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MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
MODERN SCIENCE
AND MODERN THOUGHT
S. LAING.
SIXTH THOUSAND.
CONTAINING A SUPPLE1CSXTAL CHAPTER OK
GLADSTONE'S " DAWN OF CREATION" AND " PROEM OF GENESIS,'
AND OS
DRUMMOND'-S "NATURAL. LAW !N THE SPIRITUAL WORLD."
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED.
1889.
Printed from Stereotype,
March, 1889.
/8
INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION
THE Fifth Edition of this work having been exhausted in
three weeks from its publication, a Sixth Edition is now
published at the same low price of 3s. Qd. The Author's
object is to meet the rapidly-increasing demand for works
giving an intelligible and popular view of the leading
questions of the day in Science and Philosophy, by bringing
out the volume at a price which renders it accessible to
the general public, and specially to the class of intelligent
working men who take an interest in such subjects.
S. LAING.
HALL GROVE, BAG SHOT,
Aug. 15, 1888.
4S928G
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
THE object of this book is to give a clear and concise view of
the principal results of Modern Science, and of the revolution
which they have effected in Modern Thought. I do not
pretend to discover fresh facts or to propound new theories,
but simply to discharge the humbler though still useful
task of presenting what has become the common property of
thinking minds, in a popular shape, which may interest those
who lack time and opportunity for studying special subjects
in more complete and technical treatises.
I have endeavoured also to give unity to the subjects
treated of, by connecting them with leading ideas : in the
case of Science, that of the gradual progress from human
standards to those of almost infinite space and duration,
and the prevalence of law throughout the universe to the
exclusion of supernatural interference ; in the case of
Thought, the bearings of these discoveries on old creeds
and philosophies, and on the practical conduct of life. The
endeavour to show how much of religion can be saved from
the shipwreck of theology has been the main object of the
second part. Those who are acquainted with the scientific
viii PKEFACE.
literature of tlie day will at once see how much I have been
indebted to Darwin, Lyell, Lubbock, Huxley, Proctor, and
other well-known writers. In fact, the first part of this
book does not pretend to be more than a compendious popular
abridgment of their works. I prefer, therefore, acknowledging
my obligations to them once for all, rather than encumbering
each page by detailed references.
The second part contains more of mv own reflections on
the important subjects discussed, and must stand or fall on
its own merits rather than on authority. I can only say that
I have endeavoured to treat these subjects in a reverential
spirit, and that the conclusions arrived at are the result of a
conscientious and dispassionate endeavour to arrive at " the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
CONTENTS.
fart I,
MODERN SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
HGB
3
Primitive Ideas Natural Standards Dimensions of the
Earth Of Sun and Solar System Distance of Fixed Stars
Their Order and Size Nebulae and other Universes The
Telescope and the Infinitely Great The Microscope and the
Infinitely Small Uniformity of Law Law of Gravity Acts
through all Space Double Stars, Comets, and Meteors Has
acted through all Time.
CHAPTER II.
B - - : . .-' . .."'I-' ''< V . . 20
Evidence of Geology Stratification Denudation Strata
identified by Superposition By Fossils Geological Record
shown by Upturned Strata General Result Palaeozoic and
Primary Periods Secondary Tertiary Time required
Coal Formation Chalk Elevations and Depressions of Land
Internal Heat of Earth Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Changes of Fauna and Flora Astronomical Time Tides and
the Moon Sun's Radiation Earth's Cooling Geology and
Astronomy Bearings on Modern Thought.
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
HATTEK ' '""
Ether and Light Colour and Heat Matter and its Elements
Molecules and Atoms Spectroscope Uniformity of Matter
throughout the Universe Force and Motion Conservation
of Energy Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemical Action
Dissipation of Heat Birth and Death of Worlds.
CHAPTER IV.
LIFE '77
Essence of Life Simplest Form, Protoplasm Monera and
Protista Animal and Vegetable Life Spontaneous Genera-
tionDevelopment of Species from Primitive Cells Super-
natural Theory Zoological Provinces Separate Creations
Law or Miracle Darwinian Theory Struggle for Life
Survival of the Fittest Development and Design The Hand
Proof required to establish Darwin's Theory as a Law
Species Hybrids Man subject to Law.
CHAPTER Y.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 105
Belief in Man's Recent Origin Boucher de Perthes' Dis-
coveriesConfirmed by Prestwich Nature of Implements
Celts, Scrapers, and Flakes Human Remains in River Drifts
Great Antiquity Implements from Drift at Bournemouth
Bone Caves Kent's Cavern Yictoria, Gower, and other
Caves Caves of France and Belgium Ages of Cave Bear,
Mammoth, and Reindeer Artistic Race Drawings of Mam-
moth, etc. Human Types Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Fur-
fooz, etc. Attempts to fix Dates History Bronze Age
Neolithic Danish Kitchen-middens Swiss Lake-Dwellings
Glacial Period Traces of Ice Causes of Glaciers Croll's
Theory Gulf Stream Dates of Glacial Period Rise and
Submergence of Land Tertiary Man Eocene Period
Miocene Evidence for Pliocene and Miocene Man Con-
clusions as to Antiquity.
CONTENTS. XI
CHAPTER VI.
PAS*
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE 16&
Origin of Man from an Egg Like other Mammals Develop-
ment of the Embryo Backbone Eye and other Organs of
Sense Fish, Reptile, and Mammalian Stages Comparison
with Apes and Monkeys Germs of Human Faculties in
Animals The Dog Insects Helplessness of Human Infant
Instinct Heredity and Evolution The Missing Link
Saces of Men Leading Types and Varieties Common Origin
Distant Language How Formed Grammar Chinese,
Aryan. Semitic, etc. Conclusions from Language Evolution
and Antiquity Religions of Savage Races Ghosts and
Spirits Anthropomorphic Deities Traces in Neolithic and
Palaeolithic Times Development by Evolution Primitive
Arts Tools and Weapons Fire Flint Implements
Progress from Palaeolithic to Neolithic Times Domestic
Animals Clothing Ornaments Conclusion, Man a Product
of Evolution.
$art BE.
MODERN THOUGHT.
CHAPTER VII.
MODEXN TIIOUGQT .......... 213
Lines from Tennyson The Gospel of Modern Thought
Change exemplified by Carlyle, Renan, and George Eliot
Science becoming Universal Attitude of Orthodox Writers
Origin of Evil First Cause unknowable New Philosophies
and Religions Herbert Spencer and Agnosticism Comte
and Positivism Pessimism Mormonism Spiritualism
Dreams and Visions Somnambulism Mesmerism Great
Modern Thinkers Carlyle Hero-worship.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
Origin of Belief in the Supernatural Thunder Belief in
Miracles formerly Universal St. Paul's Testimony Now
Incredible Christian Miracles Apparent Miracles Eeal
Miracles Absurd Miracles Worthy Miracles The Resurrec-
tion and Ascension Nature of Evidence required Inspira-
tion Prophecy Direct Evidence St. Paul The Gospels
What is Known of Them The Synoptic Gospels Resem-
blances and Differences Their Origin Papias Gospel of
St. John Evidence rests on Matthew, Mark, and Luke
What each states Compared with one another and with
St. John Hopelessly Contradictory Miracle of the Ascension
Silence of Mark Probable Early Date of Gospels But no*
in their Present Form.
242
CHAPTER IX.
CHRISTIANITY WITUOUT MIRACLES 274
Practical and Theoretical Christianity Example and Teaching
of Christ Christian Dogma Moral Objections Inconsistent
with Facts Must be accepted as Parables Fall and Re-
demptionOld Creeds must be Transformed or Die Maho-
metanism Decay of Faith Balance of Advantages Religious
Wars and Persecutions Intolerance Sacrifice Prayer
Absence of Theology in Synoptic Gospels Opposite Pole to
Christianity Courage and Self-reliance Belief in God and a
Future Life Based mainly on Christianity Science gives no
Answer Nor Metaphysics So-called Intuitions Develop-
ment of Idea of God Best Proof afforded by Christianity
Evolution is Transforming it Reconciliation of Religion and
Science.
CONTENTS. Xlll
CHAPTER X
MM
PRACTICAL LIFE ...,. 298
Conscience Right is Right Self -reverence Courage-
Respectability Influence of Press Respect for Women
Self-respect of Nations Democracy and Imperialism
Self-knowledge Conceit Luck Speculation Money-
making Practical Aims of Life Self-control Conflict of
Reason and Instinct Temper Manners Good Habits in
Youth Success in Practical Life Education Stoicism
Conclusion.
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER
Gladstone's " Dawn of Creation " and " Proem to Genesis." Drum-
mond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World" . . . .321
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODEM THOUGHT.
MODERN SCIENCE.
MODERN SCIENCE & MODERN THOUGHT.
CHAPTER I.
SPACE.
Primitive Ideas Natural Standards Dimensions of the Earth Of
Sun and Solar System Distance of Fixed Stars Their Order
and Size Nebulae and other Universes The Telescope and the
Infinitely Great The Microscope and the Infinitely Small
Uniformity of Law Law of Gravity Acts through all Space
Double Stars, Comets, and Meteors Has acted through all Time.
THE first ideas of space were naturally taken from the
standard of man's own impressions. The inch, the foot,
the cubit, were the lengths of portions of his own
body, obviously adapted for measuring objects of com-
paratively small size with which he came in direct
contact. The mile was the distance traversed in 1,000
double paces ; the league the distance walked in an hour.
The visible horizon suggested the idea that the earth
was a flat, circular surface like a round table ; and as
experience showed that it extended beyond the limits
of a single horizon, the conception was enlarged, and
the size of the table increased so as to take in all
the countries known to the geography of successive
periods.
In like manner the sun, moon, and stars were taken
B 2
4 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
to be at the distance at which they appeared ; that is,
first of the visible horizon, and then of the larger circle
to which it had been found necessary to expand it. It
was never doubted that they really revolved, as they
seemed to do, round this flat earth circle, dipping under
it in the west at night, and reappearing in the east
with the day. The conception of the universe, there-
fore, was of a flat, circular earth, surrounded by an
ocean stream, in the centre of a crystal sphere which
revolved in twenty-four hours round the earth, and in
which the heavenly bodies were fixed as lights for man's
use to distinguish days and seasons. The maximum idea
of space was therefore determined by the size of the earth
circle which was necessary to take in all the regions
known at the time, with a little margin beyond for the
ocean stream, and the space between it and the crystal
vault, required to enable the latter to revolve freely.
In the time of Homer, and the early Greek philosophers,
this would probably require a maximum of space of
from 5,000 to 10,000 miles. This dimension has been
expanded by modern science into one of as many
millions, or rather hundreds of millions, as there were
formerly single miles, and there is no sign that the limit
has been reached.
How has this wonderful result been arrived at, and
how do we feel certain that it is true? Those who
wish thoroughly to understand it must study standard
works on Astronomy, but it may be possible to give
some clear idea of the processes by which it has been
arrived at, and of the cogency of the reasoning by
which we are compelled to accept facts so contrary
to the first impressions of our natural senses.
The fundamental principle upon which all measure-
SPACE.
ments of space depend, which are beyond the actual
application of human standards, is this : that distant
objects change their bearings for a given change of base,
more or less in proportion as they are less or more
distant. Suppose I am on board a steamer sailing
down the Thames, and I see two churches on the
Essex coast directly opposite to me, or bearing due north,
the first of which is one mile and the other ten miles
distant. I sail one mile
due east and again take the
bearings. It is evident that
the first church will now
bear north-west, or have
apparently moved through
45, i.e., one-eighth part of
the circumference of a com-
plete circle, assuming this
circumference to be divided
into 360 equal parts or
degrees ; while the more
distant church will only
have altered its bearing
by a much less amount,
easily determined by calcu-
lation, but which may be taken roughly at 5 instead
of 45.
The branch of mathematics known as Trigonometry
enables us in all cases, without exception, where we know
the apparent displacement or change of bearing of a dis-
tant object produced by taking it from the opposite ends
of a known base, to calculate the distance of that object
with as much ease and certainty as if we were working a
simple sum of rule of three. The first step is to know
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
our base, and for this purpose it is essential to know the
size and form of the earth on which we live. These are
determined by very simple considerations.
If I walk a mile in a straight line, an object at a vast
distance like a star will not change its apparent place
perceptibly. But if I walk the same distance in a semi-
circle, what was originally on my left hand will now be
on my right, or will have changed its apparent place by
180. If I walk my mile on the circumference of a circle
of twice the size, I shall have traversed a quadrant or one-
fourth part of it, and changed the bearing of the distant
object exactly half as much,
or 90, and so on, accord-
ing to the size of the circle,
which may therefore be
readily calculated from the
length that must be tra-
velled along it to shift the
bearing of the remote ob-
ject by a given amount,
say of 1.
If, for instance, by tra-
^ veiling 65 miles from north
-|-to south we lower the ap-
parent height of the Pole
star 1, it is mathemati-
cally certain that we have travelled this 65 miles, not
along a^flat surface, but along a circle which is 360 times
65, or, in round numbers, 24,000 miles in circumference
8,000 miles in diameter. And if, whenever we
travel the same distance on a meridian or line drawn on
the circumference from north to south, we find the same
lisplacement of 1, we may be sure that our journey has
SPACE. 7
been in a true circle, and that the form of the earth is a
perfect sphere of these dimensions.
Now, this is very nearly what actually occurs when
we apply methods of scientific accuracy to measure the
earth. The true form of the earth is not exactly spheri-
cal, but slightly oval or flatter at the poles, being almost
precisely the form it would have assumed if it had been
a fluid mass rotating about a north and south axis. But
it is very nearly spherical, the true polar diameter being
7,899 miles, and the true equatorial diameter 7,925
miles, so that for practical purposes we may say roughly
that the earth is a spherical body, 24,000 miles round
and 8,000 miles across.
This gives us a fresh standard from which to start
in measuring greater distances. Precisely as we inferred
the distance of the church from the steamer in our first
illustration, we can infer the distance of the sun, from
its displacement caused by observing it from two oppo-
site ends of a base of known length on the earth's surface.
This is the essential principle of all the calculations,
though, when great accuracy is sought for, very refined
methods of applying the principle are required, turning
mainly on the extent to which the apparent occurrence
of the same event such as the transit of Venus over
the sun's disc is altered by observing it from different
points at known distances from one another on the
earth's surface. The result is to show that the sun's
distance from the earth is, in round numbers, 93,000,000
miles. This is not an exact statement, for the earth's
orbit is not an exact circle, but the sun and earth really
revolve in ellipses about the common centre of gravity.
The sun, however, is so much larger than the earth that
this centre of gravity falls within the sun's surface, and,
8 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
practically, the earth describes an ellipse about the sun,
the 93,000,000 miles being the mean distance, and the
eccentricity, or deviation from the exact circular orbit,
being about one-sixtieth part of that mean distance.
This distance, again, gives us the size of the sun, for it
is easily calculated how large the sun must be to look
as large as it does at a distance of 93,000,000 miles.
The result is, that it is a sphere of about 880,000 miles
in diameter. Its bulk, therefore, exceeds that of the
earth in the proportion of 1,384,000 to 1. Its density,
or the quantity of matter in it, may be calculated from
the effect of its action on the earth under the law of
gravity at the distance of 93,000,000 miles. It weighs
as much as 354,936 earths.
The same method gives us the distance, size, and
weight of the moon and planets ; and it gives us a fresh
standard or base from which to measure still greater
distances. The distance of the earth from the sun being
93,000,000 miles, and its orbit an ellipse nearly circular,
it follows that it is in mid-winter, in round numbers,
186,000,000 miles distant from the spot where it was at
midsummer. What difference in the bearings of the fixed
stars is caused by traversing this enormous base ?
The answer is, in the immense majority of cases, no
difference at all ; i.e., their distance is so vastly greater
than 186,000,000 miles that a change of base to this
extent makes no change perceptible to the most refined
instruments in their bearings as seen from the earth.
But the perfection of modern instruments is such, that a
change of even one second, or -jnmrth part of one degree,
in the annual parallax, as it is called, of any fixed star,
would certainly be detected.
This corresponds to a distance of 206,265 times
SPACE, 9
the length of the base of 186,000,000 miles, or of
20,000,000,000,000,000 miles, a distance which it would
take light moving at the rate of 190,000 miles per
second, three years and eighty-three days to traverse.
There is only one star in the whole heavens, a bright
star called Alpha, in the constellation of the Centaur,
which is known to be as near as this. Its annual
parallax is 0'976", or very nearly 1", and therefore its
distance very nearly 20 millions of millions of miles.
All the other stars, of which many millions are visible
through powerful telescopes, are further off than this.
There are about eight other stars which have been
supposed by astronomers to show some trace of an
annual parallax of less than half a second, and therefore
whose distances may be somewhere from twice to ten times
as great as that of Alpha Centauri, and from the quantity
of light sent to us from these distances, some approxima-
tion has been made to their intrinsic splendour as-
compared with our sun. That of Alpha Centauri is
computed to be nearly 2j times, that of Sirius, the
brightest star in the heavens, 393 times greater than that
of the sun. These figures may or may not represent
greater size or greater intensity of light, and they are
only quoted to give some idea of the vastness of the
scale of the universe, of which our solar system forms a
minute part.
Nor does even this nearly fathom the depth of the
abysses of space. Telescopes enable us to see a vast multi-
tude of stars of varying size and brilliancy. It is com-
puted by astronomers that there are at least one hundred
millions of stars within the range of the telescopes used
by Herschel for gauging the depth of space, and a thousand
millions within the range of the great reflecting telescope
10 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
of Lord Rosse. As many as eighteen different orders of
magnitude have been counted, and the more the power of
telescopes is increased the more stars arc seen. Now, as
there is no reason to suppose that this extreme variety
of brilliancy arises from extreme difference of size of one
star from another, it must be principally owing to
difference of distance, so that a star of the eighteenth
magnitude is presumably many times further off than any
of the first magnitude, the distance of the nearest of which
has been proved to be something certainly not less than
20,000,000,000,000 miles. In fact, these stellar distances
are so great that in order to bring them at all within
the range of human imagination we are obliged to apply
another standard, that of the velocity of light. Light;
can be shown to travel at the rate of about 186 millions
of miles in 16 minutes, for this is the difference of the
time at which we see the same periodical occurrence,
as for instance the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, accord-
ing as the earth happens to be at the point of its orbit
nearest to Jupiter or at that farthest away. The
velocity of light is therefore about 184,000 miles per
second, a velocity which has been fully confirmed by
direct experiments made on the earth's surface.
These enormous distances are reckoned, therefore, by
the number of years which it would take light to
come from them, travelling as it does at the rate of
184,000 miles a second. The nearest fixed star, Alpha
Centauri, is seen by a ray which left it three years
and eighty-three days ago, and has been travelling ever
since at the rate of 184,000 miles per second. Sirius,
the brightest of the fixed stars, if the determination
of its annual parallax is correct, is six times further
off, and is seen, not as it exists to-day, but as it
SPACE. 1 1
existed nearly twenty years ago ; and the light we now
see from some of the stars of the eighteenth magnitude
can hardly have left them less than 2,000 years ago.
Even this, however, is far from exhausting our con-
ception of the magnitude of space. Beyond the stars
which are near enough to be seen separately, powerful
telescopes show a galaxy in which the united lustre of
myriads of stars is only perceptible as a faint nebulous
gleam. And in addition to stars the telescope shows us
a number of nebulas, or faint patches of light, sometimes
globular, sometimes in wreaths, spiral wisps, and other
fantastic shapes, scattered about the heavens. Some of
these are resolved by powerful telescopes into clusters of
stars inconceivably numerous and remote, which appear
to be separate universes, like that of which our sun
and fixed stars form one. Others again cannot be so
resolved, and are shown by the spectroscope to be
enormous masses of glowing gas, or cosmic matter, out
of which other universes are in process of formation.
We are thus led, step by step, to enlarge our ideas of
space from the primitive conception of miles and leagues,
until the imagination fails to grasp the infinite vastness
of the scale upon which the material universe is really
constructed.
If the telescope takes us thus far beyond the
standards of unaided sense in the direction of the
infinitely great, the microscope, aided by calculations as
to the nature of light, heat, electricity, and chemical
action, takes us as far in the opposite direction of the
infinitely small. The microscope enables us actually to
see magnitudes of the order of Trcr.Vutfth of an inch as
clearly as the naked eye can see those of iVth. This
introduces us into a new world, where we can see a
12 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
whole universe of things both dead and alive of whose
existence our forefathers had no suspicion. A. glass of
water is seen to swarm with life, and be the abode of
bacteria, amoebae, rotifers, and other minute creatures,
which dart about, feed, digest, and propagate their
species in this small world of their own, very much as
jelly-fish and other humble organisms do in the larger
seas. The air also is shown to be full of innumerable
germs and spores floating in it, and ready to be de-
posited and spring into life, wherever they find a seed-
bed fitted to receive them. Given a favourable soil in the
human frame, and the invisible seeds of scarlet fever,
cholera, and small-pox ripen into full crops, just as the
germs of a fungus invade the potato crops of a whole
district, and lead to Irish famines and the extermination
of more than a million of human beings.
The microscope also enables us to see the very
beginnings of life and watch its primitive element,
protoplasm, in the form of a minute speck of jelly-like
matter, through which pulsations are constantly passing,
and we can watch the transformations by which an
elementary cell of this substance splits up, multiplies,
and by a continued process of development builds up
with these cells all the diversified forms of vegetable and
animal life.
But far as the microscope carries us down to dimen-
sions vastly smaller than those of which the ordinary
senses can take cognizance, the modern sciences of light,
heat, and chemistry carry us as much farther down-
wards, as the telescope carries us upwards beyond the
boundaries of our solar system into the expanses of
stars and nebulae. We are transported into a world of
atoms, molecules, and light-waves, where the standard of
SPACE. 13
measurement is no longer in feet or inches, or even
in one-hundred-thousandth part of an inch, but in
millionths of millimetres, i.e., in ^s-.-jraTr.irnr.Tmrth of an
inch. The dimensions are such that, as we shall see
when we come to deal with matter, if the drop of water
in which the microscope shows us living animalcula
were magnified to the size of the earth, the atoms of
which it is composed would appear of a size intermediate
between that of a rifle-bullet and a cricket-ball.
This, then, is Nature's scale of space, from millionths
of a millimetre up to millions of millions of miles.
Throughout the whole of this enormous range of space
the laws of Nature prevail.
Matter attracts matter by the same law of gravity
in the case of double stars revolving about each other
at a distance at which a base of 180,000,000 miles has
long since become a vanishing point, and in the case of
atoms which form the substance of a gas, as in that of an
apple falling from a tree at the earth's surface. Comets,
darting off into the remote regions of space, return after
long periods, in obedience to the same law. Clouds
of meteoric dust revolve in fixed orbits, determined
by the law of gravity as surely as the moon revolves
round the earth, and the earth round the sun.
This is a conclusion of such fundamental impor-
tance that it is desirable to give the uninitiated
reader some clear idea of what it means, and how
it is arrived at. Newton's great discovery, the law
of gravity, is this that all matter acting in the
mass attracts other matter directly as the amount of
attracting matter, and inversely as the square of the
distance. That is, 2 or 2,000,000 tons attract with
twice the force of 1 or 1,000,000 tons at the same
14 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
distance, but with only one-fourth of the same force
at double, and one-ninth at triple the distance.
How is this law proved ? This will be best answered
by explaining ho\v it was discovered. The force of
gravity, or attraction of the earth on bodies at the
earth's surface, is a known quantity. The whole matter
in a spherical body attracts exactly as if it were all
collected at the centre. The force of gravity at the
earth's surface is, therefore, that of the earth's mass
exerted at a distance of about 4,000 miles, and this
can be easily measured by observing the space fallen
through, and the velocity acquired, by a falling body
in a given time, such as 1".
Does the same force act at the distance of the
moon, or 207,200 miles ? This was the question
Newton asked himself, and the answer was got at
in the following way. If we swing a stone in a sling
round our head, it describes a circle as long as we
keep the string tight, and its pull inwards just balances
the pull of the stone to fly outwards, i.e., to use scientific
language, as long as the centripetal just balances the
centrifugal force. But if we let go the string the
stone darts off in the direction in which, and with
the velocity with which, it was moving when the
centripetal force ceased to act.
The moon is such a sling-stone revolving about
the earth. At each instant it is moving in the direc-
tion of a tangent to its orbit, and would move on in
a straight line along this tangent if it were not de-
flected from it by some other force. That is, if the
moon were now at M lt it would, after a given interval
of time, be at M 2 if no force had acted on it. But in
point of fact it is not at M 2 but at M 3 . Therefore it
SPACE. 1 5
tas been pulled down from M 2 to M 3 , or, if you like,
fallen through the space M 2 M 3 in the time in which
it would have travelled over M x M 2 with
its velocity at Mj. How does this space
correspond with the space through which
a heavy body would have fallen in the
same time at the earth's surface ? It
corresponds exactly, assuming the law
of gravity to be, that it decreases with
the square of the distance.
This may be taken as the first approximation, but
the more accurate and universal proofs of the law are
derived from mathematical calculations of what the
nature of the attractions must be, in the case of the
sun, earth, moon, and planets, to make them describe
such elliptic orbits and observe such laws, as from
Kepler's observations we know actually to be the case.
The answer here again is the law of gravity, and no
other possible law, and this is confirmed in practice by
the fact that we are able, by calculations based on it, to
satisfy the requisite of safe prophecy that of knowing
beforehand, and to predict eclipses, comets, transits,
and occupations, and generally to compile Nautical
Almanacs, by which ships know their whereabouts in
pathless oceans.
This, then, affords us a first firm standing-point in
any speculations as to the nature of the universe. One
great law, at any rate, is universal throughout all space,
and, as we shall see later, suns, stars, and nebulae
are composed of the same matter as the earth and its
inhabitants.
In like manner comets and meteors, though present-
ing in other respects phenomena not yet fully under-
16 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
stood, are proved to obey the same laws and to consist
of the same matter. Comets are bodies which revolve
round the sun, and are attracted by it and by the
planets, in obedience to the ordinary law of gravity,
though their density is so slight, that although often of
enormous volume, they produce no perceptible effect on
the planets, even when entangled amidst the satellites
of a planet, as Lascelles' comet was among those of
Jupiter.
Their dimensions may be judged of when it is stated
that the comet of 1811 had a tail 120 millions of miles
in length and 15 millions of miles in diameter at the
widest part, while the diameter of the nucleus was
about 127,000 miles, or more than ten times that
of the earth. In order that bodies of this magnitude,
passing near the earth, should not affect its motion or
change the length of the year by even a single second,
their actual substance must be inconceivably rare. If
the tail, for instance, of the comet of 1843 had con-
sisted of the lightest substance known to us, hydrogen
gas, its mass would have exceeded that of the sun, and
every planet would have been dragged from its orbit.
As Proctor says, therefore : " A jar-full of air would
probably have outweighed hundreds of cubic miles of
that vast appendage which blazed across the skies to the
terror of the ignorant and superstitious."
The extreme tenuity of a comet's mass is also
proved by the phenomenon of the tail, which, as the
comet approaches the sun, is thrown out sometimes
to a length of 90 millions of miles in a few hours.
And what is remarkable, this tail is thrown out against
the force of gravity by some repulsive force, probably
electrical, so that it always points away from the sun.
SPACE. 17
Thus a comet which approaches the sun with a tail
behind it, will, after passing its perihelion, recede from
the sun with its tail before it, and this although the
tail may be of the length of 200 millions of miles as in
the comet of 1843. In the course of a few hours, there-
fore, this enormous tail has been absorbed and a new
one started out in an opposite direction. And yet, thin
as the matter of comets must be, it obeys the common
law of gravity, and whether the comet revolves in an
orbit within that of the outer planets, or shoots off into
the abysses of space and returns only after hundreds of
years, its path is, at each instant, regulated by the same
force as that which causes an apple to fall to the ground;
and its matter, however attenuated, is ordinary matter,
and does not consist of any unknown elements. The
spectroscope shows that comets shine partly by reflected
sunlight and partly by light of their own, the latter part
being gaseous, and this gas, in most comets, contains
carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, possibly also oxygen, in
the form of hydrocarbons or marsh gas, cyanogen and
possibly oxygen compounds of carbon. One comet has
recently given the line of sodium, and the presence of
iron is strongly suspected.
As regards meteors, which include shooting stars
and aerolites, it has been long known, from actual masses
which have fallen on the earth, that they are composed
of terrestrial matter, principally of iron, which has been
partially fused by the heat engendered by the friction
of the rapid passage through the air. The recurrence of
brilliant displays at regular intervals, as for instance
those of August and November, when the whole sky
often seems alive with shooting stars, had also been
noticed ; but it was reserved for recent times to prove
18 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
that these meteor streams are really composed of small
planetary bodies revolving round the sun in fixed orbits
by the force of gravity, and that their display, as seen
by us, arises from the earth in its revolution round the
sun happening to intersect some of these meteoric orbits,
and the friction of our atmosphere setting fire to and
consuming the smaller meteors which appear as shooting
stars. This shows the enormous number of meteors by
which space must be tenanted. It is proved that the
earth encounters more than a hundred meteor systems,
but the chance of any one ring or system being inter-
sected by the earth is extremely small, as the earth is
such a minute speck in the whole sun-surrounding space
of the solar system. On a scale on which the earth's
orbit was represented by a circle of 10 feet diameter, the
earth itself would be only about r^th of an inch in
diameter, so that if, as astronomers say, the earth
encounters about a hundred meteor systems in the
course of its annual revolution, space must swarm with
an innumerable number of these minute bodies all
revolving round the sun by the force of gravity.
Has this law of gravity been uniform through all
time as it undoubtedly is through all space ? We have
every reason to believe so. The law of gravity, which is
the foundation of most of what we call the natural laws
of geological action, has certainly prevailed, as will be
shown later, through the enormous periods of geological
time, and far beyond this we can discern it operating
in those astronomical changes by which cosmic matter
O J
has been condensed into nebulae, nebulae into suns
throwing off planets, and planets throwing off satellites,
as they cooled and contracted. We cannot speak
with quite the same certainty of infinite time as we can
SPACE. 19
of infinite space, for we have no telescopes to gauge the
abysses of time, and no certain standards, like those of
the known dimensions of our solar system, to apply to
periods too vast for the imagination.
But we can say this with certainty, that the
present law of gravity must have prevailed when the
outermost planet of our system, Neptune, was con-
densed into a separate body and began revolving in
its present orbit, and that it has continued to act ever
since ; while, as a matter of probability, it is as nearly
certain as anything can be, that the law by which the
apple falls to the ground is an original law of matter,
and has existed as long as matter has existed.
It certainly extends through all space. Double stars
at a distance exceeding 20 millions of millions of miles
revolve round their common centre of gravity by this
law. Atoms and molecules almost infinitely smaller
than millionths of millimetres derive from it their
specific weights with as much certainty as if they were
pounds or hundredweights.
What space and matter really may be, we do not
know, and if we attempt to reason about their essence
and origin, or quit the region of science based on fact,
we get into the misty realms of metaphysics, where,
like Milton's fallen angels, we
Find no end in wandering mazes lost.
But this we do know of a certainty, that be matter
and space what they may, they are subject to this one,
uniform, all-pervading law ; and attract, have always
attracted, and will always attract, directly as the mass
of the attracting matter and inversely as the square of
the distance in space at which the attraction acts.
c 2
CHAPTER II.
TIME.
Evidence of Geology Stratification Denudation Strata identified
by Superposition By Fossils Geological Eecord shown by Up-
turned Strata General Result Palaeozoic and Primary Periods
Secondary Tertiary Time required Coal Formation Chalk
Elevations and Depressions of Land Internal Heat of Earth
Earthquakes and Volcanoes Changes of Fauna and Flora
Astronomical Time Tides and the Moon Sun's Radiation
Earth's Cooling Geology and Astronomy Bearings on Modern
Thought.
GEOLOGY has done for time what astronomy has for
space it has expanded the limited ideas derived from
natural impression and early tradition, into those of an
almost infinite duration. This result is so important
that it is desirable that all educated persons, without
being professed geologists, should have some clear idea
of the nature of the conclusions and of the evidences on
which they rest.
This I will endeavour to give.
When we come to examine the structure of the earth
or rather of the outer crust of the earth which we in-
habit with the care and precision of scientific methods,
we find that it is not of uniform composition, but con-
sists mainly of distinct layers, or strata, lying one over
the other. This is true not only of the larger beds,
TIME, 21
or distinct formations, but of the details of each forma-
tion, many of which are built up as regularly as the
layers of the Great Pyramid, while others are made up
of layers no thicker than the leaves of a book.
Now consider what this fact of stratification implies.
In the first place it implies deposit from water, for there
is no other agency by which materials can be sorted out
and thrown down in horizontal layers, while this agency
is now doing the same thing every day and all over the
world. The Rhone flows into the Lake of Geneva a
turbid stream, and flows out of it as clear as crystal.
All the matter it brings in is deposited at the bottom of
the lake, and in course of time will fill it up. This
deposit varies with every alternation of flood and drought;
the river depositing sometimes boulders and coarse
gravel, sometimes shingle, sand, or fine mud, and
carrying this material sometimes to a greater and some-
times to a less distance, according to the velocity of
the stream.
Ages hence, when the lake has been converted into
dry land, it will be as certain, whenever a pit is dug or
a well sunk in it, that it was the work of a river flowing
into a lake, as it is to-day, when we can see them at
work.
And what is true of the Rhone and the Lake of
Geneva, is true on a larger scale of the Ganges, the
Mississippi, and of every sea or ocean, with every river
or torrent pouring into it.
Again, the sea is perpetually wearing away the coasts
of all lands, and, where the cliffs are soft and the tides
and currents strong, at a very rapid rate. The materials
swallowed up are rolled as shingle, ground into sand,
or floated as fine mud, and all finally assorted and laid
22 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
down at the bottom of the sea, iiot in a confused heap,
but in regular succession. On some of them, shell-fish
and other marine creatures live and die for generations,
and their remains are covered over by fresh sands or
clays, and preserved for future geologists. All this
is going on now, and when we examine the rocks we
find that precisely the same sort of thing has been
going on from the newest to the oldest strata. With
the exception of a comparatively small amount of
igneous rock, which has boiled up from deep sources of
molten matter, and been poured out in sheets of lava, or
masses of trap, porphyry, and granite, according to the
amount of pressure it has undergone and the time it has
taken to cool and crystallise, all the earth's surface may
be said to consist of stratified matter, showing clear signs
of having been deposited from water. Some of the oldest
rocks, such as gneiss, may be a little doubtful, as they
have clearly been subjected to great heat under great
pressure, until they became plastic enough to crystallise
as they cooled, and thus destroy any fossils embedded in
them and obliterate most of the ordinary signs of strati-
fication. But the opinion of the best geologists is that
they were originally stratified, and have become what is
called " metamorphic," or changed by heat and pressure
into the semblance of igneous rocks. But even if these
are not included, enough remains to justify the general
assertion that the outer crust of the earth, as known to
us, is made up mainly of stratified materials which have
been deposited from water.
Now this implies another most important fact, viz.,
that there must have been waste or denudation of
existing land corresponding to the deposit of stratified
materials under water. Water cannot generate these
TIME. 23
materials, and every square mile of such strata, say 10
feet thick, implies the removal of 10 feet from a square
mile of land surface by rains and rivers, or of an equiva-
lent amount of cubical content in some other way, as by
the erosion of a coast line. This is a very important con-
sideration when we come to estimate the time required
for the formation of such a thickness of stratified beds as
we find existing. There must have been a fundamental
crystalline rock as the earth cooled down from a fluid
state and acquired a solid crust, and this rock must have
been worn down by primeval seas and rivers as the pro-
gressive cooling admitted of the condensation of aqueous
vapour into water. The waste of this primitive crust
must have been deposited in strata at the bottom of those
seas in thick masses, covering the original rock, and these
again must have been partly crystallised by heat and
pressure, and over and over again upheaved and sub-
merged, and themselves worn down by fresh erosion,
forming fresh deposits which underwent a repetition of
the same process,
A third important inference from the fact of strati-
fication is that all strata must have been originally
deposited horizontally, or very nearly so, and in such
order that the lowest is the oldest.
Suppose we fill a jar with water, and put some
white sand into it, and when that has subsided to
the bottom and the water is clear, some yellow sand,
and again some red sand, it is clear that we shall
have at the bottom of the jar three horizontal deposits
or strata, one white, one yellow, and one red, and that
by no conceivable means can the order in which they
were deposited have been other than first white,
secondly yellow, and lastly red. This law, therefore,
24 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
is invariable, that wherever it is possible to trace a
series of strata lying one above the other, the lowest
is the oldest, and the highest the youngest in point
of time.
If, therefore, all the great formations, from the old
Laurentian up to the newest Tertiary, had been de-
posited uniformly all over the world, and had remained
undisturbed, and we could have seen them in one
vertical section in a cliff twenty-five miles high for
that is about their total known thickness we should
have been able without further difficulty to determine
their order of succession and respective magnitudes.
But this is plainly impossible, for the deposits going
on at any one time are of very different character.
For instance, we have at present the Globigerina ooze
gradually filling the depths of the Atlantic with a
deposit resembling chalk ; the Gulfs of Bengal and
Mexico silting up with fine clay from river deposits ;
vast tracts in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Ked Sea,
covered with coral and the debris of coral-reefs. How
could these, if upheaved into dry land and explored
by future geologists, be identified as having been formed
contemporaneously ?
Suppose that coins of Victoria had been dropped in
each of them, the geologist who discovered these coins
would have no difficulty in concluding that the strata
in which they were found were all formed in the
nineteenth century. The petrified shells and other
remains found in geological strata are such coins.
Every great formation has had its own characteristic
fauna and flora, or aggregate of animal and vegetable
life, varying slowly from one geological age to another,
and linked to the past and future by some persistent
TIME. 25
types and forms, but still with such a preponderance
of characteristic fossils as to enable us to assign the
rocks in which they occur to their proper place in the
volume of the geological record. Innumerable obser-
vations have shown that we can rely, with absolute
confidence, on the fossils embedded in the different
strata of the earth's crust as tests of the period to which
they belong, however different the strata may be in
mineral composition.
The next question is how we can ascertain the thick-
ness and order of succession of these strata, We have
seen that all stratified rocks were originally deposited
from water and therefore horizontally. Had they re-
mained so, in the first place the process of forming
stratified rocks must long ago have come to an end, for
all the land surface must have been worn down to the
sea level, and with no more land to be denuded, deposi-
tion must have ceased at an early period of the earth's
history. And, in the second place, we could have known
nothing more of the earth's crust than we saw on the
surface, and in the shallow pits and borings we could
sink below it. But earthquakes and volcanoes, and the
various fractures and pressures due to subterranean heat
and secular contraction and cooling, have been at work
counteracting the effects of denudation, and causing
elevations and depressions by which the inequalities of
the earth's surface have been renewed, the balance
between sea and land maintained, and strata, originally
horizontal at the bottom of the ocean, upheaved until
sea-shells are found at the top of high mountains, and we
can walk for miles over their upturned edges.
Any one who wishes to understand how geologists
have been able to measure such a thickness of the earth's
26 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
crust, has only to take a book open at page 1 and lay
it flat before him. He can see nothing but that ono
page ; but if he turns up the pages on the right-hand
side of the book until their edges become horizontal, he
can pass over them and count perhaps 500 pages in the
space of a couple of inches.
This is precisely what geologists have been able to
do at various points of the earth's surface where the
upturned edges of the pages of its history are exposed,
and they come out, one behind the other, in the due
succession in which they were written by Nature. For
instance, in travelling from east to west in England we
pass continually from newer to older formations Chalk
comes in from below Tertiary ; Oolite and Lias from
below Chalk ; then Permian or New Red Sandstone ;
Carboniferous, including the Coal measures ; Devonian
or Old Red Sandstone ; Silurian, Cambrian, and in the
extreme north-west of Scotland and the Hebrides,
oldest of all the Laurentian.
There are some omissions and interpolations, but,
in a general way, it may be said that within the bounds
of the British Empire we have such a view of Nature's
volume as would be got, in the case I have supposed,
by travelling over its upturned edges from page 1 to-
page 500. And if each of the great formations betaken
as a separate chapter, each chapter will be found to be
made up of a number of pages, each with its own letter-
press and illustrations, though connected with the pages
before and after it by the thread of the continuous
common subject of their proper chapter ; as the chapters
again are connected by the continuous common sub-
ject-matter of the complete volume. It must not be
supposed that the volume is anything like perfect. We
TIME. 27
have to piece it together from fragments found in the
limited number of countries; which have thus far been
scientifically explored, and which do not constitute
more than a small part of the earth's surface. We
know nothing of what is below the oceans which cover
three-fourths of that surface, and there are great gaps
in the record during times when portions of the surface
were dry land, and consequently no deposit of strata or
preservation of fossils was possible. Still a great deal has
been accomplished, and the general result, as given by
common consent of the best geologists, is as follows :
The total thickness of known strata is about 130,000
feet or twenty-five miles, or the r^th part of the
distance from the earth's surface to its centre. Of this,
about 30,000 feet belong to the Laurentian, which is the
oldest known stratified deposit ; 18,000 to the Cambrian,
and 22,000 to the Silurian. These form together what
is known as the Primary or Palaeozoic Epoch.
In the lowest, the Laurentian, the only faint trace
of life discovered is that of the Eozoon Canadense, which
is considered to be an undoubted petrifaction of a
foraminiferous living organism with a chambered shell.
It must be remembered, however, that these earliest
formations have been so changed by slow crystallisation
under great heat and pressure that all fossils and nearly
all traces of stratification must have been obliterated.
In the Cambrian and Lower Silurian traces of life
become more frequent, especially of low forms of sea-
weeds, and in the Upper Silurian we find an abundance
of life, consisting of Crustacea, shell-fish, and a few true
fish in the upper strata. Some of these shells, as the
Lingula, have continued without much change up to the
present time ; and on the whole we find ourselves in the
28 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Silurian period, if not earlier, in presence of a state of
things in which substantially present causes operated
and present conditions were in force. Eains fell, winds
blew, rivers ran, waves eroded cliffs, shell-fish lived and
died, and crabs and sand-worms crawled about on shores
left dry by each tide, very much as is the case at
present.
The next great division, which got the name of
Primary before the existence of fossils was known in
the older or Palaeozoic division, comprises the Devonian
or Old Eed Sandstone ; the Carboniferous, which in-
cludes the coal ; and the Permian or New Red Sandstone.
The average thickness of these three systems taken
together is about 42,000 feet. It may be called the
era of Fern Forests and of Fish, the former being the
principal source of our supplies of coal, and the latter
being extremely abundant within the Devonian and
Permian formations.
The third great division is formed by the Secondary
group, which includes the Triassic, the Jura, and the
Cretaceous or Chalk systems, and has an average
thickness of about 15,000 feet. This epoch is em-
phatically the age of Eeptiles as the preceding one was
that of Fish, and the prevailing vegetation is no longer
one of ferns and mosses, but of Gymnosperms, or plants
having naked seeds, the most important class of which is
that of the Coniferae or Pine tribe. During this period
the Plesiosauri, Ichthyosauri, and other gigantic sea-
dragons abounded in the oceans ; colossal land-dragons,
such as the Dinosauri, occupied the continents, and
Pterodactyls, a remarkable form of carnivorous flying
lizards, ruled the air. Swarms of other reptiles, nearly
related to the present lizards, crocodiles, and turtles,
TIME. 29
abounded both in the sea and land. A few traces of
mammals and birds show that these orders had then
come into existence, just as a few traces of reptiles are
found in the Primary and of fish in the Palaeozoic strata,
but the few mammalian remains found are of small
animals of the marsupial or lowest type, and the birds
are of a transition type between reptiles and true birds.
This epoch concludes with the Chalk formation, which
is one of deep-sea deposit, where no trace of terrestrial
life can be expected.
Above this comes the Tertiary epoch, when the
present order, both of vegetable and animal life, is
fairly inaugurated ; mammals predominate over other
forms of vertebrate animals ; existing orders and species
begin to appear and increase rapidly ; and vegetation
consists mainly of Angiosperms, or plants with covered
seeds, as in our present forests. The total thickness of
these strata, from the lowest, or Eocene, to the end of
the uppermost, or Pliocene, is about 3,000 feet. Above
this comes the Quaternary, or recent period, which com-
prises the superficial strata of modern formation, and is
characterised by the undoubted existence of man and of
animal species, which either now exist or have become
extinct in quite recent geological times.
The details of this and of the Tertiary Epoch will be
more fully considered when we come to treat of the
antiquity of man, with which they are closely connected.
But for the present object, which is that of ascertaining
some standard of time for the immense series of ages
proved by geology to have elapsed since the earth
assumed its present condition, became subject to exist-
ing laws and fitted to be the abode of life, it will be
sufficient to refer to the older strata.
30 AJOUEKN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
The best idea of the enormous intervals of time
required for geological changes will be derived from the
coal measures. These consist of part only of one geo-
looical formation known as the Carboniferous. They
are made up of sheets, or seams, of condensed vegetable
matter, varying in thickness from less than an inch to
as much as thirty feet, and lying one above another,
separated by beds of rock of various composition, As
a rule, every seam of coal rests upon a bed of clay,
known as the " under-clay," and is covered by a bed of
sandstone or shale. These alternations of clay, coal, and
rock, are often repeated a great many times, and in
some sections in South Wales and Nova Scotia, there
are as many as eighty or a hundred seams of coal, each
with its own under-clay below and sandstone or shale
above. Some of the coal seams are as much as thirty
feet thick, and the total thickness of the coal measures
is, in some cases, as much as 14,000 feet.
Now consider what these facts mean. Every under-
clay was clearly once a surface soil on which the forest
vegetation grew, whose accumulated debris forms the
overlying seam of coal. The under-clays are full of the
fibres of roots, and the stools of trees which once grew
on them, are constantly found in situ, with their roots
attached just as they stood when the tree fell, and
added to the accumulation of vegetable matter, which in
modern times forms peat, and in more ancient days,
under different conditions of heat and pressure, took the
more consolidated form of coal.
When these vegetable remains are examined with the
aid of the microscope it is found that these ancient
forests consisted mainly of trees like gigantic club-
mosses, mares'-tails, and tree ferns, with a few resem-
TIME. 31
bling yews and firs. But in many cases the bulk of the
coal is composed of the spores and seeds of these ferns
and club-mosses, which were ripened and shed every
year, and gradually accumulated into a vegetable mould,
just as fallen leaves, beech - mast, and other debris,
gradually form a soil in our existing forests.
The time required must have been very great to
accumulate vegetable matter, principally composed of
fine spore dust, to a depth sufficient under great compres-
sion to give even a foot of solid coal. Dr. Dawson, who
has devoted great attention to the coal-fields of America,
says : " We may safely assert that every foot of thick-
ness of pure bituminous coal implies the quiet growth
and fall of at least fifty generations of Sigillaria, and
therefore an undisturbed condition of forest growth,
enduring through many centuries." But this is only
the first step in the measure of the time required for the
formation of the coal measures. Each seam of coal is,
as we have seen, covered by a bed of sand or shale, i.e.,
of water-borne materials. How can this be accounted
for ? Evidently in one way only that the land surface
in which the forest grew subsided gradually until it
became first a marsh, and then a lagoon or shallow estu-
ary, which silted up by degrees with deposits of sand or
mud, and, finally, was upraised until its surface became
dry land, in which a second forest grew, whose debris
formed a second coal seam. And so on, over and
over again, until the whole series of coal measures had
been accumulated, when this alternation of slight sub-
mergences and slight rises came to an end, and some
more decided movement of the earth's surface in the
locality brought on a different state of things. This
is in fact exactly what we see taking place on a smaller
32 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
scale in recent times in such deposits as those of the
delta of the Mississippi, where a well sunk at New
Orleans passes through a succession of cypress swamps
and forest growths, exactly like those now growing on
the surface, which are piled one above the other, and
separated by deposits of river silt, showing a long
alternation of periods of rest when forests grew,
followed by periods of subsidence when they were
flooded and their remains were embedded in silt.
Starting on Dr. Dawson's assumption that one foot
of coal represents fifty generations of coal plants, and
that each generation of coal plants took ten years to
come to maturity, an assumption which is certainly
very moderate, and taking the actually measured
thickness of the coal measures in some localities at
12,000 feet, Professor Huxley calculates that the time
represented by the Coal formation alone would be six
millions of years. Such a figure is, of course, only a
rough approximation, but it is sufficient to show that
when we come to deal with geological time, the standard
by which we must measure is one of which the unit is a
million of years.
This standard is confirmed by a variety of other con-
siderations. Take the case of the Chalk formation.
Chalk is almost entirely composed of the microscopic
shells of minute organisms, such as now float in the
upper strata of our great oceans, and by their subsi-
dence, in the form of an impalpable shell-dust, accumu-
late what is called the " Globigerina ooze," which is
brought up by soundings in the Atlantic and Pacific
from great depths. In fact, we may say that a chalk
formation is now going on in the depths of existing
oceans, and conversely that the old chalk, which now
TIME. 3?
forms hills and elevated downs, was certainly deposited
at the bottom of similar deep oceans of the Cretaceous
period. The rate of deposit must have been extremely
slow, certainly much slower than that of the deposit
of the much grosser matter brought down by the Nile
in its annual inundations, the growth of which has
been estimated from actual measurement at about three
inches per century. If one inch per century were the
rate of accumulation of this microscopic shell-dust,
subsiding slowly to depths of two or three miles over
areas as large as Europe, it would take 1,200 years
to form a foot of chalk, and 1,200,000 years to form
1,000 feet. Now there are places where the thickness
of the Cretaceous formation, exposed by the edges of
its upturned strata, exceeds 5,000 feet, so that this
gives an approximation very similar to that furnished
by the coal measures.
We have thus, on a rough approximation, a mini-
mum period of about 6,000,000 years for the accu-
mulation of a single member of one of the separate
formations into which the total 130,000 feet of
measured strata are subdivided. But this takes no
account of the long periods during which no accumu-
lation took place at the localities in question, and of
the long pauses which must have ensued between each
movement of elevation and submergence, and especially
between the disappearance of an old and appearance
of an almost entirely new epoch, with different forms
of animal and vegetable life. We may be certain
also that we are far from knowing the total thickness
of strata which will be disclosed when the whole sur-
face of the earth comes to be explored. All we can
say is that we have fragmentary pages left in the
34 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
geological record for, at the very least, 100 millions
of years, and that probably the lost pages are quite
as numerous as those of which we have an imperfect
knowledge.
Sir Charles Lyell, the highest authority on the
subject, is inclined to estimate the minimum of geo-
logical time at 200 millions of years, and few geologists
will say that his estimate appears excessive.
Another test of the vast duration of geological time
is afforded by the oscillations of the earth's surface. At
first sight we are apt to consider the earth as the stable
and the sea as the unstable element. But in reality it is
exactly the reverse. Land has been perpetually rising
and falling while the level of the sea has remained the
same. This is easily proved by the presence of sea-
shells and other marine remains in strata which now
form high mountains. In the case of chalk, for instance,
there must have been in England a change of relative
level of sea and land of more than two miles of vertical
height, between the original formation of the chalk at
the bottom of a deep ocean and its present position
in the North and South Downs. In other cases the
change of level is even more conspicuous. The Num-
mulite limestone, which is formed like chalk from an
accumulation of the minute shells of low organisms float-
ing in the oceans of the early Tertiary period, is found
in mountain masses, and has been elevated to a height
of 10,000 feet and more in the Alps and Himalayas.
On a smaller scale, and in more recent times, raised
beaches with existing shells and lines of cliffs and
caves, are found at various heights above the existing
sea-level of many of the coasts of Britain, Scandinavia,
Italy, South America, and other countries.
TIME. 35
Now the first question is, were these changes caused
by the land rising or by the sea falling ? The answer is,
by the land rising. Had they been caused by the sea
standing at a higher level it must have stood every-
where at this level, at any rate in the same hemisphere
and anywhere near the same latitude. But there are
large tracts of land which have never been submerged
since remote geological periods ; and in recent times
there is conclusive evidence that the changes of level of
sea and land have been partial and not general. Thus
in the well-known instance of the columns of the
ruined temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli in the Bay of
Naples, which forms the illustration on the title-page
of Lyell's " Principles of Geology," there can be no doubt
that since the temple was built, either the sea must
have risen and since fallen, or the land sunk and
since risen, at least twenty feet since the temple was
built less than 2,000 years ago, for up to this height
the marble columns are riddled by borings of marine
shells, whose valves are still to be seen in the holes
they excavated. But an elevation of .the level of the
Mediterranean of twenty feet would have submerged
& great part of Egypt, and other low-lying lands on
the borders of that sea, where we know that no such
irruptions of salt water have taken place within historical,
or even within recent geological times.
The conclusion is therefore certain, that the land
at this particular spot must have sunk twenty feet,
and again risen as much, so as to bring back the
floor of the temple to its present position, which stood
one hundred years ago just above the sea-level, and
that so gradually as not to throw down the three
columns which are still standing. A slow subsidence
D 2
36 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
has since set in and is now going on, so that the
floor is now two or three feet below the sea-level.
Similar proofs may be multiplied to any extent.
Along the coasts of the British Islands we find, in. some
places submarine forests showing subsidence, in others
raised beaches showing elevation, but they are not
continuous at the same level. Along the east coast
of Scotland there is a remarkable raised beach at a
level of about twenty-four feet above the present one,
showing in many places lines of cliff, sea-worn caves,
and outlying stacks and skerries, exactly like those of
the present coast, though with green fields or sandy
links at their base, instead of the waves of the
German Ocean. But as we go north this inland cliff
gets lower and gradually dies out, and when we get
into the extreme north, among the Orkney and Shetland
Islands, there are no signs of raised beaches, and every-
thing points towards the recent period having been one
of subsideuce.
Again, in Sweden, where marks were cut in rocks
in sheltered situations on the tideless Baltic more than a
century ago, so as to test the question of an alleged
elevation of the land, it has been clearly shown that,
in the extreme north of Sweden, the marks have risen
nearly seven feet, while in the central portion of the
country they have neither risen nor fallen, and in the
southern province of Scania they have fallen.
This would be clearly impossible if the sea and
not the land had been the unstable element, and ap-
parent elevations and depressions had been due to a
general fall or rise in the level of all the seas of the
northern hemisphere.
Jn fact, the more we study geology the more we are
TIME. 37
impressed with the fact that the normal state of the
earth is, and has always been, one of incessant changes.
Water, raised by evaporation from the seas, falls as rain
or snow on land, wastes it away and carries it down
from higher to lower levels, to be ultimately deposited
dt the bottom of the sea. This goes on constantly, anc
if there were no compensating action, as the seas covex
a much larger area than the lands, all land would ulti-
mately disappear, and one universal ocean cover the
globe. But inward heat supplies the compensating
action, and new lands rise and new mountain chains are
upheaved to supply the place of those which disappear.
This inward heat of the earth is not a mere theory,
but an ascertained fact ; for as we descend from the
surface in deep mines or borings, we find the tempera-
ture actually does increase at a rate which varies somewhat
in different localities, but which averages about 1 Fah-
renheit for every 60 feet of depth. At this rate of
increase water would boil at a depth of 10,000 feet, and
iron and all other metals be melted before we reached
100,000 feet. What actually occurs at great depths we
do not know with any certainty, for we are not sufficiently
acquainted with the laws under which matter may behave
when under enormous heat combined with enormous pres-
sure. But we do know from volcanoes and earthquakes
that masses of molten rocks and of imprisoned gases exist
in certain localities, at depths below the surface which,
although large compared with our deepest pits, are
almost infinitesimally small compared with the total depth
of 4,000 miles from that surface to the earth's centre.
This much is clear, that, in order to account for
observed facts, we must consider the extreme outer
crust, or surface of the earth as known to us, as
38 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
resting on something which is liable to expand and
contract slowly with variations of heat, and occasion-
ally, when the tension becomes great, to give violent
shocks to the outer crust, sending earthquake waves
through it, and to send up gases and molten lava
through volcanoes, along lines of fissure, and at points
of least resistance. It is clear, also, that these move-
ments are not uniform, but that one part of the
earth's surface may be rising while another is sink-
ing, and portions of it may be slowly tilting over,
so that as one end sinks the other rises.
The best comparison that can be made is to a
sheet of ice which has been much skated over and
cracked in numerous directions, so as to have become
a sort of mosaic of ice fragments, which, when a
thaw sets in and the ice gets sloppy, rise and fall
with slightly different motions as a skater, gliding
over them, varies the pressure, and occasionally give
a crack and let water rise through from below
in the line of fissure. The difficulty will not seem
so great if we consider that the rocks which form
the earth's crust are for the most part elastic,
and that an amount of elevation which seems large
in itself does not necessarily imply a very steep
gradient. Thus, if the elevation which towards
the close of the Glacial period carried a bed of exist- .
ing sea-shells of Arctic type to the top of the hill,
Moel Tryfen, in North Wales, which is 1,200 feet high,
were, say one of 1,500 feet, this would be given by
a gradient of 15 feet a mile, or 1 in 333 for 100 miles.
Such a gradient would not be perceptible to the eye,
and would certainly not be sufficient tc cause any
tension likely to rupture rocks or disturb strata.
TIME. 39
Such movements are as a rule extremely slow. In
volcanic regions there are occasionally shocks which
raise extensive regions a few feet at a blow, and partial
elevations and subsidences which throw up cones of
lava and cinders, or let mountains down into chasms,
in a single explosion. The most noted of these are
the instances of Monte Nuovo, near Naples, 800 feet
high, and Jorullo, in Mexico, thrown up in one eruption,
and the disappearance the other day of a mountain 2,000
feet high in the Straits of Sunda during an earth-
quake. The largest rise recorded of an extensive
area from the shock of an earthquake, is that which
occurred in South America in 1835, when a range of
coast of 500 miles from Copiapo to Chiloe was per-
manently raised five or six feet by a single shock, as
was shown by the beds of dead mussels and other
shells which had been hoisted up in some places as
much as ten feet. It is probable that the great chain
of the Andes, whose highest summits reach 27,000
feet, has been raised in a great measure by a succes-
sion of similar shocks.
But for the most part these movements, whether
of elevation or depression, go on so slowly and quietly
that they escape observation. Scandinavia is apparently
now rising and Greenland sinking, but most countries
have remained appreciably steady, or nearly so, during
the historical period. St. Michael's Mount, in Corn-
wall, is still connected with the mainland by a spit,
dry at ebb tide and covered at flood, as it was more
than 2,000 years ago when the old Britons carted their
tin across to Phoenician traders. Egypt, during a
period of 7,000 years, has preserved the same level,
or at the most has sunk as slowly as the Nile mud has
40 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
accumulated. Parts of the English and Scotch coast
have risen perhaps twenty feet since the prehistoric
period, when canoes were wrecked under what are
now the streets of Glasgow, and whales were stranded
in the Carse of Stirling. There is even some evidence
that the latest rise may have occurred since the Roman
wall was built from the Forth to the Clyde. In any
case, however, the movements have been extremely
slow, and there have been frequent oscillations, and
long pauses when the level of land and sea remained
stationary. The evidence, therefore, from the great
changes which have occurred during each geological
period, points to the same conclusion as that drawn
from the thickness of formations, such as the coal
measures and chalk, which must have been accumulated
very slowly, viz., that geological time must be measured
by a scale of millions of years.
Another test of the vast duration of geological time
is afforded by the changes which have taken place in
animal life as we pass from one formation to another,
and even within the limits of the same formation. The
fauna, or form of existing life at a given period, changes
with extreme slowness. During the historical period
there has been no perceptible change, and even since
the Pliocene period, which cannot be placed at a less
distance from us than 200,000 years, and probably at
much more, the change has been very small. In the
limited class of large land animals it has been con-
siderable ; but if we take the far more numerous forms
of shell-fish and other marine life, the old species which
have become extinct and the new ones which have ap-
peared, do not exceed five per cent, of the whole. This
is the more remarkable as great vicissitudes of climate
TIME. 41
aiid variations of sea-level have occurred during the
interval. The whole of the Glacial period has come and
gone, and Britain has been by turns an archipelago of
frozen islands and part of a continent extending over
what is now the German Ocean, and pushing out into
the Atlantic up to the one hundred fathom line.
Reasoning from these facts, assuming the rate of
change in the forms of life to have been the same
formerly, and summing up the many complete changes
of fauna which have occurred during the separate geo-
logical formations, Lyell has, arrived at the conclusion
that geology requires a period of not less than 200
millions of years to account for the phenomena which
it discloses.
Long as the record is of geological time, it is only
that of one short chapter in the volume of the history
of the universe. Geology only begins when the earth
had cooled down into a state resembling the present ;
when winds blew, rains fell, rivers and seas eroded
rocks and formed deposits, and when the conditions
were such that life became possible by the remains
of which those deposits can be identified.
But before this period began, which may be called
that of the maturity or middle age of our planet, a
much vaster time must be allowed for the contraction
and cooling of the vaporous ether or cosmic matter
of which it is formed, into the state in which the
phenomena of geology became possible. And if vast
in the case of the earth, how much vaster must be
the life periods of the larger planets, such as Jupiter,
which from their much greater size cool and contract
much more slowly, and are not yet advanced beyond
the stage of intense youthful heat and glowing luminosity
42 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
which was left behind by our earth a great many tens
of millions of years ago ! And how vastly vaster must
be that of the sun, whose mass and volume exceed
those of Jupiter in a far higher ratio than Jupiter
surpasses the earth !
And beyond all this in a third degree of vastness
come the life periods of those stars or distant suns,
which we know to be in some cases as much as three
hundred times larger than our sun, and not nearly so
far advanced as it in the process of emergence from the
fiery nebulous into the solar stage.
To give some idea of the vast intervals of time
required for these changes, a few facts and figures
may be given.
One of the latest speculations of mathematical
science is that the rotation of the earth is becoming
slower, or in other words the day becoming longer,
owing to the retarding action of the tides, which act
as a brake on a revolving wheel. If so, mathematical
calculation shows that the effect of the reaction on the
moon of this action of the moon on the earth, must be
that as the earth rotates more slowly, the moon recedes
to a greater distance. And vice versd, when the earth
rotated more rapidly the moon was nearer to it, until
at length, when the process is carried back far enough,
we arrive at a time when the moon was at the earth's
surface and the length of the day about three hours.
In this state of things the moon is supposed to have
been thrown off from the earth, either by one great
convulsion, or, more probably, by small masses at a
time forming a ring like that of Saturn, which ended
by coalescing into a single satellite. With the moon,
which is the principal cause of the tides, so much nearer
TIME. 43
the earth, their rise and fall must have been some-
thing enormous, and huge tidal waves like the bore
of the Bay of Fundy, but perhaps 500 or 1,000 feet
high, must have swept twice during each revolution
of the earth on its axis, i.e., twice every three or four
hours, along all the narrower seas and channels and
over all except the mountainous lands adjoining.
Now these conclusions may be true or not as
regards phases of the earth's life prior to the Silurian
period, from which downwards geology shows unmis-
takably that nothing of the sort, or in the least degree
approaching to it, has occurred. But what I wish to
point out is that all this superstructure of theory rests
on a basis which really does admit of definite demon-
stration and calculation.
Halley found that when eclipses of the sun, recorded
in ancient annals, are compared with recent observa-
tions, a discrepancy is discovered in the rate of the
moon's motion, which must have been slightly slower
then than it is now. Laplace apparently solved the
difficulty by showing that this was an inevitable result
of the law of gravity, when the varying eccentricity of
the earth's orbit was properly taken into account ; and
the calculated amount of the variation from this cause
was shown to be exactly what was required to recon-
cile the observations. But our great English mathema-
tician, Adams, having recently gone over Laplace's
calculations anew, discovered that some factors in the
problem had been omitted, which reduced Laplace's
acceleration of the moon's motion by about one-half,
leaving the other half to be explained by a real increase
in the length of the sidereal day, or time of one com-
plete revolution of the earth about its axis. The
44 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
retardation required is one sufficient to account for the
total accumulated loss of an hour and a quarter in 2,000
years ; or in other words, the length of the day is now
more by about -gVth part of a second than it was 2,000
years ago.
At this rate it would require 168,000 years to make
a difference of 1 second in the length of the day;
10,080,000 years for a difference of 1 minute ; and
604,800,000 years for a difference of 1 hour. The rate
would not be uniform for the past, for as the moon
got nearer it would cause higher tides and more retarda-
tion ; still, the abyss of time seems almost inconceivable
to get back to the state in which the earth could have
rotated in three hours and thrown off the moon.
It is right, however, to state that all mathematical
calculations of time, based on the assumed rate at
which cosmic matter cools into suns and planets, and
these into solid and habitable globes, are in the highest
degree uncertain. If the original data are right, mathe-
matical calculation inevitably gives right conclusions.
But if the data are wrong, or what is the same thing,
partial and imperfect, the conclusions will, with equal
certainty, be wrong also. Now in this case we certainly
do not know " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth " respecting these processes. Take what
is perhaps the most difficult problem presented by
science how the sun keeps up so uniformly the enor-
mous amount of heat which it is constantly radiating
into space. This radiation is going on in every direc-
tion, and the solar heat received by the earth is only
that minute portion of it which is intercepted by our
little speck of a planet. All the planets together receive
less than one 230,000,000th part of the total heat
TIME. 45
radiated away by the sun and apparently lost in space.
Knowing the amount of heat from the sun's rays
received at the earth's surface in a given time, we can
calculate the total amount of heat radiated from the sun
in that time. It amounts to this, that the sun in each
second of time parts with as much heat as would be
given out by the burning of 16,436 millions of millions
of tons of the best anthracite coal. And radiation
certainly at this rate, if not a higher one, has been
going on ever since the commencement of the geo-
logical record, which must certainly be reckoned by a
great many tens of millions of years.
What an illustration does this afford of that
apparent " waste of Nature " which made Tennyson
" falter where he firmly trod " when he came to con-
sider " her secret meaning in her deeds " !
Yet there can be no doubt that vast as these figures
are, they are all the result of natural laws, just as
we find the law of gravity prevailing throughout
space at distances expressed by figures equally vast.
The question is, what laws ? The only one we know
of at present at all adequate to account for such a
generation of heat, is the transformation into heat
of the enormous amount of mechanical force or
energy, resulting from the condensation of the mass
of nebulous matter from which the sun was formed,
into a mass of its present dimensions. This is no
doubt a true cause as far as it goes. It is true that
as the mass contracts, heat would be, so to speak,
squeezed out of it, very much as water is squeezed
out of a wet sponge by compressing it. But it is a
question whether it is the sole and sufficient cause.
Mathematicians have calculated that even if we suppose
46 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the original cosmic matter to have had an infinite
extension, its condensation into the present sun would
only have been sufficient to keep up the actual supply
of solar heat for about 15 millions of years. Of this
a large portion must have been exhausted before the
earth was formed as a separate planet, and had cooled
down into a habitable globe. But even if we took
the whole it would be altogether insufficient. All
competent geologists are agreed in requiring at least
100 millions of years to account for the changes
which have taken place in the earth's surface since
the first dawn of life recorded in the older rocks.
Various attempts have been made to reconcile the
discrepancy. For instance, it has been said that the
constantly repeated impact of masses of meteoric and
cometic matter falling into the sun must have caused
the destruction of a vast amount of mechanical energy
which would be converted into heat This is true as
far as it goes, but it is impossible to conceive of
the sun as a target kept at a perpetual and uniform
white heat for millions of years by a rain of meteoric
bullets constantly fired upon it. More plausibly it is
said that we know nothing of the interior constitu-
tion of the sun, and that its solid nucleus may be
vastly more compressed than is inferred from the
dimensions of its visible disc, which is composed of
glowing flames and vapours. This also may be a true
cause, but, after making every allowance, we must fall
back on the statement that the continuance for such
enormous periods of such an enormous waste of
energy as is given out by the sun, though certainly
explainable by laws of Nature, depends on laws not yet
thoroughly understood and explained.
TIME. 47
Even in the case, comparatively small and near
to us, of the earth, the condition of the interior and
the rate of secular cooling afford problems which as
yet wait for solution. The result of a number of
careful experiments in mines and deep sinkings shows
that the temperature, as we descend below the shallow
superficial crust which is affected by the seasons, i.e.,
by the solar radiation, increases at the average rate
of 1 Fahrenheit for every 60 feet of depth. That
is the average rate, though it varies a good deal in
different localities. Now, at this rate we should soon
reach a depth at which all known substances would be
melted.
But astronomical considerations, derived from the
Precession of the Equinoxes, favour the idea that the
earth is a solid and not a fluid body, and require us in
any case to assume a rigid crust of not less than ninety
miles in thickness. And if the whole earth below a
thin superficial crust were in an ordinary state of
fluidity from heat, it is difficult to see how it could do
otherwise than boil, that is, establish circulating cur-
rents throughout its mass with disengagement of vapour,
in which case the surface crust must be very soon
broken up and melted down, just as the superficial
crust of a red-hot stream of lava is, if an infusion of
fresh lava raises the stream below to white heat, or
as a thin film of ice would be if boiling water were
poured in below it.
A.11 we can say is, that the laws under which matter
behaves under conditions of heat, pressure, chemical
action, and electricity so totally different as must
prevail in the interior of the earth, and d fortiori in
that of the sun, are as yet very partially known to us.
48 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
In the meantime the safest course is to hold by those
conclusions of geology which, as far as they go, depend
on laws really known to us. For instance, the quantity
of mud carried down in a year by the Ganges or
Mississippi, is a quantity which can be calculated within
certain approximate limits. We can tell with certainty
how much the deposit of this amount of mud would
raise an area, say of 100 square miles, and how
long it would take, at this rate, to lower the area of
India drained by the Ganges, a sufficient number of
feet to give matter enough to fill up the Gulf of Bengal.
And if among the older formations we find one, like
the Wealden for instance, similar in character to that
now forming by the Ganges, we can approximate from
its thickness to the time that may have been required
to form it.
In calculations of this sort there is no theory, they
are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain
possible amount of error either way. In short, the
conclusions of geology, at any rate up to the Silurian
period when the present order of things was fairly
inaugurated, are approximate facts and not theories,
while the astronomical conclusions are theories based
on data so uncertain, that while in some cases they give
results incredibly short, like that of 15 millions of years
for the whole past process of the formation of the solar
system, in others they give results almost incredibly
long, as in that which supposes the moon to have been
thrown off when the earth was rotating in three hours,
while the utmost actual retardation claimed from ob-
servation would require 600 millions of years to make
it rotate in twenty-three hours instead of twenty-four.
To one who looks at these discussions between
TIME. 49
geologists and astronomers not from the point of view of
a specialist in either science, but from that of a dis-
passionate spectator, the safest course, in the present
state of our knowledge, seems to be to assume that
geology really proves the duration of the present order
of things to have been somewhere over 100 millions
of years, and that astronomy gives an enormous though
unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in
the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and
death of the solar system of which our earth is a small
planet now passing through the habitable phase.
So far, however, as the immediate object of this
work is concerned, viz., the bearings of modern scientific
discovery on modern thought, it is not very material
whether the shortest or longest possible standards of
time are adopted. The conclusions as to man's position
in the universe and the historical truth or falsehood of
old beliefs, are the same whether man has existed in a
state of constant though slow progression for the last
50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the
last 500,000 years of a period of 150 millions. It is a
matter of the deepest scientific interest to arrive at the
truth, both as to the age of the solar system, the age of
the earth as a body capable of supporting life, the suc-
cessive orders and dates at which life actually appeared,
and the manner and date of the appearance of the most
highly organised form of life endowed with new ca pa-
cities for developing reason and conscience in the form
of Man. Those who wish to prove themselves worthy
of their great good luck in having been born in a civilised
country of the nineteenth century, and not in Palaeolithic
periods, will do well to show that curiosity, or appetite
for knowledge, which mainly distinguishes the clever
50 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
from the stupid and the civilised from the savage man,
by studying the works of such writers as Lyell, Huxley,
Tyndall, and Proctor, where they will find the questions
here only briefly stated, developed at fuller length with
the most accurate science and in the clearest and
most attractive style. But for the moral, philosophical,
and religious bearings of these discoveries on the current
of modern thought, there is such a wide margin that
it becomes almost immaterial whether the shortest pos-
sible or longest possible periods should be ultimately
established.
CHAPTER III.
MATTER.
Ether and Light Colour and Heat Matter and its Elements
Molecules and Atoms Spectroscope Uniformity of Matter
throughout the Universe Force and Motion Conservation of
Energy Electricity, Magnetism, and Chemical Action Dissipa-
tion of Heat Birth and Death of Worlds.
WHAT is the material universe composed of? Ether,
Matter, and Energy. Ether is not actually known to
us by any test of which the senses can take cognizance,
but is a sort of mathematical substance which we are
compelled to assume in order to account for the pheno-
mena of light and heat. Light, as we have seen,
radiates in all directions from a luminous centre, travel-
ling at the rate of 184,000 miles per second. Now
what is light ? It is a sensation produced on the
brain by something which has been concentrated by
the lens of the eye on the retina, and thence trans-
mitted along the optic nerve to the brain, where it
sets certain molecules vibrating. What is the some-
thing which produces this effect ? Is it a succession
of minute particles, shot like rifle-bullets from the
luminous body and impinging on the retina as on a
target ? Or is it a succession of tiny waves breaking
on the retina as the waves of the sea break on a
B 2
52 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Analogy suggests the latter, for in the case of the
sister sense, Sound, we know as a fact that the sen-
sation is produced on the brain by waves of air con-
centrated by the ear, and striking on the auditory nerve.
But we have a more conclusive proof. If one of a
series of particles shot out like bullets overtakes another,
the force of impact of the two is increased ; but if one
wave overtakes another when the crest of the pursuing
wave just coincides with the hollow of the wave before
it the effect is neutralised, and if the two are of equal
size it will be exactly neutralised and both waves will
be effaced. In other words, two lights will make dark-
ness. This, therefore, affords an infallible test. If
two lights can make darkness, light is propagated, like
sound, by waves. Now two lights do constantly make
darkness, as is proved every day by numerous experi-
ments. Therefore light is caused by waves.
But to have waves there must be a medium through
which the waves are propagated. Without water you
could not have ocean waves ; without air you could
not have sound-waves. Waves are in fact nothing
but the successive forms assumed by a set of particles
which, when forced from a position of rest, tend to
return to that position, and oscillate about it. Place
a cork on the surface of a still pond, and then throw
in a stone ; what follows ? Waves are propagated,
which seem to travel outwards in circles, but if you
watch the cork, you will see that it does not really
travel outwards, but simply rises and falls in the
same place. This is equally true of waves of sound
and waves of light. But the velocity with which the
waves travel depends on the nature of the medium.
MATTER. 53
In a dense medium of imperfect elasticity they travel
slowly, in a rare and elastic medium quickly. Now
the velocity of a sound-wave in air is about 1,100
feet a second, that of the light-wave about 184,000
miles a second, or about one million times greater.
It is proved by mathematical calculation that, if the
density of two media are the same, their elasticities
are in proportion to the squares of the velocities with
which a wave travels. The elasticity of ether, there-
fore, would be a million million times greater than
that of air, which, as we know, is measured by its
power of resisting a pressure of about 15 Ibs. to the
square inch. But the ether must in fact be almost
infinitely rare, as well as almost infinitely elastic, for
it causes no perceptible retardation in the motions of
the earth and planets. It must be almost infinitely
rare also, because it permeates freely the interior of
substances like glass and crystals, through which light-
waves pass, showing that the atoms or ultimate particles
of which these substances are composed, minute as
they are, must be floating in ether like buoys floating
on water or balloons in the air.
The dimensions of the light-waves which travel
through this ether at the rate of 184,000 miles a
second, can be accurately measured by strict mathe-
matical calculations, depending mainly on the pheno-
mena of interferences, i.e., of the intervals required
between successive waves for the crest of one to over-
take the depression of another and thus make two
lights produce darkness.
These calculations are much too intricate to admit
of popular explanation, but they are as certain as
54
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
those of the Nautical Almanac, based on the law of
gravity, which enable ships to find their way across the
pathless ocean, and they give the following results :
DIMENSIONS OF LIGHT- WAVES.
COLOURS.
NUMBER OF WAVKS
IN ONE INCH.
NOMBER OF OSCILLATIONS
IN ONE SECOND.
lied
39,000
477,000,000,000,000
Orange
42,000
506,000,000,000,000
Yellow
44,000
535,000,000,000,000
Green
47,000
575,000,000,000,000
Blue
51,000
622,000,000,000,000
Indigo
54,000
658,000,000,000,000
Violet
57,000
699,000,000,000,000
These are the colours whose vibrations affect the
brain through the eye with the sensation of light, and
which cause the sensation of white light when their
different vibrations reach the eye simultaneously. But
there are waves and vibrations on each side of these
limits, which produce different effects, the longer waves
with slower oscillations beyond the red, though no longer
causing light causing heat, while the shorter and quicker
waves beyond the violet cause chemical action, and are
the most active agents in photography.
We must refer our readers to works treating specially
of light for further details, and for an account of the
vast variety of beautiful and interesting experiments
with polarised light, coloured rings, and otherwise, to
which the theory of waves propagated through ether
affords the key. For the present purpose it is sufficient
to say that modern science compels us to assume, as
the substratum of the material universe, such an ether
extending everywhere, from the faintest star seen at a
distance which requires thousands of years for its rays,
MATTER. 55
travelling at the rate of 184,000 miles a second, to
reach the earth, clown to the infinitesimally small inter-
space between the atoms of the minutest matter. And
throughout the whole of this enormous range law
prevails, ether vibrates and has always vibrated in the
same definite manner, just as air vibrates by definite
laws when the strings of a piano are struck by the
hammers.
I pass now to the consideration of matter.
What is matter ? In the most general sense it is
that which has weight, or is subject to the law ot
gravity. The next analysis shows that it is something
which can exist in the three forms of solid, liquid, or
gas, according to the amount of heat. Diminish heat,
and the particles approach closer and are linked together
by mutual attraction, so as not to be readily parted ;
this is a solid. Increase the heat up to a certain point,
and the particles recede until their mutual attractions
in the interior of the mass neutralise one another, so
that the particles can move freely, though still held
together as a mass by the sum of all these attractions
acting as if concentrated at the centre of gravity ; this
is the liquid state. Increase the heat still more, and
the particles separate until they get beyond the sphere
of their mutual attraction and tend to dart off into
space, unless confined by some surface on which they
exert pressure ; this is a gas.
The most familiar instance of this is afforded by
water, which, as we all know, exists in the three forms
of ice, water, and vapour or steam, according to the
dose of heat which has been incorporated with it.
Pursuing our inquiry further, the next great fact
in regard to matter is that it is not all uniform While
56 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
most of the common forms with which we are conversant
are made up of mixed materials, which can be taken to
pieces and shown separately, there are, as at present
ascertained, some seventy-one substances which defy
chemical analysis to decompose them, and must there-
fore be taken as elementary substances. A great
majority of these consist of substances existing in
minute quantities, and hardly known outside the labo-
ratories of chemists.
The world of matter, as known to the senses, is
mainly composed of combinations, more or less com-
plex, of a few elements. Thus, water is a compound of
two simple gases, oxygen and hydrogen ; air, of oxygen
and nitrogen ; the solid framework of the earth, mainly
of combinations of oxygen with carbon, calcium, alu-
minum, silicon, and a few other bases ; salt, of chlorine
and sodium ; the vegetable world directly and the
animal world indirectly, mainly of complex combina-
tions of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen with carbon,
and with smaller quantities of silicon, sulphur, potassium,
sodium, and phosphorus. The ordinary metals, such
as iron, gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, mercury, zinc,
nearly complete the list of what may be called ordinary
elements.
Now let us push our analysis a step further. How
is matter made up of these elements ? Up to and
beyond the furthest point visible by aid of the micro-
scope, matter is divisible. We can break a crystal into
fragments, or divide a drop into drops, until they cease
to be visible, though still retaining all the properties of
the original substance. Can we carry on this process
indefinitely, and is matter composed of something that
can be divided and subdivided into fractional parts
MATTER. 57
ad infinitumf The answer is, No, it consists of ulti-
mate but still definite particles which cannot be further
subdivided. How is this known ? Because we find
by experience that substances will only combine in
certain definite proportions either of weight or measure.
For instance, in forming water exactly eight grains by
weight of oxygen combine with exactly one grain of
hydrogen, and if there is any excess or fractional part
of either gas, it remains over in its original form
uncombined. In like manner, matter in the form of
gas always combines with other matter in the same
form by volumes which bear a definite and very simple
proportion to each other, and the compound formed
bears a definite and very simple ratio to the sum of
the volumes of the combining gases. Thus two volumes
of hydrogen combine with one of oxygen to form two
volumes of water in the state of vapour.
From these facts certain inferences can be drawn.
In the first place it is clear that matter really does
consist of minute particles, which do not touch and
form a continuous solid but are separated by intervals
which increase with increase of temperature. This is
evident from the fact that we can pour a second or
third gas into a space already occupied by a first one.
Each gas occupies the enclosed space just as if there
were no other gas present, and exerts its own proper
pressure on the containing vessel, so that the total
pressure on it is exactly the sum of the partial pressures.
It is easy to see what this means. If a second regiment
can be marched into a limited space of ground on which
a first regiment is already drawn up, it is evident that
the first regiment must be drawn up in loose order, i.e.,
the soldier-units of which it is composed must stand
58 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
so far apart that other soldier-units can find room
between them without disturbing the formation. But
the effect will be that the fire from the front will be
increased, as for instance if a soldier of the second regi-
ment, armed with a six-shooter repeating rifle, takes
his stand between two soldiers of the first regiment
.armed with single-barrelled rifles, the effective fire will
be increased in the ratio of 8 to 2. And this is pre-
cisely what is meant by the statement that the pressure
of two gases in the same space is the sum of the separate
pressures of each. It is clearly established that the
pressure of a gas on a containing surface is caused by
the bombarding to which it is subjected from the im-
pacts of an almost infinite number of these almost
infinitely small atoms, which, when let loose from the
mutual attractions which hold them together in the
solid and fluid state, dart about in all directions, col-
liding with one another and rebounding, like a set of
little billiard-balls gone mad, and producing a certain
average resultant of momentum outwards which is called
pressure.
Another simile may help us to conceive bow the
indivisibility of atoms is inferred from the fact that
they only combine in definite proportions. Suppose a
number of gentlemen and ladies promenading promis-
cuously in a room. The band strikes up a waltz, and
they at once proceed to group themselves in couples
rotating with rhythmical motion in definite orbits.
Clearly, if there are more ladies than gentlemen, some
of them will be left without partners. So, if instead
of a waltz it were a threesome reel, in which each
gentleman led out two ladies, there must be exactly
twice as many ladies as gentlemen for all to join in
MATTER. 59
the dance. But if a gentleman could be cut up into
fractional parts, and each fraction developed into a
dancing gentleman, as primitive cells split up and
produce fresh cells, it would not matter how many
ladies there were, as each could be provided with a
partner. Now this is strictly analogous to what occurs
in chemical combination. Water is formed by each
gentleman atom of oxygen taking out a lady atom
of hydrogen in each hand, and the sets thus formed
commence to dance threesome reels in definite time
and measure, any surplus oxygen or hydrogen atoms
being left out in the cold. Wonderful as it may appear,
science enables us not only to say of these inconceivably
minute atoms that they have a real existence, but to
count and weigh them. This fact has been accom-
plished by mathematical calculations based on laws
which have been ascertained by a long series of experi-
ments on the constitution of gases.
It is found that all substances, when in the form
of gas, conform to three laws :
1. Their volume is inversely proportional to the
pressure to which they are subjected.
2. Their volume is directly proportional to the
temperature.
3. At the same pressure and temperature all gases
have the same number of molecules in the same
volume.
From the last law it is obvious that if equal volumes
of two gases are of different weight, the cause must be
that the molecules of the one are heavier than those of
the other. This enables us to express the weight of
the molecule of any other gas in some multiple of the
unit afforded by the weight of the molecule of the
60 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
lightest gas, which is hydrogen. Thus, the density of
watery vapour being nine times that of hydrogen, we
infer that the molecule of water weighs nine times as
much as the molecule of hydrogen, and that of oxygen
being eight times greater, we infer that the oxygen
molecule is eight times heavier than that of hydrogen.
These weights are checked by the other law which
has been stated, that chemical combination between
different substances always takes place in certain de-
finite proportions. Thus, whenever in a chemical pro-
cess the original substances or the product are or might
exist in the state of gas, it is always found that the
definite proportions observed in the chemical process are
either the proportions of the densities of the respective
gases or some simple multiple of these proportions.
Thus, the weight of hydrogen being 2, which com-
bines with a weight of oxygen equal to 16 to form
a weight of watery vapour equal to 18, the density
of the latter is to that of hydrogen as 9 to 1, i.e.,
as 18 to 2.
But to get to the bottom of the matter we must
go a step further, and as we have decomposed sub-
stances into molecules, we must take the molecules
themselves to pieces and see what they are made of.
The molecule is the ultimate particle into which any
substance can be divided retaining its own peculiar
qualities. A molecule of water is as truly water as
a drop or a tumblerful. But when chemical decomposi-
tion takes place, instead of the molecule of water we
have molecules of two entirely different substances,
oxygen and hydrogen. Nothing can well be more
unlike than the product water and the component
parts of which it is made up. Water is a fluid*
MATTER. GI
oxygen a gas; water extinguishes fire, oxygen creates
it. Water is a harmless drink, oxygen the base of
the most corrosive acids. It is evident that the water-
molecule is a composite, and that its qualities depend,
not on the essential qualities of the atoms which have
combined to make it, but on the manner of the com-
bination, and the new modes of action into which these
atoms have been forced. In his native war-paint
oxygen is a furious savage ; with a hydrogen atom
in each hand he is a polished gentleman.
Our theory, therefore, leads beyond molecules to
atoms, and we have to consider these particles of a
still smaller order than molecules, as the ultimate
indivisible units of matter of which we have been
in search. And even these we must conceive of as
corks, as it were, floating in an ocean of ether, causing
waves in it by their own proper movements, and agi-
tated by all the successive waves which vibrate through
this ether- ocean in the form of light and heat.
Working on these data, a variety of refined mathe-
matical calculations made by Clausius, Clark Maxwell.
Sir AV. Thomson, and other eminent mathematicians,
have given us approximate figures for the actual size,
weight, and velocities of atoms and molecules. The
results are truly marvellous. A millimetre is the one-
thousandth part of a metre, or roughly one twenty-fifth
of an inch. The magnitudes with which we have
to deal are all of an order where the standard of
mensurement is expressed by the millionth part of a
millimetre. The volume of a molecule of air is only
a small fraction of that of a cube whose side would
be the millionth of a millimetre. A cubic centimetre,
or say a cube whose side is between one-third and one-
62 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
half of an inch, contains 21,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
molecules. The number of impacts received by each
molecule of air during one second will be 4,700 millions.
The distance traversed between each impact averages
95 millionths of a millimetre.
It may assist in forming some conception of these
almost infinitely small magnitudes, to quote an illustra-
tion given by Sir W. Thomson as the result of mathe-
matical calculation. Suppose a drop of water were
magnified so as to appear of the size of the earth
or with a diameter of 8,000 miles, the atoms of which
it is composed, magnified on the same scale, would
appear of a size intermediate between that of a rifle-
bullet and of a cricket-ball.
These figures show that space and magnitude extend
beyond the standards of ordinary human sense, such as
miles, feet, and inches, as far downwards into the region
of the infinitely small as they do upwards into that of
the infinitely great.
And throughout the whole of this enormous range
law prevails. The same law of gravity gives weight
to molecules and atoms, makes an apple fall to the
ground, and causes double stars to revolve round their
centre of gravity in elliptic orbits. The law of polarity
which converts iron-filings into small magnets under
the influence of a permanent magnet or electric current,
animates the smallest atom. Atoms arrange themselves
into molecules, and molecules into crystals, very much
as magnetised iron-filings arrange themselves into regular
curves. And the great law seems to prevail universally
throughout the material, as it does also throughout the
moral world, that you cannot have a North without a
South Pole, a positive without a negative, a right without
MATTER. 63
a wrong ; and that error consists mainly in what the
poet calls "the falsehood of extremes" that is, in
allowing the attraction of one pole, or of one opinion,
so to absorb us as to take no account of its opposite.
The universal prevalence of law has received won-
derful confirmation of late years from the discovery
made by the spectroscope that the sun, the planets,
and the remotest stars are all composed of matter
identical with that into which chemical analysis has
resolved the constituent matter of the earth. This-
has been proved in the following Wciy :
If a beam of light is admitted into a darkened
room through a small hole or narrow slit, and a.
triangular piece of glass, called a prism, is interposed
in its path, the image thrown on a screen is a rainbow-
tinted streak, intersected by numerous fine dark lines,
which is called a spectrum. If, instead of solar light,
light from other luminous sources is similarly treated,
it is found that all elementary substances have their
peculiar spectra. Light from solid or liquid substances
gives a continuous spectrum, light from gases or glowing
vapours gives a spectrum of bright lines separated from
each other, but always in definite positions according
to the nature of the substance. The next great step
in the discovery was that these bright lines become
dark lines when a light of greater intensity, coming
from a solid nucleus, is transmitted through an atmo-
sphere of such gases or vapours. We can thus photo-
graph the spectrum of glowing hydrogen, sodium, iron,
or other substances, and placing it below a photograph
of a solar or stellar spectrum, see if any of the dark
lines of the latter correspond with the bright lines of
the former. If they do we may be certain that these
64 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
substances actually exist in the sun or star. It is, in
fact, just the same thing as if we had been able to
bring down a jar full of the solar or stellar matter and
analyse it in our laboratories.
It is difficult to convey any adequate description
of these grand discoveries made by the new science of
Spectroscopy without referring to special works on the
subject ; but it may be possible to give some general
idea of the principles on which they are based.
Light consists of waves propagated through ether.
These waves are started by the vibrations of the ulti-
mate particles of matter, which, whether in the simplest
form of atoms, in the more complex form of molecules,
or in the still more complex form of compound mole-
cules, have their own peculiar and distinct vibrations.
These vibrations are increased, diminished, or other-
wise modified by variations of heat and by the colli-
sions which occur between the particles from their
own proper motions. If we take the simplest case,
that of matter in the form of a gas or vapour com-
posed of single atoms, at a temperature just sufficient
to become luminous and at a pressure small enough
to keep the atoms widely apart, the vibrations are all
of one sort, viz., that peculiar to the elementary sub-
stance to which they belong, and one set of waves
only is propagated by them through the ether. The
spectrum, therefore, of such a gas is a single line of
light, in the definite position which is due to its re-
frangibility, i.e., to the velocity of the particular wave
of light which the particular vibration of those particular
atoms is able to propagate.
When pressure is increased so that the particles
are brought closer together, their vibrations made
MATTER. G5
more energetic and their collisions more frequent,
more waves, and waves of different qualities are
started, and more lines appear in the spectrum and the
lines widen out, until at length when the gas becomes
very dense, some of the lines overlap and an approach
is made towards a continuous spectrum. Finally,
when the particles are brought so near together that
the substance assumes a fluid or solid state, the number
of wave-producing vibrations becomes so great that
a complete system of different light-waves is propa-
gated, and the lines of the spectrum are multiplied
until they coalesce and form a continuous band of
rainbow-tinted light. If the particles of the gas, instead
of being single atoms, are more complex, as molecules
or compound molecules, the vibrations are more complex
and the different resulting light-waves more numerous,
so that the lines in the spectrum are more numerous,
and in some cases they coalesce so as to form shaded
bands,- or what are called fluted lines, instead of simple
lines.
Moreover, whatever light-waves are originated by
the vibrations of the particles of a gas are absorbed
into those vibrations and extinguished, if they originate
from the vibrations of some more energetic particles
of another substance outside of it, whose light- waves,
travelling along the ether, pass through the gas, and
are thus shown as dark lines in the spectrum of the
other source of light.
We can now understand how the assertion is justi-
fied that we can analyse the composition of the sun
and stars as certainly as if we had a jar full of their
substance to analyse in our laboratory. The first
glance at a spectrum tells us whether the luminous
66 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
source is solid, fluid, or gaseous. If its spectrum is
continuous it is solid or fluid ; we know this for certain,
but can tell nothing more. But if it consists of
bright lines, we know that it comes direct from
matter in the form of luminous gas, and knowing
from experiments in the laboratory the exact colours
and situations of the lines formed by the different
elements of which earthly ma.tter is composed, we
can see whether the lines in the spectra of heavenly
matter do or do not correspond with any of them.
If bright lines correspond we are sure that the sub-
stances correspond, both as to their elementary atoms
and their condition as glowing gas. If dark lines in
the spectrum of the heavenly body correspond with
bright lines in that of a known earthly substance, we
are certain that the substances are the same and in the
same state of gas, but that the solar or stellar spectrum
proceeds from an intensely heated interior solid or fluid
nucleus, whose waves have passed through an outer
envelope or atmosphere of this gas.
Applying these principles, although the science is
still in its infancy and many interesting discoveries
remain to be made, this grand discovery has become
an axiomatic fact Matter is alike everywhere. The
light of stars up to the extreme boundary of the visible
universe, is composed mainly of glowing hydrogen, the
same identical hydrogen as we get by decomposing water
by a voltaic battery.
Of the 71 elementary substances of earthly matter
enumerated by chemists, 9 may be considered as doubt-
ful or existing only in excessively minute quantities.
Of the remaining 62, 22 are known certainly to exist
in the sun's atmosphere, 10 more can probably be traced
MATTER. 67
there, and there are only 6 as to which, in the present
state of our knowledge, there is negative evidence that
they are not present. The elements whose presence is
proved comprise many of those which are most common
in the composition of the earth, as hydrogen, iron, lead,
calcium, aluminium, magnesium, sodium, potassium,
etc.; and if others, such as oxygen, carbon, and chlorine
have not yet been found, good reasons may be assigned
why they may not exist in a state likely to give re-
cognisable spectrum-lines. The main fact is firmly
established that matter is the same throughout all space,
from the minutest atom to the remotest star.
Thus far we have been treating of matter only, and
of force and motion but incidentally. These, however,
are equally essential components of the phenomena of
the universe. What is force ? In the last analysis it
is the unknown cause which we assume for motion, or
the term in which we sum up whatever produces or
tends to produce it. The idea of force, like so many
other of our ideas, is taken from our own sensations.
If we lift a weight or bend a bow, we are conscious of
doing so by an effort. Something which we call will
produces a motion in the molecules of the brain, which
is transmitted by the nerves to the muscles, where it
liberates a certain amount of energy stored up by the
chemical composition and decomposition of the atoms
of food which we consume. This contracts the muscle,
and the force of its contraction, transmitted by a system
of pulleys and levers to the hand, lifts the weight. If
we let go the weight it falls, and the force which lifted
it reappears in the force with which it strikes the
ground. If we do not let go the weight but place it
on a support at the height to which we have raised
F 2
68 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
it, it does not fall, no motion ensues, but the lifting
force remains stored up in a tendency to motion, and
can be made to reappear as motion at any time by
withdrawing the support, when the weight will fall.
It is evident, therefore, that force may exist in two
forms, either as actually causing motion or as causing
a tendency to motion.
In this generalised form it has been agreed to
call it energy, as less liable to be obscured by the
ordinary impressions attached to the word force,
which are mainly derived from experiences of actual
motion cognizable by the senses. We speak, therefore,
of energy as of something which is the basis or
primum mobile of all motion or tendency to motion,
whether it be in the grosser forms of gravity and
mechanical work, or in the subtler forms of molecular
and atomic motions causing the phenomena of heat,
light, electricity, magnetism, and chemical action.
This energy may exist either in the form of actual
motion, when it is called energy of motion, or in that
of tendency to motion, when it is called energy of
position. Thus the bent bow has energy of position
which, when the string is let go, is at once converted
into energy of motion in the flight of the arrow.
Eespecting this energy modern science has arrived
at this grand generalisation, that it is one and the
same in all its different manifestations, and can neither
be created nor destroyed, so that all these varied
manifestations are mere transformations of the same
primitive energy from one form to another. This is
what is meant by the principle of the " Conservation
of Energy."
It was arrived at in this way. Speaking roughly
MATTER. 69
it has long been known that heat could generate
mechanical power, as seen in the steam-engine ; and
conversely that mechanical power could generate heat,
as is seen when a sailor, in a chill north-easter, claps
his arms together on his breast to warm himself. But
it was reserved for Dr. Joule to give this fact the
scientific precision of a natural law, by actually measur-
ing the amount of heat that was added to a given
weight of water by a given expenditure of mechanical
power, and conversely the amount of mechanical work
that could be got from a given expenditure of heat.
A vast number of carefully-conducted experiments
have led to the conclusion that if a kilogramme be
allowed to fall through 424 metres and its motion be
then suddenly stopped, sufficient heat will be generated
to raise the temperature of one kilogramme of water
by 1 Centigrade ; and conversely this amount of heat
would be sufficient to raise one kilogramme to a height
of 424 metres.
If, therefore, we take as our unit of work that of
raising one kilogramme one metre, and as our unit of
heat that necessary to raise one kilogramme of water
1 Centigrade, we may express the proportion of heat
to work by saying that one unit of heat is equal to
424 units of work ; or, as it is sometimes expressed,
that the number 424 is the mechanical equivalent
of heat.
But the question may be asked, what does this
mean, how can mechanical work be really transformed
into heat or vice versd ? The answer is, the energy
which was supplied by chemical action to the muscles
of the man or horse, or to the water converted into
steam by combustion of coal, which originated the
70 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
mechanical work, was first transformed into its equiva-
lent amount of mechanical energy of motion, and then,
when that motion was arrested, was transformed into
heat, which is simply the same energy transformed into
increased molecular motion.
If we wish to carry our inquiry a step further back
and ask where the original energy came from which
has undergone these transformations, the answer must
be, mainly from the sun. The sun's rays, acting on the
chlorophyl or green matter of the plants of the coal era,
tore asunder the atoms of carbon and oxygen which
formed the carbonic acid in the atmosphere, and locked
up a store of energy in the form of carbon in the coal
which is burned to produce the steam. In like manner
it stored up the energy in the form of carbon in the
vegetable products which, either directly, or indirectly
after having passed through the body of some animal,
supplied the food, whose slow combustion in the man or
horse supplied the energy which did the work.
But where did the energy come from which the
sun has been pouring forth for countless ages in
the form of light and heat, and of which our earth
only intercepts the minutest portion? This is a mys-
tery not yet completely solved, but one real cause we
can see, which has certainly operated and perhaps been
the only one, viz., the mechanical energy of the con-
densation by gravity of the atoms which originally
formed the nebulous matter out of which the 3un was
made. If we ask how came the atoms into existence
endowed with this marvellous energy, we have reached
the furthest bounds of human knowledge, and can only
reply in the words of the poet: "Behind the veil,
behind the veil."
MATTER. 71
We can only form metaphysical conceptions, or I
might rather call them the vaguest guesses. One is, that
they were created and endowed with their elementary
properties by an all- wise and all-powerful Creator. This
is Theism.
Another, that thought is the only reality, and that
all the phenomena of the universe are thoughts or
ideas of one universal, all-pervading Mind. This is
Pantheism.
Or again, we may frankly acknowledge that the real
essence and origin of things are " behind the veil," and
not knowable or even conceivable by any faculties with
which the human mind is endowed in its present state
of existence. This is Agnosticism.
There is one other conception, of which we may
certainly say that it is not true that is Atheism. No
one with the least knowledge of science can maintain
that it can ever be demonstrated that everything in the
universe exists of itself and never had a Creator.
But these speculations lead us into the misty
regions where, like Milton's devils, " we find no end
in wandering mazes lost." Let us return to the solid
ground of fact, on which alone the human mind can
stand firmly, and like Antaeus gather fresh vigour every
time it touches it for further efforts to enlarge the
boundaries of knowledge and extend the domain of
Cosmos over Chaos.
The transformation of energy which we have seen
to exist in the case of mechanical work and heat, is
not confined to those two cases only, but is a universal
law applicable to all actions and arrangements of matter
which involve motions of atoms, molecules, or masses,
and therefore imply the existence of energy. In heat
72 MODEEN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
we have had an example of energy exerted in molecular
motion and molecular separation. In chemical action
we have energy exerted in the separation of atoms,
severing them from old combinations and mutual attrac-
tions, and bringing them within the sphere of new
ones. In electricity, and magnetism which is another
form of electricity, we have energy of position which
manifests itself in electrical separation, by which matter
becomes charged with two opposite energies, positive
and negative, which accumulate at separate poles, or
on separate surfaces, with an amount of tension which
may be reconverted into the original amount of energy
of motion when the spark, passing between them,
restores their electrical equilibrium. Of this we have
an example in the ordinary electrical machine, where
the original energy comes from the mechanical force
which turns the handle, and is given back when the
electric spark brings things back to their original state.
We have also energy of motion, when instead of
electrical separation and tension we have a flow or
current of electricity producing the effect of the electric
spark in a slow, quiet, and continuous manner. Thus,
in the voltaic battery, the free energy created by the
difference of chemical action of an acid on plates of
different metals, is transformed into a current which
charges two poles with opposite electricities, and when
the poles are brought together and the circuit is closed,
flows through it in a continuous current. This current
is an energetic agent which produces various effects.
It deflects the magnetic needle, as is seen in the electric
telegraph. It creates magnetism, as is seen when the
poles of the battery are connected by a wire wrapped
round and round a cylinder of soft iron, so as to make
MATTER. 73
the current circulate at right angles to the axis
formed by the cylinder. In fact, all magnetism may
be considered as the summing up at the two opposite
extremities or poles of an axis, of the effects of electric
currents circulating round it ; as, for instance, the earth
is a great magnet because currents caused by the action
of the sun circulate round it nearly parallel to the equator.
Electric currents further show their energy by attract-
ing and repelling one another, those flowing in the
same direction attracting, and those in opposite direc-
tions repelling, the same effect showing itself in
magnets, which are in substance collections of circular
currents flowing from right to left or left to right
according as they are positive or negative. Again,
currents produce an effect by inducing currents in
other bodies placed near them, very much as the
vibrations of a tuning-fork induce vibrations and bring
out a corresponding note from the strings of a piano
or violin ready to sound it. When a coil of wire is
connected with a battery and a current passes through
it, if it is brought near to another isolated coil it
induces a current in an opposite direction, which, when
it recedes from it, is changed into a current in the same
direction.
These principles are illustrated by the ordinary
dynamo, by which the energy of mechanical work
exerted in making magnets revolve in presence of
currents, and by various devices accumulating electric
energy, is made available either for doing other mecha-
nical work, such as driving a wheel, or for doing
molecular or atomic work by producing heat and light.
For another transformation of the energy of electric
currents is into heat, light, or chemical action. If the
74 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
two poles of a battery are connected by a thin platinum
wire it will be heated to redness in a few seconds, the
friction or resistance to the current in passing through
the limited section of the thin wire producing great
heat. If the wire is thicker heat will equally be pro-
duced, but more slowly.
If the poles of the battery are made of carbon, or
some substance the particles of which remain solid
during intense heat, when they are brought nearly to-
gether the current will be completed by an arc of
intensely brilliant light, and the carbon will slowly
burn away. This is the electric light so commonly used
when great illuminating power is wanted.
Again, the electric current may employ its energy
in effecting chemical action. If the poles of a battery,
instead of being brought together, are plunged into a
vessel of water, decomposition will begin. Oxygen will
rise in small bubbles at the positive pole, and hydrogen
at the negative. If these two gases are collected to-
gether in the same vessel, and an electric current, in the
intense and momentary form of a spark, passed through
them, they will combine with explosion into the exact
amount of water which was decomposed in their
formation.
Everywhere, therefore, we find the same law of
universal application. Energy, like matter, cannot be
created or destroyed, but only transformed. It is
therefore, in one sense, eternal. But there is another
point of view from which this has to be regarded.
Mechanical work, as we have seen, can always be
converted into heat, and heat can, under certain con-
ditions, be reconverted into mechanical work ; but
not under all conditions. The heat must pass from
MATTER. 7 5
something at a higher temperature into something at
a lower. If the condenser of a steam-engine were
always at the same temperature as the boiler, we
should get no work out of it. It is easy to under-
stand how this is the case if we figure to ourselves
a river running down into a lake. If the stream is
dammed up at two different levels, each dam, as long-
as there is water in it, will turn a mill-wheel. But
if all the water runs down into the lake and, owing
to a dry season, there is no fresh supply, the wheels
will stop and we can get no more work done. So
with heat, if it all runs down to one uniform tem-
perature it can no longer be made available to do work.
In the case of the river, fresh water is supplied at
the higher levels, by the sun's energy raising it by
evaporation from the seas to the clouds, from which
it is deposited as rain or snow. But in the case of
heat there is no such self-restoring process, and the
tendency is always towards its dissipation ; or in
other words, towards a more uniform distribution
of heat throughout all existing matter. The process
is very slow ; the original fund of high-temperature
heat is enormous, and as long as matter goes on con-
densing fresh supplies of heat are, so to speak, squeezed
out of it.
Still there is a limit to condensation, while there is
no limit to the tendency of heat to diffuse itself from
hotter to colder matter until all temperatures are
equalised. The energy is not destroyed ; it is still
there in the same average amount of total heat, though
no longer differentiated into greater and lesser heats,
and therefore no longer available for life, motion, or
any other form of transformation. This seems to be
76 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the case with the moon, which, being so much smaller,
has sooner equalised its heat with surrounding space,
and is apparently a burnt-out and dried-up cinder with-
out air or water. And this, as far as we see, must be the
ultimate fate of all planets, suns, and solar systems.
Fortunately the process is extremely slow, for even our
small earth has enjoyed air, water, sunshine, and all
the present conditions necessary for life for the whole
geological period, certainly from the Silurian epoch
downwards, if not earlier, which cannot well be less
than 100 millions of years, and may be much more.
Still time, even if reckoned by hundreds of millions of
years, is not eternity ; and as, looking through the tele-
scope at nebulae which appear to be condensing about
central nuclei, we can dimly discern a beginning, so, look-
ing at the moon and reasoning from established principles
as to the dissipation of heat, we can dimly discern an
end. What we really can see is that throughout the
whole of this enormous range of space and time law
prevails ; that, given the original atoms and energies
with their original qualities, everything else follows in
a regular and inevitable succession ; and that the whole
material universe is a clock, so perfectly constructed
from the beginning as to require no outside interference
during the time it has to run to keep it going with
absolute correctness.
CHAPTER IV.
LIFE.
Esoen:e of Life Simplest Form, Protoplasm Monera and Protista
Animal and Vegetable Life Spontaneous Generation
Development of Species from Primitive Cells Supernatural
Theory Zoological Provinces Separate Creations Law or
Miracle Darwinian Theory Struggle for Life Survival of
the Fittest Development and Design The Hand Proof
required to establish Darwin's Theory as a Law Species
Hybrids Man subject to Law.
THE universe is divided into two worlds the in-
organic, or world of dead matter; and the organic, or
world of life. What is life ? In its essence it is a state
of matter in which the particles are in a continued
state of flux, and the individual existence depends, not
on the same particles remaining in the same definite
shape, but on the permanence of a definite mould or
form through which fresh particles are continually
entering, forming new combinations and passing away.
It may assist in forming a conception of this if we
imagine ourselves to be looking at a mountain the top
of which is enveloped in a driving mist. The mountain
is dead matter, the particles of which continue fixed in
the rocks. But the cloud form which envelops it is
a mould into which fresh particles of vapour are con-
78 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
tinually entering and becoming visible on the wind-
ward side, and passing away and disappearing to
leeward. If we add to this the conception that the
particles do not, as in the case of the cloud, simply
enter in and pass away without change, but are
digested, that is, undergo chemical changes by which
they are partly assimilated and worked up into com-
ponent parts of the mould, and partly thrown off
in new combinations, we shall arrive at something
which is not far off the ultimate idea of what constitutes
living matter, in its simplest form of the protoplasm,
or speck of jelly-like substance, which is shown to be
the primitive basis or raw material of all the more
complex forms both of vegetable and animal life.
Digestion, therefore, is the primary attribute. A
crystal grows from without, by taking on fresh par-
ticles and building them up in regular layers according
to fixed laws, just as the pyramids of Egypt were built
up by laying layer upon layer of squared stones upon
surfaces formed of regular figures, and inclined to each
other at determinate angles.
The living plant or animal grows from within by
taking supplies of fresh matter into its inner laboratory,
where it is worked up into a variety of complex pro-
ducts needed for the existence and reproduction of life.
After supplying these, the residue is given back in
various forms to the inorganic world, and the final
residue of all is given back by death, which is the
ultimate end of all life.
The simplest form of life, in which it first emerges
from the inorganic into the organic world, consists of
protoplasm, or, as it has been called, the physical basis
of life. Protoplasm is a colourless semi-fluid or jelly-
LIFE. 79
like substance, which consists of albuminoid matter, or
in other words, of a heterogeneous carbon-compound of
very complex chemical composition. It exists in every
living cell, and performs the functions of nutrition and
reproduction, as well as of sensation and motion. In its
simplest form, that of the microscopic monera or pro-
tista, the lowest of living beings, we find a homogeneous
structureless piece of protoplasm, without any differen-
tiation of parts. The monera are simple living globules
of jelly, without even a nucleus or any sort of organ,
and yet they perform all the essential functions of life
without any different parts being told off for particular
functions. Every particle or molecule is of the same
chemical composition and a facsimile of the whole
body, as in the case of a crystal. They are, therefore,
the first step from the inorganic into the organic world,
and if spontaneous generation takes place anywhere,
it is in the passage of the chemical elements from the
simple and stable combinations of the former into the
complex and plastic combinations of the latter.
These monera are found principally in the sea and
in great masses at the bottom of deep oceans, where
they form a sort of living slime first described by
Huxley in 1868, and called Bathybius.
The next step upwards is to the cell in which the
protoplasm is enclosed in a skin or membrane of
modified protoplasm, and a nucleus, or denser spot, is
developed in the enclosed mass. This is the primary
element from which all the more complicated forms
of life are built up. Each cell seems to have an inde-
pendent life of its own, and a faculty of reproduction by
splitting into fresh cells similar to itself, which multiply
in geometrical progression, assimilating the elements of
80 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
their substance from the inorganic world so rapidly
as to provide the requisite raw material for higher
structures.
The first organised living forms are extremely
minute, and can only be recognised by powerful
microscopes. A filtered infusion of hay, allowed to
stand for two days, will swarm with living things, a
number of which do not exceed 46 ,i 00 th of an inch
in diameter. Minute as these animalcula are, they
are thoroughly alive. They dart about and digest;
the smallest speck of jelly-like substance shoots out
branches or processes to seize food, and if these come
in collision with other substances they withdraw them.
They exist in countless myriads, and perform a very
important part in the economy of nature. They are
the, scavengers of the universe, and remove the remains
of living matter after death, which would otherwise
accumulate until they choked up the earth. This they
do by the process of putrefaction, which is due mainly
to the multiplication of little rod-like creatures known
as bacteria, which work up the once living, now dead,
matter into fresh elements, again fitted to play their
part in the inorganic and organic worlds.
One of the simplest of these forms is the amoeba,
which is nothing but a naked little lump of cell-matter,
or plasma, containing a nucleus ; and yet this little
speck of jelly moves freely, it shoots out tongues or
processes and gradually draws itself up to them with
a sort of wave-like motion ; it eats and grows, and in
growing reproduces itself by contracting in the middle
and splitting up into two independent ameebse.
The germs of these various animalcula swarm in
the air, and carry seeds of infection everywhere where
LIFE. 81
they find a soil fitted to receive them ; and thus assist
the survival of the fittest in the struggle of life, by
eliminating weak and unhealthy individuals and species.
Thus when the potato, the vine, or the silk-worm has
had its constitution enfeebled by prolonged artificial
culture, there are germs always ready to revenge the
violation of natural laws, and bring the survivors back
to a more healthy condition. In like manner the
germs of cholera, typhoid, and scarlet fever, enforce
the observance of sanitary principles.
In this simple form the lowest forms of life are
not yet sufficiently differentiated to enable us to dis-
AMCBBA. AM<EBA dividing into two.
tinguish clearly between animal and vegetable, and
they have been called by some naturalists Protista,
while others designate them as Protozoa or Protophyta,
according as they show more resemblance to one or
the other form of life. But it is often so doubtful that
in looking at the same organism through a microscope,
Huxley was inclined to consider it as a plant, while
Tyndall exclaimed that he could as soon believe that
a sheep was a vegetable.
In the next stage upwards, however, life subdivides
itself into two great kingdoms, that of the vegetable
and of the animal world. Alike in their general defini-
tion as contrasted with inorganic matter, and in their
82 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
common origin from an embryo cell, which divides
and subdivides until cell-aggregates are formed, from
which the living form is built up by a process of
evolution, the plant differs from the animal in this :
that the former feeds directly on inorganic matter,,
while the latter can only feed on it indirectly, after it
has been manufactured by the plant into vegetable
substance.
This is universally true, for if we dine on beef r
we dine practically on the grass which the ox ate ;
that is, on the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and other
simple elements which the grass, under the stimulus
of light and sunshine, manufactured into complex
compounds ; and which the ox again, by a second
process, manufactured from these compounds into others-
still more complex, and more easily assimilated by us
in the process of digestion. But in no case can we
dine, as the plant does, on the simple elements, and
thrive on a diet of air and water, with a small ad-
mixture of nitrate of ammonia, and of phosphates,
sulphates and chlorides, of a few primitive metals.
Vegetable life, therefore, is the producer, and animal
life the consumer, of the organic world.
Practically the plant derives most of its substance
from the carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, which,
green leaves under the stimulus of light and heat have-
the faculty of decomposing, and abstract the carbon
giving out the oxygen ; while the animal, by a reverse
process, burns up the compounds manufactured by the
plant, principally out of this carbon, by the oxygen
obtained from the air by the process of respiration,
exhaling the surplus carbon in the form of carbonic
acid gas.
LIFE. 83
The balancing effect of these two processes may be
seen in any aquarium, where animals and vegetables
live together in water which is kept pure, while it would
become stagnant and poisonous in a few hours, if one
of the two forms of life were removed. All that the
animal requires therefore for its existence, materials
with which to build up its frame and supply waste ; heat
with which to maintain its circulating fluids and other
substances at a proper temperature ; motive power or
energy to enable it to move, feel, and in the case of
man to think ; are all proceeds of the slow combustion
of materials derived from the vegetable world in the
oxygen breathed from the air, just as the work done
by a steam-engine is the product of a similar combus-
tion, or chemical combination of the oxygen of the air
with the coal shovelled into the fire-box. These dis-
tinctions, however, between animals and vegetables are
not quite absolute, for, even in the more highly-organised
forms of life, there is a border-land where some plants
seem to perform the functions of animals, as in those
which catch and consume flies and eat and digest pieces
of raw meat.
Those who wish to pursue this interesting subject
further will do well to read the Chapter on Living
Matter in Huxley's " Physiography," where they will
find it more fully explained, with the inimitable clear-
ness which characterises all the writings of an author
who is at the same time one of the first scientific
authorities and one of the greatest masters of English
prose. But my present object is not to write a scientific
treatise, but shortly to sum up the ascertained results
of modern science, with a view to their bearings
on modern thought ; and from this point of view the
G 2
8-t MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
immediate question is, how far law, which has been
shown to prevail universally throughout space, time, and
inorganic matter, can be shown to prevail equally
throughout the world of life.
Up to a certain point this admits of positive proof.
It is as certain that all individual life, from the most
elementary protoplasm up to the highest organism
Man, originates in a minute or embryo cell, as it is
that oxygen and hydrogen combined in certain pro-
portions make water. But if we try to go back one
step further, behind the cell, we are stopped. In the
inorganic world we can reason our way beyond the
microscopic matter to the molecule, and from the mole-
cule to the atom, and are only arrested when we come
to the ultimate form of matter, and of energy, out of
which the universe is built up. But, in the case of life,
we are stopped two steps short of this, and cannot tell
how the cell containing the germ of life is built up out
of the simpler elements.
Many attempts have been made to bridge over this
gulf, and show how life may originate in chemical
compounds, but hitherto without success. Experiments
have been made which, for a time, seemed to show that
spontaneous generation was a scientific fact, i.e., that
the lowest forms of life, such as bacteria and amoeba,
really did originate in infusions containing no germs
of life ; but they have been met by counter experiments
confirming Harvey's dictum, " Omne animal ex ovo,"
or all life proceeds from antecedent germs of life, and
the verdict of the best authorities, such as Pasteur,
Tyndall, and Huxley is, that spontaneous generation
has been " defeated along the whole line." This verdict
is perhaps too unqualified, for it certainly appears that,
LIFE. 85
on the assumption with which both sides started, that
all organic life was destroyed by exposure to a heat of
212, or the boiling-point of water, the advocates of
spontaneous generation had the best of it, as low forms
of life did appear in infusions which had been exposed
to this heat, and then hermetically sealed, so as to
prevent any germs from entering. But it was replied
that, as a hard pea takes more boiling than a soft one,
it might very well be that heat sufficient to destroy life
in any moist organism of sufficient size to be seen by
the microscope, might not destroy the germinating
power of ultra-microscopic germs in a very dry state.
And this position seems to have been confirmed by
various experiments, showing that such ultra-microscopic
germs really do exist, and are given forth in the last
life stage of the bacteria which cause putrefaction ; and
that if they are absent or destroyed by repeated applica-
tions of heat, infusions will keep sweet for ever in
optically pure air.
Above all, the germ theory has received confirma-
tion from the brilliant practical results to which it has
led in the hands of Pasteur, enabling him to detect, and
to a great extent eradicate, the causes which had led to
the oidium of the vine and the pebrine of the silk-
worm, thereby saving losses of millions to the industries
of France. The germ theory has also led to important
results in medical science, and is pointing towards the
possibility of combating the most fatal diseases by
processes analogous to that by which vaccination has
almost freed the human race from the scourge of small-
pox.
On the whole, therefore, we must be content to
accept a verdict of " Not proven " in the case of spon-
86 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
taneous generation, and admit that as regards the first
origin of life, science fails us, and there is at present no
known law that will account for it.
Should spontaneous generation ever be proved to be
a fact, it will doubtless be in creating living protoplasm
from inorganic elements at its earliest stage, before it
has been differentiated even into the primitive form
of a nucleated cell or that of an amoeba. This is what
the doctrine of evolution would lead us to expect, for
it would be in contradiction to it to suppose that the
starting-point could be interpolated at any stage sub-
sequent to the lowest. It may be also that this step
could only be made under conditions of heat, pressure,
and otherwise, which existed in the earlier stage of the
earth's existence, but have long since passed away.
This, however, is only a small part of the difficulty
we have to encounter in reducing life to law.
These primeval embryo cells, like as they are in
appearance, contain within them the germs of an almost
infinite diversity of evolutions, each running its separate
course distinct from the others. The world of life is
not one and uniform, but consists of a vast variety of
different species, from the speck of protoplasm up t6
the forest tree, and from the humble amoeba up to man,
each one, at any rate within long intervals of time,
breeding true and keeping to its own separate and
peculiar path along the line of evolution.
The first germ, or nucleated cell, of a bacteria de-
velops into other bacteria and nothing else, that of a
coral into corals, of an oak into oaks, of an elephant
into elephants, of a man into man. In the latter case
we can trace the embryo in its various stages of growth
through forms having a certain analogy to those of
LIFE. 87
the fish, the reptile, and the lower mammals, until it
finally takes that of the human infant. But we have
no experience of a fish, a frog, or a dog, being ever
born of human parents, or of any of the lower animals
ever producing anything resembling a man.
How can this be explained ? Naturally the first
attempt at explanation was by miracle. At a time
when everything was explained by miracle, when all
unusual occurrences were attributed to supernatural
agency, and men lived in an atmosphere of providential
interferences, witchcraft, magic, and all sorts of divine
and diabolic agencies, nothing seemed easier than to
say the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the
fishes of the sea are all distinct after their kind, because
God created them so.
But as the supernatural faded away and disappeared
in other departments where it had so long reigned
supreme, and science began to classify, arrange, and
accumulate facts as they really are, it became more and
more difficult, or rather impossible, to accept this simple
explanation. The very first step destroyed the validity
of all the traditional myths which described the origin
of life from one simultaneous act of creation at a single
centre. The earth is divided into separate zoological
provinces, each with its own peculiar animal and vege-
table world. The kangaroo, for instance, is found in
Australia and there only. By no possibility could the
aboriginal kangaroo have jumped at one bound from
Mount Ararat to Australia, leaving no trace of his
passage in any intermediate district. This isolation
of life in separate provinces applies so rigidly, that we
may sum it up by saying generally that there are no
forms of life common to two provinces unless where
88 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
mioration is possible, or has been possible in past
geological periods.
In islands at a distance from continents, we find
common forms of marine life, for the sea affords a means
of communication ; and often common forms of bird,
insect, and vegetable life, where they may have been
wafted by the winds ; but forms which neither in the
adult or germ state could swim or fly, or be transported
by something which did swim or fly, are invariably
wanting. New Zealand affords a most conspicuous
instance of this. Here is a large country with a soil
and climate exceptionally well adapted to support a
large amount of animal life of the higher orders, and
yet it had absolutely no land animals before they were
introduced by man. If special creations took place to
replenish the earth as soon as any portion of its surface
becomes fit to sustain it, why were there no animals in
New Zealand ? Or, in the Andaman Islands, in the
Gulf of Bengal, which are as large as Ireland, covered
with luxuriant vegetation, and within 300 miles of the
coast of Asia, where similar jungles swarm with ele-
phants, tigers, deer, and all the varied forms of
mammalian life, there are no mammalia except a
pigmy black savage and a pigmy black pig, the latter,
probably introduced by man.
The sharpness of the division between zoological
provinces is well illustrated by that drawn by the
Straits of Loinbok, where a channel, not twenty miles
wide, separates the fauna of Asia and Australia so com-
pletely that there are no species of land animals, and
only a few of birds and insects, common to the two
sides of a channel not so wide as the Straits of Dover.
There is no possibility of accounting for this, except
LIFE. 89
by supposing that the deep water fissure of the Strait
of Lombok has existed from remote geological periods,
and barred the migration southwards of those Asiatic
animals, which, as long as they found dry land,
migrated northwards and westwards till they were
stopped by the Polar and Atlantic Oceans. This diffi-
culty of requiring special creations for separate provinces
is enormously enhanced if we look beyond the existing
condition of things, and trace back the geological record.
We must suppose separate creations for all the separate
provinces of the separate successive formations from
the Silurian upwards. And the more we investigate
the conditions of life either under existing circum-
stances or in those of past geological epochs, the
more enormously are we driven to multiply the number
of separate creations which would be necessary to ac-
count for the diversity of species. "We find life shading
off into an infinite variety of almost imperceptible
gradations from the highest organism, man, to the
lowest, or speck of protoplasm, and we can draw no
hard and fast line and say, up to this point life originated
in law, and beyond it we must have recourse to miracle.
Either all life or none is a product of evolution acting
by defined law, and the affirmation of law is the
negation of miracle.
Every day brings us an account of some new
discovery bringing forms of life nearer together and
bridging over intervals thought to be impassable.
The discovery of plants living on insects, and which
devour and digest pieces of raw meat, has added to
the difficulty which has been long felt, in the humbler
forms of life, of drawing any clear line of demarcation
between the animal and vegetable worlds.
90 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Microscopic research brings to light fresh facts
confounding our fixed ideas as to the permanence of
particular modes of reproducing life, and showing that
the same organism may run through various meta-
morphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during some of
which it may be sexual and in others asexual, i.e., it
may reproduce itself alternately by the co-operation of
two beings of opposite sex, and by fissure or budding
from one being only which is of no sex.
These, and a multitude of other similar facts, com-
plicate enormously the problems of life and its develop-
ments, whether we attempt to solve it by calling in aid
a perpetual series of innumerable miraculous interposi-
tions, or by appealing to ordinary known laws of
Nature.
Is the latter solution possible, and can the organic
world be reduced, as the inorganic world has been with
all its mysteries and infinities of space, time, and
matter, from chaos into cosmos, and shown to depend
on permanent and harmonious laws ? Is the world
of life, like that of matter, a clock ; so perfectly con-
structed from the first that it goes without winding
up or regulating ? or is it a clock which would never
have started going, or having started would soon cease
to go, if the hand of the watchmaker were not con-
stantly interfering with it ? This is the question which
the celebrated Darwinian theory attempts to answer,
of which I now proceed to give a short general outline.
The varieties among domestic animals are obvious
to every one. The race-horse is a very different
creature from the dray-horse; the short-horned ox
from the Guernsey cow; the greyhound from the
Skye terrier. How has this come to pass ? Evidently
LIFE. 01
by man's intervention, causing long-continued selection
in breeding for certain objects. The English race-horse
is the product of mating animals distinguished for
speed for some fifteen or twenty generations. The grey-
hound is a similar dog-product by breeding for a longer
period with the same object ; as the Skye terrier is
of selection in order to get a dog which can follow a
fox into a cairn of rocks and fight him when he gets
there. In all these cases it is evident that the final
result was not attained at once, but by taking ad-
vantage of small accidental variations and accumulating
them from one generation to another by the principle
of heredity, which makes offspring reproduce the
qualities of their parents.
The most precise and scientific experiments on
this power of integrating, or summing up, a progressive
series of differentials, or minute differences, between
successive generations, are those conducted by Darwin
on pigeons. He has shown conclusively that all the
races of domestic pigeons, of which there are two or
three hundred, are derived from one common ancestor,
the wild or blue rock pigeon, and that the pigeon-
fancier can always obtain fresh varieties in a few
generations by careful interbreeding. Of the existing
varieties many now differ widely from one another,
both in size, appearance, and even in anatomical struc-
ture, so that if they were now discovered for the
first time in a fossil state or in a new country, they
would assuredly be classed by naturalists as separate
species.
This is the work of man ; is there anything similar
to it going on in Nature ? Yes, says Darwin, there
is a tendency in all life, and especially in the lower
92 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
forms of life, to reproduce itself vastly quicker than
the supply of food and the existence of other life can
allow, and the balance of existence is only preserved
by the wholesale waste of individuals in what may
be called the " struggle for life." In this struggle, which
goes on incessantly and on the largest scale, the slightest
advantage must tell in the long run, and on the average,
in selecting the few who are to survive, and such slight
advantages must tend to accumulate from one genera-
tion to another under the law of heredity. The
cumulative power of selection exercised by man ' in the
breeding of races is therefore necessarily exercised in
Nature by the struggle for life, and in the course of
time, by the cumulation of advantages originally slight,
small and fluctuating variations are hardened into large
and permanent ones, and new species are formed.
Darwin illustrates this principle of the " struggle for
life " with a vast variety of instances, showing how the
balance of animal and vegetable life may be preserved
or destroyed in the most unexpected manner. For
instance, the fertilisation of red clover is effected by
humble-bees, and depends on their number ; the number
of bees in a given district depends mainly on the
number of field-mice which destroy their combs and
nests ; the number of mice depends on the number of
cats ; and thus the presence or absence of a carnivorous
animal may decide the question whether a particular
sort of flora shall prevail over others or be extirpated.
The countless profusion with which any one species,
unchecked by its natural foes, may multiply in a given-
district, is illustrated by the potato disease, which in a few
days invades whole countries ; and by the rabbit plague
in Australia and New Zealand, where, in less than
LIFE. 93
twenty years, the descendants of a few imported pairs
have rendered whole provinces useless for sheep pasture,
and stoats are now being imported to restore the
balance of life. The tendency in species to produce
varieties which by selection may become exaggerated
and fixed, is illustrated by the case of the Ancon herd
of sheep. A ram lamb was born in Massachusetts in
1791, which had short crooked legs and a long back
like a turnspit dog. Being unable to jump over fences
like the ordinary sheep, it was thought to possess
certain advantages to the farmer, and the breed was
established by artificial selection in pairing this ram
with its descendants who possessed the same peculiarities.
The introduction of the Merino superseded the Ancon
by giving a tame sheep not given to jump fences, with a
better fleece, and so the breed was not continued, but it
is certain that it might have been established as a
permanent variety differing from the ordinary sheep as
much as the turnspit or Skye terrier differs from the
ordinary dog. The tendency of Nature to variation is
apparent in the fact that of the many hundred millions
of human beings living on the earth, no two are pre-
cisely alike, and varieties often appear, as in giants and
dwarfs, six-fingered or toed children, hairy and other
families, which might doubtless be fixed and perpetu-
ated by artificial or natural selection, until they became
strongly marked and permanent.
It is evident that if the theory of development is
true it excludes the old theory of design, or rather, it
thrusts it back in the organic, as it has been thrust
back in the inorganic world, to the first atoms or origins
which were made so perfect as to carry within them all
subsequent phenomena by necessary evolution. Design
94 MODERN SCIENCE A^D MODERN THOUGHT.
and development lead to the same result, that of pro-
ducing organs adapted for the work they have to do,
but they lead to it in totally different ways. Develop-
ment works from the less to the more perfect, and from
the simpler to the more complicated, by incessant
changes, small in themselves but constantly accumu-
O * **
Liting in the required direction. Design supposes that
organisms were created specially on a predetermined
plan, very much as the sewing-machine or self-binding
reaper were constructed by their inventors.
Until quite recently all adaptations of means to ends
were considered as evidences of design. A series of
treatises was published some thirty years ago, for prizes
left by a late Duke of Bridgewater, to illustrate this
theme, among which one by Sir Charles Bell on the
Hand attracted a good deal of attention. It was shown
what an admirable machine the human hand is for the
various purposes for which it is used, and the inference
was drawn that it must have been created so by a
designer who adapted means to ends in much the same
way as is done by a human inventor. But more com-
plete knowledge has dispelled this idea, and shown that
the design, if there be any, must be placed very much
farther back, and is in fact involved in the primitive
germ from which all vertebrate life certainly, and
probably all life, animal or vegetable, have been slowly
developed.
The human hand is in effect the last stage of a
development of the vertebrate type, or type of life in
which a series of jointed vertebrae form a backbone,
which protects a spinal cord containing the nervous
centres, gives points of attachment for the muscles,
and forms an axis of support for the looser tissues.
LIFE. 9
Certain of these vertebrae throw out bony spines or rays;
at first, by a sort of simple process of vegetable growth,
which formed the fins of fishes ; then some of these
rays dropped off and others coalesced into more com-
plex forms, which made the rudimentary limbs of
reptiles ; and finally, the continued process of deve-
lopment fashioned them into the more perfect limbs
of birds and mammals. In this last stage a vast variety
of combinations was developed. Sometimes the bones
of the extremities spread out, so as to form long fingers
supporting the feathered wings of birds and the mem-
braneous wings of bats ; sometimes they coalesced into-
the solid limbs supporting the bodies of large animals,
as in the case of the horse ; and finally, at the end of
the series, they formed that marvellous instrument, the
hand, as it appears in the allied genera of monkeys,
apes, and man.
Any theory of secondary design and special mira-
culous creation must evidently account for all the
intermediate forms as well as for the final result. We
must suppose not one but many thousands of special
creations, at a vast variety of places and over a vast
extent of time ; we must take into account not the suc-
cesses only, but the failures, where organs appear in a.
rudimentary form which are perfectly useless, or in
some cases even injurious, to the creature in which they
are found. For instance, in the case of the so-called
wingless birds, like the dodo of the Mauritius, and the
apteryx of New Zealand, which are found in oceanic
islands, evolution accounts readily for the atrophy
or want of development of organs which were not
wanted where the birds had no natural enemies and
found their food on the ground ; but why should they
96 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
have been created with rudimentary wings, useless while
they remained isolated, and insufficient to prevent their
extermination as soon as man, or any other natural
enemy, reached the islands where they had lived secure ?
If we are to adopt the theory of design and special
creation, we must be prepared to take Burns' poetical
fancy as a scientific truth, and believe that Nature had
to try its " prentice hand," and grope its way through
repeated trials and failures from the less to the more
perfect. Again, the theory of special creation must
account not only for the higher organs and forms of
life, but for the lower forms also. Are the bacteria,
amoebae, and other forms of life which the microscope
shows in a drop of water all instances of a miraculous
creation ? And still more hard to believe, is this the
origin of the whole parasitic world of life which is attached
to and infests each its own peculiar form of higher life ?
Is the human tape-worm a product of design, or
that wonderful parasite the trichinia, which oscillates
between man and the pig, being capable of being born
only in the muscles of the one, and of living only in
the intestines of the other ?
These are the sort of difficulties which have led the
scientific world, I may say universally, to abandon the
idea of separate special creations, and to substitute for
it that which has been proved to be true of the whole
inorganic world of stars, suns, planets, and all forms of
matter; the idea of an original creation (whatever
creation may mean and behind which we cannot go) of
ultimate atoms or germs, so perfect that they carried
within them all the phenomena of the universe by a
necessary process of evolution.
This is the idea to which the Darwinian theory
LIFE. 97
leads up, by showing natural causes in operation which
must inevitably tend to cause and to accumulate slight
varieties, until they become large in amount and per-
manent, thus developing new races within old species,
new species within old families, new families within
old types, and new and complex types from old and
simple ones.
The theory is up to a certain point undoubtedly
true, and beyond that point in the highest degree
probable, but scientific caution obliges us to add that
it is still to a considerable extent a "theory," and
not a "law." That is, it is not like the law of
gravity, a demonstrated certainty throughout the whole
universe, but a provisional law which accounts for a
great number of undoubted facts, and supplies a frame-
work into which all other similar facts, as at present
ascertained, appear to fit with a probability not ap-
proached by any other theory, and which is enhanced
by every fresh discovery made, and by the analogy
of what we know to be the laws which regulate the
whole inorganic world.
To enable us to talk of the " Darwinian law," and
not of the "Darwinian theory," we require two
demonstrations :
1. That living matter really can originate from in-
organie matter.
2. That new species really can be formed from
previously existing species.
As regards the first, we have seen that the efforts of
science have hitherto failed to produce an instance of
spontaneous generation, and all we can say is that it
is probable that such instances have occurred in earlier
ages of our planet, under conditions of light, heat,
98 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
chemical action, and electricity, different from anything
we can now reproduce in our laboratories. This, how-
ever, falls short of demonstration, and for the present
we must be content to leave the origin of life as one
of the mysteries not yet brought within the domain of
law.
As regards the second point, we are farther ad-
vanced towards the possibility of proof. But here also
we are met by two difficulties. If we appeal to
historical evidence, we are met by the fact that a
much greater time than is embraced by any historical
record is almost necessarily required for the dying
out of any old species and introduction of any new
one, by natural selection. And if we appeal to fossil
remains we are met by the imperfection of the geo-
logical record. As to this, it must be remembered
that only a very small portion of the earth's surface
has been explored, and of this a very small portion
consists of ancient land surfaces or fresh water for-
mations, where alone we can expect to meet with traces
of the higher forms of animal life. And even these
have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now
meet with thousands and tens of thousands of un-
doubted human remains lying almost under our
feet, it is only within the last thirty years that
their existence has even been suspected. Cuvier,
the greatest authority of the last generation, laid
it down as an incontrovertible fact that neither
men nor monkeys had existed in the fossil state,
or in anything more ancient than the most super-
ficial and recent deposits. We have now at least
twenty specimens of fossil monkeys from one locality
alone of the Miocene period, that of Pikermi, near
LIFE. 99
Athens, and many thousands of human remains, at
least into the Quaternary period and contemporary
with extinct animals, if not earlier. We must be
content, therefore, with approximate solutions pointing
up to but not absolutely demonstrating the truth.
What is a species ? Speaking generally it is an
assemblage of individuals who maintain a separate
family type by breeding freely among themselves, and
refusing to breed with other species. There can be no
doubt that this represents what, at the first view and
for a limited range of time, is in accordance with actual
facts. The animal and vegetable worlds are practically
mapped out into distinct species, and do not present
the mass of confusion which would result from indis-
criminate cross-breeding. It is clear also that this
state of things has lasted for a considerable time, for
the paintings on Egyptian tombs and monuments carry
us back more than 4,000 years, and show us the most
strongly marked varieties of the human race, such as
the Semitic, the Egyptian, and the Negro, existing just
-as they do at the present day. They show us also such
'extreme varieties of the dog species as the greyhound
and the turnspit, then in existence ; and the skeletons
of animals such as the ox, cat, and crocodile, which
have been preserved as mummies, show no appreciable
difference from those of their modern descendants.
When we come to look closely, however, into the
matter, our faith in this absolute rule of the entire
independence of species is greatly modified. In the
lower grades of life we see everywhere species shading
off into one another by insensible gradations, and every
extension of our knowledge, both of the existing animal,
vegetable, and microscopic worlds, and of those of past
100 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
geological periods, multiplies instances of intermediate
forms, differing from one another far less than do many
of the individual varieties of recognised species. In the
case of sponges, for instance, the latest conclusion of
scientific research is this : that if you rely on minute
distinctions as constituting distinct species, there are
at least 300 species of one family of sponges, while if
you disregard slight differences, which graduate into
one another, and are found partly in one and partly in
another variety, you must designate them all as forming
only one species. Even in higher grades, as species are
multiplied, it becomes more and more difficult to say
where one ends and the other begins. Take the familiar
instance of the grouse and ptarmigan. The red grouse
is believed to be peculiar to the British Islands, while
the ptarmigan is a very widely spread inhabitant of
Arctic regions and high mountains. Which is more
probable that the grouse was specially created in the
British Islands, apparently for the final cause of
bringing sessions of Parliament to wind up business in
August, or that, as the rigour of the Glacial period
abated, and heather began to grow, certain ptarmigan by
degrees modified their habits and took to feeding on
heather tops instead of lichens, and by so doing
gradually became larger birds and assumed the colour
best adapted for protection in their new habitation ?
In point of fact, grouse showing traces of this descent
in smaller size and much whiter plumage are still to
be met with. It would be easy to multiply instances,
but this consideration seems conclusive.
If we reject the Darwinian theory and adopt that
of independent species descended from a specially
created ancestor or pair of ancestors, we are driven
LIFE. 101
by each discovery of intermediate or slightly modified
forms, into the assumption of more and more special
acts of creation, until the number breaks down under
its own weight, and belief becomes impossible.
For instance, in the Madeira Islands alone, 134
species of air-breathing land-snails have been discovered
by naturalists, of which twenty- one only are found in
Africa or Europe, and 113 are peculiar to this small
group of islands, where they are mostly confined to
narrow districts and single valleys. Are we to suppose
that each of these 113 species was separately created ?
Is it not almost certain that they are the modified
descendants of the twenty-one species which had found
their way there in a former geological period, when
Madeira was united to Africa and Spain ?
There remains only the argument from the fertility
of species inter se, and their refusal to breed with other
species. This also, when closely examined, appears to
be a primd facie deduction, rather than an absolute
law. Different species do, in fact, often breed together,
as is seen in the familiar instance of the horse and ass.
It is true that in this case the mule is sterile and no
new race is established. But this rule is not universal,
and quite recently one new hybrid race, that of the
leporine, or hare-rabbit, has been created, which is
perfectly fertile. The progeny of dog and wolf has also
been proved to be perfectly fertile during the four
generations for which the experiment was continued.
In the case of cultivated plants and domestic animals,
there can be little doubt that new races, which breed
true and are perfectly fertile, have been created within
recent times from distinct wild species. The Esquimaux
dog is so like the Arctic wolf that there can be little
102 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
doubt he is either a direct descendant, or that both are
descendants from a common stock. The same is true
of the jackal and some breeds of dogs in the East and
Africa, and other races of dogs are closely akin to foxes.
But all dogs breed freely together, and can with
difficulty be mated with the wild species which they
so closely resemble. The modern Swiss cattle are
pronounced by Eutimeyer to show undoubted marks
of descent from three distinct species of fossil oxen, the
Bos primigenius, Bos longifrons, and Bos frontosus.
There is now in the Zoological Gardens in Kegent's
Park a hybrid cow, whose sire was an American bison
and its mother a hybrid between a zebu and a gayal.
This animal is perfectly fertile, and has bred again to-
the bison ; but what is singular is, that this hybrid
resembles much more an ordinary domestic English
cow than it does any of its progenitors. It is totally
unlike the bison, both in appearance and disposition,,
and, except in having a projecting ridge over the
withers, it might be mistaken for a coarse, bony,
common cow. If a hybrid bull had been born
of the same type, and mated with this hybrid cow,
there is little doubt that a new race might have been
established, extremely different from its ancestors.
In fact, nearly all the domesticated animals have-
the essential characters of new races. We cannot point
to wild progenitors existing in any part of the world
from which they are descended, and when they run
wild they do not revert to any common ancestral form.
In the vegetable world instances of fertile hybrids-
are still more abundant, and the introduction and
establishment of new varieties is a matter of every-day
occurrence.
LIFE. 103
Now, whatever artificial selection 'can do in a short
time, natural selection can certainly do in a longer
time, and nothing short of absolute proof of the im-
possibility of species coming into existence by natural
laws should induce us to fall back on the supernatural
theory, with all its enormous difficulties of an innumer-
able multitude of special creations, most of them
obviously imperfect and tentative or rather, useless
and senseless on any supposition except that of a
necessary and progressive evolution. In fact, if it
were not for its bearing on the nature and origin of
man, few would be found to maintain the theory of
miraculous creations, or to doubt that the world of
life is regulated by fixed laws as well as the world
of matter. But whatever touches man touches us
closely, and brings into play a host of cherished
aspirations and beliefs, which are too powerful to be
displaced readily by calm, scientific reasoning. Shall
man, who, we are told, was created in God's image
and only " a little lower than the angels," be degraded
into relationship with the brutes, and shown to be
only the last development of an animal type which,
in the case of apes and monkeys, approaches singularly
near to him in physical structure ? Are the saints
and heroes whom we revere, and the beautiful women
whom we admire, descended, not from an all-glorioua
Adam and all-lovely Eve, as portrayed in Milton's
"Paradise Lost," but from Palaeolithic savages, more
rude and bestial than the lowest tribe of Bushmen or
Australians ? Is the account of man's creation and
fall in the Hebrew Scriptures as pure a myth as that
of Noah's ark, or of Deucalion and Pyrrha ?
The only answer to these questions is that truth is
104 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
truth, and fact is fact, and that it is always better to
act and to believe in conformity with truth and fact,
than to indulge in illusions. There are many things
in Nature which jar on our feelings and seem harsh
and disagreeable, but yet are hard facts, which we have
to recognise and make the best of. Childhood does
not pass into manhood without exchanging much that
is innocent and attractive for much that is stern and
prosaic. Death, with its prodigal waste of immature
life, its sudden extinction of mature life in the plenitude
of its powers, its heart-rending separations from loved
objects, is a most disagreeable fact. But it would not
improve matters to keep grown-up lads in nurseries for
fear of their meeting with accidents, or becoming
hardened by contact with the world. Progress, not
happiness, is the law of the world ; and to improve
himself and others by constant struggles upwards is the
true destiny of man.
In working out this destiny the fearless recognition
of truth is essential. Facts are the spokes of the ladder
by which we climb from earth to heaven, and any
individual, nation, or religion, which, from laziness or
prejudice, refuses to recognise fresh facts, has ceased to
climb and will end by falling asleep and dropping to a
lower level.
" Prove everything, hold fast that which is true," is
the maxim which has raised mankind from savagery to
civilisation, and which we must be prepared to act upon
at all hazards and at all sacrifices, if we wish to retain
that civilisation unimpaired and to extend it further.
CHAPTER V.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
Belief in Man's Recent Origin Boucher de Perthes' Discoveries
Confirmed by Prestwich Nature of Implements Celts, Scrapers,
and Flakes Human Remains in River Drifts Great Antiquity
Implements from Drift at Bournemouth Bone Caves Kent's
Cavern Victoria, Gower, and other Caves Caves of France and
Belgium Ages of Cave Bear, Mammoth, and Reindeer Artistic
Race Drawings of Mammoth, etc. Human Types Neanderthal,
Cro-Magnon, Furfooz, etc. Attempts to fix Dates History
Bronze Age Neolithic Danish Kitchen-middens Swiss
Lake-Dwellings Glacial Period Traces of Ice Causes of
Glaciers CrolTs Theory Gulf Stream Dates of Glacial Period
Rise and Submergence of Land Tertiary Man Eocene
Period Miocene Evidence for Pliocene and Miocene Man
Conclusions as to Antiquity.
GREAT as the effect has been of the wonderful dis-
coveries of modern science of which I have attempted
to give a general view in the preceding chapters, there
remains one which has had the greatest effect of all
in changing the whole current of modern thought, viz.,
the discovery of the enormous antiquity of man upon
earth, and his slow progress upwards from the rudest
savagery to intelligence, morality, and civilisation. It
is needless to point out in what flagrant and direct
opposition this stands to the theory that man is of
recent miraculous creation, and that he was originally
106 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
endowed with a glorious nature and high faculties,
which were partially forfeited by an act of disobedience.
It is important, therefore, to understand clearly the
evidence upon which a conclusion rests, so startling-
and unexpected as that which traces the origin of man.
back into the remote periods of geological time.
It had been long known that a stone period pre-
ceded the use of metals. Flint arrow-heads, stone axes,
knives, and chisels, rude pottery, and other human
remains lie scattered almost everywhere, on or near
the existing surface, and are found in the . sepulchral
mounds and monuments which abound in all countries
until they are destroyed by the progress of agriculture.
These are certainly ancient, for their origin was so
completely forgotten that the stone hatchets or celts
(from the Latin celtis, or chisel) were universally
believed to be thunderbolts which had fallen from
heaven. But there was no proof that they were
very ancient, they were always found at or near
the present surface, and if animal remains were
associated with them, they were those of the dog,
ox, sheep, red deer, and other wild and domestic
species now found in the same district. Historical
record was not supposed to extend beyond the 4,000
or 5,000 years assigned to it by Bible chronology, and
it was thought that this might be sufficient to account
for all the changes which had occurred since man first
became an inhabitant of the earth. Above all, the
negative evidence was relied on, that geologists had
explored far and wide, and although they had found
fossil remains which enabled them to restore the charac-
teristic fauna of so many different formations, they had
found no trace of man or his works anywhere below the
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 107
present surface. This seemed so conclusive that Cuvier,.
the greatest authority of the day, pronounced an em-
phatic verdict that man had not existed contempo-
raneously with any of the extinct animals, and probably
not for more than 5,000 or 6,000 years. Here, then,
appeared to be an edifice based on scientific fact, in
which geologists and theologians could dwell together
comfortably, and the weight of their united authority
was sufficient to silence all objections, and ignore or
explain away the instances which occasionally cropped
up, of human remains found in situations implying
greater antiquity.
Suddenly, I may almost say in a single day, this-
edifice collapsed like a house of cards, and the fact
became apparent that the duration of human life on.
the earth must be measured by periods of tens, if not
of hundreds of thousands of years.
It happened thus : A retired French physician,
Monsieur Boucher de Perthes, residing at Abbeville, in
the valley of the Somme, had a hobby for antiquarianism
as decided as that of Monkbarns himself. Abbeville
afforded him a capital collecting-ground for the indul-
gence of his tastes, as the sluggish Somnie flows through
a series of peat mosses, which are extensively worked
for fuel, and afford many remains of the Gallo-Roman
and pre-Roman or Celtic period. Higher up, on the
slopes of the low hills which bound the wide valley, are
numerous beds of gravel, sand, and brick-earth, which,
are also extensively worked for road and building
materials. In these pits remains of the mammoth,
rhinoceros, and other extinct animals are frequently
found, and the workmen had noticed occasionally
certain curiously-shaped flints, to which they gave the-
108
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
name of "langues du chat," or cats' tongues. Some of
these were taken to Monsieur Boucher de Perthes as
curiosities for his museum, and he at once recognised
them as showing marks of human workmanship. This
put him on the trace, and in the year 1841 he himself
FLINT HACHE, FLINT HACHE
From Moulin Quignon, Abbeville. From St. Acheuf, Valley of the Somme.
(Half the actual size.) (Half the ^^ size }
(From Lubbock's " Prehistoric Times.")
discovered, in situ, in a seam of sand containing remains
of the mammoth, a flint rudely but unmistakably
fashioned by human hands into a cutting instrument.
During the next few years a large quantity of gravel
was removed to form the Champ de Mars at Abbeville,
and many of these celts or hatchets were found. In
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 109
1847, M. Boucher de Perfches published his "Antiquite's
Celtiques et Antediluviennes," giving an account of
these discoveries, but no one would listen to him. The
united authority of theologians and geologists opposed
an infallible veto on the reception of such ideas, and it
must be admitted that M. Boucher de Perthes himself
did his best to discredit his own discoveries by associat-
ing them with visionary speculations about successive
deluges and creations of pre- Adamite men. At length
Dr. Falconer, the well-known palaeontologist, who had
brought to light so many wonderful fossil remains from
the Sewalik hills in India, happened to be passing
through Abbeville and visited M. Boucher de Perthes'
collection. He was so much struck by what he saw that
on arriving in London he spoke to Mr. Prestwich, the
first living authority on the tertiary and quaternary
strata, and Mr. Evans, whose authority was equally
.great on everything relating to the stone implements
found in such numbers in the more recent or Neo-
lithic period. He urged them to go to Abbeville and
examine for themselves whether there was anything in
these alleged discoveries. They did so, and the result
was that on their return to England Mr. Prestwich
read a paper to the Royal Society on the 19th May,
1859, which conclusively and for ever established the
fact that flint implements of unmistakable human work-
manship had been found, associated with the remains
of extinct species, in beds of the Quaternary period
deposited at a time when the Somme ran at a level
more than 100 feet higher than at present, and was
only beginning to excavate its valley.
The spell once broken evidence poured in from all
quarters,and although twenty-five years only have elapsed
110 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
-since Mr. Prestwich's paper was read, the number of
stone and other implements worked by man, deposited
in museums, is already counted by tens of thousands,
and they have been found from Devonshire to India,
in France, England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece,
Northern Africa, Palestine,
and Hindostan, and in fact
wherever they have been
looked for, except in northern
countries which were buried
under ice during the Glacial
period. Some idea of the
immense number of these
rude implements may be
formed from the fact that the
valley system of one small
river, the Little Ouse, which
rises near Thetford and flows
into the Wash after a course
of twenty - five miles, has
within little more than ten
years yielded about 7,000
specimens.
They have been found in
great abundance in the valley
f the
(Haii the actual size.) Wiltshire Avon, and in fact
(From Lubbock's " Prehistoric Times ") -11
in all the river gravels and
brick-earths of the south and south-east of England; and
in those of the Somme, Oise, Seine, Loire, and all the
principal river systems of France ; and in less numbers,
probably because they have been less looked for, in
similar situations over an area extending from Central
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. Ill
and Southern Europe to Madras and China. It is a
remarkable fact about these river-drift implements that
they are all nearly of the same type and found under
similar circumstances, that is to say, in the gravels,
oands, brick-earths, and fine silt or loess deposited by
rivers which have either ceased to run, or which ran
at levels higher than their present ones and were only
beginning to excavate their present valleys. Also they
are always found in association with remains of what
is known as the quaternary, as distinguished from the
recent or existing fauna, and which is characterised by the
mammoth, the thick-nosed rhinoceros, and other well-
known types of extinct animals. The general character
of these implements is very rude, implying a social condi-
tion at least as low as that of the Australian savages of the
present day. They consist mainly of the flake ; the chop-
per, or pebble roughly chipped to an edge on one side;
the scraper, used probably for preparing skins ; pointed
flints used for boring ; and by far the most abundant
and characteristic of all, the hdche or celt, a sharp
or oval implement, roughly chipped from flint or, in its
absence, from any of the hard stones of the district,
such as chert or quartzite, and intended to be held
in the hand and used without any haft or handle.
These hdches are evidently the first rude type of
human tools, from which the later forms of the axe,
adze, chisel, wedge, etc., have been derived by a very
slow and lengthened process of evolution. They differ,
however, in many essential respects, from the more
perfect stone celts of later periods and of modern
savages. The chipping is very rude, they are never
ground or polished, the pointed end is that intended
for use, the butt-end being left blunt, showing that the
112 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT,
hdche was not haftecl but held in the hand ; while the
converse is always the case with the finely-chipped
or polished stone celts and hatchets of
the Neolithic period, which, in its later
stages, are to all intents and purposes
similar to modern implements, only
made of stone instead of metal. But
these Palaeolithic hdches are only one
step in advance of the rude natural
stone which an intelligent orang or
chimpanzee might pick up to crack a
cocoa-nut with, or to grub up a root
from the earth, or an insect from a
rotten tree.
At the same time there is not the
remotest doubt as to their being the work of human hands.
POLISHED STONE AXB.
Neolithic.
(Half the actual size.)
Prom l.ubbock'8
"Prehistoric Times.")
FLINT ADZE,
From Danish Kitchen-middens.
MODERN STONE ADZE,
New Zealand.
(From Lubbock's " Prehistoric Times.";
When placed side by side with the rudest forms of
stone hatchets actually used by the Australian and other
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LANCE.
PALEOLITHIC.
Mammoth Period.
PALEOLITHIC.
Mammoth Period.
PALAEOLITHIC.
Mammoth Period.
PALEOLITHIC.
Keindeer Period.
EARLY NEOLITHIC.
LATE NEOLITHIC.
(From Lublrck's ' Prehistoric Times.")
114 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
savages, it is difficult to detect any difference. If placed
in an ascending series, from the oldest and rudest, to
the finely-finished axes and arrow-heads of the period
immediately preceding the use of metal, the progress
may be clearly traced by insensible gradations. The
blows given to bring the block to the desired shape by
intentional chipping have left distinct marks ; and
archaeologists have succeeded, with a little practice,.
in fashioning similar implements from modern flints.
In fact, forgeries have been made by workmen in
localities where collectors were eager and credulous,
though fortunately such forgeries are easily distin-
guished from genuine antiques by the different appear-
ance of the old and recent fractures, and other signs-
which make it almost impossible to deceive an ex-
perienced eye. The conclusion, therefore, of one of our
best archaeologists may be safely accepted, that it is as
impossible to doubt that these rude stone flakes and
hatchets are works of human art, as it would be if we
had found clasp-knives and carpenters' adzes.
The remains of human skeletons are, as might be
expected, very rare in these river drifts, which have been
formed under conditions where the preservation of such
remains would be very unlikely. In fact, as Sir John
Lubbock points out, the bones found in the river gravels
are almost invariably those of animals larger than man,
such as the mammoth and rhinoceros. Still a few
human bones have been found, sufficient to show that
these river-drift men were probably a dolichocephalic
or long and narrow- headed race, with prominent jaws,
massive bonos, and great muscular strength, but still,
although rude and savage, of an essentially human
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 115
type, and going a very little way towards bridging over
the gap between the savage and the ape.
A more complete view, however, of the conditions
of human life at these remote periods is afforded by the
evidence given by caves, where naturally the remains
of man are much more abundant and much better
preserved. Before entering, however, on the examina-
tion of this class of evidence, it may be well to give an
instance which may help to familiarise the imagination
with the vast periods of time which must have elapsed
since Palaeolithic man left these rude implements
within reach of river floods.
Among the gravels in which Palaeolithic hdches have
been found, are some which cap the cliff at Bourne-
mouth at a height of about 130 feet above the sea.
This gravel can be traced in a gradual fall from west to
east, along the Hampshire coast and the shores of the
Solent to beyond Spithead, and was evidently de-
posited by a river which carried the drainage of
the Dorsetshire and Hampshire downs into the sea
to the eastward, and of which the present Avon,
Test, and Itchen were tributaries. But for such a river
to run in such a course the whole of Poole and Christ-
church bays must have been dry land, and the range
of chalk downs now broken through at the Needles
must have been continuous. To borrow the words of
Evans in his " Ancient Stone Implements," " Who,
standing on the edge of the lofty cliff at Bournemouth,
and gazing over the wide expanse of waters between
the present shore and a line connecting the Needles
on the one hand and the Ballard Down Foreland on
the other, can fully comprehend how immensely remote
i 2
116 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
was the epoch when what is now that vast bay was
high and dry land, and a long range of chalk downs,
600 feet above the sea, bounded the horizon on the
south ? And yet this must have been the sight that
met the eyes of those primeval men who frequented
the banks of that ancient river which buried their
handiworks in gravels that now cap the cliffs, and of
the course of which so strange but indubitable a
memorial subsists in what has now become the Solent
Sea."
Any attempt to assign a more precise date than
the vague one of immense antiquity to these early
traces of primeval man, had better be postponed until
we have examined the more detailed and extensive
body of evidence which has been afforded by the
exploration of caves, to which the great discovery at
Abbeville at once gave an immense impulse, and which
has since been prosecuted in England, France, Belgium,
and Germany, with the greatest ardour and success.
The caves in which fossil remains are found occur
principally in limestone districts. They are due to the
property which water possesses, when charged with a
small quantity of carbonic acid, of dissolving lime.
Earn falling on the earth's surface takes up carbonic
acid from contact with vegetable matter, and a portion
of it finds its way through cracks and crevices in the
subjacent rock to lower levels, where it comes out in
springs of hard water charged with carbonate of lime
from the rock which it has dissolved. It has been
calculated that the average rainfall on a square mile of
chalk thus carries away about 140 tons of solid matter
in a year. In this way underground channels are
formed, some of which become large enough to admit
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 117
of streams flowing through them, and even rivers, as
is seen in the limestone district of Carinthia, where
considerable rivers are swallowed up and run for miles
beneath the surface. In this way caverns are formed,
or sometimes a series of caverns, which represent the
pools of the rivers which formerly flowed through them.
Accumulations were formed at the bottom of these pools
of whatever may have been brought down by the
stream, and when, owing to changes in level or denuda-
tion of the gathering grounds, the rivers ceased to flow
in the old channel, these pools became dry and were
converted into caves, in which wild beasts and man
found shelter and left their remains. The debris thus
formed accumulated with a mixture of blocks which fell
from the roof, and of red loamy earth consisting of the
residue of the limestone rock insoluble in water, and
of dust and mud brought in by winds and floods,
and occasionally interstratified by beds of stalag-
mite, composed of thin films of crystalline carbonate
of lime, deposited drop by drop by drippings through
the rock forming the roof of the cave. These drip-
pings form what are called stalactites, which hang like
pendent icicles from the roof of caves, and as the
drip falls from these it forms a corresponding deposit,
known as stalagmite, on the floor below. The forma-
tion of this deposit is necessarily extremely slow, and
it only goes on when the drops of water charged with
a minute excess of carbonate of lime come in contact
with the air ; so that whenever the floor of the cave
was under water no stalagmite could be formed. The
alternations, therefore, of deposits of stalagmite repre-
sent alternations of long periods during which tbe cave
was generally dry or generally flooded. During the dry
118 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
periods, when the cave happened to be inhabited, the
treadings on the floor would prevent the accumulation
of an unbroken deposit of pure stalagmite, and the
crystalline matter would be employed in forming a
solid cement of the various debris into what is known
as a breccia.
Another class of caves, or rock-shelters, has been
formed along the sides of valleys bounded by cliffs,
where the stratification is horizontal or nearly so ;
but the different beds vary much in hardness and
permeability to water. The softer strata weather away
more rapidly than the others, and thus form shallow
caves or deep recesses in the face of the cliffs, with
a floor of hard rock below and a roof of hard rock
above, which afford dry and commodious shelters for
any sort of animal, including man. In other respects
they resemble the first class of caves in having their
contents cemented into a breccia by the dripping of
water charged with carbonate of lime from the roof,
and, if the cave happened to be deserted for a long
period, this deposit would in the same way form a
bed of stalagmite and seal up securely everything below
it. In some cases, also, the roof would fall in, and
thus preserve everything previously existing in the
cave for the investigation of future geologists.
With these general remarks readers will be able
to understand the evidence afforded by the remains
of man found in caverns. I will begin by taking as
a typical case that of Kent's Cavern, near Torquay,
because it is one of the earliest and best known, and
all the facts concerning it have been verified by
explorations carefully conducted by a committee ap-
pointed by the British Association in 1864, and which
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 119
comprised the names of the most eminent authorities in
geology and palaeontology, including those of Sir Charles
Lyell, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Evans, Mr. Boyd Dawkins,
Mr. Pengelley, and others.
The cave is about a mile east from Torquay harbour,
and runs into a hill of Devonian limestone in a winding
course, expanding into large chambers connected by
narrow passages. The following is the series of deposits
in descending order in the large chamber near the
entrance :
1. Large blocks of limestone which have fallen from
the roof.
2. A layer of black, muddy mould, three inches to
twelve inches thick.
3. Stalagmite one foot to three feet thick.
4. Red cave-earth with angular fragments of lime-
stone of variable thickness, but in places five
to six feet thick.
In the black earth above the stalagmite were
found a number of relics of the Neolithic or polished
stone period, with a few articles of bronze and pottery,
some of which appear to be of a date as late as that of
the Roman occupation of Britain. Associated with
these are bones of ox, sheep, goat, pig, and other
ordinary forms of existing species, and there is an
entire absence of any older fauna, or of any of the
ruder forms of Palaeolithic implements. When we get
below the stalagmite into the underlying cave-earth,
the case is entirely reversed. Not a single specimen
of polished or finely-wrought stone, or of pottery, is
to be found ; a vast number of celts or hdches, scrapers,
knives, hammer stones, and other stone implements,
are met with, which are all of the rude Palaeolithic type
120 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
found in the river drifts, with a few bone implements
such as harpoon-heads, a pin, an awl, and a needle,
like those frequently met with in the caves of France
and Belgium. Associated with these are a vast number
of bones and teeth, all of which belong to the old
quaternary fauna, of which many species have become
extinct and others have migrated to distant latitudes.
The following is a list of the mammalian remains
which have been found in this cave-earth below the
stalagmite :
ABUNDANT.
The Cave Lion, a large extinct species of lion.
Cave Hyaena, ,, liytena.
Cave Bear, bear.
Grizzly Bear.
Mammoth (Elcphas primigeniiu).
Rhinoceros (Tichorinus), woolly or thick-nosed extinct species.
Horse.
Bison.
Irish Elk.
Red Deer.
Reindeer.
SCARCE.
Wolf.
Fox.
Glutton.
Brown Bear.
Urus.
Hare.
Lagomnys, tailless Arctic Lore.
Water Vole.
Field Vole.
Bank Vole.
Beaver.
And one specimen of the Machairodus, or Great Sabre-toothed
Tiger, which is one of the characteristic species of the upper
Miocene and Pliocene formations.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 121
These constitute a fauna which is characteristic
of the Pleistocene, Quaternary, or Palaeolithic period,
and essentially different from that of the prehistoric
or Neolithic period, which is practically the same as
that now existing. Wherever remains of the mammoth,
woolly rhinoceros, and cave bear are found, Palaeolithic
implements may be expected, and conversely. In fact
Palaeolithic man is as essentially part of the character-
istic fauna of the Quaternary period, as the Palseotherium
is of the Eocene, or the Deinotherium and Hipparion
of the Miocene.
A large number of other caves have been explored
in England, notably the Victoria Cave nea.r Settle in
Yorkshire, the Gower Caves in South Wales, the Brix-
ham Cave in Devonshire, the Woking Cave in Somerset-
shire, and King Arthur's Cave in Herefordshire, and the
results have been everywhere practically the same as
those at Kent's Cavern. The same class of implements
have been found and the same fauna, with the occa-
sional addition of a few species, among which the
hippopotamus is the most remarkable. Everywhere
there is the same entire break between the Neolithic
and the Palaeolithic deposits, and the same evidence
of great antiquity for the latter. It would appear as
if in the British area some great geological change,
such as submergence beneath the sea or invasion of the
ice, had exterminated or driven away Palaeolithic man,
aloDg with the mammoth, rhinoceros, cave bear, and
other extinct animals of the Paleolithic fauna, and
after a long lapse of time the area had again become
habitable and been occupied by a newer race and by the
recent fauna.
The same remark applies to the river drifts, which
122 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
not in England only, but everywhere, appear to belong
to a distinct period, vastly more ancient than any of
the recent deposits in which Neolithic remains are
found. So far, therefore, as the river drifts and British
caves are concerned, all that we could say of the
Palaeolithic period is that it is of vast antiquity, and
must have lasted for an immense time, as it was in
force for the whole time requisite for rivers like the
Somme or Avon, which drain small areas, to cut down
their present valleys, often two or three miles wide,
from the level of their upper gravels, which are in
many places 100 to 150 feet above the level of the
highest floods of the present rivers.
But the caves of France and Belgium supply us
with more evidence, and enable us to trace the history
of long periods of Palaeolithic time, and study in detail
the succession of changes that have occurred, and the
habits, arts, and industries of the various tribes of
primitive men who occupied these caves and rock-
shelters at these remote periods. In fact, it may be
said with truth that we know more about the men who
chased the mammoth and reindeer in the South of
France perhaps 50,000 years ago, than we do about
those who lived there immediately before the classical
era, or less than 5,000 years ago.
In certain provinces of France and Belgium it
happens fortunately that there are extensive districts
of limestone, in which caverns and rock-shelters are
extremely abundant and full of Palaeolithic remains in
an excellent state of preservation. The abundance of
such caves may be estimated from the fact that the
cliffs, bounding one small river, the Vezere, in the
department of Dordogne in the South of France, contain
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 123
in a distance of eight or ten miles no fewer than nine
different stations, each of which has given a vast variety
of remains embedded in the breccias and cave-earths of
their respective floors ; and the small river Lesse in
Belgium has been scarcely less prolific. Of the abun-
dance of the human and animal remains found in such
caverns it may be sufficient to say that one alone, that
of Chaleux in the valley of the Lesse, is computed by
Dumont to have yielded not less than 40,000 distinct
objects.
The great abundance of remains thus collected, both
of human bones and implements, and of animals con-
temporaneous with them, have made it possible to
classify and arrange, in relative order of time, a good
many of the subdivisions of the Palaeolithic period.
This has been done partly by the order of superposition
and partly by the greater or less rudeness of the imple-
ments of stone and bone, and by the greater or less
abundance of those animals of the quaternary fauna
which appeared first and disappeared soonest. The
result has been to show that the period when vast
herds of reindeer roamed over the plains of Southern
France up to the Pyrenees was not the earliest,
but was preceded by a long period when the rein-
deer was scarce, and the remains of the mammoth,
cave bear, and cave hyaena were more abundant than in
the following ages. The implements of this period are
of the earlier river-drift type and extremely rude, and
there is an almost entire absence of instruments of
bone.
Gradually as we pass upwards the more Southern
forms of elephant, rhinoceros, antelopes, and great
carnivora disappear, and the mammoth and cave bear
124 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODEEN THOUGHT.
become scarcer, while the reindeer becomes more and
more abundant until at length it furnishes the chief
source of food, and its horns one of the principal materials
for the manufacture of implements. Concurrently with
this change we find a progressive improvement in the
arts of life, as shown by stone implements more care-
fully chipped into a greater variety of forms, and arrow
and lance-heads, barbed harpoons, awls, and needles
for sewing skins, made chiefly from the antlers of the
reindeer.
At length we arrive at one of the most interesting
facts disclosed by these researches, that during one of
the later or reindeer periods of the Palaeolithic era,
many of the caves in the South of France, and also in
Switzerland and Southern Germany, were occupied by
a race who, like the Esquimaux of the present day,
had a strong artistic tendency, and were constantly
drawing with the point of a flint on stone or bone,
or modelling with flint knives from horns and bones r
sketches of the animals they hunted, scenes of the chase,
or other objects which struck their fancy. These are
exceedingly well done, so that there is no difficulty in
recognising the animals intended to be represented,
among which are the mammoth, cave bear, reindeer,
wild horse, and wild ox. The sketch of the mammoth
which is engraved on a piece of ivory, from the cave of
La Madeleine in the valley of the Vezere, is particularly
interesting, as it corresponds exactly with the mammoth
whose body was found entire in frozen mud on the
banks of a river in Siberia, and it sets at rest all
possible question of man having been really contem-
porary with this extinct animal in the South of France.
The drawings and carvings of other animals,
PORTRAIT OF MAMMOTH.
Drawn with a flint on a piece of Mammoth's ivory ; from Cave of La Madeleine,
Dordogne, France.
EARLIEST PORTRAIT OF A MAN, WITH SERPENT AND HORSES' HEADS.
From Grotto of Les Eyzies. Reindeer Period.
. ., - - , : , v-,- vfg^
HORSES' HEAD
eriod.
REINDEER FEEDING.
From Grotto of Thayngen, near Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
126 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
especially of the reindeer, are often extremely spirited,
and one especially of a reindeer engraved on a bit
of bone from a cave at Thayngen, near Schaffhausen
in Switzerland, would do credit to any modern animal
painter. A very few human figures are found among
these primeval drawings, but strangely, while the
animals are so well drawn, those of men aire very
inferior and almost infantine in execution. They are
sufficient, however, to show that the savage of Perigord
pursued the formidable aurochs, naked, armed with
a lance or javelin, bearded on the chin but not on
the rest of the face, and wearing his hair in a tuft
on the top of the head.
We do not, however, depend on these drawings
for evidence of the sort of men who inhabited these
caves in Palaeolithic days. A large number of skulls
and complete skeletons have been found in different
caves, some of which have served as sepulchral vaults
for families and tribes, while in others individuals
have been crushed by falls of rock, or otherwise interred,
and in a few cases skulls and bones have been found
at great depths in river drifts, and in the loess, or
fine glacial mud which fills up the valley of the Rhine
and other areas over which the great Swiss glaciers
when melting poured their turbid streams.
The most celebrated of these are :
The Neanderthal and Canstadt skulls, which are con-
sidered to belong to the oldest type, having been found
in the lowest strata, which contain the rudest implements
and the most archaic fauna. Of these the Neanderthal
skull has attracted much attention from its singularly
brutal appearance, having a very low and receding fore-
head, and a massive bony ridge over the eyes resembling
ANTIQUITY OF MAX.
127
that of the gorilla. But the brain is of fair capacity,
and occasional skulls of a similar type occur at the
present day, so that we are not warranted in saying
that we have discovered the "missing link" between
man and ape, especially as the Engis and other skulls
of this period present less exceptional features. All
we can safely say is that the oldest type of man known
to us seems to have been characterised by long and
narrow heads, prominent eyebrows, medium stature,
MEXTONE SKELETON. Palaeolithic. Eeindeer Period.
and great thickness of bones and prominence of ridges
denoting great muscular strength.
The discovery of a sepulchral chamber at Cro-
Magnon in the valley of the Vezere, with several entire
skeletons, gave evidence of another type which has been
found elsewhere in caves of the same age, viz., newer
than the earliest mammoth and cave bear age to which
the oldest skulls are referred, but older than the subse-
quent reindeer age, and still characterised by great
rudeness of implements. This is a remarkable type,
128 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODEEN THOUGHT.
for these savages were really a fine race of men, tall in
stature, and with well-developed brain. They are long-
headed, but not more so than is often found in the best
modern European skulls, and the average capacity of
the skull exceeded that of most modern races, while
their average height was not less than 5 ft. 10 in. for
the men, and 5 ft. 6 in. for the women.
Another totally different race appears in caves of
the same period or a little later, which is known as the
Furfooz race, from a sepulchral cave in Belgium where
a number of skeletons were discovered, but which appears
to have been widely spread throughout Europe towards
the middle of the Palaeolithic period. The type of this
race is almost exactly that of the modern Lapp, short
in stature, averaging not above 5 ft., though strong and
muscular, and with small round heads and high cheek-
bones. From this time forward, long and short-headed
races, and intermediate types resulting probably from
their intermixture, seem to have existed pretty much
as they do at the present day, and the important con-
clusion to be drawn is, that even as far back as the
early Glacial period, man had already existed long
enough to develop different races, and in sufficient
numbers to scatter wandering tribes of savage hunters
widely over the earth and up to the verge of glaciers
and the utmost confines of inhospitable regions.
In trying to fix anything like definite dates for
man's existence upon earth, we must reverse the pro-
cess by which we have proved the enormous antiquity
of his earliest remains, and ascend step by step from
the known to the unknown, The first step is that
supplied by history.
Authentic Egyptian history begins with Menes, the
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 129
first king who united the different provinces of Egypt
into one empire.
The date of this event has been fixed by the best
authorities, who have devoted their lives to the study
of Egyptian texts and monuments, at about 5,000 years
B.C., or say 7,000 years before the present time.
Boeck makes it B.C. 5702, Unger 5613, Mariette 5004,
Brugsch 4455, Lauth 4157, Lepsius 3892, and Bunsen
3623.
It will be observed that the tendency of all the
more recent investigations is to lengthen the date,
and that of Mariette may be safely assumed as the
minimum limit of time for the foundation of the
Egyptian monarchy.
Now this date shows no trace of approach to a
primitive and uncivilised state of things. On the
contrary, Menes is related to have carried out a great
engineering work by which the Nile was embanked,
its course changed, and the new capital city of
Memphis built on the site reclaimed. His next
successor, Tet, is credited with having written learned
treatises on medicine and anatomy, and the earliest
pyramid, that of Sakkara, was probably built by a
king who ascended the throne only eighty-eight years
after the death of Meues.
The annals and monuments of Chaldsea and China
take us back to about 2,500 years B.C., or say for 4,500
years from the present time, and tell the same tale as
those of Egypt of dense population and a high degree
of civilisation already established. In fact, it is evident
that the great alluvial valleys of rivers such as the Nile
and Euphrates have been inhabited for a number of
centuries by a population who had emerged from the
K
130 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
hunter and pastoral stage into that of agriculture, and
had increased and multiplied until great cities were
built and mighty monarchies founded, and who were
in possession of most of the arts of civilised life. The
Egyptian date which carries us back about 7,000 years
is, however, by far the earliest upon which we can rely
as an authentic record, and any glimmerings of history
beyond this are obviously mythical.
Here, then, we take leave of history, and must
explore our way upwards by the aid of archaeology and
geology.
The earliest historical civilisations were all acquainted
with metals, chiefly in the form of bronze, which is an
alloy of copper and tin, very hard, easily cast, and well
adapted for every description of tool and weapon.
Indeed, it has only been superseded by iron within
recent historical times. But the Bronze Age was pre-
ceded by a long Neolithic period, when stone, finely
wrought and often ground or polished, was used for the
purposes to which metal was afterwards applied. The
men of this Neolithic period were comparatively civi-
lised; they had all the common domestic animals, the
dog, horse, ox, sheep, goat, and pig ; also some of the
cultivated grains, as wheat and barley; they wore
clothing and lived in villages. According to all appear-
ance they were the first wave of the great migrations
into Europe from Asia, and either occupied regions
left empty by the last vicissitudes of the Glacial
period, or conquered, and partly exterminated and
partly intermixed with, the ruder savages of the
Paleolithic period. Some think the Iberian or Basque
people may be a remnant of this Neolithic race, who
were driven westward by the later wave of Celtic migra-
ANTIQUITY OF MAN, 131
tion just as the Celts were by the still later waves of
Teutonic and Slavonic immigrants. Be this as it may,
it is certain that a Neolithic people were spread very
widely over the globe, as their remains of very similar
character are found almost everywhere in Europe, Asia,
and America, and always in association with the exist-
ing or most recent fauna and configuration of the earth's
surface.
The difficulty in assigning any precise date for these
remains arises very much from the fact that the
Neolithic passed into the Bronze or historical civilisa-
tion, at different times in different countries. The
Australians, the Polynesians, and the Esquimaux were
or are still in the Stone period, while steam-engines are
spinning cotton at Manchester, and the most famous
cities of Egypt and the East have been for centuries
buried under shapeless mounds of their own ruins. It
is probable that all Europe remained in the Neolithic
stage for many centuries after the historical date of the
commencement of the Egyptian empire.
Still there are some remains which may enable us
to form an approximate conjecture of the time during
which this Neolithic period may have lasted.
The two principal clues are furnished :
1. By the Danish mosses and kitchen-middens.
2. By the Swiss lake-dwellings.
In Denmark there are a number of peat mosses
varying in depth from ten to thirty feet, which have
been formed by the filling up of small lakes or ponds
in hollows of the Glacial drift. Around the borders of
these mosses, and at various depths in them, lie trunks
of trees which have grown on their margin. At the
present surface are found beech-trees, which are now,
K 2
132 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
and have been throughout the whole historical period
of 2,000 years, the prevalent form of forest vegetation
in Denmark. Lower down is found a zone of oaks,
a tree which is now rare and almost superseded by
the beech. And still lower, towards the bottom of
the mosses, the fallen trees are almost entirely Scotch
firs, which have been long unknown in Denmark and
when introduced will not thrive there. It is evident,
therefore, that there have been three changes of climate,
causing three entire changes in the forest vegetation
of Denmark, since these mosses began to be formed.
'The latest has lasted certainly for 2,000 years and
(ve cannot tell how much longer, so that some period
of more than 6,000 years must be assumed for the
three changes.
Now, it is invariably found that remains of
the Iron Age are confined to the present or beech
era, while bronze is found only in that of oak,
and the Age of Stone coincides with that of the
Scotch fir.
The kitchen-middens afford another memorial of
the prehistoric age in Denmark. There are mounds
found all along the sheltered sea-coasts of the main-
land and islands, consisting chiefly of shells of the
oyster, cockle, limpet, and other shell-fish, which have
been eaten by the ancient dwellers on these coasts.
Mixed up with these are the bones of various land
animals, birds, and fish, and flint flakes, axes, worked
bones and horns, and other implements, including rude
hand-made pottery. The relics are very much the same
as those found in the fir zone of the peat mosses, and
although old as compared with the Iron or historical
age, they do not denote any extreme antiquity. The
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 133
shells are all of existing species, though the larger size
of some of those found on the shores of the Baltic
shows that the salt water of the North Sea had then
a freer access to it than at present. The bones of
animals, birds, and fish are also all of existing species,
and no remains of extinct animals, such as the
mammoth, or even of reindeer, have been found. By
fer the most common are the red deer, roe-deer, and
wild boar. The dog was known, but appears to have
been the only domestic animal.
Most of the stone implements are rude, but a few
carefully-worked weapons have been found, and a
few specimens of polished axes, which, with the pre-
sence of pottery and the nature of the fauna, show
conclusively that these Danish remains are all of the
Neolithic age and subsequent to the close of the
Glacial period. In fact, similar shell mounds are
found in almost all quarters of the globe where
savage tribes have lived on the sea-coast, subsisting
mainly on shell-fish, and they are probably still being
formed on the shores of the Greenland and Arctic Seas,
and in Australia, and remote islands of the Pacific.
Human remains are scarce in these Danish deposits,
but numerous skulls and skeletons have been found
in tumuli which, from their situation and from stone
implements being buried with the dead, may be reason-
ably inferred to be those of the people of the peat
mosses and shell mounds. They denote a short race
with small and very round heads, in many respects
resembling the present Lapps, but with a more pro-
jecting ridge over the eye.
On the whole, all we can conclude from these
Danish remains is that at some period, not less than
134 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
6,000 or 7,000 years ago, when civilisation had already
been long established in the valley of the Nile, rude
races resembling the Lapps or Esquimaux lived on the
shores of the Baltic, who, although so much more
recent, and acquainted with the domestic dog, pottery,
and the art of polishing stone, had not advanced much
beyond the condition of the later cave-men of the South
of France ; and that this race was succeeded by one
who brought in the much higher civilisation of the
Bronze Age.
The lake-dwellings of Switzerland give still more
detailed and interesting information as to Neolithic
times.
During a very dry summer in 1854, the Lake of
Zurich fell below its usual level and disclosed the
remains of ancient piles driven into the mud, from
which a number of deer-horns and other implements
were dredged up. This led to further researches, and
the result has been that a large number of villages
built on these piles has been discovered in almost all
the Swiss lakes, as well as in those of Italy and other
countries. On the whole, more than 200 have been
discovered in Switzerland, and fresh ones are being
constantly brought to light. They range over a long
period, a few belonging to the Iron and even to
Eoman times ; while the greater number are almost
equally divided between the Age of Bronze and that of
Stone. Some of them are of large size, and must have
been long inhabited and supported a numerous popula-
tion, from the immense number of implements found,
which at one station alone, that of Concise on the
Lake of Neufchatel, amounted to 25,000. These imple-
ments consist mainly of axes, knives, arrow-heads, saws,.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 135
chisels, hammers, awls, and needles, with a quantity of
broken pottery, spindle-whorls, sinkers for nets, and
other objects.
In the oldest stations, where no trace of metal
is found, and the decay of the piles to a lower
level shows the greatest antiquity, the implements are
all of the Neolithic type, and the animal remains
associated with them are all of the recent fauna. There
are no mammoths, rhinoceroses, or reindeer; the wild
animals are the red deer and roe, the urus, bison, elk,
bear, wolf, wild cat, fox, badger, wild boar, ibex, and
other existing species ; and of domestic animals, the dog,
pig, horse, goat, sheep, and at least two varieties of
oxen. Birds, reptiles, and fish, were all of common
existing species. Carbonised ears of wheat and barley
have been found, as also pears and apples, and the seeds,
stones, and shells of raspberry, blackberry, wild plum,
hazel-nut, and beech-nut. Twine, and bits of matting
made of flax, as well as the occurrence of spindle-whorls,
show that the pile-dwellers were acquainted with the
art of weaving.
On the whole, these pile-villages show that a large
population lived in Switzerland for a long time before
the dawn of history, who had already attained a con-
siderable amount of civilisation at their first appearance,
which went on steadily increasing down to the time of
the Eoman conquest. Various attempts have been
made to fix an approximate date for the earliest of
these pile-villages, but they have not been very
successful. They have been based mainly on the
amount of silting up which has taken place in some of
the smaller lakes since the piles were driven in, as
compared with that which has occurred since the Kornan
136 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
period. The best calculations appear to show that'
6,000 or 7,000 years ago Switzerland was already
inhabited by men who used polished stone implements,
but how long they had been there we have no distinct
evidence to show. Perhaps 10,000 years may be taken
as the outside limit of time that can be allowed for
the Neolithic period in Switzerland, Denmark, or
any known part of Europe.
In Egypt, however, there is evidence of a much
greater antiquity. Fragments of pottery, which was
entirely unknown in the Palaeolithic age, have been
brought up by borings in the Nile Valley from depths
which, at the average rate of accumulation there during
the last 3,000 years of three inches and a half in a
century, would denote an age of from 13,000 to 18,000
years. Looking at the dense population and high
civilisation of Egypt at the commencement of history,
7,000 years ago, it is highly probable that this time
at least must have elaps3d since the country was first
occupied by a settled agricultural population as far
advanced in the arts of life as the lake-dwellers of
Switzerland.
Any calculation, however, of Neolithic time takes us
back a very short step in the history of the human race.
The Palaeolithic period must evidently have been of
vastly longer duration.
Any attempt to estimate this must depend entirely
on geological considerations. Palaeolithic man is part
of the Quaternary fauna, which came in with the com-
mencement and continued down to the close of the
great Glacial period.
In carrying our researches further back, the pos-
sibility of assigning anything like a definite date for
ANTIQUITY OF MAX. 137
the existence of man depends, therefore, on the question
whether it is possible to fix any approximate dates
for the commencement and duration of this period.
In the first place, how do we know that there has
been a Glacial period ?
In England we are familiar with water, but not
with ice ; we therefore recognise at once the signs
of the action of water. If we come across a dry
channel, winding in alternating curves between eroded
banks, and showing deposits of gravel and silt, we
say without hesitation, " Here a river formerly ran."
But if we had lived in Switzerland, we should recog-
nise with equal certainty the signs of glacial action.
Suppose any one visiting Chamouni walks up the
valley to the foot of the Mer de Glace, where the
Arve issues from the glacier, let us say in autumn,
when the front of the glacier has shrunk back some
distance, what does he see ? Rounded and polished
rocks, which seem as if they had been planed by a
gigantic plane working downwards over them, and
on these a mass of miscellaneous rubbish shot down
as if from a dust-cart, consisting of stones of all sizes,
some of them boulders as big as a house, scattered
irregularly on a mass of clay and sand. When he
looks more closely he will see that these stones are
not rounded as they would be by running water,
but blunted at their angles by a slow grinding action ;
and in many cases, both the stones and the rocks
on which they rest are scratched and striated in a
direction which is that of the glacier's motion. At
the bottom of this rubbish-heap he will find the
clay into which the rock has been ground by the
full weight of the glacier, very stiff and compact ;
138 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
while if he looks down the valley, he will see, on
a hot day, a swollen and turbid river issuing from
the melting ice and flooding the meadows, on which
it will leave a deposit of fine mud. These are effects
actually produced by ice ; and wherever he sees them
he can infer the former presence of a glacier, as cer-
tainly as when he sees a bed of rounded pebbles he
infers the former presence of running water. The
planed rocks are commonly known as roches moutonnees,
from a fancied resemblance of their smooth, rounded
hummocks to the backs of a flock of sheep lying
down ; the rubbish-heaps are called moraines; and
the stiff bottom clay with boulders embedded in it
is called the grund-moraine, till, or boulder clay ;
while the blunted and scratched stones are said to be
glaciated.
These tests, therefore, roches moutonnees, moraines,
boulders, and glaciated stones, are infallible proofs that
wherever we find them there has been ice-action, either
in the form of gla .ers, or of icebergs, which are only
detached portions of glaciers floated off when the glacier
ends in the sea. Now, if our inquirer extends his view,
he will find that these signs, the meaning of which he
has learned at the head of the valley of Chamouni, are
to be found equally in every valley and over the whole
plain of Switzerland, up to a height of more than 3,000
feet on the slope of the opposite Jura range, while on
the Italian side the Glacial drift extends far into the
plains of Piedmont.
Extending our view still more widely, we find that
every high mountain range in the Northern hemisphere
has had its system of glaciers ; and one great mountain
mass, that of Scandinavia, has been the nucleus of an
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 135
enormous ice-cap, radiating to a distance of not less
than 1,000 miles, and thick enough to block up with
solid ice the North Sea, the German Ocean, the Baltic,
and even the Atlantic up to the 100 fathom line. This
ice-cap, coalescing with local glaciers from the higher
lands of England, Scotland, and Ireland, swept over
their surface, regardless of minor inequalities of hill
and valley, as far south as to the present Thames Valley,
grinding down rocks, scattering drift and boulders, and,
in fact, doing the first rough sub-soil ploughing which
prepared most of our present arable fields for cultiva-
tion. The same ice-sheet spread masses of similar drift
over Northern Germany, Sweden, Denmark; and the-
northern half of European Russia, and left behind it
numerous boulders which must have travelled all the
way from Norway or Lapland.
If we cross the Atlantic we find the same thing-
repeated on a still larger scale in North America. A
still more gigantic ice-cap, radiating from the Lau-
rentian ranges, which extend towards the Pole from
Canada, has glaciated all the minor mountain ranges
to the south up to heights sometimes exceeding 3,000
feet, and coalescing with vast glaciers thrown off by the
Rocky Mountains from their eastern flanks, has swept
over the whole continent, leaving its record in the form
of drift and boulders, down to the 40th parallel of latitude*
It is difficult to realise the existence of such gigantic
glaciers, but the proofs they have left are incontro-
vertible, and we have only to look to Greenland to see-
similar effects actually in operation. The whole of
that vast country, where at former periods of the earth's
history, fruit-trees grew and a genial climate prevailed,
is now buried deep under one solid ice-cap, from which
140 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODEEN THOUGHT.
only a few of the highest peaks protrude, and which
discharges its surplus accumulation of winter snow
by huge glaciers filling all the fiords and pushing out
into the sea with an ice-wall sometimes forty or fifty
miles in length, from which icebergs are continually
breaking off and floating away. A still more gigantic
ice-wall surrounds the Southern Pole, and in a compara-
tively low latitude presented an insuperable barrier to
the further progress of the ships of Sir J. Ross's
expedition.
A still closer examination of the Glacial period shows
that it was not one single period of intense cold but a
prolonged period, during which there were several
alternations, the glaciers having retreated and advanced
several times with comparatively mild inter-glacial
periods, but finally with a tendency on each successive
advance to contract its area, until the ice shrank into
the recesses of high mountains, where alone we now
find it. Another noteworthy point is that during this
long Glacial period there were several great oscillations
in the level of sea and land.
Such was the Glacial period, and to assign its
date is to fix the date when we know with certainty
that man already existed, and had for some long
though unknown time previously been an inhabitant
of earth. Is this possible ? To answer this question
we must begin by considering what are the causes,
or combination of causes, which may have given rise
to such a Glacial period. When we look at the
causes which actually produce existing glaciers, we find
that extreme cold alone is not sufficient. In the
coldest known region of the earth, in Eastern Siberia,
there are no glaciers, for the land is low and level
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 141
and the air dry. On the other hand, in New Zealand,
in the latitude of England and with a mean annual
temperature very similar to that of the West of
Scotland, enormous glaciers descend to within 700
feet of the sea-level. The reason is obvious ; the
Alps of the South Island rise to the height of 11,000
feet above the sea, and the prevalent westerly winds
strike on them laden with moisture from their passage
over a wide expanse of ocean. In like manner, in
the case of the Swiss Alps, the Himalayas, and other
great mountain ranges, high land and moist winds
everywhere make glaciers. Given the moist wind,
any great depression of temperature, whether arising
from elevation of land or other causes, will make it
deposit its moisture in the form of snow, and the
accumulation of snow on a large surface of elevated
land must inevitably relieve itself by pushing down
rivers of ice to the point where it melts, just as the
rain-fall relieves itself by pouring down rivers to the
point where the surplus water finds its level in the sea.
When the two conditions of high land and moist
winds ar3 combined, low temperature increases their
effect, and the snow-fall consolidates into a great ice-
cap, from which only the tops of the highest mountains
project, and which pushes out gigantic glaciers far over
surrounding countries and into adjacent seas. Such is
now the case in Greenland, and was formerly the case
in Scandinavia, where a huge sheet of ice radiated from
it over Northern Germany as far as Dresden, filled up
the North Sea, and, coalescing with smaller ice-caps
from the highlands of Scotland, England, and Wales,
buried the British Islands up to the Thames under
massive ice. At the same period glaciers from the
142 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGH1.
Alps filled the whole plain of Switzerland, and in
North America the ice-cap extended from Labrador to
Philadelphia.
The first remark to be made is that, as these phe-
nomena depend primarily on moist winds, and only
secondarily on cold, and as moist winds imply great
evaporation and therefore great solar heat over ex-
tensive surfaces of water, all explanations are worthless
which suppose a general prevalence of cold, either from
less solar radiation, passage through a colder region of
space, or otherwise. We must seek for a cause which
is consistent with the general laws of Nature, and with
the leading facts of the actual generation of glaciers at
the present day.
Astronomers believe that they have discovered such
a, cause, in the theory first started by Mr. Croll, that
the glaciation of the Northern hemisphere was due to a
secular change in the shape of the earth's orbit, com-
bined with the shorter changes produced by the pre-
cession of the equinoxes. The latter cause is due to
the fact that the earth is not an exact sphere but
slightly protuberant at the equator, and that the attrac-
tion of the sun on this protuberant matter prevents the
axis round which the earth rotates from remaining
exactly parallel with itself, and makes it move slowly
round its mean position just as we see in the case of a
schoolboy's top, which reels round an imaginary upright
axis while spinning rapidly. This revolution in the case
of the earth completes its circle in about 21,000 years,
so that if summer, when the pole is turned towards the
sun, occurred in the Northern hemisphere when the earth
was in perihelion, or nearest the sun, and consequently
winter when it was in aphelion, or furthest away from
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 143
the sun, after 10,500 years the position would be
exactly reversed, and winter would occur in perihelion
and summer in aphelion ; the Southern hemisphere then
enjoying the same conditions as those of the Northern
one 10,500 years earlier. And in another 10,500 years
things would come back to their original position.
Now if the earth's orbit were an exact circle this
would make no difference, all the four seasons would
be of the same duration and would receive the same
solar heat in both hemispheres, and if the orbit
were nearly circular, so that the difference between
the perihelion and aphelion distances was small, the
effect would be small also. But if the orbit flattened
out or became more eccentric, the effect would
be increased. The time of traversing the aphelion
portion of the annual orbit would become longer
and that of traversing the perihelion portion shorter,
as the orbit departed from the form of a circle
and became more elliptic. Whenever, therefore, the
North Pole was turned away from the sun in aphelion,
the winters would be longer than the summers in the
Northern hemisphere, and conversely, the summers
would be longer than the winters when, after an
interval of 10,500 years, precession brought about the
opposite condition of things, in which winter occurred
in perihelion.
At present the earth's orbit is nearly circular, and
the Northern hemisphere is nearest the sun in winter
and furthest from it in summer, but the difference is
only about 3,000,000 miles, or a small fraction of the
total mean distance of 93,000,000 miles, which makes
the winter half of the year shorter than the summer
half by nearly eight days.
144 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
But mathematical calculations show that under the
complicated attractions of the sun, moon, and larger
planets, the eccentricity of the earth's orbit slowly
changes at long and irregular intervals, but always
within fixed limits, increasing up to a certain point and
then diminishing till it approaches the circular form,
when it again increases. The maximum limit of eccen-
tricity makes the difference between the greatest and
least distances of the earth from the sun range between
12,000,000 and 14,000,000 miles, which is four or five
times as great as at present ; and with this eccentricity,
and winter in aphelion in the Northern hemisphere, the
winter half of the year in Northern latitudes would
be twenty-six days longer than the summer half,
instead of eight days shorter as at present. In this
state of things the quantity of heat received daily
from the sun in winter would be such as to lower
the temperature of the whole Northern hemisphere by
35 Fahrenheit, and reduce the average January tem-
perature of England from 39 to 4, while the mean
summer temperature would be about 60 higher than
at present. But this summer heat, derived from solar
radiation, would not counteract the cold of winter, for
all moisture during winter being accumulated in ice
and snow, most of the solar heat of summer would be
expended in supplying latent heat to melt a portion of
this frozen accumulation, and dense fogs would intercept
a large amount of the solar radiation.
After 10,500 years this state of things would be en-
tirely reversed, and with twenty-six days more of summer,
and the earth 12,000,000 miles nearer the sun in winter,
the Northern hemisphere would enjoy something like
perpetual spring. There can be no doubt that these aro
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 145
real causes, and the only difficulty is to account for their
not having been more invariable in their operation and
given us a constant succession of Glacial periods since the
commencement of geological time, whenever the eccen-
tricity became great, which occurs at irregular periods,
but practically about three times in every 3,000,000
years. The answer is that the effects would only occur
when the other conditions were present, viz., high land,
moist winds, and an absence of oceanic currents of warm
water like the Gulf Stream. The latter is one of the
main causes which affect temperature. The difference
of temperature between the equatorial and polar regions
causes a constant overflow of heated air from south to
north, which is replaced by an indraught of colder air
from north to south, which, owing to the greater
velocity of the earth's rotation towards the equator,
takes the form of trade-winds blowing constantly
from a more or less easterly direction. These winds,
sweeping over the Atlantic Ocean, raise its level at its
western barrier, and the accumulation deflected by
America flows off in a current which extends to the
western shores of Europe and carries mild winters into
the extreme North. In the Orkney and Shetland
Islands, which are nearly in the same latitude as Cape
Farewell in Greenland, there is so little ice that skating
is a rare accomplishment, and curling, the roaring game
which is so popular some degrees further south, is
quite unknown. If the Gulf Stream were diverted, and
the highlands of Scotland upheaved to the height of the
Alps of New Zealand, the whole country would again
be buried under glaciers pushing out into the Atlantic
and German Ocean.
These considerations may show why every period of
146 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
great eccentricity was not necessarily a Glacial period,
though under certain conditions it must inevitably have
been so, and geologists are generally agreed that the
last period of the sort must have been one of the main
causes of the great refrigeration which set in over the-
whole Northern hemisphere towards the close of the
Pliocene period, and continued until recent times.
But in this case we can fix the date with great
accuracy, for calculation shows that the last period
of great eccentricity began 240,000 years ago, and
lasted 160,000 years. For the last 50,000 years the
departure of the earth's orbit from the circular form
has been exceptionally small. We may suppose the
Glacial period, therefore, to have commenced 240,000
years ago, come to its height 160,000 years ago, and
finally passed away 80,000 years before the present
time.
These dates receive much confirmation from con-
clusions drawn from a totally different class of facts.
A bed of existing marine shells of Arctic type, appa-
rently belonging to one of the latest phases of the
Glacial period, has been found on the top of a hill
in North Wales which is now 1,100 feet above the
sea-level, and the same marine drift seems to extend
to a height of upwards of 2,000 feet. There must,,
therefore, have been a depression of the land sufficient
to carry it many fathoms below the sea, and a sub-
sequent elevation sufficient to carry the sea bottom
up to a height of certainly 1,100 and probably over
2,000 feet. In all probability, these movements were
very slow and gradual, like those now going on in
Greenland and Scandinavia, for there are no signs
of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions in the district ;
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 147
and it is probable that pauses occurred in the move-
ments, and a long pause when subsidence had ceased
before elevation began. Without taking these pauses
into account, and assuming the elevation only just
completed, and that Sir C. Ly ell's average of two and a
half feet a century is a fair rate for these slow move-
ments, it would have required 50,000 years of continued
elevation to bring these shells, and 80,000 years to
bring the marine drifts, up to their present height
above the sea; and a similar period previously must
be allowed for their submergence. We may fairly
conclude, therefore, that upwards of 100,000 years
have elapsed since these shells lived and died at the
bottom of the sea towards the close of the Glacial
period, which corresponds very well with the date
assigned by astronomical calculations.
Again, another attempt to fix a date for the close
of the Glacial period has been made by Monsieur Forel,
a Swiss geologist, from actual measurements of the
quantity of suspended matter poured into the Lake of
Geneva by the Rhone, and the area of the lake which
has been silted up since it was filled by ice. It is
evident that this silting up at the head of the lake could
only begin when the great Rhone glacier, which once
extended to the Jura Mountains, had shrunk 'back into
its valley far enough to pour its river into the lake.
M. Forel's calculations give 100,000 years as the
probable time required for the river to silt up so much
of the lake as is now converted into dry land. The
data are somewhat vague, as on the one hand the rate
of deposition may have been greater when a large mass
of ice and snow was being melted, while on the other
hand it may have been less, while the glacier still
L 2
148 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
occupied the valley almost to the head of the lake and
the Rhone had only a course of a few miles. All that
can be said, therefore, is that it gives an approximate
date for the close of the Glacial period which, like that
derived from rates of depression and elevation, corre-
sponds wonderfully well with the date required by
Croll's theory.
Now, whether the date be a little more or a little
less, it is clear that man existed on earth throughout a
great part, if not the whole, of the Glacial period. He had
existed a long while in conjunction with a fauna of more
Southern and African aspect, before the reindeer migrated
in vast herds into Southern France. His remains are found
in caves and river drifts associated with those of hippo-
potamus, an animal which could by no possibility have
lived in rivers which for half the year were bound
hard in ice. Such remains must therefore of necessity
date either from a period before the great cold had
set in, or from some inter-glacial period prior to the
great cold which drove the reindeer, musk ox, glutton,
and Arctic hare as far south as the slopes of the
Pyrenees.
In England we can trace distinctly at least four
successions of boulder clays, that is of the ground
moraines of land ice, separated by deposits of drifts,
sands, and brick-earths, formed while the glaciers were
retreating and melting; and a number of the Palaeolithic
implements have been found in what was undoubtedly
part of the period of the second or great chalky boulder
clay, which overspreads the southern and eastern coun-
ties of England up to the Thames Valley. The dis-
covery of Palaeolithic remains in the deposit of St. Prest,
near Chartres, makes it almost certain that some at
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 149
least of the ruder instruments must date back to the
very beginning of the Glacial period, and all the
evidence points to the conclusion that man was living
during the many alternations of climate of that period,
and whenever the glaciers retreated, followed them up
closely.
Thus far we have been going on certain and ascer-
tained facts, confirmed by such numerous and well-
authenticated proofs that doubt is impossible. But we
get on less certain ground when we try to trace back
human origin to more remote periods. As regards this
question, we must begin by describing shortly the
geological periods during which the existence of man
may have been possible. It is useless to go back
beyond the Cha]k, which was deposited in a deep
ocean and forms a great break between the modern
and the Secondary period, in which latter reptiles
predominated, and mammalia are only known by a
few remains of small insectivorous and marsupial
animals.
The inauguration of the present state of things
commences with the Tertiary period. This has been
divided into three stages : the Eocene, in which the
first dawn appears of animal life similar in type to
that now existing ; the Miocene, in which there is
a still greater approximation to existing forms of life ;
and the Pliocene, in which existing types and species
become preponderant. Then comes the Pleistocene or
Quaternary, including the great Glacial period, during
which the whole marine and nearly the whole terrestrial
fauna are of existing or recently extinct species, though
very different in their geographical distribution from
that of the present day. And finally we arrive at
150 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the recent period, when the present climate and the
present configuration of lands, seas, and rivers, prevail
with very slight modifications, and no changes have
taken place either in the specific character or geo-
graphical distribution of life, except such as can be
clearly traced to existing causes such as the agency
of man.
This is the geological frame-work into which we
have to fit the history of man's appearance upon earth.
We have traced him through the recent and Quater-
nary, can we trace him further into the Tertiary ?
Speaking generally we may say that the Eocene period
was that in which Europe began to assume something
like its present configuration, and in which mammalian
life, of the higher or placental type, began to supplant
the lower forms of marsupial life which had preceded
them. But these higher types were for the most part
of a more primitive or generalised character than the
more specialised types of later periods, and the highest
order, that of the primates, which includes man, ape,
and lemur, was, as far as is yet known, represented only
by two or three extinct lemurian forms.
The plan on which Nature has worked in the
evolution of life seems always to have been this : she
begins by laying down a sort of ground plan, or
generalised sketch of a particular form of life, say,
first of vertebrata, then of fish, then of reptiles, and
finally of mammalian life. This sketch resembles the
simple theme of a few notes on which a musician
proceeds to work out a series of variations, each sur-
passing the other in complication and specialised
development in some particular direction. Now, in
the Eocene period we are in the stage of the theme
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 151
and first simple variations of the mammalian melody.
It hardly seems likely, therefore, that a creature so
highly specialised as man, even in his most rudimentary
form, should have existed, and in the absence of any
direct evidence to the contrary, it is safe to assume
that his first appearance must have been of later date.
But when we come to the Miocene and Pliocene
periods, the case is different. It is true that in the
Miocene the specialisation of certain families, as for
instance that of the horse, had not been carried out to
the full extent, and that all the species of Miocene land-
mammals and several of the genera are now extinct.
But there were already true apes and baboons, and
even two species of anthropoid ape, one of which, the
Dryopithecus, whose fossil remains were found in the
South of France, was as large as a man, and has been
considered by some anatomists as in some ' respects
superior to the chimpanzee or gorilla.
Now, wherever anthropoid apes lived it is clear that,
whether as a question of anatomical structure or of
climate and surroundings, man, or some creature which
was the ancestor of man, might have lived also. Anatomi-
cally speaking, apes and monkeys are as much special
variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they
resemble bone for bone and muscle for muscle, and the
physical animal man is simply an instance of the quad-
rumanous type specialised for erect posture and a larger
brain. The larger brain, implying greater intelligence,
must also have given him advantages in contending
with outward circumstances, as for instance, by fire and
clothing against cold, which might enable him to sur-
vive when other species succumbed and became extinct.
If he could survive, as we know he did, the adverse
152 MODEKN SCIENCE AND MODEKN THOUGHT.
conditions and extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period,
there is no reason why he might not have lived in the
semi-tropical climate of the Miocene period, when a
genial climate extended even to Greenland and Spitz-
bergen, and when ample forests supplied an abundance
of game and edible fruits. The same reasons apply,
with still greater force, to the Pliocene period, when
existing types and species had become more common
and when a mild climate still prevailed. The existence
of Tertiary man must antecedently be pronounced
highly probable ; but probabilities are not proofs, and
the fact of such existence must be determined by the
evidence. All that can be said is that while there
ought to be great caution in admitting as established a
fact of such importance, there ought to be no determined
predisposition to disbelieve it, like that which for so
many years retarded the acceptance of the evidence for
Palaeolithic man. On the contrary, the fact that man
existed in such numbers and under such conditions as
have been described in the Quaternary period, establishes
a strong presumption that his first appearance must
date from a much earlier period.
Let us see how the evidence stands. Undoubted
stone implements, and bones bearing traces of cuttings
by flint knives, have been found in strata at St. Prest,
near Chartres, which were always considered to be
Pliocene. Since the discovery, however, some geologists
have contended that these strata are not Pliocene,
but of the earliest Quaternary or perhaps a transition
period between Pliocene and Quaternary. This evi-
dence cannot, therefore, be accepted as conclusive for
anything more than proof that man's existence extends
at any rate over the whole Quaternary period, com-
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 153
prising the vast glacial and inter-glacial ages which have
effected such changes in the earth's surface.
The next piece of evidence is from Italy, where
bones of the Baleenotus, a sort of Pliocene whale, have
been discovered in strata undoubtedly Pliocene, which
bear marks of incisions which to all appearance must
have been made by flint knives employed in hacking off
the flesh. Doubts were thrown at first on this, as it
was thought that possibly fish, or some gnawing animal
INCISED BONES OF BAL.EXOTUS. Pliocene. From Moute Aperto, Italy.
Figured by Quatrefages, " Homines Fossiles et Homines Sauvages," p. 93.
like the beaver, might have cut the grooves with their
teeth. But later specimens have been found on which
the cuts have a regular curvature which could not have
been made by any teeth, and present precisely the same
appearance as the cuts which are so commonly found on
the bones of reindeer and other animals in hundreds of
Palaeolithic caves.
M. Quatrefages, who is a very eminent and at the
same time very cautious authority, says, in his last
work on the subject published in 1884, "Hommes Fos-
siles et Hommes Sauvages," that "the most incredulous
154 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
must be convinced. The hand of man armed with a
cutting instrument could alone have left marks of this
sort on a plain surface. It is evident that some horde
of savages of these remote times has found the carcase
of this great cetacean stranded on the shore, and cut
the flesh off with stone knives just as the savages
of Australia do at the present day." In fact incredulity
only exists because this is as yet a solitary instance
of Pliocene man, and scientific men, feeling that if true,
further evidence must soon be found, very properly
endeavour to keep their judgment in suspense.
If these bones of the Balsenotus really bear marks
of human tools, the spectacle which might have been
witnessed on the shore of the Pliocene sea perhaps
500,000 years ago, must have closely resembled that
given by Sir John Lubbock from a description by
Captain Grey of a recent whale feast in Australia.
" When a whale is washed on shore it is a real godsend
to them. Fires arc immediately lit, to give notice of
the joyful event. Then they rub themselves all over
with blubber, and anoint their favourite wives in the
same way; after which they cut down through the
blubber to the beef, which they sometimes eat raw
and sometimes broil on pointed sticks. As other
natives arrive they 'fairly eat their way into the
whale, and you see them climbing in and about the
stinking carcase, choosing titbits.' For days ' they
remain by the carcase, rubbed from head to foot with
stinking blubber, gorged to repletion with putrid meat
out of temper from indigestion, and therefore engaged
in constant frays suffering from a cutaneous disorder
by high feeding and altogether a disgusting spectacle.
There is no sight in the world/ Captain Grey adds,
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 155
'more revolting than to see a young and gracefully-
formed native girl stepping out of the carcase of a
putrid whale/"
The evidence for Miocene man is much of the same
character: very strong and conclusive as far as it goes, but
resting on too few instances to be universally accepted.
In 1868 the Abbe Bourgeois laid before the Anthropo-
logical Congress at Paris certain flints which he had
found in situ in undoubted Miocene strata at Thenay,
in the Beauce, near Blois. They were received with
general incredulity, and the traces of
human design were denied. The Abbe,
however, persisted, and having made
fresh discoveries the subject was re-
ferred to the next meeting of the
Congress at Brussels, who appointed
a commission of fifteen of the most
eminent European authorities in such
matters to report Upon it. Nine re- Figured by Qaatrefages,
, , _ . a . , , " Hommes Fossiles et
ported that some 01 the flints showed Hommes Salvages,"
undoubted traces of human workman-
ship, five were of an opposite opinion, and one was
neutral. Since then fresh objects have been found, and
M. Quatrefages, who had formerly been doubtful, says
in his recent work : " These new objects, and especially
a scraper which is one of the most distinctly charac-
terised of that class of implements, have removed my
last doubts." And certainly, if the figures given at
page 92 of his " Hommes Fossiles et Hommes Sauvages "
correctly represent the original implements, and they
really came from Miocene strata, doubt is no longer
possible. The evidence of design in chipping into
a determinate shape is quite as clear as in the similar
MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS FROM THENAY COMPAEED WITH
UNDOUBTED PALAEOLITHIC IMPLEMENTS FEOM QUATERNARY
CAVES AND DRIFTS.
MIOCENE.
BORKK, OR AWL.
Thenay. Miocene.
Congres Prehistorique,
Bruxelles, 1872.
QUATERNARY. Chaleux,
Belgium. Reindeer Period.
Congres Prehistorique,
Bruxelles, 1872.
SCRAPER, OR RDDE
KXIFE. Thenay. Mio-
cene. Quatrefages,
p. 92.
SCRAPER. Thenay. Miocene,
Quatrefages, p. 92.
QUATERNARY.
From Le Moustier.
QOATBBNART. Mammoth Period.
River Drift, Mesvin, Belgium.
Congres Prehistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN.
157
class of implements from Kent's Cavern or the Cave
of La Madeleine. They must either have been chipped
by man, or as Mr. Boyd Dawkins supposes, by the
Dryopithecus or some other anthropoid ape which had
a dose of intelligence ,^fe.
so much superior to the ,^^ -
gorilla or chimpanzee as
to be able to fabricate
tools. But in this case
the problem would be
solved and the missing
link discovered, for such
an ape might well have
been the ancestor of
Palaeolithic man.
The next instance is
from the valley of the
Tagus, where flint imple-
ments were alleged to
have been discovered by
an eminent Portuguese
geologist, Senor Eibeiro,
in Miocene strata. The
subject was fully dis-
cussed on the spot, at a
meeting of the Anthro-
pological Congress at
Lisbon in 1880. The
general opinion seemed to be that some of the implements
showed undoubted traces of human design, but some
gDod authorities remained sceptical ; and although there
was no doubt that they were found in Miocene strata, it
was thought possible that flints of Quaternary age might
TEKTIARY HACHE.
From Miocene Strata of Tagns Valley.
(Half the actual size.)
Quatrefages, " Hommes Fossiles eb
Homines Sauvages."
158 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
have fallen into fissures, or been mixed up with Miocene
sands by floods at some very remote period, and thus
become encrusted in a Miocene matrix.
The verdict here, therefore, must be " Probable, but
not proven." The same will apply to the alleged dis-
covery of a human skull in California, buried under six
distinct layers of hardened volcanic ashes, and certainly
of Pliocene date, if not earlier. Whitney, the Director
of the Geological Survey of the United States, and
other American geologists, believe this skull to be
Pliocene, but doubts have been thrown on its au-
thenticity, and European geologists do not generally
accept it.
A human bone is described by Lyell, which was
found near Vicksburg in a side valley of the Mississippi,
associated with bones of the extinct Mastodon and
Megalonyx. But, although undoubtedly of great anti-
quity, there is no proof that it does not belong to the
Quaternary period, especially as the mastodon seems
to have lived until comparatively recent times in
America, its remains being often found in recent bogs
and peat mosses.
The same remark will apply to the skull which was
found, in digging a well at New Orleans, under six
distinct layers of cypress forests such as are now
growing on the surface, showing as many periods of
successive subsidences, subsequent elevations, and sta-
tionary periods long enough to allow of a forest growth
of many generations of large trees. Here again the
antiquity must be very great, but we have no reason
to carry it back into Tertiary periods, or beyond the
recent period when the Mississippi began to flow in
its present course and form its present delta
ANTIQUITY OF MAX. 159
Human remains have also been discovered in caves
in Brazil associated with bones of extinct animals,
but we have no clear information as to the time when
these animals became extinct, or as to the exact order
of superposition in which the human skulls and imple-
ments were found, and the occurrence of a polished
stone celt in the same cave throws still more doubt on
their extreme antiquity.
The existence of Tertiary man must for the present
be considered as resting on three instances :
1. The undoubted flint implements and cut bones
(including those of the Eleplias meridionalis, a
Pliocene and Miocene species) of St. Prest.
2. The cut bones of the Balaenotus from the Pliocene
strata of Monte Aperto in Italy, the cuts on
which appear to have been undoubtedly made
by the hand of man armed with a sharp cutting
stone implement.
3. The flints from the Miocene strata of Thenay,
some of which show unmistakable signs of
O
having been split by fire and chipped into shape
by design.
On the other hand the evidence is entirely negative,
that a large number of fossil animal remains have been
found in various parts of the world, specially in the
Pliocene of the Cromer forest bed, and the Miocene of
the Sewalik hills, Pikermi and Nebraska, without find-
ing any trace of man. This is true, and is sufficient
to make us require great caution in admitting as fully
established a fact of so much importance, which would
carry back the antiquity of man from one or two
hundred thousand years to at least a million. But
the example of Quaternary man shows the danger of
160 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
trusting too exclusively to negative evidence. Thirty
years ago the negative evidence against his existence
was considered conclusive. Now his remains have
been found over the whole world and in thousands
of instances.
It must be remembered, also, that remains of Tertiary
man are not likely to be abundant. If man was then
living, it was probably in fewer numbers and in more
limited areas. The pressure of population had not yet
driven wandering hordes to follow sea-coasts and cross
rivers and mountains in pursuit of food. Probably at
this early period man lived more on fruits, and there-
fore required fewer implements, and his intelligence was
less, so that he had less power of fashioning them. For
the purposes for which his Palaeolithic descendants
chipped stones into shape, he may have used natural
stones which would often answer the purpose, but
which, when thrown away, would leave nothing by
which they could be recognised.
If the forests now inhabited by the gorilla and
chimpanzee were submerged and again elevated, no
trace would be found of the existence of animals which
had built rude nests, used broken branches of trees as
clubs, and cracked cocoa-nuts with hammer stones.
But above all, the surface of these older strata has
been so much denuded, that the situations in which
alone we might expect to find remains of man have
almost entirely disappeared. Ninety-nine hundredths
of our Quaternary implements come from river drifts
or caves. Where are the Pliocene or Miocene rivers or
caves ? They have disappeared amidst the revolutions
of the earth's surface and the constant denudation
which wastes continents away. The negative evidence
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 161
would be strong if we could point to caves filled with
bone-breccias of a Pliocene or Miocene fauna, in which
no trace was found of human remains. But it is weak
as against even a single well-ascertained instance, if it
merely amounts to such remains not being frequently
found where we could hardly expect to find them.
And it is weak against the strong presumption that when
Quaternary man is found in such numbers and under
such conditions, spread over wide areas in inhospitable
climates, he must have had his first origin in earlier
times. It is, therefore, in the highest degree probable
that this origin must have been in Tertiary times,
when we know as a certain fact that large anthropoid
apes were already in existence.
If this were so, what would it teach us as to the
date of man's appearance ?
Reckoning by the thickness of the different stratified
deposits which make up the earth's crust, and assuming
the average rate of their deposition, or what is the same
thing, the average rate of waste of land surface to have
been the same throughout, the whole Tertiary period
carries us back barely one-twentieth part of the way
towards the first beginnings of fossil- bearing strata.
That is, if 100,000,000 years have elapsed since the
^arth became sufficiently solidified to support vegetable
and animal life, the Tertiary period may have lasted for
5,000,000 years; or for 10,000,000 years, if the life-
sustaining order of things has lasted, as Lyell supposes,
for at least 200,000,000 years. Even if we take the
shorter period, the time is ample for the enormous
changes which have taken place since the commence-
ment of the Eocene period. The average rate of denu-
dation over the globe has been taken at about one foot
162 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
in 3,000 years, from actual calculations of the average
amount of solid matter carried down by the Mississippi
and other great rivers. Now at this rate it would take
only 2,000,000 years to wear the whole of Europe down
to the sea- level, and, in the absence of any compensating
movements of elevation, the whole of North America
would be washed away and deposited in strata at the
bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in less than
3,000,000 years.
If, therefore, the origin of man could be traced down
to the middle Miocene, or even to the date of the great
anthropoid Dryopithecus of Southern France, we should
have to assume a period for his existence of probably
between one and two millions of years, a mere fraction
of the time since the earth became the abode of life
and existing causes operated to bring about geological
formations.
As regards the habits and manners of Quaternary
man we know very little that is positive, and can only
gather some vague indications from the relics of caves
and river drifts. These, however, are sufficient to
establish with certainty that the law of his existence
has been one of continued progress. The older the
remains, the ruder are the implements and the fewer
the traces of anything approaching to civilisation. In
the Neolithic period man is comparatively civilised.
He has domestic animals and cultivated plants ; he
has clothing and ornaments, well-fashioned tools and
pottery, and permanent dwellings. He lives in socie-
ties, builds villages, buries his dead, and shows his
faith in a future life by placing with them fuod and
weapons. As we ascend the stream of time these
indications of an incipient civilisation disappear. The
ANTIQUITY OF MAX. 163
first vestige of the domestic animals is found in the
dog which gnawed the bones of the Danish kitchen-
middens, and of the earliest Swiss lake - dwellings.
When fairly in Palseolithic times even the dog dis-
appears, and man has to trust to his own unaided
efforts in hunting wild animals for food.
Weapons and implements become more and more
rude until, in the oldest deposits, we find nothing but
roughly - chipped hatchets, arrow-heads, flakes, and
scrapers. Implements of bone, such as barbed har-
poons, borers, and needles, which are abundant in the
middle Palseolithic or reindeer period, become ruder and
disappear. Pottery, which is extremely abundant in the
Neolithic period, either disappears altogether or becomes
so scarce that it is a moot question whether a few of the
rudest fragments found in caves are really Palseolithic.
If so, they clearly date from the later Palseolithic,
and pottery was unknown in the earlier Palseolithic
times.
Judging from the portraits engraved on bone during
the reindeer period, Palseolithic man pursued the chase
in a state of nature, though from the presence of bone
needles it is probable that the skins of animals may
have been occasionally sewed together by split sinews
to provide clothing. There can be no doubt that his
habitual dwelling was in caves or rock-shelters. Here
was his home, here he took his meals and allowed the
remains of his food to accumulate. His staple diet
consisted of the contemporary wild animals, the mam-
moth, the rhinoceros, the cave bear, the horse, the
aurochs, and the reindeer. Even the great cave lion
was occasionally killed and eaten, and the fox and other
smaller animals were not despised ; while among tribes
M 2
1G4 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
skilled in the use of the bow and arrow, birds were a
common article of food, and fish were harpooned by
those who lived near rivers. Wild fruit and roots were
also doubtless consumed, and from the formation of his
teeth and intestines it is probable that if we could trace
the diet of the earliest races of men we should find
them to have been frugivorous, like their congeners the
anthropoid apes.
The abundance of wild animals and the long period
for which hunting savages inhabited the same spots may
be inferred from the fact that at one station alone, that of
Solutre' in Burgundy, it is computed that the remains of
no less than 40,000 horses have been found. All the
long bones of the larger animals have been split to
extract the marrow, which seems, as with the modern
Eskimos and other savages, to have been a great
delicacy, and also used for softening skins for the
purpose of clothing.
Among the split bones a sufficient number of human
bones have been found to make it certain that Palseo-
lithic man was, occasionally at least, a cannibal ; and
in several caves, notably that of Chaleux, in Belgium,
these bones, including those of women and children,
have been found, charred by fire, and in such numbers
as to indicate that they had been the scene of cannibal
feasts. It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems
to have become more frequent as man advanced in
civilisation, and that while its traces are frequent in
Neolithic times, they become very scarce or altogether
disappear in the age of the mammoth and the reindeer.
As regards religious ideas they can only be inferred
from the relics buried with the dead, and these are
scarce and uncertain for the earlier periods. The caves
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 165
in which Palaeolithic man lived on the flesh of the
Quaternary animals, have been so often used as burying-
places in long-subsequent ages, that it is extremely
difficult to ascertain whether the skeletons found in
them are those of the original inhabitants. Thus the
famous cave of Aurignac, in which Lartet thought he
had discovered the tomb of men at whose funeral feast
mammoths and rhinoceroses were consumed, is now
generally considered to be a Neolithic burying-place
superimposed on an abandoned Palaeolithic habitation.
There are not more than five or six well authenti-
cated instances in which entire Palaeolithic skeletons
have been found under circumstances in which there
is a fair presumption that they may have been interred
after death, and these afford no clear proof of articles
intended for use in a future life having been deposited
with them. All we can say, therefore, is that from the
commencement of the Neolithic period downwards,
there is abundant proof that man had ideas of a future
state of existence very similar to those of most of the
savage tribes of the present day ; such proof is wanting
for the immensely longer Palaeolithic period, and we are
left to conjecture. The only arts which can with
certainty be assigned to our earliest known ancestors
are those of fire and of fashioning rude implements from
stone by chipping. Everything beyond this is the
product of gradual evolution,
CHAPTER VI.
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE.
Origin of Man from an Egg Like other Mammals Development of
the Embryo Backbone Eye and other Organs of Sense. Fish,
Reptile, and Mammalian Stages Comparison with Apes and
Monkeys Germs of Human Faculties in Animals The Dog
Insects Helplessness of Human Infant Instinct Heredity
and Evolution The Missing Link Eaces of Men Leading
Types and Varieties Common Origin Distant Language How
Formed Grammar Chinese, Aryan, Semitic, etc. Conclusions
from Language Evolution and Antiquity Religions of Savage
Races Ghosts and Spirits Anthropomorphic Deities Traces
in Neolithic and Palaeolithic Times Development by Evolution
Primitive Arts Tools and Weapons Fire Flint Implements
Progress from Palaeolithic to Neolithic Times Domestic
Animals Clothing Ornaments Conclusion, Man a Product of
Evolution
ALTHOUGH the establishment of the great antiquity of
the human race has attracted more immediate attention,
being a fact at once intelligible to the general public,
the researches of anatomists and physiologists, aided by
the microscope, have brought to light results quite as
remarkable as regards the individual man and his place
in Nature. Until recently it was taken for granted
that man was a special miraculous creation, altogether
superior to and distinct from the rest of the animal
world. This assumption, gratifying alike to our vanity
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 167
and our laziness in the laborious search for truth, has
been to a great extent disproved and replaced by the
Law of Evolution.
The most striking proof of this is found when we
trace scientifically the growth of each individual man
from his first origin to his final development. Man,
like all other animals, is born of an egg. The primitive
egg, or ovum, which was the first germ of our existence,
is a small cell about the one-hundredth of an inch in
diameter, consisting of a mass of semi-fluid protoplasm
enclosed in a membrane, and containing a small speck
or nucleus of more condensed proto-
plasm. This nucleated cell is itself
the first form into which a mass
of simple jelly-like protoplasm is
differentiated in the course of its
evolution from its original uniform
composition. The nucleated cell is
the starting-point of all higher life,
and by splitting up and multiplying
repetitions of itself in geometrical progression, provides
the cell material out of which all the complicated struc-
tures of living things are built up. In sexual genera-
tion, which prevails in all the higher forms of life, this
process requires, in order to start it, the co-operation of
two such cells or germs of life, one male, the other
female.
The first remarkable fact is that the human egg
is, at its commencement, undistinguishable from that
of any other mammal, and remains so for a long
period of its growth, going through its earlier stages
of development in precisely the same way. At first
the egg behaves exactly as any other single-celled
168 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
organism, as for instance that of the amoeba, which
is considered the simplest form of organised life. It
contracts in the middle and divides into two cells,
each with its nucleus and each an exact counterpart
of the original cell. These two subdivide into four,
the four into eight, and so on, until at last a cluster
of cells is formed which is called a morula from its-
resemblance to the fruit of the mulberry-tree. Develop-
ment goes on, and the globular lump of cells changes
into a globular bladder whose outside skin is built up
of flattened cells. Then condensation takes place, from
MAMMALIAN EGO.
First Stage. Second Stage. Third Stage.
the more rapid growth of cells at particular points, and
the foundation is laid of the actual body of the germ or
embryo, the other cells of the germ-bladder serving
only for its nutrition. Up to this point the germs
not only of all mammals including man, but of all
vertebrate animals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, are
scarcely distinguishable.
In the next stage the outer surface of the embryo
develops three distinct layers, the outer one of which,
or epidermis, becomes the outer skin; the inner one,
or epithelium, the mucous membrane or lining of
all the intestinal organs ; and the intermediate layer
the raw material of muscles, bones, and blood-vessels.
1G9
The embryo is now contracted in the middle and
assumes the form of a violin-shaped disc, and a slight
longitudinal furrow appears, dividing it into two equal
right and left parts, which is gradually converted into
a tube containing the spinal marrow, to protect which
a chain of bones or vertebrae is developed, forming the
back-bone.
And now comes what is the most marvellous part
of the process, viz., the development of the brain, eye,
ear, and other organs of sense, from these simple
elements. The brain begins as a swelling of the fore-
most end of the cylindrical marrow-tube. This divides
itself into five bladders, lying one behind the other,
from which the whole complicated structure of the brain
and skull is subsequently developed.
The eye, ear, and other sense-organs, begin in the
same way. A slight depression in the outer skin
extends until the edges close and form a hollow space in
which the eye is formed. At first it is a mere black
pigment mark on the interior surface of the enclosed
space, which develops into the retina, with a wonderful
apparatus of optic nerves for conveying impressions
photographed on it to the brain. The enclosed space
itself is filled with a fluid, or vitreous humour, from
which a lens is condensed for collecting the rays of
light and concentrating them on the retina, and by
degrees all the beautiful and complicated organs are
evolved for perfecting the work of the eye and pro-
tecting it from injury. But this fact must be kept
clearly in view : the process is identically the same as
that by which the eyes of other animals are formed, and
its various stages represent those by which the organs
of vision have gradually risen to the development of a
170 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
complete eye, in advancing from the lowest to the
higher forms of life. Thus in the lowest, or Protista,
the eye remains a simple pigment spot, which probably
perceives light by being more sensitive to variations of
temperature than the surrounding white cells. The next
higher family develop a lens, and so on in ascending
order, different families developing different contriv-
ances for attaining the same object, but all starting
from the same origin, development of the cells of the
epidermis, and leading up to the same result, organs
of vision adapted for the ordinary conditions of life
of the creature which uses them. I say the ordinary
conditions, for there are curious instances of the eye
persisting, dwindling from disuse, and finally dis-
appearing, in animals which live underground like the
mole, or in subterranean waters like some fish in the
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky and underground lakes of
Carinthia, where the stimulus of light is no longer felt
for many generations.
The history of the ear and other organs of sense
is the same as that of the eye. They are all develop-
ments of the cell system of the outer skin, and all
pass through stages of development identical with those
at which it has been arrested in the progression from
lower to higher forms of life. The same principles
-apply to the development of the inner organs, such
as the heart, lungs, liver, etc., a striking illustration
of which is found in the fact that the gill arches, or
bones which support the gills by which fishes breathe,
exist originally in man and all other vertebrate animals
above the ranks of fish, but, in the development of the
embryo, they are superseded by the air-breathing ap-
paratus of lungs, and converted to other purposes in.
MAN S PLACE IN NATURE.
171
the formation of the jaws and organ of hearing. In
fact, we may say that every human being passes
through the stage of fish and reptile before arriving
at that of mammal, and finally of man.
If we take him up at the more advanced stage,
where the embryo has already passed the reptilian form,
we find that for a considerable time the line of de-
velopment remains the same as that of other mammalia.
DOG (six weeks). MAN (eight weeks).
From Haeckel's " Schopfungsgeschichte."
The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five
fingers and toes develop in the same way, and the
resemblance after the first four weeks' growth between
the embryo of a man and a dog is such that it is
scarcely possible to distinguish them. Even at the age
of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal with a
tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy.
As evolution proceeds the embryo emerges from the
general mammalian type into the special order of
JPrimates to which man belongs. This order, beginning
172 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODEEN THOUGHT.
with the lemur, rises through the monkey, the baboon,
and tailed ape, up to the anthropoid apes, the chim-
panzee, gorilla, and orang, which approach nearest to
the human type. The succession is gradual from the
lower to the higher forms up to the anthropoid apes,
but a considerable gap occurs between these and man.
It is true that in his physical structure man resembles
these apes closely, every bone and muscle of the one
having its counterpart in those of the other. But even
at its birth the human infant is already specialised by
considerable differences. The brain is larger, its convo-
lutions more complex, the spine has a double curvature,
adapting it for an erect posture, and the legs, with a
corresponding object, are longer and stronger, while the
arms are shorter and less adapted for climbing. The
thumb also is longer, making the hand a better instru-
ment for all purposes, except that of clasping the
branches of trees, for which the long, slender fingers of
the ape are more available. The great toe also is less
flexible and the foot more adapted for giving the body a
firm support and less for being used as a hand.
As growth proceeds after birth these differences
become more and more accentuated. The infant
chimpanzee is not so very unlike the infant negro, but
after a certain age the sutures of the skull close in the
former, making the skull a solid box, which prevents
further expansion of the brain, and the growth of the
bone is directed towards the lower part of the face,
giving the animal a projecting muzzle, massive jaws,
and a generally bestial appearance, while at the same
time its intelligence is arrested and its ferocious in-
stincts become more prominent. Still these higher apes
remain creatures of very considerable intelligence and
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 173
warm affections, as may be seen in the behaviour of
those which have been caught young and brought up
under the influence of kind treatment. There is a
chimpanzee now in the Zoological Gardens at Regent's
Park, which can do all but speak, which understands
almost every word the keeper says to it, and when told
to sing will purse out its lips and make an attempt to
utter connected notes. In the native state they form
societies, obey a chief, and often show great sagacity
in their manner of foraging for food and escaping from
danger.
Even in lower grades of life than the anthropoid
apes we can see plainly many of the germs of human
faculties in an undeveloped state. Those who are
fond of dogs, and have lived much with them and
understood their ways, must have been struck by the
many human-like qualities they possess, and especially
by the very great resemblance between young dogs and
young children. They both like and dislike very much
the same people and the same mode of treatment.
They like those who take notice of them, caress
them, talk to them, and, above all, those whom they
can approach with perfect confidence of receiving uni-
form kind treatment. They dislike those who have no
sympathy with them, or whose treatment of them
is either cold or capricious. Their great delight is
to play with one another, and often to tease and make
a pretence of quarrelling and fighting. They both have
an instinct for mischief, and are constantly trying it
on how far they can go without getting into serious
difficulties.
Later in life, and in more serious matters, the dog
has certainly the germs of intelligence, and does a
174 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
number of things which require a certain exercise of
reasoning power. He has a good memory, and imagina-
tion enough to be excited at the prospect of a walk
where there is a chance of finding a rat or a rabbit,
and to dream of chasing imaginary rabbits when he
is lying curled up on the hearthrug. Every dog has
an individual character of his own as clearly defined
as that of an individual man, nor can the rudiments
of consciousness be denied to the hound who, in a
kennel of twenty others, knows perfectly well that he is
Hover, and not .Rattler or Ranger, and waits till his
name is called to come forward for a biscuit. When he
has got it, his sense of property makes him appropriate
it as his own, and respect the biscuits appropriated to
other dogs, at any rate to the extent of knowing per-
fectly well that he is doing wrong if he takes them
by force or steals them.
In moral qualities the dog approaches even more
closely to man. His fidelity, affection, and devotion
even to death, are proverbial. He feels shame and
remorse when he has departed from the canine sense of
right and wrong or from the canine standard of honour,
and is happy when he feels that he has clone his duty.
What is this but the working of an elementary con-
science? Even in the higher sphere of religious feeling,
the dog feels unbounded love and reverence for the
master who is the highest being conceivable to him, or
in other words, his God; and he shudders as that
master does in the presence of anything weird and super-
natural. Every good ghost story begins by describing
Low the dogs howled and shrank to their master's feet
when the first shadow of supernatural presence was cast
on the haunted castle.
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 175
Capacity for progressive improvement can hardly be
denied to a race which has developed such qualities
from ancestors who, like the wild and half- wild dogs of
Asia and America, had not even learned to bark, and
were as unlike the civilised and affectionate collie, as
Palaeolithic man to his modern successor. In fact, the
progress of the dog seems only to be limited by the
want of organs of speech, and of an instrument like the
hand by which to place himself in closer relation with
the outer world.
The same remarks apply to the elephant, whose
great sagacity seems clearly attributable to the possession
of such an instrument in the trunk, inferior no doubt
to the hand, but still very superior to the paw of the
dog or to the hoof-enclosed fore-foot of the horse. In
all animals the greater or less perfection of the instru-
ments by which they act upon and are acted upon by
the outer world, seems to be the principal factor in
determining the quality of the brain as an organ of
intelligence.
In the insect world we find still more wonderful
exemplifications of the resemblance between animal and
human intelligence. Ants live in organised societies,
build cities, store up food for winter, keep aphides as
milk-cows, carry on slave-hunting raids, and push the
division of labour to such an extent that some tribes
are all workers, others all warriors and slave-owners.
These actions are not all merely mechanical and in-
stinctive, for ants can to a considerable extent adapt
themselves to circumstances, and alter their habits and
mode of life when it becomes necessary in the " struggle
for existence." The same is true of bees, beetles, and
other insects, but it is useless to dwell on these, for
176 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the organisation of the insect world is so different from
that of the mammalian, to which man belongs, that
no safe analogy can be drawn from one to the other.
It is from the higher mammalian types that we can
fairly draw the inference that, if like effects are pro-
duced by like causes, the more perfect intelligence,
consciousness, and morality of man, must be the same
in kind though higher in degree than the less perfect
manifestations of the same qualities in animals of
similar though less perfect physical organisation.
There is one respect in which the human infant
differs greatly from the young of other animals, viz.,
in the long period for which it remains in a condition
of utter helplessness. In many of the lower forms
of life the young creature emerges into the world
with many of its necessary faculties complete, and has
to learn comparatively little from education. The
chicken runs about and picks up food on the day it
escapes from the egg, and the young flycatcher will
peck at flies with fragments of the shell still adhering
to it. As we rise in the scale of creation, these
instinctive aptitudes become fewer, and more time
is required before the young animal can shift for
itself; and at length, in the human infant, we arrive
at a stage where for the first year or two it can do
little to preserve its existence except to breathe and
suck.
The reason of this is doubtless to be found in the
higher development to which it is destined to attain.
The faculties of every animal depend on two causes
first, heredity, or those which have been evolved
from the type, and become fixed by succession through
a long series of ancestors; secondly, adaptation, or
MAN'S PLACE IN NATUEE. 177
those which are acquired by education, including ill
the term everything that is requisite to place the animal
in harmony with its surrounding environment. The
first are what are called instincts, which exist from
the birth, and are preserved unconsciously and without
an effort. The last involve an effort, and reference from
the outer stations of the senses along the telegraph wires
called nerves, to the central office of the brain, where
the message is recorded and the reply considered
and transmitted along another set of nerves to the
muscles, where it translates itself into action. In
either case the fundamental fact seems to resolve
itself into a tendency of molecular motion to follow
beaten rather than unknown paths. What the brain
has once thought or perceived, it will think or perceive
more readily a second time, and in like manner, a
message which has once been transmitted and read off
along a nerve, from muscle to brain or from brain to
muscle, will be transmitted and read off more readily
by practice, until at length it ceases to require conscious
effort and becomes instinctive. We may see an illustra-
tion of this in the facility with which a piano player,
who began by learning the notes with difficulty,
acquires such aptitude that the execution of rapid
passages becomes mechanical, and can be carried on
without a mistake, even when the performer is thinking
of something else or talking to a bystander.
The outer world with which every animal has to
deal from its birth upwards, may be compared to a
dense forest or jungle through which it has to find
its way. A certain number of paths have been cut
by its ancestors, and it finds them ready made by
heredity; others it constructs for itself by repeated
178 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
efforts until they become as broad and easy as those
which it inherited ; and finally, if the forest is thick
and its area extensive it can only be explored by
leaving the beaten paths of inherited or acquired
instinct, and groping the way painfully by conscious
effort and attention.
"We can now see why the lower the animal, or in
other words the less extensive the forest, the whole
vital energy may be concentrated on the few beaten
paths opened by heredity, and a few necessary actions
may be performed from the first, instinctively and with
great perfection, while in higher organisms the vital
energy is employed in developing a great mass of
future possibilities rather than a small number of
inferior present realities. The baby cannot run about
the room and feed itself like the chicken, because the
baby has to grow into a man or woman, while the
chicken has only to grow into a fowl which can do
very little more in its adult than in its infant state.
In fact, when we come to analyse the sum of
faculties of the adult man, we find that they are
derived to a surprisingly small extent from heredity
as compared with education. In saying this, however,
it must be understood that the term " heredity " is
limited to that direct heredity which transmits characters
by instinctive necessity, and not to the far larger
sphere of indirect heredity by which faculties, arts,
modes of thought, and rules of conduct, are accumu-
lated in civilised societies, and become the principal
instrument of education in its larger sense. If it were
possible to suppose a human infant born of civilised
parents, left entirely to itself, what would it grow
into ? Perhaps it would learn to walk, though this
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 179
is not quite certain, as the few wild children who have
been discovered in forests, went very much on all
fours, and if we can believe the accounts of wolf
children in India, those educated among wolves adopt
their gait and habits ; certainly it would not learn
to speak, in the sense of using any articulate language ;
its arts would not extend beyond recognising a few
articles of food, and perhaps using stones to crack
nuts, and constructing some rude shelter from branches
of trees. It would know nothing of fire, and on the
whole would not be so far advanced as its oldest
Palaeolithic ancestor.
As regards a moral sense, and all that we are
accustomed to think the highest attributes of humanity,
it is clear that his mind would be a blank. Even at a
much more advanced stage, such ideas evidently come
from education, and are not the results either of in-
herited instinct or of supernatural gift. An English
child kidnapped at an early age by Apache Indians or
head -hunting Dyaks, would, to a certainty, consider
murder one of the fine arts, and the slaughter of an
inoffensive stranger, especially if accomplished with a
treachery that made the exploit one of little risk, an
achievement of the highest manhood. If brought up
among Mahometans he would consider polygamy, if
among the Todas polyandry, as the natural and proper
relation of the sexes. All that can be said is, that if
recaptured and brought back to civilised society, he
would perhaps be assisted by heredity in adopting its
ideas more readily than would be the case if he had
been born a savage.
It is clear, therefore, that the history of the indi-
vidual man tells the same story of evolution from
K 2
180 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
low be<nnnino-s as is told by that of the human race
O O /
as traced from Palaeolithic, through Neolithic, into
modern times. His law is progress, worked out
by conscious effort called forth by the environment
of outward circumstances, and accelerated from time
to time by the successful efforts of a few superior men,
whose greater sum of energy or happier organisation
for development, enables them to pioneer new paths
through the vast unexplored forests of science, art,,
and morality.
The difficulty of accounting for the development
of intellect and morality by evolution is not so great
as that presented by the difference in physical structure
between man and the highest animal. Given a being
with man's brain and man's hand and erect stature,
it is easy to see how intelligence must have been
gradually evolved, and rules of conduct best adapted
for his own good and that of the society in which
he lived must have been formed and fixed by suc-
cessive generations, according to the Darwinian laws
of the "struggle for life" and the "survival of the
fittest."
But it is not so easy to see how this difference
of physical structure arose, and how a being came
into existence which had such a brain and hand, and
such undeveloped capabilities for an almost unlimited
progress. The difficulty is this : the difference in
structure between the lowest existing race of man
and the highest existing ape is too great to admit
of the possibility of one being the direct descendant
of the other. The negro in some respects makes a
slight approximation towards the Simian type. His
skull is narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle
181
more projecting, his arm longer than those of the
average European man. Still he is essentially a man,
and separated by a wide gulf from the chimpanzee
or gorilla. Even the idiot or cretin, whose brain is
no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the
chimpanzee, is an arrested man and not an ape.
If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds good in
the case of man and ape, we must go back to some
common ancestor from whom both may have originated
by pursuing different lines of development. But to
establish this as a fact and not a theory we require
to find that ancestral form, or, at any rate, some
intermediate forms tending towards it. We require to
find fossil remains proving for the genus man what the
Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus
horse, that is, gradual progressive specialisation from a
simple ancestral type to more complex existing forms.
In other words, we require to discover the "missing
link." Now it must be admitted that hitherto, not
only have no such missing links been discovered, but
the oldest known human skulls and skeletons, which
date from the Glacial period, and are probably at least
100,000 years old, show no very decided approximation
towards any such pre-human type. On the contrary,
one of the oldest types, that of the men of the sepul-
chral cave of Cro-Magnon, is that of a fine race, tall in
stature, large in brain, and on the whole superior to
many of the existing races of mankind. The reply of
course is that the time is insufficient, and if man and
the ape had a common ancestor, that as a highly
developed anthropoid ape certainly, and man probably,
already existed in the Miocene period, such ancestor
must be sought still further back, at a distance com-
182 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
pared with which the whole Quaternary period sinks
into insignificance. It is said also that the discovery of
man's antiquity is of quite recent date, and that thirty
years ago the same negative evidence was quoted as
conclusive against his existence in times and places
which now afford his remains by tens of thousands.
All this is true, and it may well make us hesitate before
we admit that man, whose structure is so analogous to
that of the animal creation, whose embryonic growth is
so strictly accordant with that of other mammals, and
whose higher faculties of intelligence and morality are
so clearly not miraculous instincts but the products of
evolution and education, is alone an exception to the
general law of the universe, and is the creature of a
special creation.
This is the more difficult to believe, as the ape
family which man so closely resembles in physical
structure, contains numerous branches which graduate
into one another, but the extremes of which differ more
widely than man does from the highest of the ape
series. If a special creation is required for man, must
there not have been special creations for the chim-
panzee, the gorilla, the orang, and for at least 100
different species of apes and monkeys which are all
built on the same lines ?
What are the facts really known to us as to man,
his nature, and his origin ?
Man is one of a species of which there are in round
numbers some 1,200 millions of individuals living at
the present time on the earth. Taking thirty years
as the average duration of each generation there are
thus over 3,000 millions who are born and die per
century, and this has gone on more or less durino- the
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 183
period embraced by history which extends for a great
part of the Old World over thirty centuries, in the case
of Assyria and China over forty or fifty, and in Egypt
over seventy centuries. At the commencement of these
historical periods population was dense, probably in
Egypt and Western Asia denser than at present, and
civilisation far advanced. The Pyramids, which are
at the same time the oldest and the largest buildings
in the world, prove this conclusively, both from the
mechanical skill and astronomical science shown in
their construction, and from the great accumulation
of capital and highly artificial arrangements of society
which could alone have rendered such works possible.
The great mass of the population in these olden times
lived in what is known as the Old World, and was
accumulated mainly in the great valley systems of
the Nile, and of the various rivers and irrigated plains
of the southern half of the continent of Asia. Northern
Asia and Europe were thinly inhabited by ruder tribes.
Of America and the interior of Africa we know little
until a much later date, but the population was in all
probability sparse and savage, while in Australia, if it
existed at all, it was still scantier and more savage;
while in New Zealand and most of the Pacific Islands
it has only been introduced by migration within com-
paratively recent times.
The next leading fact we have to observe is that
the human race is not everywhere the same, but is
divided into several well-marked varieties. The most
obvious distinction is that of colour. In the Old World
there are three distinct and clearly characterised groups
the white, the yellow, and the black. These are
found mainly in three separate zoological provinces:
184 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the white iu the temperate and north-temperate zones
of Europe and Western Asia, the yellow in those of
Eastern Asia, and the black in the tropical zone, prin-
cipally of Central Africa. Where they are pure and
unmixed, these race-types differ from one another riot
in colour only but in many other important and per-
manent characters. The average size of the brain, the
complexity of its convolutions, the shape of the skull,
the bones of the face and jaws, the comparative length
of the limbs, the structure of the hair and skin, the
characteristic odour, the susceptibilities to various
diseases, are all essentially different, so that no
observant naturalist, or even observant child or dog,
could ever mistake a Chinaman for a Negro, or a Negro
for an Englishman.
Such a naturalist, seeing for the first time typical
specimens of the three races, would pronounce them
without hesitation to be distinct species, and would
predict with much confidence that they would either
not cross, or, if they did, would produce a hybrid progeny
of inferior fertility.
But here he would be wrong, for, in fact, the most
opposite races breed freely together, and produce a
fertile progeny.
Moreover, when we extend our view beyond the
clearly distinguished types of the white, yellow, and
black, as seen in Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro
races, we find these types breaking off into sub-types
and shading off towards each other, while a large
proportion of the human race consists of brown, red,
olive, and copper-coloured people, who may either be
original varieties, or descended from crosses between
the primitive races. Small isolated groups also crop
185
op, differing from the main races, of whom it is hard
to say from whom they are descended or how they got
there ; as for instance the Hottentots, in South Africa,
the pigmy black Negritos of the Andamans and other
South Asiatic islands, the Papuans and Australians,
the hairy Ainos of Japan, and some of the aboriginal
races of India.
To a certain extent climate seems to have had an
influence in creating or developing the main typical
differences. Thus the main line of black races lies
along the hot tropical belt of the earth from Old to New
Guinea. But the rule is not universal, there is no
similar type in tropical America, where a singular
uniformity of type and colour prevails throughout the
whole continent. Even in Africa we find the Ne^ro
O
type, while retaining its black colour, shading off
towards higher types and losing its more animal-like
characteristics. Again, while colour becomes generally
lighter as we pass from tropical to south-temperate
and from south to north-temperate regions, if we go
still further north we find darker races, such as the
Lapps and Esquimaux, and in one remarkable instance
the colour within the temperate zone itself actually
becomes darker with increase of latitude, and the
aboriginal savage of Tasmania, in a climate like that
of Devonshire, was blacker than many negroes.
Even within great and well-defined races themselves
there are clearly marked varieties. Thus the white
race consists of the two distinct types of the fair-whites
and dark- whites, the former prevailing in Northern
Europe and the latter in Southern Europe, Western Asia,
and North Africa ; the contrast between a fair Swede
with flaxen hair and blue eyes, and a swarthy Spaniard
186 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
with black hair and eyes, being almost as marked as
between the latter and some of the higher black or
brown races. Throughout a great part of Europe, in-
cluding specially England, it is evident that the existing
population is derived mainly from repeated crosses of
these two races with one another and probably with
earlier races.
In the existing state of things also it is evident
that if the different races of mankind ever really did
pass into one another under influences like those of
climate, the time of their doing so is long past. A.
colony of English families transported to tropical Africa
would to a certainty die out long before they had taken
even the first step towards acquiring the black velvety
skin, the woolly hair, the projecting muzzle, and the-
long narrow skull of the typical Negro, while a Negro
colony transported to Scotland or Scandinavia would as
certainly disappear from diseases of the chest and lungs,
long before they began to vary towards the European
type. The yellow race seems to be on the whole the
best fitted to withstand climate and other external in-
fluences, and it certainly shows no signs anywhere of
passing over either into the Caucasian or the Negro
type.
On the whole, therefore, if the fact of fertile inter-
crossing is to be taken as proving the unity of the
human race and their probable descent from a common
ancestor, and we are to assume that all the great
varieties which we find existing are the result of modi-
fications gradually introduced by climate and surround-
ing circumstances, it is evident that the point of
divergence must be put at an immense distance.
This is the more certain, as when we look back for
MAN'S PLAGE IX NATURE. 187
a period of more than 4,000 years, we find from the
Egyptian monuments that some of the best-marked
existing types have undergone no sensible change. The
portraits of negroes and of Semitic dark-whites painted
on the walls of temples and tombs of the 12th dynasty,
about 2000 B.C., might be taken as characteristic por-
traits of the negro and Jew of the present day, and
the modern Egyptian fellah reproduces with little or no
change the features of the ancient Egyptians of the
days of Eameses and Amenophis. It is evident, there-
fore, that where no great change has taken place from
crossing of races, they will maintain their special
characters unaltered for more than 100 generations.
Indeed we might say for 200 generations, for the
statues and wooden statuettes from the tombs of
Sakkara, the ancient Memphis, which certainly date
back for more than 5,000 years, show us the Egyptian
type in its highest perfection, and with a more intel-
lectual and I might say modern expression than is-
found 1,000 or 2,000 years later, when the type of the
higher classes had evidently deteriorated somewhat from
a slight infusion of African elements.
The same conclusion of the great distance at which
any common point of divergence of the various races of
mankind must be placed, is confirmed by a totally
different line of inquiry, that into the origin of
language.
Philologists have clearly proved that languages did
not spring into existence ready made, like Minerva from
the brain of Jupiter, but have followed the general law
of Nature, and have had their periods of birth, growth,
and evolution from simple into complex organism.
Now there is a vast variety of languages, some say
188 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
more than a thousand. A large proportion of these are,
of course, only what may be called dialects of the same
original language, as in the case of the whole Indo-
European family, including Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin,
Teutonic, Celtic, and Slavonic, with all their offshoots
and derived branches, as well as many others. These
can be all traced back to the common root of the
primitive language of an Aryan white race, who radiated
by successive migrations from some region in the
elevated plateaux of Central Asia. Any one who wants
to be convinced of this has only to refer to Max Mailer's
works and trace the history of one verb, viz., that used
to denote individual existence.
Asmi in Sanscrit has become eimi in Greek, sum in
Latin (whence sono, suis, and all the modern deriva-
tives of Latin races), and "am" in English ; while the
Latin est, the Greek esti, and the German ist, are clearly
akin to the original asti. It may help in understanding
how language has been formed if we point out that " I
am " originally meant " I breathe," and " he is " is the
more general and abstract form of " he stands."
But there are a number of languages between which
no such relationship can be traced, which are con-
structed on radically different principles, and have no
resemblance with one another in their roots, or primitive
sounds used to express objects and simple ideas, except
in the few cases where it can be traced to importation
from abroad, or to imitation of naturally suggested
sounds, such as those which have led so many nations to
express the idea of " mother " by a sound resembling
the bleating of a lamb. Obviously, similarity of sound
in such words as are used for the ideas of father, mother,
cow, crow, thunder, crack, splash, and so on, suggests
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 189
no common origin, and as most, or at any rate a great
many roots, were probably derived originally in this
manner, though long since diverted to express other
ideas by associations which it is impossible to trace,
the wonder rather is that we should find so many
languages with so few roots in common. The best
authorities tell us that a list of fifty to one hundred
languages could be made of which no one has been
satisfactorily shown to be related to any other.
The main distinction between languages, however,
is to be found in their inner mechanism, or grammar,
rather than in the mere difference of root-sounds. The
result of years of mechanical training in barbarous Latin
and Greek grammars in our English public schools
has been to leave the average Englishman completely
ignorant of the real meaning of the word " grammar,"
and almost incapable of comprehending that it can
mean anything else than a string of arbitrary rules to
be learned by heart for the vexation of small boys.
And yet grammar is really most interesting, as
showing the modes by which the dawning human in-
tellect has proceeded, at remote periods and among
different races, in working out the great problem of
articulate speech, by which man rises into the higher
regions of thought and is mainly distinguished from
the brute creation. Consider first what the problem is,
and then some of the principal modes which have been
invented to solve it.
Suppose some primitive race to have accumulated
a certain stock of root-words, or simple sounds to signify
definite objects and simple ideas, they must soon find
that these alone are not sufficient to convey briefly and
clearly to other minds the ideas which they wish to
190 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
express. For instance, suppose a tribe had got root
words to express the ideas of " man," " bear," and " kill."
What one of the tribe wants to convey from his own
mind to that of his neighbour may be, " The man has
tilled the bear," or " The bear has killed the man," or
"The" (or "A) man has killed a bear," or "bears," or
" will " or " may have " killed, and so on through a
vast number of variations on the original three-note
theme. Up to a certain point, a man might succeed in
making himself understood by using his three root-
sounds in a certain order, aided by the pantomime of
accent and gesture ; and the Chinese, though one of the
oldest civilised peoples of the world, have scarcely got
beyond this stage. But the process would be difficult
and uncertain, and at length it would occur to some
genius that such modifications as those of definite and
indefinite, past and present, singular and plural, etc.,
were of general application, not to the particular three
or four roots which he wished to connect, but to all
roots. The next step would be to invent a set of sounds
which, attached in some way to the root-sounds, should
convey to the hearer the sense in which it was intended
that he should take them.
This is the fundamental idea of grammar, but it
has been worked out by different races in the most
different manner. The Chinese and other allied races
in the South-east of Asia, such as the Burmese and
Siamese, have solved it in the simplest manner. Their
languages are what is called monosyllabic that is,
each word consists of a single syllable, and is a root
expressing the fundamental idea, without distinction of
nouu from verb, active from passive, or other modifi-
cations. They have to trust, therefore, to express their
191
meaning, mainly to syntax, or the order in which words
succeed one another, which, up to a certain point, is
the simplest method, and is largely adopted in modern
English. Thus, "Man kill bear," " Bear kill man,"
convey the meaning just as clearly as the classical
languages do by cases, when they distinguish whether
the man is the killer or the killed by saying homo or
hominem. But the monosyllabic system limits the
nations who use it to an inconveniently small number
of words, and fails in expressing their more complex
relations, so that we find the same word in Chinese or
Siamese often expressing the most different ideas, and
the meaning can only be conveyed by supplementing
the root-words and syntax by accent and other con-
ventional signs which are akin to the primitive devices
of gesture language. Thus, in Siamese, the syllable ha,
according to the note in which it is intoned, may mean
a pestilence, the number five, or the verb " to seek."
This very primitive and almost infantine form of
language is confined to one family, that of the Chi-
nese and Indo-Chinese, who, it may be observed, are
by no means simple or primitive in other respects,
but stand and have stood for centuries at a com-
paratively high level of civilisation. All other races,
including the most savage, have adopted some form or
other of grammar, i.e., of modifying original root-sounds
by additional generic sounds of definite determination ;
but the devices on which they have hit for this purpose
are most various. Thus, the grammar of the Aryan
family of languages has been formed by reasoning out
such general categories of thought as articles, pronouns,
and prepositions, coining sounds for them and prefixing
these sounds to the root-sounds as separate determi-
192 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
nating signs. More complex shades of meaning are con.
veyed principally by inflections, i.e., by adding certain
generic new sounds to the original root-word, and incor-
porating them with it so as to form modifications which
are a sort of secondary words. Thus the ideas of
present, past, and future love, loving, and being loved,
lovely, and so on, are formed by transforming the root
amo into such modifications as amor, amavi, amabo,
aw'i-ns, amabilis, etc. We can see this process in the
course of formation in the change which converted the
old English form " Caesar his " into the modern genitive
" Caesar's."
Other families again obtain the same results by very
different processes. The Semitic languages, for instance,
including Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian, and Phoenician, are
what is called " triliteral," i.e., they consist of roots
mostly of three consonants, and express different shades
of grammatical meaning by altering the internal vowels.
Thus, from the root m-l-k are derived inelek, a king ;
malak, he reigned, and so on.
The Turanian family, comprising Huns, Turks,
Finns, Lapps, and other Mongolian races of Northern
Asia, all speak agglutinative languages, i.e., languages
in which the root is put first and is followed by
suffixes strung on to it, but not incorporated with it
and remaining distinct. Thus in Turkish, the root sev,
to love, is expanded into sevishdirilmedeler, meaning
" incapable of being brought to love one another."
These are only given as specimens of some of the
most marked of the vast varieties of language which
have been examined and classified by philologists.
They suggest a great many interesting reflections, but
I confine myself to those which bear more inmie-
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE 193
diately on the subject of man's origin and develop-
ment. It is evident that they imply great antiquity
for the existence, not of man only, but of separate
races of men speaking separate languages.
Babylonian inscriptions, quite 4,000 years old, show
that the characteristic features of the Aryan and
Semitic languages were as clearly established then as
they are now ; and the hieroglyphics of Egyptian
monuments, 1,000 years older, show the Coptic language
essentially the same as modern Coptic, and although
presenting some points of analogy with Semitic, too
different to be classed with it. If these are descended
from a common ancestor, clearly their origin must be
extremely remote. And even with unlimited time it is
difficult to conceive how such radical differences in
the structure of languages could have arisen unless the
different races had branched off before any clear form
of articulate speech had become fixed. Could a race
accustomed for generations to the free-flowing inflec-
tional Aryan, have deserted it for the cramped forms
of the Semitic, or vice versd, could the Semite have
adopted the modes of thought and expression of
Sanscrit ? And the same difficulty would apply in at
least twenty or thirty cases of other families of
language.
It must be recollected that language is not merely
the conventional instrument of thought, but to a great
extent its creator, and the mould in which it is cast.
The mould may be broken, and races abandon old
and adopt new languages by force of external circum-
stances, such as conquest or contact with and absorption
by superior races, but there is no instance of its being
so transformed from within as to pass into a totally
o
194 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
different type. Nor can we very well see how root-
words once attached to fundamental ideas, such for
instance as the simpler numerals, should come to be
forgotten and new and totally different words invented.
Of course, the explanation was easy in the olden
days, when everything was referred to miracle. Lan-
guages were different because God had made them
so, to baffle the attempt of united mankind to build
a tower high enough to reach to heaven. But the
theory of special miraculous creation for each language
cannot stand a moment's investigation.
As in the case of the animal world, special creations,
if admitted at all, must be multiplied to an extent
which becomes absurd. Is every petty tribe of savages
who speak a language unintelligible to others to be
supposed to have had it conferred upon it as a miracu-
lous gift ? Was the language of the extinct Brazilian
tribe, of which Humboklt tells us that a very old
parrot spoke the last surviving words, one of the
languages used to scatter the builders of the Tower of
Babel? Or, still more conclusively, where we know
and can prove that one part of a language is the
product of natural laws, can we assume that another
part of the same language is the result of miracle ?
Did it require Divine inspiration to make the old
Egyptians call a cat miaou, or to teach so many nations
to express the idea of mother by imitating the bleating
of a lamb ? If not, why should half the words in a
dictionary be miraculous and half natural ?
And if CsBsar is correctly reported to have been
more proud of discovering a new case than of conquering
Gaul, ought we not to " render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar's," and assign grammar as well as words
to human invention ? In short, no reasonable man who
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 195
studies the subject can doubt that language is just as
much a machine of human invention for communicating
thought, as the spinning jenny is for spinning cotton.
The general conclusion, then, to be drawn from the
study of language points in the same direction as that
of all other branches of science, viz., that their true
history is that of evolution from simple origins by the
operation of natural laws over long periods of time
into forms of greater complexity and higher develop-
ment. What language really does for us is to take up
the thread where the oldest history fails us, and show
that even at this date it is impossible to doubt that the
human race must have been already in existence for a
very long period, and in existence as at the present
day in several sharply distinguished varieties, so that
the common origin, if there be one, must be placed still
further back. As history verified by the Egyptian
monuments extends over a period of nearly 7,000
years, this is equivalent to saying that such a period
can only be a very small part of the total time which
has elapsed since man became an inhabitant of the earth.
The origin and development of religions have been
much discussed, but too often with a desire to make
theories square with wishes. The subject also does not
admit of such precise determination as in treating of
arts and languages, which have left traces of themselves
in the form of primitive implements and primitive roots.
The history of religions really begins with written
records, or at the earliest with the older myths which
are embodied in these records. But these are all com-
paratively modern, and imply a considerable progress in
civilisation before they could have existed. If we wish
fco form some idea of what may have been the primitive
elements from which religion was evolved, during the
o 2
196 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
long Neolithic and still longer Palaeolithic periods which
preceded history, we must look at what are actually
the religious ideas of contemporary savage and semi-
barbarous races.
At the very lowest stage of savagery we find races-
like the Australians, the Bushmen, the Mincopies, and
the Fuegians, who cannot be said to have any religion
at all, or at the most some vague ideas of ghosts and
spirits. The Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, who
are considered by Professor Owen as " perhaps the most
primitive, or lowest in the scale of civilisation, of the
human race," are reported by Dr. Mo watt to have " no-
idea of a Supreme Being, no religion, nor any belief in a
future state of existence." Sir J. Lubbock says of the
Australians that "they have no religion, nor any idea
of prayer ; but most of them believe in evil spirits, and
all have great dread of witchcraft."
As we rise above this level of the lowest savagery
we find ideas of religion beginning to grow from two
main tap-roots. The first is the idea of ghosts or
spirits, which arises naturally from dreams and visions
and develops itself into ancestor and hero-worship, and
belief in a world of spirits, good and evil, influencing
men's lives and fortunes, and in many forms of sickness
taking possession of their bodies. This spirit-worship
also necessarily leads to some dim perception of a future
life.
The other tap-root is the inevitable disposition to
account for the phenomena of nature, when men first
began to reflect on them, by the agency of invisible
beings like themselves ; in other words, of anthropo-
morphic gods. This is a higher and later stage of
religious belief than the former, for it implies a
certain disposition to inquire into the causes of things
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 197
and a certain amount of reasoning power to infer like
causes from like results.
But the two often blend together, as in the religions
of the Aryan race, in which we see deified heroes and
ancestors crowding the courts of Olympus, with a
multitude of anthropomorphic gods, who are often
merely obvious personifications of natural phenomena
or astronomical myths. Thus Varuna, Ouranos, or
Uranus, are personifications of the vault of heaven ;
Phoebus, the shining one, of the sun ; Aurora, of
the dawn ; while Hercules is half deified hero and
half solar myth. Sometimes, however, of the two
stems of religion one only has flourished, and the other
has either never existed, or been overshadowed by the
first and relegated to a lower sphere. Thus the great
Chinese civilisation, comprising such a large portion of
the human race, has apparently developed its religion
entirely from the idea of spirits and spirit -worship.
The worship of ancestors is its main feature, and its
sacred books are, in effect, treatises on ethics and political
economy, with rules for rites and ceremonies to enforce
decent and decorous behaviour, rather than what we
should call works of religion. There is no trace of a con-
ception of anthropomorphic gods in the genuine national
Chinese religion from Confucius downwards ; and even
the introduction of Buddhism has done little but add
the deified hero, Buddha, to the list of divine ancestors
and give more definite shape to various vague super-
stitions. In like manner the whole Buddhist world can
hardly be said to recognise anything beyond their
incarnate hero, except a Nirvana or metaphysical
abstraction, rather than a personal deity.
With other races again, and specially the Hebrew,
the idea of a tribal anthropomorphic God has gradually
198 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
swallowed up that of other gods, developed into that of
one Almighty Being, and dwarfed that of ghosts and
spirits. The primitive Hebrews, indeed, carried this so
far as to exclude all ideas of a future life from their
religious system. Their primitive God, however, was
strictly anthropomorphic, and modelled on the idea of
an Oriental sultan sometimes good and beneficent, but
sometimes cruel and capricious, and above all jealous of
any disrespect and enraged by any disobedience. Morality
seems at first to have had little or nothing to do with
these conceptions, and there is not the remotest trace in
the early history of any religion, of its having beem
born ready-made from the necessary intuition of one
Almighty God of love, mercy, and justice, which is so
confidently assumed by many metaphysicians and theo-
logians. On the contrary, conscience had to be first
evolved, and the process may be followed step by step
by which, as manners became milder and ideas purer,
the grosser attributes of Deity were gradually purged
off, and the idea of a just and merciful God was evolved
from barbaric elements.
These considerations, however, lead us far from the
question of the first dawn of religion among primitive
man. Judging from the earliest facts of history, and
the analogy of modern savage races, where we might
look for the first traces of religious ideas would be from
the contents of tombs and from idols. When a tribe
had attained to some definite idea of a future life it
would almost certainly bury weapons and implements
with its dead, as is the case with modern savages.
When it had reached the stage of worshipping anthro-
pomorphic deities, it would probably frame images of
them, some of which would be found in their tombs and
dwellings.
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 199
The latter test soon fails us. In the early Egyptian
tombs, and in the remains of the prehistoric cities
excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl and ox-
headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures or idols,
are found in abundance. But when we ascend into
Neolithic times, such idols are no longer found, or,
if found, it is so rarely that archaeologists still
dispute as to their existence. Certain crescents found
in the Swiss lake-dwellings were at one time thought
to indicate a worship of the moon, but the better
opinion seems to be that they were used as rests
for the head during sleep, as we find similar objects
now used in many parts of the world. Among the
many thousand objects recovered from these Swiss
lake- dwellings and other Neolithic abodes, there are
only a very few which may possibly have been rude
idols or amulets, and the only ones which may be said
with some certainty to have been idols, are one or two
discovered by Mons. de Braye in some artificial caves
of the Neolithic period, excavated in the chalk of Cham-
pagne, which appear to be intended for female figures of
life size with heads somewhat resembling that of the
owl-headed Minerva.
When we pass to Palaeolithic times the evidence of
idols becomes more faint, and rests solely on the con-
jecture that some of the figures carved by the Reindeer-
men of La Madeleine and other caves, may probably
have been intended for amulets. As they were such
skilful carvers, and so fond of drawing whatever im-
pressed itself on their imagination, the presumption
is strong that they had not advanced to the stage
when the worship of gods symbolised by idols had
come into existence, as otherwise more undoubted idols
must have been found in the caves which were so long
200 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
their habitations, and which have yielded such a number
of remains of works of art.
The evidence for a belief in a future existence and
in spirits is more conclusive. Throughout the whole
Neolithic period we find objects buried with the dead
which were evidently intended for use in a future life.
We find also in many Neolithic tombs a singular fact
which points to the existence of a very long belief in
evil spirits. Many of the skulls, especially of young
people, have been trepanned, that is, a piece of the
skull has been cut out, making a hole, apparently to
let out the evil spirit which was supposed to be causing
epilepsy or convulsions ; and where the patient had
recovered and the wound healed, when he died long
afterwards, a piece of the skull, including this trepanned
portion, was sometimes cut out and used apparently as
an amulet. The objects deposited in graves show that
the idea of a future life was, as with most savages of
the present day, that of a continuation of the same life
as he had led here, though perhaps in happier hunting-
grounds. In some cases a great chief seems to have
had wives and slaves slaughtered and buried with him,
though the proofs of this are more clear and abundant
in later prehistoric times than during the Neolithic
period. Cannibalism, however, seems to have occasion-
ally prevailed both in Palseolithic, Neolithic, and pre-
historic times, as it did so extensively among modern
savage races before they came under civilising influences.
This is clearly proved by the number of human bones,
chiefly of women and young persons, which have been
found charred by fire and split open for extraction of
the marrow.
The evidence of belief in a future life becomes
more rare and uncertain in Palaeolithic times. Perhaps
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 201
it may be because we have so few authentic discoveries
of Palaeolithic burying-places, and so many instances
of caves, once inhabited by Palaeolithic races, being
used long afterwards as Neolithic sepulchres. After
the famous cave of Aurignac it is difficult to trust any
evidence of the discovery of a real Palaeolithic sepulchre
which has not been subsequently disturbed.
In the few cases also where Palaeolithic skeletons
have been found, as in that of the men of Neanderthal
and Mentone, they have often been those of single
individuals, and it may be doubted whether they were
buried there, or merely died in the caves in which they
lived, in which case any implements found with them
do not necessarily imply that they were placed there
for use in a future life. On the whole it seems doubtful
whether any certain proofs of burials denoting know-
ledge of a future life can be found in Palaeolithic times,
and if there are, they are certainly few and far
between, and confined to the later stages of that
period.
All we can say is, that religion certainly did not
descend ready-made among these aboriginal savages,
but that, like language, it was slowly developed from
beginnings as rude as those we now find among the
lowest races of savages.
It may be well, however, to say here, once for all,
what is applicable to many other passages in this book,
that the question of the origin of any religion is entirely
different from that of its truth or falsehood. To explain
a thing is not to disprove it ; on the contrary, a thing
only really becomes true to us when we understand it.
A stately oak, with wide-spreading branches, that give
shade and shelter to the cattle of the fields, is not the
less a fact because we know that it did not drop
202 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
ready-made from heaven, but grew from an acorn.
The intrinsic truth of a religion must be tested by
the conformity which, in a given stage of its evolution,
it bears to the facts of the universe as disclosed by
science, and to the feelings and moral perceptions which
have been equally developed by evolution in the con-
temporary world.
All I contend for is, that all religions have grown
and been developed from humble origins, and that
their history, impartially considered, does not contra-
dict, but on the contrary greatly confirms the law of
natural evolution.
Of the two faculties by which man is commonly dis-
tinguished from the brute creation, viz., that of being
the speaking and the tool-making animal, the former
attribute has been shown to be the product of evolution
from origins long since lost in the far-off distance of
remote ages.
The same remark is even more certainly true as
regards the other attribute of tool- making, or, in its
widest sense, adapting natural laws and natural objects
to the arts of life by intelligent application. The
primitive roots, so to speak, of this industrial language,
which in the case of spoken language for the most part
elude our search, are here furnished by the Palaeolithic
remains found so abundantly in river drifts and caves.
There can be no doubt whatever that the modern wood-
cutter's axe and carpenter's adze are the lineal descen-
dants of the rudely-chipped hdches, or celts, which are
dug out of the gravels of St. Acheul, or from below the
stalagmite of Kent's Cavern. The regular progression
can be traced from the mass of flint rudely chipped to a
point, with a butt-end left rough to grasp in the hand,
up to more symmetrical and carefully- chipped forms ;
MANS PLACE IN NATURE. 20u
to implements intended to be hafted or fastened to a
handle ; to implements ground and polished to a sharp
edge and pierced for the handle ; and finally to the
finished specimens of the later Neolithic period, which
exactly represent the adze and battle-axe, and are
almost identical with those used quite recently by the
Polynesians and other semi-civilised races who had no-
access to metals. From these the transition to metals
is easily traced, the first bronze implements and weapons
being facsimiles of those of polished stone which they
superseded, and the gradual development of bronze, and
from bronze to the cheaper and more generally useful
metal, iron, being a matter of quite modern history.
In like manner, the development of the knife, sword,
and all cutting instruments, from the primitive flint -
flake, can be traced step by step, and is beyond doubt;
and equally so the development of all missiles, from
the primitive chipped flint, used as a javelin or arrow-
head, up to the modern rifle. When we catch the first
glimpse of the beginnings of human art or industry, the
furniture or stock-in-trade of Palaeolithic man appears
to have been as follows :
He was acquainted with fire. This seems to be
clearly established by the charred bones, charcoal, and
other traces of fire which are found in the oldest
Palaeolithic caves, and even in the far distant Miocene
period, if we can believe in the flints discovered by
the Abbe" Bourgeois in the strata of Thenay, some of
which appear to have been split by the action of fire.
This is a remarkable fact, for a knowledge of the means
of kindling fire is by no means a very simple or obvious
attainment. Apes and monkeys will sit before a fire
and enjoy its warmth, but no monkey has yet developed
intelligence enough even to put fresh sticks on to keep
204 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
up the fire, much less to rekindle it when extinct.
Primeval man must often have had experience of
fire from natural causes, as from forests and prairies
scorched by a tropical sun being set on fire by light-
ning, or from volcanic eruptions ; but how he learned
from these to kindle fire for himself is not so ob-
vious. Savage races, as a rule, do so by converting
mechanical energy into heat, by the friction of a
stick twirled round in a hole, or rubbed backwards
and forwards in a groove in another piece of wood;
and there are old observances among civilised nations
which show that this was the mode practised by
their ancestors, as when the sacred fire in the Temple
of Vesta was relighted in this manner by the old
Eomans if it had chanced to be extinguished. It is
probable, therefore, that this was the original mode of
obtaining fire, but if so, it must have required a good
deal of intelligence and observation, for the discovery
is by no means an obvious one, nor is it easy to see any
natural process that might suggest it.
Neither ancient history nor the accounts of existing
savage races throw much light on the question. The
narratives of the discovery of fire contained in the
oldest records are obviously mythical, like the fable of
Prometheus, which is itself a version of the older Vedic
myth of the god Agni (whence the Latin ignis or fire)
having been taken from a casket and given to the first
man, Manou, by Pramantha, which in the old Vedic
language means taking forcibly by means of friction. Of
the same character are the mythical legends of savage
races of fire having been first brought by some wonder-
ful bird or animal ; and there is nowhere anything like
an authentic tradition of the fact of its first introduc-
tion There have been reports of savages who were
MANS PLACE IN NATURE. 205
unacquainted with fire, but they have never been well
authenticated, and the nearest approach to such a state
of things was probably furnished by the aborigines of
Van Diemen's Land, of whom it is said that in all their
wanderings they were particularly careful to bear in
their hands the materials for kindling a fire, in the
shape of a firebrand, which it was the duty of the
women to carry, and to keep carefully refreshed from
time to time as it became dull.
On the whole, traditions all point to fire having
been first obtained from friction, and it is possible that
the first idea may have been derived from the boughs of
trees, or silicious stalks of bamboos, having been set on
fire when rubbed together by the action of the wind.
It is easier to see the origin of the remaining equip-
ment of primitive man, viz., chipped stones, for flints
splintered by frost or fire often take naturally the
forms of sharp-edged flakes and rude hatchets or
hammers, and very little invention was required to
improve these specimens, or endeavour to imitate them
by artificial chippings. It is rather surprising that this
art did not improve more rapidly, for it is evident that
the old Palaeolithic period must have lasted a long time
before any decided progress began to show itself. And
during this long period a singular uniformity appears to
have prevailed throughout the Palaeolithic world. The
rude form of the celt or hdche, with a blunt butt
and chipped roughly to a point, is found in the oldest
river gravels and caves wherever they have been in-
vestigated, and the forms of the Somme and the Thames
are repeated in the quartzite implements of the Madras
laterite.
In the very oldest caves and river deposits the tool-
equipment of man seems to have been very much limited
206 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
to these rude celts, used probably for smashing skulls in
war and the chase, and splitting bones to get at the
marrow; sharp-edged flakes for cutting; rude javelin-
heads ; and stones chipped to a rounded edge, very like
those used by the Esquimaux for scraping bones and
skins. As we ascend in time we find arrow-heads of
stone and bone, at first unbarbed and gradually becoming
barbed, showing that the bow had been discovered ;
harpoons of bone and fish-hooks ; bone pins and needles ;
and a much greater variety and more carefully-chipped
forms of flint tools and weapons ; until we finally reach
the upper reindeer stage of caves like that of La
Madeleine, where artistic drawings and carvings are
found, and the equipment generally is superior to that
of many existing savage tribes, and not much inferior to
that of the Esquimaux and other Arctic races.
We then pass into Neolithic times, when many of
the chief elements of civilisation are already in full
force. Man has emerged in many localities from the
hunter into the pastoral stage, the principal domestic
animals are known, and in some of the later lake-
dwellings he has advanced a stage further, and has
become an agriculturist living in villages. From this to
the Bronze and early historical periods, there is no great
break, and the ruder tribes of barbarians described by
Csosar and Tacitus may well have been the lineal
descendants of the Neolithic men whose polished axes
and finely-shaped arrow-heads lie scattered over the
surface of Europe and are found in innumerable burial-
mounds and dolmens.
But in Paleolithic times, though we can see con-
stant progress, mankind is still in a state of unmiti-
gated barbarism. Agriculture was clearly unknown,
for the hand-mills, pestles, and mortars, which are
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARROW.
FLINT ARROW IN VERTEBRA OF REINDEER.
Palaeolithic. La Madeleine.
PALEOLITHIC.
Mammoth Period. Le Monstier
.v
PAL.EOLITHIC.
Reindeer Period.
First vestige of barb.
PALEOLITHIC.
Reindeer Period.
PALEOLITHIC.
Reindeer Period.
NEOLITHIC.
Ireland.
(From Lubbock's '
NEOLITHIC.
Denmark.
Prehistoric Times.")
RECENT.
Esquimaux.
208 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODEKN THOUGHT.
among the most enduring and abundant relics where
grain was used for food, are never met with. Pottery
was unknown in all the earlier periods, and it is ques-
tionable whether even the rudest forms of baked clay,
moulded by hand, are found where there is no inter-
mixture of a subsequent Neolithic habitation. The
dog was clearly not a companion of man prior to the
era of the Danish kitchen-middens, for the spongy
parts of bones which are always gnawed by dogs when
dogs are present, are invariably preserved in the debris
of Palaeolithic caves, and the few bones of dogs, wolves,
and foxes found with human remains in these caves
almost always show that the animals had formed part
of the food of the inhabitants.
Other domestic animals were, in all probability,
equally unknown, although it has been thought pos-
sible that some of the tribes of the reindeer period may
have had herds of the half-tame deer, like the modern
Laplanders. This conjecture, however, appears to rest
solely on the large number of bones and horns found
at certain stations, which may have arisen from their
having been occupied for a very long period, and as the
dog was unknown, it seems probable that no other
animals had been domesticated.
As regards clothing, the first certain proofs of its
use are afforded by the bone pins and needles, which
were evidently employed for fastening the skins of
animals together, and the scrapers were probably used
for scraping these skins arid fashioning the bone imple-
ments. It is probable, therefore, that the use of skins
as a protection against the cold of the Glacial period,
was known at a very early period.
Ornaments, also, are of very early date, as pierced
shells, sometimes fossil, and pierced teeth of the bear
MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE. 209
other animals are frequently found under circum-
stances which show that they must have been strung
together as necklaces. The skeleton found in a cave
at Mentone had a number of perforated shells of Nassa,
and a few stag's teeth also perforated, dispersed about
the skull, so as to show that they had formed some
sort of head ornament. Lumps of red hematite, also,
probably used for paint, have been found in some of
the caves of the reindeer period.
Captain Cook's description of the savages of Tierra
del Fuego would have applied to them, that, " although
content to be naked, they were very ambitious to be
fine ; " and probably like these poor Fuegians, they
adorned themselves with streaks of red, black, and
white, and wore bracelets and anklets of shell and
bone.
If we wish to form some idea of the manners and
customs of our Palaeolithic ancestors, we must look
for them among the existing savage races, whose
mode of life, and equipment of tools and weapons,
most nearly resemble those of the earliest cave-dwellers.
The Australians, the Bushmen of South Africa, the
Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, and the Fuegians
are probably the lowest specimens of the human race
known in modern times ; but even these are in some
respects further advanced in the arts than the first Palaeo-
lithic man. The Bushmen are skilled in the use of
the bow, and have discovered the art of poisoning
their arrows. The Australians, Mincopies, and Fuegians
have canoes, harpoons, and fish-hooks. The latter
approach more nearly to the conditions of life of the
savages who accumulated the kitchen-middens on the
coasts of Denmark at a much later period, and the
Bushmen probably represent better those of the cave-
210 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
men who lived principally on the produce of the
chase of large animals, such as the mammoth, rhino-
ceros, cave bear, horse, and deer. The pigmy Bushman
will attack the elephant, the rhinoceros, and even the
lion, and often succeed in killing them by pitfalls or
poisoned arrows.
The inferences, therefore, to be drawn, alike from
the physical development of the individual man, and
from the origin and growth of all the faculties which
specially distinguish him from the brute creation
language, religion, arts, and science all point to the
conclusion that he is a product of laws of evolution,
and not of special or miraculous creation.
Still, admitting this, we must admit on the other
hand, that until more of the " missing links " are dis-
covered, and the origin of man is placed on a basis of
scientific certainty, there is an opening left for the
belief that here, if nowhere else, there was some super-
natural interference with the laws of Nature, and that
the finger of the clock-maker did here alter the hands
of the clock from the position which they would have
occupied under the original law of its construction.
But if this were so, it must equally in candour be
admitted that the miracle did not consist in placing man
and woman upon earth, at any recent period, or with
faculties in any way developed, but could only have
consisted in causing a germ or germs to come into
existence, different from any that could have been
formed by natural evolution, and containing within
them the possibilities of conscious and civilised man,
to be developed from the rudest origins by slow and
painful progress over countless ages.
II
MODERN THOUGHT.
P 2
CHAPTER VII.
MODERN THOUGHT.
Lines from Tennyson The Gospel of Modern Thought Change
exemplified hy Carlyle, Renan, and George Eliot Science be-
coming Universal Attitude of Orthodox Writers Origin of
Evil First Cause unknowable New Philosophies and Eeligions
Herbert Spencer and Agnosticism Comte and Positivism
Pessimism Mormonism Spiritualism Dreams and Visions
Somnambulism Mesmerism Great Modern Thinkers Carlyle
Hero-worship.
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ;
That nothing walks with aimless feet ;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete ;
That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything.
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last far off at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
214 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
So runs my dream : but what am 1 1
An infant crying in the night :
An infant crying for the light :
And with no language but a cry.
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul 1
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life ;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI.
" So careful of the type 1 " but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, " A thousand types are gone ;
I care for nothing, all shall go.
" Thou makest thine appeal to me :
I bring to life, I bring to death :
The spirit does but mean the breath ;
I know no more." And he, shall he.
MODERN THOUGHT. 215
Man. her last -work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
"Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Mature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
P>e blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills ?
No more ? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail !
fur thy voice to soothe and bless t
What hope of answer, or redress ?
Eehind the veil, behind the veil.
TENNYSON, In Memoriam.
(By kind permission of LOKD TENNYSON.)
THESE noble and solemn lines of a great poet sum
up in a few words what may be called " the Gospel of
Modern Thought." They describe what is the real
attitude of most of the thinking and earnest minds
of the present generation. On the one hand, the
discoveries of science have so far established the uni-
versality of law, as to make it impossible for sincere
men to retain the faith of their ancestors in dogmas
and miracles. On the other, larger views of man and
of history have shown that religious sentiment is an
essential element of human nature, and that many of
our best feelings, such as love, hope, conscience, and
reverence, will always seek to find reflections of them-
216 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
selves in the unseen world. Hence faith has diminished
and charity increased. Fewer believe old creeds, and
those who do, believe more faintly ; while fewer de-
nounce them, and are insensible to the good they have
done in the past and the truth and beauty of the
essential ideas that underlie them.
On the Continent, and especially in Catholic coun-
tries, where religion interferes more with politics and
social life, there is still a large amount of active hostility
to it, as shown by the massacre of priests by the French
Communists ; but, in this country, the old Voltairean
infidelity has died out, and no one of ordinary culture
thinks of denouncing Christianity as an invention of
priestcraft. On the contrary, many of our leading
minds are at the same time sceptical . and religious,
and exemplify the truth of another profound saying of
Tennyson :
There is more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
The change which has come over modern thought
cannot be better exemplified than by taking the
instance of three great writers whose works have
produced a powerful influence Carlyle, Renan, and
George Eliot. They were all three born and brought
up in the very heart of different phases of the old
beliefs Carlyle, in a family which might be taken as
a type of the best qualities of Scottish Presbyterianism,
bred in a West country farmhouse, under the eye of
a father and mother whom he loved and revered, who
might have been the originals of Burns' "Cotter's
Saturday Night," or the descendants of the martyrs
of Claverhouse. His own temperament strongly in-
clined to a stern Puritanical piety ; his favourite heroes
MODERN THOUGHT. 217
were Cromwell and John Knox ; his whole nature was
antipathetic to science. As his biographer, Froude,
reports of him, " He liked ill men like Humboldt,
Laplace, and the author of the ' Vestiges.' He refused
Darwin's transmutation of species as unproved ; he
fought against it, though I could see he dreaded that
it might turn out true." And yet the deliberate
conclusion at which he arrived was that " He did
not think it possible that educated honest men could
even profess much longer to believe in historical
Christianity."
The case of Kenan was equally remarkable. He
was born in the cottage of Breton peasants of the
purest type of simple, pious, Catholic faith. Their one
idea of rising above the life of a peasant was to become
a priest, and their great ambition for their boy was
that he might be so far honoured as one day to become
a country cure. Young Kenan, accordingly, from the
first day he showed cleverness, and got to the top of
his class in the village school, was destined for the
priesthood. He was taken in hand by priests, and
found in them his kindest friends ; they sent him to
college, and in due time to the Central Seminary where
young men were trained for orders. All his traditions,
all his affections, all his interests, led in that direction,
and yet he gave up everything rather than subscribe
to what he no longer believed to be true. His con-
version was brought about in this way. Having been
appointed assistant to a professor of Hebrew he became
a profound scholar in Oriental languages ; this led to
his studying the Scriptures carefully in the original,
and the conclusion forced itself upon him that the
miraculous part of the narrative had no historical
foundation. Like Carlyle, the turn of his mind was
218 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
not scientific, and while denying miracles he remained
keenly appreciative of all that was beautiful and poetical
in the life and teaching of Jesus, which he has brought
more vividly before the world in his writings than had
<?ver been done by orthodox commentators.
George Eliot, again, was brought up in yet another
phase of orthodox Christianity that of middle-class
nonconformist Evangelicalism. She embraced this creed
fervently, and, as we see in her "Dinah," retained
41 keen appreciation of all its best elements. But as
her intellect expanded and her knowledge widened,
she too found it impossible to rest in the old belief,
and, with a painful wrench from a revered father and
loving friends, she also passed over from the ranks of
orthodoxy. She also, after a life of profound and
earnest thought, came to the conclusion recorded of her
by an intimate friend and admirer, Mr. Myers :
"I remember how at Cambridge, I walked with
her once in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an
evening of rainy May ; and she, stirred somewhat be-
yond her wont, and taking as her text the three words
which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-
calls of men the words God, Immortality, Duty
pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable
was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet
how peremptory and absolute the third. Never, per-
haps, had sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of
impersonal and unrecompensing law. I listened, and
night fell; her grave, majestic countenance turned
toward me like a Sibyl's in the gloom ; it was as
though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one,
the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third
scroll only, awful with inevitable fates."
MODERX THOUGHT. 219
Such instances as these cannot be the result of
mere accident. As long as scepticism was confined to
a limited number. of scientific men it might be possible
to think that it was merely the exaggeration of a
particular train of thought pursued too exclusively.
But when science has become the prevailing mode of
thought, and has been brought home to the minds of
all educated persons, it is no longer possible to repre-
sent it as an exceptional aberration. And where the
bell-wethers of thought lead the way the flock will
follow. What the greatest thinkers think to-day, the
mass of thinkers will think to-morrow, and the great
army of non-thinkers will assume to be self-evident
the day after. This is very nearly the case at the
present day ; the great thinkers have gone before, the
mass of thinkers have followed, and the still greater
mass of non -thinkers are wavering and about to follow.
It is no longer, with those who think at all, a ques-
tion of absolute faith against absolute disbelief, but of
the more or less shade of "faintness" with which they
cling to the "larger hope."
This is nowhere more apparent than in the writings
of those who attempt to stem the tide which sets so
strongly against orthodoxy. They resolve themselves
mainly into one long wail of " oh the pity of it, the pity
of it ! " if the simple faith of olden times should dis-
appear from the world. They show eloquently and con-
clusively that science and philosophy cannot satisfy the
aspirations or afford the consolations of religion. They
expose the hollowness of the substitutes which have been
proposed, such as the worship of the unknowable, or
the cult of humanity. They win an easy triumph over
the exaggerations of those who resolve all the historical
220 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
records of Christianity into myths or fabulous fulfilment
of prophecies, and they wage fierce battles over minor
points, as whether the first quotations from the Gospels
are met with in the first or second half of the second
century. But they nowhere attempt to grapple with
the real difficulties, and show that the facts and
arguments which converted men like Carlyle and
Renan are mistaken facts and unsound arguments.
Attempts to harmonise the Gospels and to prove
the inspiration of writings which contain manifest
errors and contradictions, have gone the way of Buck-
land's proof of a universal deluge, and of Hugh Miller's
attempt to reconcile Noah's ark and the Genesis
account of creation with the facts of geology and
astronomy. Not an inch of ground that has been
conquered by science has ever been reconquered in fair
fight by theology.
This great scientific movement is of comparatively
recent date. Darwin's " Origin of Species " was only
published in 1859, and his views as to evolution,
development, natural selection, and the prevalence
of universal law, have already annexed nearly the
whole world of modern thought and become the foun-
dation of all philosophical speculation and scientific
inquiry.
Not only has faith been shaken in the supernatural
as a direct and immediate agent in the phenomena of
the worlds of matter and of life, but the demonstration
of the "struggle for life " and " survival of the fittest "
has raised anew, and with vastly augmented force, those
questions as to the moral constitution of the universe
and the origin of evil, which have so long exercised the
highest minds. Is it true that "love" is "Creation's
MODERN THOUGHT. 221
final law," when we find this enormous and apparently
prodigal waste of life going on ; these cruel internecine
battles between individuals and species in the struggle
for existence ; this cynical indifference of Nature to
suffering ? There are, approximately, 3,600 millions of
deaths of human beings in every century, of whom at
least 20 per cent., or 720 millions, die before they have
attained to clear self-consciousness and conscience.
What becomes of them ? Why were they born ? Are
they Nature's failures, and " cast as rubbish to the
void ? "
To such questions there is no answer. We are obliged
to admit that as the material universe is not, as we once
fancied, measured by our standards and regulated at
every turn by an intelligence resembling ours ; so
neither is the moral universe to be explained by simply
magnifying our own moral ideas, and explaining every-
thing by the action of a Being who does what we should
have done in his place. If we insist on this anthropo-
morphic conception we are driven to this dilemma.
Carlyle bases his belief in a God, "the infinite Good
One," on this argument : "All that is good, generous,
wise, right whatever I deliberately and for ever love in
others and myself, who or what could by any possibility
have given it to me but One who first had it to give ?
This is not logic ; this is axiom."
But how of the evil ? No sincere man looking into
the depths of his own soul, or at the facts of the world
around, can doubt that along with much that is good,
generous, wise, and right, there is much that is bad,
base, foolish, and wrong. If logic compels us to receive
as an axiom a good author for the former, does not the
same logic equally compel us to accept the axiom that
222 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the author of the latter must have been one who " first
had it in himself to give " ? That is, we must accept
the theory of a God who is half good, half evil; or adopt
the Zoroastrian conception of a universe contested by
an Ormuzd and Ahriman, a good and evil principle,
whose power is, for the present at any rate, equally
balanced.
From this dilemma there is no escape, unless we
give up altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic
deity, and adopt frankly the scientific idea of a First
Cause, inscrutable and past finding out ; and of a
universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose real
essence we know nothing, and can only suspect or
faintly discern a fundamental law which may make
the polarity of good and evil a necessary condition of
existence. This is a more sublime as well as more
rational belief than the old orthodox conception ; but
there is no doubt that it requires more strength of mind
to embrace it, and that it appears cold and cheerless to
those who have been accustomed to see special provi-
dences in every ordinary occurrence, and to fancy them-
selves the special objects of supernatural supervision in
all the details of daily life. Hopes and fancies, however,
are powerless against facts ; and the world is as surely
passing from the phase of orthodox into that of scien-
tific belief as youth is passing into manhood, and the
planet which we inhabit from the fluid and fiery
state into that of temperate heat, progressive cooling,
and final extinction as the abode of life. In the
meantime, what can we do but possess our souls in
patience, follow truth wherever it leads us, and trust,
as Tennyson advises, that in the long run everything
will be for the best, and "every winter turn to spring" ?
MODERN THOUGHT. 223
The decay of old religious beliefs, and the intro-
duction of new conceptions based on scientific discovery,
have given rise to many attempts to found new philo-
sophies, and in some cases new sects and religions, of
some of the principal of which a short account may
be given.
One of the greatest thinkers of modern times,
Herbert Spencer, has expanded the theories of modern
science, specially those of the conservation of energy
and of Darwinian evolution, into a generalised philo-
sophy, embracing not only the phenomena of the
material and living universe, but also history, religion,
politics, and all the complex relations of social life.
He starts from the principle that throughout the uni-
verse, in general and in detail, there is an unceasing
redistribution of matter and motion. This shows itself
as evolution where there is a predominant aggregation
of matter and diminution of motion, and as dissolution
where matter is disintegrated and motion increased.
Thus, in the formation of coal, the motion of the sun's
rays is fixed in the condensed matter of the chemical
products of vegetation, and is dissipated when, after
countless ages, the coal is burned and its substance
dissolved into its elements. These changes constitute
a transformation of the uniform or homogeneous into
the differentiated or heterogeneous, as seen in the
condensation of nebulous or cosmic matter into suns
and planets ; in the varied elements of the inorganic
world; "in each organism, vegetable or animal; in
the aggregate of organisms, thought and geologic time ;
in the mind ; in society ; in all products of social
activity." These changes are all in the direction of
passing from an indefinite whole to definite parts, and
224 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
they are inevitable, unless the original substance were
so absolutely uniform as to be absolutely stable.
Once started, this process of differentiation tends
necessarily to go on, the surrounding conditions being
ever at work, whether by aggregation or dissolution, by
joining like to like, or separating unlike from unlike,
to sharpen and make more definite existing differences.
This is in effect a generalised conception of Darwin's
laws of the " struggle for life " and " survival of the
fittest." Finally, however, the result of all these
changes is that an ultimate equilibrium is reached,
which is rest in the inorganic and death in the organic
world ; as when the sun with all its planets shall
have parted with all its heat, and all its energy shall
have run down to one uniform level. From this
state it can only be roused by some fresh shock from
without, dissipating it again into a mass of diffused
matter and unbalanced motions.
Hence we come to the final statements of the
Spencerian philosophy, as given in the words of its
author :
" This rhythm of evolution and dissolution, com-
pleting itself during short periods in small aggregates,
and in the vast aggregates distributed through space
completing itself in periods which are immeasurable
by human thought, is, so far as we can see, universal
and eternal, each alternating phase of the process predo-
minating, now in this region of space and now in that,
as local conditions determine. All these phenomena,
from their great features even to their minutest details,
are necessary results of the persistence of force under
its forms of matter and motion. Given these as dis-
tributed through space, and their quantities being
MODERN THOUGHT. 225
unchangeable either by increase or decrease, there
inevitably result the continuous redistributions dis-
tinguishable as evolution and dissolution, as well as
those special traits above enumerated. That which
persists, unchanging in quantity, but ever changing
in form, under these sensible appearances which the
universe presents to us, transcends human knowledge
and conception, is an unknown and unknowable power,
which we are obliged to recognise as without limit in
space and without beginning or end in time."
This is, in its highest form, the philosophy of
Agnosticism. A very different thing, be it observed,
from Atheism, for it distinctly recognises an under-
lying power which, although " unknown and unknow-
able," may be anything harmonising with the feelings
and aspirations in which all religious sentiment has its
origin, so long as it fulfils the condition of not, by too
precise definition, coming into collision with something
which is not " unknown " but " known " and irrecon-
cilable with it.
For instance, there is nothing in Agnosticism to
.negative the possibility of a future state of existence.
Behind the veil there may be anything, and no one can
say that individual consciousness may not remain or be
restored after death, and that our condition may not be
in some way better or worse, according to the use we
have made of the opportunities of life. But if any one
attempts to define this future state and say we shall
have spiritual bodies, live in the skies, sing psalms, and
wave palm-branches, we say at once " this is partly
unknowable and partly known to be impossible."
These abstract speculations, however, are only
adapted for a few of the highest thinkers. That which
226 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
has given the philosophy of Spencer a wide influence if?
the manner in which he applies these general principles
to the subjects which more immediately concern the
mass of thinking minds, such as history, politics, and
the problems of social life. What Darwin shows in
animal life and the origin of species, Spencer traces in
the rise and fall of empires, the growth and decline of
religions, the increasing complexity of social relations,
the conflicting forces of evolution and dissolution at
work around us in our every-day life, in the relations
of science and theology, capital and labour, state social-
ism and laissez-faire. For instance, the decline of the
Eoman Empire and its overthrow by the barbarians is
analogous to the decay of a planet from loss of internal
heat and its dissipation into matter capable of fresh
evolution, by the shock of a comet. The ever-increasing
gulf between wealth and poverty, science and super-
stition, resembles the process by which the one-toed
horse became gradually differentiated more and more
from the common five-toed type of its remote ancestor.
These speculations of Spencer, pursued with vast
acuteness and research through all branches of social
science, though they have not founded a new religion
or established a new sect, have undoubtedly exercised
a great influence on modern thought, especially among
the rising generation.
Another " ism " which, although it has exercised
a much narrower influence than the philosophy of
Spencer, has founded a sect and put forward more
definite claims to give the world a new religion, is
that which is known as "Positivism," or " Comtism,"
from the name of its founder, Auguste Comte. It is
not easy to understand, but its essence seems to be this ..
MODERN THOUGHT. 227
Admitting that science has killed theology, and
that the old forms of supernatural religion, inevitable
in the childhood of the world, have become incredible,
Comte cast about for some idea which should be at
the same time "positive," or based on ascertained
fact, and fervid enough to satisfy the cravings of
religious sentiment. He thought he found it in
" Humanity ; " that is, in love and veneration for
the abstract idea of the human race, taken collectively,
and considered in its past, present, and future relations.
As patriotism, a very ardent feeling, is the love of
a limited section of the human race ; and as it has
been gradually enlarged from the limits of a tribe
to those of a city, and from those of a city to those
of a country or nationality, he conceived that it might
be still further enlarged so as to embrace all mankind.
So far it may be admitted that there is a germ of
truth in Comte's idea, and that elevated minds may
enlarge their view beyond the narrow bounds of a
particular country at a particular period, and may
derive fresh incentives to action, and fresh subjects
for ennobling thought, from a contemplation of the
past progress, present condition, and future possibilities
of the collective human race. But there is a homely
proverb that " charity begins at home," and as we
widen the sphere of patriotism or philanthropy we are
very apt to diminish their intensity and find them
evaporate in a mist of high-sounding phrases. The
"friend of man" is very apt to be the friend of no
one man in particular, and to make universal philan-
thropy an excuse for neglecting individual charity.
Apart, however, from this objection, and granting
that with increased intercourse and increased culture
Q 2
228 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
" Humanity " might become a more practical idea, we
should be still a long way from making it the basis of
a new religion. It is here that Comte has laid him-
self open to the scoffs of unbelievers, who have gone
so far as to call his religion " Catholicism without
Christianity," and himself a "grotesque old French-
man." With the narrow systematising logic so cha-
racteristic of the French intellect he has worked out
a complete scheme of ritual, hierarchy, and all the
apparatus of an old religion. A supreme pontiff
at its head, associated with a supreme priestess to
represent the female element ; for saints the distin-
guished men who have advanced the different branches
of human art and science ; for days of worship, fete
days of these saints and meetings of believers to
commemorate their merits.
All this savours too much of the "Goddess of
Liberty," and the theo - philanthropy of the French
Revolution, when the disciples of Rousseau cut off heads
in the name of universal benevolence, to find much
acceptance in a sceptical age and among a practical
people. Robuster intellects, like George Eliot, even
where they incline to accept Humanity as an ennobling
idea, and to recognise Comte as an original thinker,
reject all the constructive part of his new religion as
unworthy of notice ; while to the mass of mankind
the whole thing appears utterly unreal and incompre
hensible.
One more "ism" Pessimism, the gospel of feeble-
ness and failure has had a considerable effect on the
Continent, though little in this country. It is based
on the fact that, in accordance with the universal law
of polarity, progress is not an unmixed good, but
MODERN THOUGHT. 229
develops a corresponding negative of failure. In simple
forms of society the distinctions between wealth and
poverty, capital and labour, culture and ignorance, are
not so sharply defined, and the lot of those who fail
in the battle of life is not so hard as when men are
congregated in crowded cities, exposed to temptations,
and tantalised by the sight of wealth and luxury be-
fore their eyes and yet beyond their reach. A mass
of misery and discontent is thus created, which in
lower natures translates itself into anarchism and
fanatical hatred of all above them, while in higher
ones it takes the form of theories for the regeneration
of the world by levelling everything that exists, and
building anew on fresh foundations. Still higher minds
see the futility of these theories, and take refuge in
a philosophy which pronounces the world a mistake,
life an evil, and the only possible solution to be,
to put an end to what is radically bad by an act
of universal suicide. This is in substance the philo-
sophy of Schopenhauer and the school of Continental
Pessimists. It has considerable analogy with that of
Buddhism, which considers all personal existence to
be a painful dream or illusion, and places supreme
happiness in Nirvana, or escape from it by annihilation
of individuality.
To understand how such a doctrine can have
found acceptance, we must remember that the ten-
dency of modern civilisation is to throw more and
more work on the brain and nervous system and
less on other organs. This of itself tends to produce
more ill-health both of mind and body, especially of
those digestive organs upon which the sensation of
health and well-being so mainly depends. A dyspeptic
230 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
man is of necessity an unhappy and desponding man.
Moreover, in ruder states of society sucli weaklings
were got rid of by the summary process of being killed
off, while with the more humane and refined arrange-
ments of modern times they live on and " weary deaf
heaven with their fruitless cries."
It is among such men, with cultivated intellects,
sensitive nerves, and bad digestion, that we find the
prophets and disciples of the gospel of Pessimism.
They feel, and feel truly, that as far as they are
concerned life is an evil, the pains of which far out-
weigh its pleasures, and having lost the mediaeval
faith in a future life where the balance will be redressed,
they see no remedy for the miseries of the world but
that of ceasing to be, or annihilation.
This affords another illustration of the extent to
which religions and philosophies are, like the spectre
of the Brocken, reflections of our own selves on dis-
solving mists, clothed with our own clothes and
repeating our own gestures. To a healthy man or
to a strong man the pessimist view of the universe
is simply impossible. If he has experienced a fail-
average of happiness and success in life, he instinctively
rejects a creed which tells him that there are no lights
as well as shadows. If he has a mind of average
strength he feels that suffering is a thing to be
avoided prudently, borne stoically, or grappled with
courageously, and not to be run away from by moral
or physical suicide.
Accordingly Pessimism is not a creed which is ever
likely to exert much influence on the strong, practical
Anglo-Saxon race, and we can only discern some faint
traces of it in the tendency of certain very limited
MODEEN THOUGHT. 231
cliques of so-called ^Estheticism to admire morbid and
self-conscious ideals, both in poetry and painting.
It is a very curious and remarkable fact, that while
so many highly intellectual attempts have been made in
vain in modern times to found new sects and religions,
the only one which has had any real success is that
which is based on the most gross and vulgar imposture
Morrnonism. Mormonism is a fact which, without
the vestige of a reasonable argument to show for itself,
originating in the vulgar ravings and forgeries of a
vulgar Yankee, violating the first instincts of the family
and of society by polygamy, still exists in spite of
persecutions, and to a certain extent progresses and
flourishes. The reason seems to be that instead of
being a theory in the air or over the heads of the masses,
it is, with all its faults, a practical system in contact
with the actual realities of life. Its success is mainly
owing to its being an organised system of emigration,
and a faith which places its Paradise here on earth and
not in the skies. A poor ignorant labourer in Wales or
Norway, who becomes a convert to Mormonism, is taken
in hand at once, forwarded to his destination, and when
he arrives there looked after and put in a way of earn-
ing an honest livelihood and probably becoming a landed
proprietor. The ideal set before him is not a very high
one, that of becoming a sober, industrious, respectable,
narrow-minded citizen of the State of Utah, and a
creditable member of the community of Latter Day
Saints. But to a poor labourer from the slums of
Liverpool, to lead such a life, in the pure mountain air
in the valley of the Salt Lake, and see his flocks and
herds increasing and his family growing up, without care
for the future, is indeed the realisation of an earthly
232 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Paradise. The moral to draw from this is, that tha
success of a religion, under the conditions of modern
society, does not depend so much on its theory as on
the way in which it takes hold of the practical problems
of life and shows an aptitude for grappling with them.
Another wide-spread modern delusion, that of
Spiritualism, is akin to Mormonism, as showing how
little reason has to do with the beliefs which are
most readily propagated among large classes of the
community. Nothing but the most morbid appetite
for the supernatural, combined with the most absolute
ignorance of the laws of evidence, could induce sane
people to believe that, if a corner of that mysterious
and awful veil were lifted which separates the living
from the dead, we shall discover what ? spirits whose
vocation it is to turn tables and talk twaddle.
In vain medium after medium is detected, and the
machinery by which ghosts are manufactured exposed
in police-courts; in vain the manifestations of the
so-called spirits are repeated by professional conjurers
like Maskelyne and Cooke, who disclaim any assist-
ance from the unseen world. People are still found
to believe the unbelievable because it gratifies their
taste for the marvellous, and enables them to fancy
themselves the favoured recipients of supernatural
communications.
.If Spiritualism has found a certain amount of
acceptance from men of a very different order, who,
like Crookes and Wallace, understand what scientific
evidence really is, it is because the phenomena associated
with it, such as mesmerism and clairvoyance, really
have a certain basis of fact, and open up interesting
fields for scientific investigation. The working of the
MODERN THOUGHT. 233
brain and nerves in certain abnormal conditions, and
the physical effects of imagination, are subjects im-
perfectly understood, but which well deserve accurate
inquiry.
Take, for instance, dreams, which afford the first
certain starting-point towards the theory of visions and
apparitions. It is as certain that we dream as that we
sleep, and that in our sleeping state we often live a sort
of second life, which is different from our ordinary waking
life. Dreams seem to be made up of impressions which
have been photographed on the brain in its waking
state, and which are revived and worked up into new
combinations and imaginary scenes, when consciousness
is suspended. Vivid impressions are thus often worked
up into a succession of dreams so vivid as to be scarcely
distinguishable from reality. It happened to me, about
the middle period of my life, to be sent, almost at a
day's notice, to India, where for more than two years
I had a period of intensely hard work and great re-
sponsibility, as Finance Minister. This naturally left a
number of strong impressions on my brain, which for
years afterwards kept reviving in a series of connected
dreams, in which I fancied myself back in India. I
had thus a dream life as well as a real life of Indian
experiences, and the former was so vivid that, if I were
writing reminiscences, I should sometimes find it diffi-
cult to distinguish between the two.
This enables me to realise how dreams may readily
pass into visions. If I had dozed off in an arm-chair
after dinner, and fallen into one of my Indian dreams,
I might have seen Lord Canning, who had been dead
for years, walk into the room as distinctly as if he had
been present in person. In a less critical age, and with
234 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
a less sceptical turn of mind, I might readily have beeu
convinced that I had seen his ghost.
There can be no doubt that in this way dreams
must often, in pre-scientific ages, have originated a
bond fide belief in spirits. Herbert Spencer traces to
this cause the origin of all religious belief. Perhaps
this may be carrying it too far, but doubtless it was
one of the main causes, especially of that portion of
religion which took the form of offerings to the dead
.and ancestor- worship.
But a still further step may be taken from the
ordinary dream to the waking dream or vision. It
is a well - established fact that under peculiar and
rare circumstances the brain may dream, that is,
revive impressions where there is no corresponding
reality, without losing its consciousness. There was a
celebrated case of a Berlin bookseller in the last century,
who, having fallen into bad health, lived for more than
a year in the company of ghosts that is, he constantly
saw men and women, with every appearance of being
alive, enter the room and come and go as if they had
been ordinary visitors. Being a man of a scientific
turn of mind he never supposed these were really
ghosts, but reasoned on them and recorded his expe-
riences. Instead of sending for a priest and resorting to
exorcisms he called in a physician and took a course of
medicine, with the result that after a considerable time
the ghostly visitors gradually became dim and finally
disappeared.
Numerous other cases are recorded in which there is
no doubt that visions have been seen, especially under
the influence of religious excitement, and a large number
MODERN THOUGHT. 235
cf so-called miraculous appearances and ghost stories are
probably owing to this cause rather than to conscious
imposture.
When we consider the enormous number of dreams,
and probably considerable number of visions, which occur,
instead of being surprised at occasional coincidences,
the wonder rather is that they are not more frequent.
If only one per cent, of the 30,000,000 inhabitants of
the British Isles dream every night, that would give
109,500,000 dreams per annum, a large proportion of
which are made up of vivid impressions of actual
persons and events. It is impossible that some of the
combinations of these impressions should not form
pictures which are subsequently realised, and we may
be sure that the successes only will be noted, and the
failures forgotten. It is strange, therefore, that the
researches of the Psychical Society should not have
brought to light more instances of death-warnings and
other remarkable coincidences. To take the vulgar
instance of horse-racing. A number of minds are
greatly exercised over the problem of picking out
winners, and doubtless a vast number of dreams
show colours flashing past winning-posts, and numbers
hoisted on the telegraph board. And yet I only
remember two tolerably well-authenticated instances
in the last half-century, in which any one is said to
have backed a winner on the faith of a dream. The
only positive result of dreams and visions is that they
frequently occur under circumstances where they are
almost certain to be mistaken, by unscientific persons
in unscientific ages, for actual supernatural appearances.
Another field for inquiry is opened out by the
236 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
effects which are undoubtedly produced under certain
abnormal conditions of the brain and nervous system,
as in epilepsy, somnambulism, and mesmerism.
In the simplest case, that of epilepsy, the effect
is mainly shown by a more intense action of nerve-
currents, causing convulsive motions and an unnatural
increase of muscular strength and rigidity, so that two
strong men may be scarcely able to hold one weak
woman. In somnambulism, the effects are more com-
plex. The reception of outward impressions seems to
be limited, so that the whole consciousness and vital
energy are concentrated on particular actions, which
are thus performed safely, while in the ordinary waking
state they would be impossible. Thus a somnambulist
walks securely along a plank spanning an abyss, because
the impressions of surrounding space do not reach the
brain and confuse it with a sense of danger. In this
state also past impressions photographed on the brain,
which in the ordinary waking state are obscured by
other impressions, seem to come out occasionally as in
dreams, enabling the somnambulist to do and remember
things which would otherwise be beyond his faculties.
Mesmerism is closely akin to somnambulism. Apart
from delusion and charlatanism the fact seems to be
established that it is possible, by artificial means, to
induce a state resembling somnambulism in persons of
a peculiar nervous temperament. As regards the means,
thu essential point seems to be to throw the brain into
this abnormal state partly by keeping an unnatural
strain on the attention, and partly by acting on it
through the imagination. The experiments of Dr. Braid
showed that the mesmeric sleep could be induced just
as well by keeping the eye strained on a black wafer
MODERN THOUGHT. 237
stuck on a white wall, as by the manipulations of an
operator. This experiment disposes of a great deal of
mysterious nonsense about magnetic fluids, overpowering
wills, and other supposed attributes of professional
mesmerisers, and reduces the question to the plain
matter-of-fact level of the relations between the brain,
will, imagination, and nervous system, which exist in
natural and in artificial somnambulism. These are
undoubtedly very curious, and open up a wide field
for physiological and mental research. As far as I
have seen or read, they seem to turn mainly on the
reflex effects of an excited imagination on other organs
and faculties. I do not believe that any one could be
mesmerised who was absolutely ignorant of the subject
and unconscious that any one was operating. On the
other hand, any one who had frequently been mes-
merised would fall into the sleep if led to believe that
an operator was at work when there was really not
one. And the peculiar effects shown in the mesmeric
state are attributable mainly, if not entirely, to the
imagination acting with morbid activity on the slightest
hint or suggestion of what is expected. Thus the will
disappears in the more powerful suggestion of the
imagination that the patient has to obey the will of
the operator, or do certain things which are in the
programme. I can readily believe also that in this
state the imagination can perform feats which would
be impossible to it in a natural state when it is kept
in check by other faculties, and that a good deal of
what is called clairvoyance may be explained by the
way in which the slightest hint from expression, in-
voluntary muscular motion, or otherwise, is taken
advantage of as a substitute for the ordinary modes
238 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
of communication. Such a faculty may also doubtless
be cultivated by practice, and thus explain many of
the phenomena of what are called spiritual communica-
tions and thought-reading. But that impressions can
be made on the brain, or that one mind can communi-
cate with another, without some physical means of
connection between object and subject, is absolutely
unproved and remains altogether incredible.
Among the great writers who, without . attempting
to found sects, have profoundly influenced modern
thought, Carlyle undoubtedly occupies the foremost
place. With all his extravagances and eccentricities,
he was essentially a Hebrew prophet in modern guise,
preaching a true gospel that of sincerity. To stand
on fact and despise shams, to make one's life accord
with the "eternal veracities," to strip off outward
trappings and look at the ideas they clothe, to worship
truth and abhor falsehood ; these are the principles
which Carlyle is never tired of enforcing in his vivid
and picturesque language. The dignity of all faithful
work, and the hollowness of mere show and pretence, is
another theme on which he delights to dwell ; and the
maxim, "Do the nearest duty that lies to your hand
and already the next duty will have become plainer,"
is his favourite rule for practical conduct. He insists
much on " hero-worship," and pushes his conclusions
to an extreme extent, dividing mankind too absolutely
into two classes ; on the one hand the heroes who dis-
cern facts and the followers who loyally obey them ; on
the other, the great mass of foolish and chattering
humanity. Human nature is not really all black or
all white, but shaded off by innumerable half-tints and
blended gradations. Nevertheless " hero-worship " con-
MODERN THOUGHT. 239-
tains a great truth, that loyal reverence for what we
feel to be above us does not lower a man but elevates
him ; and that those really degrade themselves who
have no respect for higher things, and try to drag
everything down to their own level.
In insisting on looking through phrases to facts
Carlyle touches one of the great dangers of the present
day. The spread of education has given an extension
to the influence of words which threatens to become
excessive. People read until they have no time to-
think, and find it easier to borrow the thoughts of
others. And a large and ever-increasing portion of the
community have learnt, in Yankee phrase, to " orate,"
and use the new-found faculty incessantly and remorse-
lessly. I do not refer so much to the obstruction of
the Parliamentary machine by floods of talk, for that
is an evil which will work its own cure, but to the
undue influence which oratory tends to acquire in all
constitutional countries, where the ultimate power is
vested in what is essentially a debating society. A
great orator is inevitably a great power in the State,
but it does not necessarily follow that he is a great
statesman.
The qualities which make an orator depend to a
great extent on gifts of nature, such as a good voice
and presence, and still more on the gift of a fervid
temperament, which moves and convinces others
because the speaker is himself moved and convinced.
These may or may not coincide with the gifts of a
great statesman, ripe experience, clear judgment, and
calm courage. When they do coincide the State will
be well ruled ; when they do not, the statesman will
lack motive power, and the orator will lack statesman-
240 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
ship ; so that between the two the affairs of the nation
will be apt to be mismanaged. Still, on the whole we
must accept the inevitable, and trust that the public
opinion which is formed by many speeches and many
articles will give better average results than by
attempting to find a Hero who might just as readily
turn out to be a Cleon as a Pericles. But the influence
of Carlyle's teaching will always remain useful as a
corrective, and as a warning to public opinion to
measure public men by their solid qualities rather than
by their oratorical talent.
The influence of Carlyle has been great on all the
foremost minds of his generation, and may be dis-
tinctly traced in their writings. If Tennyson makes
his Guinevere say:
Oh God ! what might I have made of Thy fair earth
Had I but loved Thy highest creature in it !
"We needs must love the highest when we see it.
This is genuine Carlylese condensed into noble poetry.
The whole literature of fiction has been transformed.
The fashionable novel, with its dandified coxcomb heroes
and simpering fine lady heroines, has been superseded
by works like those of Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope,
and George Eliot, which satirise folly and pretension
however highly placed, and aim at honest, earnest,
simple and sincere ideals of true men and women. The
whole tone of society has become more manly, and no
one now thinks of acquiring fame by wearing a pea-
green coat or getting a voucher for Almack's. Artificial
distinctions have to a great extent disappeared, the sons
of dukes think it no disgrace to earn an honest live-
lihood as stockbrokers, and self-made men are received
MODERN THOUGHT. 241
on an equal footing everywhere if they have the
essential qualities of gentlemen. There is vastly more
real equality and real fraternity among men, and every
one recognises, in theory at any rate, the dignity of
honest labour, whether of the hand or head. The
certain survival also, in the long run, of truth over
falsehood, or in other words of the fittest, as being most
in accordance with the laws of the universe, is uni-
versally recognised as a law in the moral as well as in
the material world.
For these results, which have now become almost
commonplaces, those who derived them in their youth
direct from works like " Sartor Resartus " can best
judge to what an extent modern thought has been
indebted to Carlyle.
CHAPTEK VIII.
MIRACLES.
Origin of Belief in the Supernatural Thunder Belief in Miracles
formerly Universal St. Paul's Testimony Now Incredible
Christian Miracles Apparent Miracles Keal Miracles Absurd
Miracles Worthy Miracles The Kesurrection and Ascension
Nature of Evidence required Inspiration Prophecy Direct
Evidence St. Paul The Gospels What is Known of Them
The Synoptic Gospels Resemblances and Differences Their
Origin Papias Gospel of St. John Evidence rests on Matthew,
Mark, and Luke What each states Compared with one another
and with St. John Hopelessly Contradictory Miracle of the
Ascension Silence of Mark Probable Early Date of Gospels
But not in their Present Form.
WHEN men began to reason on the phenomena of the
world around them, it was inevitable that they should
begin by referring all striking occurrences to super-
natural causes. Just as they measured space by feet
and inches, and time by days and years, they referred
unusual events to personal agencies. They knew by
experience that certain effects were produced by their
own wills, muscular energies, and passions ; and when
they saw effects which seemed to be of a like nature,
they inferred that they must have been produced by
like causes.
To take the familiar instance of thunder* The
MIRACLES. 243
first savage who thought about it must have said :
" The sound is very like the roar with which I spring
on a wild beast or an enemy ; the flash of lightning
is very like the flash of the arrow or javelin with
which I strike him ; the effect is often the same, that
he is killed. Surely there must be some one in the
clouds, very strong, very angry, very able to do me
harm, unless I can propitiate him by prayers or
offerings." But after long centuries, science steps
in. An elderly gentleman at Philadelphia, Benjamin
Franklin by name, sends up a silk kite during a
thunder-storm, and behold ! the lightning is drawn
down from the skies, tamed, and made to emit harm-
less sparks, or to follow the course of a con-
ducting wire, at our will and pleasure. There is
no more room left for the supernatural in the fiercest
tropical thunder-storm than there is in turning
the handle of an electrical machine, or sending in
a, tender to light the streets of London by electric
light. And the result is absolutely certain. In the
contest between the natural and the supernatural,
the latter has not only been repulsed but annihilated.
The most orthodox believer in miracles, if his faith
were brought to the practical test of backing his
opinions by his money, would rather insure a gin-
palace or gambling saloon protected by a lightning-
conductor than a chapel protected by the prayers of a
pious preacher.
This instance of thunder is a type of the revolution
of thought which has been brought about by modern
science in the whole manner of viewing the phenomena
of the surrounding universe. Former ages saw miracles
everywhere, the age in which we live sees them nowhere,
B 2
244 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
except possibly in the single instance of the miracles
recorded in the Bible. In the annals of grave Roman
historians,
In every page locutus bos.
Not a Czesar or a Consul died, without an ox speaking,
or a flaming sword in the skies predicting portents. If
the moon happened to pass between the sun and the
earth the dim eclipse
With fear of change perplexes monarcha.
If the winds blow it is because .ZEolus releases them
from the cave ; if the rains fall it is because Jupiter
opens the windows of heaven, or Indra causes the
cloud-cows to drop their milk on the parched earth.
Perhaps no better proof can be afforded of the universal
belief that miracles were considered matters of every-day
occurrence than is given by the passage in St. Paul's
Epistle to the Corinthians, in which he enumerates the
principal Christian gifts, and assigns, as it were, their
comparative order and the number of marks that should
be given to each in a competitive examination.
The power of " working miracles " comes low in the
list. "First apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly
teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings,
helps, governments, diversities of tongues." And he
goes on to say, in words that come home to every heart
in all centuries, that all those things are worthless as
compared with that true Christian charity which
" suffereth long, and is kind ; envieth not ; vaunteth
not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself
unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,
thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but
MIRACLES. 245
rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."
This is in the true spirit of modem thought, which,
when the externals of religion fail, strives to look below
them at its essence, and to retain what is eternally
true and beautiful as the ideal of a spiritual and the
guide of a practical life, while rejecting all the out-
ward apparatus of metaphysical creeds and incredible
miracles, which had only a temporary value, and can
no longer be believed without shutting one's eyes to
facts and becoming guilty of conscious or unconscious
insincerity.
But to return to miracles. Almost the entire world
of the supernatural fades away of itself with an extension
of our knowledge of the laws of Nature, as surely as
the mists melt from the valley before the rays of the
morning sun. "We have seen how, throughout the wide
domains of space, time, and matter, law, uniform,
universal, and inexorable, reigns supreme ; and there
is absolutely no room for the interference of any outside
personal agency to suspend its operations. The last
remnant of supernaturalism, therefore, apart from the
Christian miracles which we shall presently consider,
has shrunk into that doubtful and shady border-land
of ghosts, spiritualism and mesmerism, where vision
and fact, and partly real partly imaginary effects
of abnormal nervous conditions, are mixed up in a
nebulous haze with a large dose of imposture and
credulity.
Even this region is being contracted every day by
every fresh revelation in a police-court, and every
fresh discovery of the laws which really regulate the
transmission of nervous energy to and from the brain,
246 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
in the abnormal state which constitutes epilepsy and
somnambulism, and enables an excited imagination to
produce physical effects, such as those of drastic drugs
on a patient who has actually taken nothing but pills of
harmless paste.
The question of Christian miracles, however, rests
on a different and more serious ground. They have
been accepted for ages as the foundation and proof
of a religion which has been for nineteen centuries
that of the highest civilisation and purest morality,
and for this reason alone they deserve the most reverent
treatment and the most careful consideration.
Of a large class of these miracles it may be said
that there is no reason to doubt them, but none to
consider them as violations of law, or anything but
the expression, in the language of the time, of natural
effects and natural causes. "When a large class of
maladies were universally attributed to the agency
of evil spirits which had taken possession of the
patient's body, it was inevitable that many cures
would be effected, and that these cures would be set
down as the casting out of devils. In many cases
also a strong impulse communicated to the brain
may send a current along a nerve which may tem-
porarily, or even permanently, restore motion to a
paralysed limb, or give fresh vitality to a paralysed
nerve. Thus, the lame may walk, the dumb speak, and
the blind see, with no more occasion to invoke super-
natural agency than if the same effects had been
produced by a current of electricity from a voltaic
battery. There is no reason to doubt that miracles
of this sort have been frequently wrought by saints
and relics, and that even at the present day they
MIRACLES. 247
may possibly be wrought at Lourdes and other shrines
of Catholic faith. Only at the present day we scrutinise
the evidence and count the failures, and admit nothing
to be supernatural which can be explained as within
a fair average result of exceptional cases under the
operation of natural laws. In like manner we set
down all visions or apparitions as having no objective
reality if they can be explained by the known laws of
dreams or other vivid revivals of impressions, on the
brain of the person who perceives them.
There remains the class of really supernatural
miracles, or miracles which could by no possibility
have occurred as they are described, unless some out-
ward agency had suspended or reversed the laws of
Nature. As regards such miracles, a knowledge of
these laws enormously increases the difficulty in be-
lieving in them as actual facts. Take for instance the
conversion of water into wine. When nothing was
known of the constitution of water or of wine, except
that they were both fluids, it was comparatively easy
to accept the statement that such a conversion really
took place. But now we know that water consists
of oxygen and hydrogen combined in a certain simple
proportion, and of these and nothing else ; while wine
contains in addition nitrogen, carbon, and other ele-
ments combined in very complicated proportions. If
the water was not really changed into wine, but only
seemed to be so, it was a mere juggling trick, such as
the Wizard of the North can show us any day for a
shilling. But if it was really changed, something must
have been created out of nothing to supply the elements
which were not in the original water and were not put
into it from without.
248 MODEKN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Again, those who have followed the question of
spontaneous generation, and witnessed the failure of the
ablest chemists to produce the lowest forms of proto-
plasmic life from inorganic elements, will hardly believe
that such a highly organised form of life as a serpent
could have been really produced from a wooden rod.
And this, be it observed, not only by Moses the prophet
of God, but by the jugglers who amused the court of
Pharaoh by their conjuring tricks; and for an object
of no greater moment than to persuade a king to allow
some of his subjects to emigrate, which object, more-
over, notwithstanding the miracle, entirely failed, as the
king simply "hardened his heart" and persisted in his
refusal.
But passing from this class of grotesque and in-
credible miracles, let us examine those which may be
called worthy miracles ; that is, miracles disfigured
by no absurd details, and wrought for objects of suf-
ficient importance to justify supernatural interference,
if ever such interference were to take place. At the
head of such miracles must undoubtedly be placed
those of the Saviour's resurrection. The appearances
to the Apostles, and above all the bodily Ascension
to heaven in the presence of more than 500 witnesses,
were a fitting termination to the drama of His life
and sufferings, and afforded a conclusive test of
the fact which was the foundation-stone of the new
religion.
"If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching
vain," says St. Paul; and he proceeds to argue that
the whole question of the reality of . future life hinges
on the fact that Christ really rose from the dead.
His theory is that death came into the world by
MIRACLES. 249
the sin of the first man, Adam, and has been destroyed
and swallowed up in immortality by the victory
of the second man, Christ. This theory has, from
that day to this, been the key-stone of Christian
theology.
There can be no doubt, therefore, that if any
miracle is true this must be the one, and, on the
other hand, if this miracle cannot be established
by sufficient proof, it is idle to discuss the evidence
for other miracles. In order to go to the root
of the matter therefore, it is necessary to consider,
in a calm and judicial spirit, the evidence upon
which this miracle of the Resurrection really rests.
In the first place we must consider what sort of
evidence is required to prove a miracle. Clearly it
must be evidence of the most cogent and unimpeach-
able character, far more conclusive than would be
sufficient to establish an ordinary occurrence. The
discoveries of modern science have shown beyond the
possibility of doubt that the miracles which former
ages fancied they saw around them every day had
no real existence, and that, except possibly in the
solitary instance of the Christian miracles, there has
been no supernatural interference with the laws of
Nature throughout the enormous ranges of space, time,
and matter. It may be going too far to say with
Hume that no amount of evidence can prove a miracle,
since it must always remain more probable that human
testimony should be false than that the laws of Nature
should have been violated. But it is not going too far
to say that the evidence to establish such a violation
must be altogether overwhelming and open to no other
possible construction.
250 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Take the case of the allegation that a man who had
really died rose in the body from the grave, ate, drank,
and held intercourse with living persons. There are
some 1,200 millions of human beings living in the world,
and somewhat more than three generations in each
century, that is, there are some 3,600 millions of deaths
per century, and this has been going on for some forty
or fifty centuries, or longer. It is certain, therefore,
that at least 150,000 millions of deaths must have
taken place, and a large proportion of these under
circumstances involving the most heart-rending separa-
tions, and the most intense longing on the part of the
dying to give, and of the living to receive, some token of
affection from beyond the grave. And yet no such token
has ever been given, and the veil which separates the
dead from the living has never been lifted, except pos-
sibly in one case out of this 150,000,000,000. Surely it
must require very different evidence to establish the
reality of such an exception, from that which would
be sufficient to prove the signature to a will or the date
of a battle.
But just when the new views opened up by modern
science made it more difficult to believe in miracles,
and more exacting in the demand for stronger evi-
dence to support them, the old evidence became greatly
weakened. The main evidence which satisfied our
forefathers was that the Bible was inspired, and that
it asserted the reality of the miracles. This, when
critically examined, was really no evidence at all, for
how did we know that the Bible was inspired? Because
it was proved to be so by miracles. The argument was
therefore in a circle, and resembled that of the Hindoo
mythology, which rested the earth on an elephant and
MIRACLES. 251
the elephant on a tortoise. But what did the tortoise
rest on ?
To examine the matter more closely, what is the
meaning of inspiration ? It means that a certain book
was not written, as all other books in the world have
been written, by writers who were fallible, and whose
statements and opinions, however admirable in the
main and made in perfect good faith, inevitably reflected
the views of the age in which they lived and contained
matters which subsequent ages found to be obsolete or
erroneous, but that this particular book was miraculously
dictated by an infallible God, and therefore absolutely
and for all time true. But, as a chain cannot be stronger
than its weakest link, if any one of these statements were
proved not to be true, the theory of inspiration failed,
and human reason was called on to decide by the
ordinary methods, whether any, and if any, what parts
of the Volume were inspired and what uninspired.
Now it is absolutely certain that portions of the
Bible, and those important portions relating to the
creation of the world and of man, are not true, and
therefore not inspired. It is certain that the sun,
moon, stars, and earth, were not created as the author
of Genesis supposed them to have been created, and
that the first man, whose Palaeolithic implements are
found in caves and river gravels of immense antiquity,
was a very different being from the Adam who wa&
created in God's likeness and placed in the Garden of
Eden. It is certain that no universal deluge ever
took place since man existed, and that the animal life
existing in the world, and shown by fossil remains to-
have existed for untold ages, could by no possibility
have originated from pairs of animals living together
252 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
for forty days in the ark, and radiating from a mountain
in Armenia.
Another test of inspiration is afforded by the
presence of contradictions. If one writer says that
certain events occurred in Galilee, while another says
that they took place at Jerusalem, they cannot both bo
inspired. They may be both reminiscences of real
events, but they are obviously imperfect and not in-
spired reminiscences, and require to be tested by the
same process of reasoning as we should apply in en-
deavouring to unravel the truth from the confused and
contradictory evidence of conflicting historians.
Inspiration is clearly as much a miracle as any
of the miracles which it relates, and there is only one
way conceivable by which it could be proved, so as to
afford a solid basis for faith and give additional
evidence in support of the supernatural occurrences
said to have taken place ; that would be if it carried
with it internal evidence of its truth. Such evidence
might be afforded in one way, and in one only by
prophecy. If any volume written many centuries ago
contained a clear, definite, and distinct prophecy of
future events, which the writer could by no possibility
have known or conjectured, such a prophecy must
have been dictated by some agency different from
anything known in the ordinary course of nature ;
and future ages, seeing the fulfilment of the prophecy,
could scarcely doubt that the volume which contained
it was inspired. But such a prophecy must be quite
definite, so that there could be no doubt as to whether
it had been fulfilled or not, and must not consist of
vague and mystic utterances, in which future believers
might find meanings, probably never thought of by
MIRACLES. 253
the prophets themselves, confirming the faith which,
from other considerations, they thought it a sin to
disbelieve. Nor must it consist of passionate aspira-
tions for deliverance, and predictions of the downfall
of cruel conquerors, wrung from the hearts of an
oppressed people in times of imminent danger and
crushing despair; because such predictions have been
partly verified and partly transformed in future ages,
so as to receive a new and spiritual significance.
There is one prophecy which affords a test by which
to judge of the value of all others as a proof of inspira-
tion, for it is perfectly distinct and definite, and comes
from the highest authority that of the approaching
end of the world contained in the New Testament.
St. Matthew reports Jesus to have said :
" For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his
Father with his angels ; and then he shall reward every
man according to his works.
" Verily I say unto you, There be some standing
here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the
Son of man coming in his kingdom."
It is certain that all standing there did taste death
without seeing the Son of Man coming with His angels.
The conclusion is irresistible, that either Jesus was
mistaken in speaking these words, or else Matthew was
mistaken in supposing that He spoke them.
St. Paul predicts the same event in still more
definite terms. He says :
" For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord,
that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of
the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
" For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with
254 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall rise
first:
"Then we which are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the
Lord in the air."
Here is the most distinct prediction possible, both of
the event which was to happen and of the limit of time
within which it was to take place; and, to give it
additional force, it is specially declared to be an inspired
prophecy uttered as " the word of God."
The time is distinctly stated to be in the lifetime
of some of the existing generation, including Paul him-
self, who is to be one of the " we which are alive," who
are not to "prevent," or gain any precedence over,
those who have " fallen asleep," or died, in the interval
before Christ's coming. By no possibility can this be
construed to mean a coming at some indefinite future
time, long after all those had died who were to remain
and be caught up alive into the clouds. St. Paul doubt-
less meant what he said, and firmly believed that he
was uttering an inspired prophecy which would certainly
be fulfilled. But it is certain that it was not fulfilled.
Paul and all Paul's contemporaries have been dead for
1,800 years, and the shout, the voice of the Archangel,
and the trump of God, have never been heard. What
is this but an absolutely irresistible demonstration that
prophecy not only fails to prove inspiration, but, on the
contrary, by its failure disproves it, and shows that
St. Matthew and St. Paul were as liable to make
mistakes as any of the hundreds of religious writers
who, in later times, have prophesied the approaching
end of the world or advent of the millennium.
The evidence for miracles, therefore, must be taken
MIRACLES. 255
on its own merits, without aid from any preconceived
theory that it is sinful to scrutinise it because the books
in which it is contained are inspired. Applying to it
impartially the ordinary rules of evidence, let us see
what it amounts to, for that which is really the test
case of all other miracles, that of the Eesurrection.
The witnesses are St. Paul and the authors of
the four Gospels according to St. Matthew, St. Mark,
St. Luke, and St. John. Of these, St. Paul is in some
respects the best. When a witness is called into court
to give evidence, the first question asked is, " Who
are you ? Give your name and description." St. Paul
alone gives a clear answer to this question. There is
no doubt that he was an historical personage, who lived
at the time and in the manner described in the Acts of
the Apostles, and that the Epistle to the Corinthians is
a genuine letter written by him. In this Epistle he
says :
"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I
also received, how that Christ died for our sins accord-
ing to the scriptures ;
" And that he was buried, and that he rose again
o
the third day according to the scriptures :
"And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the
twelve :
"After that, he was seen of above five hundred
brethren at once ; of whom the greater part remain unto
this present, but some are fallen asleep.
" After that, he was seen of James ; then of all the
apostles.
"And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one
born out of due time."
ihis is undoubtedly very distinct evidence that
256 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the appearances described by St. Paul were currently
believed in the circle of early Christians at Jerusalem
within twenty years of their alleged occurrence.
This is strong testimony, but it is weakened by
several considerations. In the first place, we know
that Paul's frame of mind in regard to miracles
was such as to make it certain that he would take
them for granted, and not attempt to examine critically
the evidence on which they were founded, and this
was doubtless the frame of mind of those from whom
he received the accounts. Again, he places all the
appearances on the same footing as that to himself,
which was clearly of the nature of a vision, or strong
internal impression, rather than of an objective reality.
Upon this vital point, whether the appearances which
led to the belief in Christ's resurrection were subjective
or objective that is, were visions or physical realities
Paul's testimony therefore favours the former view,
which is quite consistent with the laws of Nature and
with experience in other cases.
And finally, St. Paul's account of the appearances
is altogether different from those of the other witnesses,
viz., the four Evangelists.
When we come to consider the testimony of the four
Gospels we are confronted by a first difficulty : Who
and what are the witnesses ? What is really known of
them is this : Until the middle of the second century
they are never quoted, and were apparently unknown.
Somewhere about 150 A.D., for the exact date is hotly
disputed, we find the first quotations from them, and
from that time forwards the quotations become more
frequent and their authority increases, until finally they
superseded all the other narratives current in the early
MIRACLES. 257
Churcn, such as the " Gospel of the Hebrews," and the
" Pastor " of Hermas, and are embodied in the canon of
inspired writings of the New Testament. From the
earliest time where there is any distinct recognition of
them, they appear to have been attributed to the
Evangelists whose names they bear, viz., Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John.
When we look to internal evidence to give us some
further clue as to their authorship and date, we at once
meet with a great difficulty. The three Gospels of
St. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called " Synoptic,"
because they give what is substantially the same narra-
tive of the same facts arranged in the same order, and
the same sayings and parables giving the same view of
the character and teaching of Jesus. In whole passages
this resemblance is not merely substantial but literal,
so that we cannot suppose it to arise merely from
following the same oral tradition, and cannot doubt
that the authors must have copied verbatim either from
one another or from some common manuscript. But then
comes in this perplexing circumstance. After passages
of almost literal identity come in statements which are
inconsistent with those of the other Gospels and narra-
tives of important events which are either altogether
wanting or quite differently described in them.
Thus, in the vital matter of the Kesurrection,
Matthew says that the disciples were especially com-
manded to " go into Galilee ; there shall you see
him," and that they did go accordingly, and there
saw Him on a mountain where He had appointed
them to meet Him; while Luke distinctly says that
"he commanded them that they should not depart
from Jerusalem," and describes them as remaining
258 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
there and witnessing a number of appearances, in-
cluding the crowning miracle of the Ascension (the
same, doubtless, as that which St. Paul describes as
having taken place in the presence of more than
500 witnesses), of which Matthew, Mark, and John
apparently know nothing. And yet the final injunc-
tion of Jesus to preach the gospel in His name to
all nations is given in almost the same words in
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, showing that they must
have had before them some common manuscript
describing the course of events after the Crucifixion.
So in minor matters, Mark mentions the cure of
one blind man, Bartimseus, who sat by the roadside
begging ; in Matthew there are two blind men, and
yet the dialogue that passed " What will ye that
I shall do unto you ? " " Lord, that our eyes may
be opened" is almost word for word the same.
It would seem that if they did copy from an original
manuscript, they felt themselves free to take any
liberties with it they liked, in the way of omission
and alteration.
The only light thrown on this perplexing question of
the origin of the Gospels is that afforded by the cele-
brated passage from Papias quoted by Eusebius. Papias
was Bishop of Hieropolis, in Asia Minor, and suffered
martyrdom, when an aged man, about the year 164.
He was therefore brought up in personal contact, not
with the Apostles themselves, but with those who, like
Poly carp and others, had been their immediate disciples,
and had known and conversed with them. In the
passage quoted he states his preference for oral tradition
MIRACLES. 259
over written documents, and his reasons for it. He
says : "If I found some one who had followed the first
presbyters, I asked him what he had heard from them ;
what said Andrew or Peter, or Philip, Thomas, James,
John, or Matthew ; and what said Andrew and John the
Presbyter, who were also disciples of the Lord ; for I
thought I could not derive as much advantage from
books as from the living and abiding oral tradition.''
And he goes on to give his reasons for not attaching
more weight to the two written sources of information
which were evidently best known and looked upon as of
most authority in his time, viz., the Gospels according
to St. Matthew and St. Mark. He says that Matthew
wrote down in Hebrew the Logia, or principal sayings
and discourses of the Lord, " which every one trans-
lated as he best could," evidently implying that these
numerous translations were, in his opinion, loose, in-
accurate, and unreliable. As regards Mark, he says
that " Mark, who had not known the Lord personally,
and had never heard Him, followed Peter later as his
interpreter; and when Peter, in the course of his
teaching, mentioned any of the doings or sayings of
Christ, took care to note them down exactly, but
without any order, and without making a continuous
narrative of the discourses of the Lord, which did not
enter into the intention of the Apostle. Thus Mark
let nothing pass, jotting down a certain number of facts
as Peter mentioned them, but having no other care than
to omit nothing of what he heard, and to change
nothing in it."
This testimony of Papias is very valuable and very
s 2
260 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
instructive. In the first place, it seems conclusive that
the Gospel of St. John was not known to him, and not
received in the early Christian Churches of Asia Minor
as a work of authority. Had it been so received, Papias
must, have known of it, brought up as he was at the feet
of men who had been John's disciples, and bishop of a
Church closely connected with those of which, if there is
any faith in tradition, John had been the patriarch and
principal founder. And if he had known of such a
written Gospel as that of St. John, and believed it to
have been really written by the " beloved disciple," the
Apostle second only, if second, to St. Peter, it is incon-
ceivable that he should have expressed such an un-
qualified preference for oral tradition, and made such an
almost contemptuous reference to written documents*
He must have said : " For, with the exception of the
Gospel of the blessed John, I found that little was to be
got from books."
It seems clear, therefore, that although the Gospel of
St. John may contain genuine reminiscences of an early
date, and possibly some which really came from the
Apostle himself, the work in its present form could not
have been written by him, and must have been compiled
at such a late date as to have been unknown in the
Christian Churches of the East in the time of Papias.
The same remark applies to the Gospel of St. Luke,
of which Papias has equally no knowledge, and which,
from internal evidence, appears to be a later edition of
the two earlier Gospels, or of the original manuscripts
from which they were taken, altered in places to meet
objections of a later date, as where the injunction to
"go into Galilee; there shall ye see him," is changed
MIRACLES. 261
into " as lie spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee/'
obviously to reconcile the statement with the subsequent
belief that the Ascension took place at Jerusalem.
There remain the two original Gospels according to
St. Matthew and St. Mark. Volumes of erudition have
been written to try and reconcile them with one
another, and with the other two Gospels, and to explain
the extraordinary resemblances and no less extraor-
dinary differences. Translations have been heaped on
translations, and successive editions and revisions piled
on one another until the edifice toppled over by its own
weight, but, after all, we have nothing better to rely on
than the statement of Papias, which there is no reason
to mistrust. The basis of the three Synoptic Gospels
was probably a collection of facts and anecdotes written
down in Greek by Mark, and of discourses written in
Hebrew by Matthew. These have been worked up sub-
sequently, at unknown dates, and by unknown authors,
aided possibly by oral traditions, into connected narra-
tives or biographies of the life and teachings of the
Founder of the religion.
Possibly, though by no means certainly, we have
in the present Gospel according to St. Matthew the
nearest approach to the original Logia or doctrinal
discourses, and in the present Mark the nearest approach
to the original notes recorded by Mark from the dicta-
tion of St. Peter.
As regards the Gospel according to St. John, it ap-
pears perfectly clear, both from the silence of Papias, the
absence of any reference to it by other early Christian
Fathers until the end of the second century, and still
more from internal evidence, that it could not possibly
262 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
have been written by the Apostle whose name it bears.
John, as we know from St. Paul's Epistles, was one
of the pillars of the Christian Church of Jerusalem,
whose doctrine was in all respects Hebraic, and who
opposed the larger idea that a man could be a Christian
without first becoming a Jew.
The writer of the Gospel is not only ignorant of
matters which must have been well known to every
Jew, but he is positively prejudiced against Judaism,
and represents it in an unfavourable light. His
narrative of the events of the life of Jesus, including
the miracles, is totally different from that of the
Synoptics, and his view of His character and report
of His speeches wide as the poles asunder. To the
Synoptics Jesus is the man-Messiah foretold by the
prophets; to the author of John He is the "Logos,"
the incarnation of a metaphysical attribute of the
Deity.
The terse and simple clearness of His sayings
recorded by the first, is exchanged in the latter for
an involved and cumbrous phraseology reminding one
of a Papal Encyclical. The amiability and " sweet
reasonableness" of the Jesus of the Synoptics, have
become acrimonious unreasonableness and egotistical
self-glorification in many of the long harangues which
are introduced on the most unlikely occasions in the
fourth Gospel.
It is evident, therefore, that this Gospel can afford
no aid towards a critical examination of contemporary
evidence, and that for this we must look almost
entirely to such remains of early records as are
preserved in the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark,.
MIRACLES. 263
and St. Luke. With these data, how does the evidence
stand as regards the miracles of the Resurrection
which are the test cases of all alleged miracles ?
It is important to observe that the oldest manu-
scripts of the Gospel of St. Mark stop at the 8th
verse of the last chapter, and that the subsequent
verses, 9 20, have every appearance of being a later
addition made to reconcile this Gospel better with
the prevailing belief and with the other Gospels.
Commentators discover a difference in the style and
language, and the appearances are described in vague
and general language, very different from the distinct
details given of them in the other Gospels, and
inconsistent with the formal statement twice repeated
in the genuine Mark that they were to take place
in Galilee. Moreover, if these verses were really in
the original Gospel, it is inconceivable how they should
have dropped out in the oldest manuscripts, while
it is perfectly conceivable how they should have been
added at a later period, when the Fathers of the
Church began to occupy themselves with the task of
harmonising the different Gospels.
But if the genuine Mark really terminated with the
8th verse, not only is there no confirmation of the
four miraculous appearances, including the Ascension,
recorded by St. Paul as being currently believed by the
early Christians within twenty years of their occurrence,
but there is positively no mention of any appearance at
all. A young man, clothed in white, tells three women
who went to the tomb that Jesus is risen, and that they
were to tell His disciples and Peter that they would see
Him in Galilee ; an injunction which was not carried
264 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
out, for the women "were afraid, neither said they
anything to any man."
In St. Matthew' the young man has become an
angel, and as the women return from the tomb Jesus
met them and said, "All hail," repeating the injunction
to tell the disciples to go into Galilee, where the Eleven
accordingly went into a mountain where Jesus had
appointed them, and "when they saw him they
worshipped him : but some doubted." This is the
whole of Matthew's testimony.
St. Luke, again, in his Gospel and Acts amplifies
the miraculous appearances almost up to the extent
described by St. Paul, though with considerable differ-
ences both of addition and omission. The three women
become a number of women ; the one angel or young
man in shining clothes, two ; the appearance to the
women disappears ; Peter is mentioned as running to
the sepulchre but departing without seeing anything
special except that the body had been removed ; the first
appearance recorded is that to the two disciples walking
from Emmaus, who knew Him not until their eyes were
opened by the breaking of bread, when He vanished ;
the next appearance is to the Eleven sitting at meat
with closed doors; and finally there is the crowning
miracle of the Ascension, stated somewhat vaguely in
the Gospel, but with more detail in the Acts, describing
how He was taken up to heaven and received in a
cloud, in the sight of numerous witnesses. This is
probably the same miracle as that mentioned by
St. Paul as having occurred in the presence of " more
than five hundred brethren at once, of whom the
greater part remain alive unto this present ; " though
he mentions two subsequent appearances one to
MIRACLES. 265
James and a second to all the Apostles of which no
trace is found in any other canonical narrative. It is
to be noted that all St. Luke's miracles are expressly
stated to have occurred at Jerusalem, where Jesus
had commanded His disciples to remain, and are,
therefore, in direct contradiction with the statements
of Matthew and Mark, that whatever occurred was in
Galilee, where the disciples were expressly enjoined to go.
When we come to St. John, we find the first
part of the narrative of the other Gospels repeated
with several variations and a great many additional
details. Mary Magdalene is alone and finds the
stone removed from the sepulchre. She tells Peter
and John, who run together to the tomb ; John out-
runs Peter, but Peter first enters and sees the napkin
and linen grave-clothes, but nothing miraculous, and
they return to their homes. Mary remains weeping
and sees, first two angels, and then Jesus himself,
whom she at first does not recognise and mistakes
for the gardener. The walk to Emmaus is not men-
tioned, and the next appearance is to the disciples
sitting with closed doors. Another takes place after
eight days, for the purpose of convincing Thomas
of the reality of the resurrection in the actual body,
and here apparently the narrative closes with the
appropriate ending, " That these things are written
that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God ; and that believing ye might have life through his
name." But a supplementary chapter is added, describing
a miraculous draught of fishes and appearance to Peter,
John, and five other disciples at the Sea of Tiberias in
Galilee, in which the command is given to Peter to
" Feed my sheep," and an explanation is introduced of
266 MODERN SCIENCE AM) MODERN THOUGHT.
what was doubtless a sore perplexity to the early Chris-
tian world, the death of St. John before the coming of
the Messiah.
These are the depositions of the five witnesses,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, in which the
verdict " proven " or " not proven " must rest in regard
to the issue " miracle " or " no miracle."
The mere statement of them is enough to show how
insufficient they are to establish any ordinary fact, to-
say nothing of a fact so entirely opposed to all experi-
ence as the return to life of one who had really died.
Suppose it were a question of proving the signature of
a will, what chance would a plaintiff have of obtaining
a verdict who produced five witnesses, four of whom
could give no certain account of themselves, while the
fifth spoke only from hearsay, and the details to which
they deposed were hopelessly inconsistent with one
another as regards time, place, and other particulars ?
The account of the Ascension brings this contradiction
into the most glaring light. According to St. Luke
and St. Paul this miracle took place at Jerusalem, in
the presence of a large number, St. Paul says over 500
persons, before whose eyes Jesus was lifted up in the
body into the clouds, and more than half, or over 250
of these witnesses, remained alive for at least twenty
years afterwards to testify to the fact. Consider what
this implies. Such an event occurring publicly in the
presence of 500 witnesses is not like an appearance to a
few chosen disciples in a room with closed doors : it
must have been the talk of all Jerusalem.
The prophet who had shortly before entered the
city in triumphal procession amidst the acclamations
of the multitude, and who, a few days afterwards, by
MIRACLES. 267
some sudden revolution of popular feeling, had become
the object of mob-hatred ; who had been solemnly tried,
condemned, and executed ; that this prophet had been
restored to life and visibly translated in the body to
heaven in the presence of more than 500 witnesses, must
inevitably have caused an immense sensation. How-
ever prone the age might be to believe in miracles, such
a miracle as this must have startled every one. The
most incredulous must have been converted ; the High
Priest and Pharisees must, in self-defence, have insti-
tuted a rigid inquiry ; the Proconsul must have reported
to Rome ; Josephus, who, not many years afterwards,
wrote the annals of the Jews during this period with
considerable detail, must have known of the occurrence
and mentioned it.
And above all, Matthew, Mark, and John must
have been aware of the occurrence ; and in all pro-
bability, Matthew, John, and Peter, from whom
Mark derived his information, must have been among
the 500 eye-witnesses. How then is it possible that,
if the event really occurred, they not only should not
have mentioned it, but partly by their silence, and
partly by their statement that they went into Galilee,
have virtually contradicted it. The Ascension, if true,,
was a capital fact, not only crowning and completing
the drama of Christ's life which they were narrating
with its most triumphant and appropriate ending, but
confirming, in the strongest possible manner, the
doctrine for which they were contending, that He
was not an ordinary man or ordinary prophet, but
the Messiah, the Son of God, who had redeemed
the world from its original curse and conquered sin
and death. One might as well suppose that any one
268 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
writing the life of Wellington would omit the Battle
of Waterloo as that any one writing the life of
Christ would knowingly and wilfully omit all men-
tion of the Ascension. It must be evident that
whoever wrote the original manuscripts from which
the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John were com-
piled, must either never have heard of the Ascension,
or having heard of it did not believe it to be true.
This must also apply to the other miraculous appear-
ances said to have occurred at Jerusalem. How was
it possible for writers who knew of them to make
no mention of them, and virtually contradict them
by asserting that they did not remain at Jerusalem,
but went to Galilee in obedience to a command to
that effect, and that the final parting of Jesus from
His disciples took place there ?
The most unaccountable fact is the total silence
of Mark, who was nearest the fountain-head if he
derived his information from St. Peter, as to these
miraculous appearances. If his Gospel ended with
verse 8 of chapter xvi., as the oldest manuscripts
and the internal evidence of the postscripts afterwards
added appear to prove, there is absolutely no state-
ment of any such appearance at all. Nothing is said
but that three women found the tomb empty and
saw a young man clothed in white, who told them
that Jesus had risen and gone into Galilee. Now,
if there is one fact more certain than another about
miraculous legends, it is that as long as they have
any vitality at all, they increase and multiply
and do not dwindle and diminish. AVe have an
excellent example of this in the way in which a
whole cycle of miracles grew up in a short time
MIRACLES. 269
about the central fact of the martyrdom of St. Thomas
a Becket.
If, therefore, Matthew and Mark knew nothing of
the series of miracles, which from St. Paul's statement
we must assume to have been currently believed by
the early Christians twenty years after the death of
Christ, the only possible explanation is that their
Gospels were compiled from narratives which had been
written at a still earlier date, before these miracles
had been heard of.
We must suppose that Mark really wrote down what
he heard from Peter, and that Peter, being a truthful
man, though he probably had a sincere general belief
that Christ had risen, declined to state facts which he
knew had never occurred. This is in entire accordance
with what we find in the whole history of ecclesiastical
miracles, from those recorded in Scripture down to those
of St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, and of
St. Francis Xavier in the sixteenth. Innumerable as
are the accounts of miracles said to have been wrought
by relics or by other holy persons, there is no instance
of any statement by any credible person that he had
himself worked a real miracle. St. Augustine describes
in detail many wonderful miracles, including resurrec-
tions from the dead, which he said had been wrought
to his own knowledge, within his own diocese of Hippo,
by the relics of the martyr Stephen. In fact, he says
that the number of miracles thus wrought within the
last two years since when these relics had been at Hippo,
was at least seventy. This testimony is far more
precise than any for the Gospel miracles, for it comes
from a well-known man of high character, who was on
the spot at the time, and speaks of these and many
270 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
other miracles having occurred to his own knowledge.
But he never asserts that he himself had ever wrought
a miracle.
In like manner Paulinus relates many miracles of
his master, St. Ambrose, including one of raising the
dead ; but Ambrose himself never asserts that he
performed a miracle. Neither does St. Francis of Assisi,
or any of the 25,000 saints of 'the Roman calendar to
whom miracles are attributed.
Even Jesus himself seems, on several occasions, to
have disclaimed the power of working miracles, as when
He refused to comply with the perfectly reasonable
request of the Jews to attest His Messiahship by a sign,
if He wished them to believe in it.
There is every reason, therefore, to believe that
when we find narratives making no mention of im-
portant miracles which were afterwards commonly
received, they must be taken from records of an earlier
date, and proceeding directly from those who, if the
miracles were true, would have been the principal
eye-witnesses to vouch for them. But, if this be so,
how near to the fountain-head do these narratives carry
us ? We lose the miracles, but in compensation we get
what may be considered fresh and lively narratives of
the life and conversation of Jesus, and confirmation
both of His being an historical personage, and of the
many anecdotes and sayings which depict His character,
and bring Him before us as He really lived. The
mythical theory cannot stand which found in every
saying and action an ex post facto attempt to show that
He fulfilled prophecies and realised Messianic expecta-
tions. We can see Him walking through the fields on
a Sunday afternoon with His disciples, plucking ears
MIRACLES. 271
of corn, and rebuking the Pharisees for their puritanical
adherence to the letter of the observance of the Sabbath ;
we can see Him taking little children in His arms, and
talking familiarly at the well with the woman of
Samaria; we can hear Him preaching the Sermon on
the Mount, and dropping parables from His mouth
like precious pearls of instruction in love, charity, and
all Christian virtues. We can sympathise with the
agony in the garden as with a real scene, and hear the
despairing cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me ? "
It seems to me that faith in the reality of scenes
like these is worth a good deal of faith in the
metaphysical conundrums of the Athanasian Creed,
or in the actual occurrence of incredible miracles.
Another argument in favour of the early date and
genuine character of the primitive records which
have been worked up in the Synoptic Gospels, is
afforded by the sayings attributed to Jesus. It is
impossible to imagine that these could be the in-
vention of a later age, when theological questions
of faith and doctrine had absorbed almost the entire
attention of the Christian world. We have already
seen how wide is the difference, both as regards style
and phase of thought, between the discourses reported
in the fourth Gospel and those of the Synoptics.
No one writing in the second or towards the end of
the first century, or even earlier in the religious
atmosphere of St. Paul's Epistles, could have com-
posed the Sermon on the Mount or the Lord's Prayer.
The parables and maxims, instead of teaching nothing
but a pure and sublime morality in simple language,
must have contained references to the doctrine of the
272 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Logos, and the disputes between the Jewish and the
Gentile Christians. Even if these discourses had passed
long through the fluctuating medium of oral tradition,
they must, when finally reduced to writing, have
shown many traces of the theological questions which
agitated the Christian world. The only explanation
is that Apostles like St. Matthew, and St. Peter
through Mark, really recorded these sayings in writing
while they were fresh in memory, and that their
authority secured them . from adulteration.
At the same time it must be borne in mind that
while portions of the original narrative appear to carry
us back very near to the fountain-head, a large part
of the Gospels in their present form is evidently of
much later date and of uncertain origin. It is clear
that Papias, writing about the year 150, knew nothing
of the Gospels of Luke and John, and nothing of those
of Matthew and Mark in their present form. The
discourses of Matthew and the disconnected notes of
Mark, to which he refers, were something very different
from the complete histories of the life and teaching of
Jesus contained in the present Gospels. It is equally
clear that Justin Martyr and Hegesippus, who wrote
about the middle of the second century, and made
frequent quotations of the sayings and doings of the
Lord, made them, not from the present canonical
Gospels, but from other sources relating the same
things in different order and different language. "A
Gospel according to the Hebrews" and "Memoirs of
the Apostles " seem to have been the principal sources
from which they quoted.
It is evident however, that during the first two
centuries there were a great number of so-called
MIRACLES. 273
Gospels and Apostolic writings floating about in the
Christian world along with oral traditions. The author
of Luke tells us this expressly, and later writers refer
to a number of works now unknown or classed as
apocryphal, and complain of forged Gospels circulated
by heretics. None of these writings, however, seem
to have had any peculiar authority or been considered
as inspired Scripture, which term is exclusively con-
fined to the Old Testament, until the middle of the
second century.
At length, by a sort of law of the survival of the
fittest, the present Gospels acquired an increasing
authority and superseded the other works which had
competed with them ; but the selection, was deter-
mined to a great extent, not by those principles of
criticism which would now be applied to historical
records, but by doctrinal considerations of the support
they gave to prevalent opinions. In other words, ortho-
doxy and not authenticity was the test applied, and
it is probable that no Christian Father of the second or
third century would have hesitated to reject an early
manuscript traceable very clearly to an Apostle, in
favour of a later compilation of doubtful origin, if the
former contained passages which seemed to favour
heretical views, while the latter omitted those passages,
or altered them in a sense favourable to orthodoxy.
To sum up the matter, it appears that while the
antecedent improbability of miracles has been enor-
mously increased by the constant and concurrent
proofs of the permanence of the laws of Nature, the
evidence for them when dispassionately examined, is
altogether insufficient to establish even an ordinary
fact.
T
CHAPTER IX.
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES.
Practical and Theoretical Christianity Example and Teaching of
Christ Christian Dogma Moral Objections Inconsistent with
Facts Must be accepted as Parables Fall and Eedemption
Old Creeds must be Transformed or Die Mahometanisui
Decay of Faith Balance of Advantages Religious "Wars and
Persecutions Intolerance Sacrifice Prayer Absence of
Theology in Synoptic Gospels Opposite Pole to Christianity
Courage and Self-reliance Belief in God and a Future Life
Based mainly on Christianity Science gives no Answer Nor
Metaphysics So-called Intuitions Development of Idea of
God Best Proof afforded by Christianity Evolution is Trans-
forming it Reconciliation of Religion and Science.
CAN Christianity continue to exist without miracles ?
To answer this question we must distinguish be-
tween practical and theoretical Christianity. The
essence of practical Christianity consists in such a
genuine acceptance of its moral teaching, and love and
reverence for the life and character of its Founder,
as may influence conduct, and be a guide and support
in life. Theoretical Christianity is that which professes
to teach a complete theory of the creation of the world
and man, of the relations between man and his Creator,
and of his position and destiny in a future state of
existence.
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 275
The former needs no miracles. The Sermon on the
Mount, and St. Paul's description of Christian charity,
carry their own proof with them, and such parables as
that of the Good Samaritan require no support, either
from historical evidence or from supernatural signs, to
come home to every heart whether in the first or in the
nineteenth century. The fact that the son of a Jewish
mechanic, born in a small town of an obscure province,
without any special aid from position, education, or
other outward circumstance, succeeded, by the sheer
force of the purity and loveliness of his life and teach-
ing, in captivating all hearts and founding a religion
which for nineteen centuries has been the main civilis-
ing influence of the world and the faith of its noblest
men and noblest races ; this fact, I say, is of itself so
admirable and wonderful as not to require the aid of
vulgar miracles and metaphysical puzzles in order to be
recognised as worthy of the highest reverence. And
when such a life was crowned by a death which remains
the highest type of what is noblest in man, self-sacrifice
in the cause of truth and for the good of others, we may
well call it divine, and not quarrel with any language or
any forms of worship which tend to keep it in view and
hold it up to the world as an inducement to a higher life.
Miracles are not only unnecessary for a faith of this
description, but are a positive hindrance to it. To put
it at the lowest, miracles, in an age which has learned
the laws of Nature, must always be open to grave doubts,
and thus throw doubt on the reliability of the narratives
which are supposed to depend on them. Moreover, the
touching beauty and force of example of the life of
Jesus are almost lost if He is evaporated into a sort
of supernatural being, totally unlike any conceivable
T 2
276 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
member of the human family. We may strive to
model our conduct at a humble distance on that of
the man Jesus, the carpenter's son, whose father and
mother, brothers and sisters, were familiar figures in
the streets of Nazareth, but hardly on that of a
" Logos," the incarnation of a metaphysical conception
of an attribute of the Deity, who existed before all worlds
and by whom all things were made.
But, on the other hand, miracles are indispensable
for the dogma, or theoretical side of Christian theology.
Let us consider frankly what this dogma is, and how
far it is true that is, consistent or inconsistent with
known and indisputable facts.
The Christian dogma cannot be better stated than
in the words of St. Paul, who was its first inventor, or,
at any rate, the first by whom it was elaborated into a
complete theory.
" For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive."
This may be expanded into the following propositions :
1. That the Old Testament is miraculously inspired,
and contains a literally true account of the creation of
the world and of man.
2. That, in accordance with this account, the mate-
rial universe, earth, sun, moon, and stars, and all
living things on the earth and in the seas, were created
in six days, after which God rested on the seventh day.
3. That the first man, Adam, was created in the
image of God and after His own likeness, and placed,
with the first woman, Eve, in the Garden of Eden,
where they lived for a time in a siate of innocence, and
holding familiar converse with God.
4. That by an act of disobedience they fell from this
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIEACLES. 277
high state, were banished from the Garden, and sin and
death were inflicted as a penalty on them and their
descendants.
5. That after long ages, during which mankind
remained under this curse, God sent His Son, who
assumed human form, and by His sacrifice on the cross
appeased God's anger, removed the curse, and destroyed
the last enemy, death, giving a glorious resurrection
and immortal life to those who believed on Him.
This theory is a complete one, which hangs together
in all its parts, and of which no link can be displaced
without affecting the others. It is the theory which
has been accepted by the Christian world since its first
promulgation ; and, although expounded with meta-
physical refinements in the Athanasian Creed, and set
forth with all the gorgeous surroundings of poetical
imagination in Milton's " Paradise Lost," it remains in
substance St. Paul's theory, that " as in Adam all die,
even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
It is obvious that this theory is open to grave
objections on moral grounds. It is more in the cha-
racter of a jealous Oriental despot than of a loving
and merciful Father, to inflict such a punishment on
hundreds of millions of unoffending creatures for an
act of disobedience on the part of a remote ancestor.
And it is still more inconsistent with our modern
ideas of justice and humanity to require the vicarious
sacrifice of an only Son as the condition of forgiving the
offence and removing the curse.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that, notwith-
standing these objections, and harsh as the theory is,
it has had a wonderful attraction for many of the
highest intellects and noblest nations of the human race.
278 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
It was the creed of Luther, Cromwell, and Milton,
and the inspiring spirit of Scotch Presbyterianism and
English Puritanism. It has inspired great men and
great deeds, and although responsible for a good deal
of persecution and fanaticism, it must always be spoken
of with respect, as a creed which has had a powerful
effect in raising men's minds from lower to higher
things, and has on the whole done good work in its
time.
But the question of its continuance as a creed
which it is possible for sincere men to believe, as
literally and historically true, depends not on wishes
and feelings, or on reverence for the past, but on hard
facts. Is it or is it not consistent with what are
now known to be the real truths respecting the
constitution of the universe and the origin of life and
of man ?
To state this question is to answer it. There is
hardly one of the facts shown in the preceding chapters
to be the undoubted results of modern science which
does not shatter to pieces the whole fabric. It is
as certain as that two and two make four that the
world was not created in the manner described in
Genesis ; that the sun, moon, and stars are not lights
placed in the firmament or solid crystal vault of
heaven to give light upon the earth ; that animals were
not all created in one or two days, and spread over the
earth from a common centre in Armenia, after having
been shut up in pairs for forty days in an ark,
during a universal deluge. And finally, that man is
not descended from an Adam created quite recently in
God's image, and who fell from a high state by an act
of disobedience, but from a long series of Palaeolithic
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 279
ancestors, extending back certainly into the Glacial
and probably into the Tertiary period, who have not
fallen but progressed, and by a slow and painful process
of evolution have gradually developed intelligence,
language, arts, and civilisation, from the very rudest
and most animal-like beginnings.
Belief in inspiration, the very key-stone of the
system, becomes impossible when it is shown that
the accounts given of such important matters in the
writings professing to be inspired are manifestly untrue ;
and when the ordinary rules of criticism are brought to
bear upon these writings it is at once seen that they
are compilations of different ages from various and
uncertain sources.
The improbability of miracles is enormously in-
creased by the proof of the uniform operation of
natural law throughout the vast domains of space,
time, matter, and life ; and where the supernatural
was formerly considered to be a matter of every-day
occurrence, it has vanished step by step, until only
the last vestige of it is left in a possible belief in
some of the more important and impressive miracles
of the Christian dispensation. Even this faint belief
is manifestly founded more on reverence for tradition,
and love of the religion which the miracles are sup-
posed to support, than on any dispassionate view of
the evidence on which they rest. Tried by the
ordinary rules of evidence, it is apparent that it is
contradictory and uncertain, and not such as would
be sufficient to establish in a court of law any ordinary
fact, such as the execution of a deed. It is apparent
also that the evidence for the most crucial and impor-
tant of all miracles, that of the Ascension, is not
280 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
nearly so precise and cogent as that for a number of
early Christian and mediaeval miracles which we reject
without hesitation.
What follows? Must we reject these venerable
traditions as old wives' fables ? I answer, No ; but
we must accept them as parables.
A great deal of the best teaching of the New Testa-
ment is conveyed in the form of parables. Take for
instance that of Lazarus and Dives. No one supposes
that this is an historical narrative ; that this particular
Jew, out of the millions of poor and good Jews who-
have lived and died, was actually taken up into
Abraham's bosom ; and that the remarkable dialogue
across the gulf is a literal transcript of an actual con-
versation. But the moral is taught for all time, that
it is bad for the rich to indulge in selfish luxury and take
no thought of the mass of poverty and misery weltering
around them; and that the condition of the poorest
of the poor, borne with piety and resignation, may
really be better and higher than that of the selfish rich.
Apply the same principle to the dogma of the fall and
redemption, and we may see in it a parable of the
NOTE. Since writing this chapter, I have seen with much pleasure
an article entitled " Christmas," by Matthew Arnold, in a recent
number of the Contemporary Review, which takes exactly the same
view of the allegorical or parabolic sense of miraculous narratives.
He takes the instance of the Immaculate Conception and Birth of the-
Saviour, and shows that it was a myth which grew up, almost inevi-
tably, from the strong impression made on the minds of early Christiana
by the idea of purity set forth by the life and teaching of Jesus, which,
stood in such striking contrast with the corruption of the heathen
world. The same idea led to a similar myth in the case of Gautama,
the pure and self-sacrificing founder of the Buddhist religion, and it
teaches an eternal truth to all who can look below the letter to the
spirit of the parable.
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 281
highest meaning. Every one of us must be conscious
of having fallen by yielding to temptation and giving
way to animal passions. We may have fallen so low
that without some redemption, or friendly influence
from without, we cannot raise ourselves from the lower
level and regain our lost place. We can see that there
are thousands round us, who, from poverty or other
adverse circumstances, have got immersed in evil con-
ditions from which it is hopeless to extricate them-
selves without friendly aid. We can see also that
there is nothing more noble and divine than to make
sacrifices in order to be the redeemer who saves as
many souls as possible from this entanglement of evil,
and gives them a chance of rising into a happier
and better life. We may feel this, and use as an
incentive to attempt some humble imitation of it,
the parable which presents it to us in its highest
aspect, and has been the efficient means of stimulating
so many good men to do good works. This is surely
better than paltering with the truth, and enervating
our conscience and intelligence by professing to believe
in the literal historical accuracy of things which have
become incredible to all thinking and educated minds.
Of course, I do not mean that these dogmas and
miraculous narratives were intended by the original
writers to be parables, but only that they have be
come so to us ; and the alternative lies between
rejecting them altogether or accepting them as having
an allegorical meaning or latent truth.
At any rate, whether we like it or not, this is
what we shall have to do, for the conclusions of
science are irresistible, and old forms of faith, however
venerable and however endeared by a thousand asso-
"282 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
ciations, have no more chance in a collision with
science than George Stephenson's cow had if it stood
on the rails and tried to stop the progress of a loco-
motive. It is not enough to say that a thing is
lovely and amiable, and that its loss will leave a
blank, to ensure its continuance. The law of Nature
is progress and not happiness. Stars, suns, planets,
human individuals, and human races have their periods
of youth, maturity, and decay, and are continually
being transformed into new phases.
The old order changes, giving place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways.
Childhood, with its innocence and engaging ways,
passes into the sterner and more prosaic attributes
of the grown-up man ; fancy decays as reason ripens;
simple faith is replaced by larger knowledge ; and
the smooth brow of infancy is often marred by
wrinkles of strife and suffering, impressed during
the more or less successful struggle in the battle of
life ; and yet we could not if we would, and would
not if we could, arrest the progress of Nature,
and say that the child shall never grow into a man.
Such also is the fate of creeds. They must be
transformed or die ; and the best test of the vitality and
intrinsic truth of a religion is just that capacity for
transformation against which theologians exclaim as
sacrilege. In this respect Christianity has a great
advantage over other religions. The pious souls who
are shocked at any denial of the inspiration of Scripture
may console themselves by considering what has been
the fate of other religions which have been imprisoned
too closely within the limits of a sacred book. Mahome-
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 283
tanism, the religion of one God and a succession of
prophets or great men who have taught his doctrines,
is not in theory inconsistent with progress and civilisa-
tion. But Mahomet unfortunately wrote a book, the
Koran, which, while it contained much that to the Arab
mind was sublime and beautiful, was of necessity im-
pregnated with the ideas of the age in which he lived ;
an age of much ignorance and superstition, of imperfect
social arrangements, and of barbarous and ferocious
manners. This book came to be accepted as the inspired
word of Allah, which it was impious to question, to
which nothing could be added, and from which nothing
could be taken away. Hence Mahometanism has be-
come what we see it a narrow and fanatical creed,
incompatible with progress and free thought, and
stereotyping institutions, such as polygamy and slavery,
which are fatal to any advance towards a higher civili-
sation. From this fate Christianity has been saved by
the fortunate circumstance that its sacred books are
collections of a variety of writings of different authors
and different ages, reflecting such various and often
conflicting phases of thought and belief that of neces-
sity their interpretation was very elastic, and lent itself
readily to the changes required by the spirit of suc-
cessive periods and of different nationalities. Wherever
for a time a system of infallibility was enforced, as in
Spain by the Inquisition, Christianity became cruel,
barbarous, unprogressive, and really very little better
than the religion of Islam, to which it closely approxi-
mated. Decay of faith, therefore, in dogmatic Christianity
is, like other great revolutions of thought, a question,
not of absolute gain or absolute loss, but of a balance
between conflicting advantages and disadvantages.
284 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
The loss is evident enough, and is set forth with
much eloquence and force by the few remaining
champions of orthodoxy. The simple, undoubting
faith, which has been for ages the support and conso-
lation of a large portion of mankind, especially of the
weak, the humble, and the unlearned, who form an
immense majority, cannot disappear without a painful
wrench, and leaving, for a time, a great blank behind.
But, on the other hand, there are a great many real and
important advantages which have to be set on the credit-
side of the account.
Intolerance is the shadow which dogs the footsteps
of faith, and in many cases more than obscures its
benefits. When we consider the mass of human misery
which has been occasioned by religious wars and perse-
cutions ; the ruthless extirpation of the Albigenses ; the
slaughter of the saints
whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ;
the Thirty Years' War, which desolated Germany and
threw civilisation back for a century ; the civil wars-
of France ; the Spanish Inquisition ; and a thousand
other instances of the baleful effects of religious
hatreds, we can almost sympathise with those who
pronounce religion an invention of priests for the
promotion of evil, and exclaim with the Roman poet :
Eeligio tantum potuit suadere malorum.
To this must be added the misery caused by the
belief in demonology and witchcraft, and the tortures
inflicted on innumerable innocent victims by prejudices
inspired by a literal construction of passages of the Old
Testament. Nor is it a small matter to have escaped
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 285
from the nightmare dreams which must have oppressed
so many minds, especially of the young and imaginative,
in an age when such a book as Dante's " Inferno "
could be written, and accepted as a gleam of prophetic
insight into the horrors of the invisible world.
Even in more recent and humane times, intolerance
remained as a general mode of thought, inspiring hatred
of those whose form of belief differed from that which
was generally adopted. It is only within the present
generation that true tolerance has come to be estab-
lished as the law of modern thought, and men have
learned to live together and love one another, without
reference to intellectual differences of creed and doctrine.
Surely this is a great advantage, and we are nearer to
the true spirit of Christianity than in the days when a
Birmingham mob sacked Priestley's house because he
professed his belief in the saying of Jesus, that " my
Father is greater than I." "We may read the Athanasian
Creed less, but we practise Christian charity more, in
the present than in any former age.
Another great advantage is that as freer thought has
been brought to bear on the mysteries of religion, we
have purged off the grosser ideas and arrived at much
more enlarged and spiritual conceptions. Take, for
instance, prayer and sacrifice. In its crude form,
sacrifice was a sort of bargain struck with an unseen
Power, by which we hoped to obtain some favour which
we greatly desired, in exchange for giving up something
which we greatly valued. This is the form in which
sacrifice appears in the Old Testament, in Abraham's
offer to kill his son Isaac, and in the record of the
Moabitish stone, how the king, when besieged in his
capital, sacrificed his son, and by so doing obtained the
286 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
favour of his God and defeated his enemies. In
another form, sacrifice was considered as a propitiation
to appease the anger of an offended Deity, pictured as a
sort of Oriental despot, who must have some one for a
victim, and was not particular who it might be ; and
even in the Christian dogma the merit of the sacrifice
is very closely analogous to that of the Mayor of Calais
who went out to King Edward with a halter round his
neck, ready to be hanged, so that he might save the
lives of his fellow- citizens.
Nowadays, no one thinks of sacrifice as anything
but the sacrifice of lower instincts and passing tempta-
tions to a higher ideal, and the voluntary renunciation
of selfish ease and pleasure for the good of others.
In like manner, the original idea of prayer was
that of obtaining a request by flattery or importunity,
just as a courtier might do at the court of some
earthly king of kings or sultan. It is now spiritualised
into the conception that its effect is entirely subjective ;
that it never really obtains any reversal of the laws
of Nature, but that it often exalts the mind to a frame
in which things otherwise impossible become possible.
A German regiment marches to battle singing Luther's
grand old hymn
Em feste- Burg ist unser Gott.
Half the regiment may be freethinkers, but it is never-
theless true that they are more likely to stand firm
and win the victory if they chant the hymn, than
if they march in silence.
Taking all these things into account, there is no
reason to despair because the irresistible progress of science
has made us
Falter where we firmly trod,
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 287
and changed a great deal of what was once fixed and
certain faith into vague aspirations and less definite,
though larger and more spiritual, conceptions.
There is next to no theology in the Christianity
of the Synoptic Gospels, which give us by far the
nearest and most authentic record of what its Founder
actually taught ; and it may be that in sloughing off"
the mythical legends and metaphysical dogmas which
have grown up around it, we shall be, in reality, not
banishing the Christian religion from the world, but
making it revert to its more simple and spiritual
ancestral type, in which form all that is really valu-
able in its pure and elevated morality may be incor-
porated more readily with practical life, and assimilated
without difficulty with the progressive evolution of
modern thought and science.
At the same time we must bear in mind that even
Christianity in its purest form does not escape from
the universal law of polarity, and presents, not the
whole truth, but only one very important side of
truth. It is the religion of love, purity, gentleness,
and charity; important virtues, but not all that con-
stitute the perfection of men or nations. In fact, if
carried to the "falsehood of extremes," its very virtues
become vices. It would not work in practice, if smitten
on one cheek to turn the other; and any one who
attempted to follow literally the precept of " taking no-
thought for the morrow," and trusting to be fed like
the sparrows, would, in modern society, come dan-
gerously near being what we call in Scotland a " ne'er-
do-weel," that is to say, a soft, molluscous sort of
creature, who is a burden on his friends, and ends his
days as a pensioner on charity or a writer of begging
288 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
letters. The foremost men and foremost races of
modern society are precisely those who act on the
opposite principle, and do look ahead and steer wisely
and boldly amidst dangers and difficulties for distant
and definite ends.
In one of the old Norse Saga there is a saying which
has always impressed me greatly. An aged warrior,
when asked what he thought of the new religion,
replied : " I have heard a great deal of talk of the old
Odin and of the new Christ, but whenever things
have come to a real pinch, I have always found that
my surest trust was in my own right arm and good
sword."
This strong self-reliance and hardy courage to do
or to endure is, beyond all doubt, the solid rock
foundation upon which the manly character of indi-
viduals and of nations must be built up. The softer
virtues and graces come afterwards, which are to refine
and adorn, and convert the man into the gentle man,
or one of Nature's true gentlemen. But without the
harder gifts of courage and self-help, a man is not a
man, and the raw material is not there out of which
to fashion a Gordon or Christian hero.
This may be called the Norse pole as contrasted
with the pole of Christianity, and the perfect man is
he who can stand firmly between the two opposites,
controlling both and being controlled by neither.
While I have thought it right, however, to call
attention to this counter-pole to Christianity, I should
add that with the strong, practical Teutonic races
there is not much danger of erring on the side of too
much weakness, humility, or asceticism, and therefore
the influence of the Christian religion makes mainly for
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 289
good. Modern civilisation has been formed, to a great
extent, by grafting the gentler virtues of the Gospel
on the robust primitive stock of the barbarians who
overthrew Rome. It is the example and teaching of
Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, which have
been mainly instrumental in diffusing ideas of divine
love, charity, and purity throughout the world, and
humanising the iron-clad and iron-souled warriors,
whose trust was in their stout hearts and strong right
arms, and who knew no law but
The good old plan,
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can.
In another respect it is most important that the
world should, as far and as long as possible, hold on
to Christianity and struggle to save its essential spirit
from the shipwreck of its theology, and the sheer
impossibility of believing in the literal and historical
truth of many of its dogmas.
The highest and most consoling beliefs of the human
mind are to a great extent bound up with the Christian
religion. If we ask ourselves frankly how much, apart
from this religion, would remain of faith in a God and
in a future state of existence, the answer must be,
very little. Science traces everything back to primeval
atoms and germs, and there it leaves us. How came
these atoms and energies there, from which this
wonderful universe of worlds has been evolved by
inevitable laws ? What are they in their essence, and
what do they mean ? The only answer is, it is un-
knowable. It is " behind the veil," and may be any-
thing. Spirit may be matter, matter may be spirit.
290 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
We have no faculties by which we can even form a
conception, from any discoveries of the telescope or
microscope, from any experiments in the laboratory, or
from any facts susceptible of real human knowledge,
of what may be the first cause underlying all these
phenomena.
In like manner we can already to a great extent,
and probably in a short time shall be able to the
fullest extent, to trace the whole development of life
from the lowest to the highest ; from protoplasm,
through monera, infusoria, mollusca, vertebrata, fish,
reptile, and mammal, up to man and the individual
man from the microscopic egg, through the various
stages of its evolution up to birth, childhood, maturity,
decline, and death. We can trace also the development
of the human race through enormous periods of time,
from the rudest beginnings up to its present level of
civilisation, and show how arts, languages, morals, and
religions have been evolved gradually by natural laws
from primitive elements, many of which are common
in their ultimate form to man and the animal creation.
But here also science stops. Science can give no
account of how these germs and nucleated cells, en-
dowed with these marvellous capacities for evolution,
came into existence or got their intrinsic powers. Nor
can science enable us to form the remotest conception
of what will become of life, consciousness, and con-
science, when the material conditions with which they
are always associated while within human experience,
have been dissolved by death and no longer exist. We
know as little in the way of accurate and demonstrable
knowledge of our condition after death as we do of our
existence if we had an existence before birth.
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 291
If we turn for an answer to these questions from,
science to metaphysics we find ourselves in cloud-land.
Mists of fine phrases and plausible conjectures form
into philosophies, and dissolve away again without
leaving a vestige of positive knowledge. Take Descartes '
famous fundamental axiom, " Cogito, ergo sum," I think
and therefore I exist. Ts it really an axiom ? Does
it take us any nearer to what thought really is, and
what is the true meaning of existence ? If the fact
that I am conscious of thinking proves the fact that
I exist, is the converse true, that whatever does not
think does not exist ? Am I existent or non-existent
during the seven or eight hours of dreamless sleep
out of every twenty-four, when to a certainty I am
not thinking ? Does a child only begin to exist when
it begins to think ? If " Cogito, ergo sum " is an
intuition to which we can trust, why is not " Non
cogito, ergo non sum " an equally good foundation on
which to build a system of philosophy, and spin out of
the brain an ideal system of God, man, and the universe ?
The so-called intuitions of metaphysics seem really
to amount to little more than translations into philo-
sophical language of our own earnest wishes and aspi-
rations. We shudder at the notion of annihilation ;
we revolt at the idea that all the high faculties of the
mature and cultivated mind are to be extinguished by
death; we long for a future life, in which we may
again see beloved faces, and, pondering on these things,
we have a strong impression that it must not and cannot
be, which presently takes the form, in some minds of
a philosophical turn, of what is called an intuition, on
which they proceed to build up a demonstration of God
and immortality.
r 2
292 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
But, again, what do they really know more than
science has already told us? The essence of all
spiritual existence, as far as we know anything of it,
is personal consciousness. This clearly depends on, or
is indissolubly associated with, a certain condition of a.
material organ the brain. With a less active condition
of this organ, as in sleep, personal consciousness is sus-
pended. In the case of a man recovered from drowning
by artificial means, it is gone, and the man is to all
intents and purposes dead for perhaps a quarter of an
hour, and would remain dead if warm blankets and
artificial respiration did not recall him to life. Where
and what was he during this interval ? and, if his
personal identity and conscious existence were gone for
that quarter of an hour, why and when did they return ?
and, if the Humane Society's men had been less prompt,
would they ever have returned ?
These are questions to which no metaphysical
system that I have ever seen can return the semblance
of an answer.
Again, how is it possible for philosophy to lay down
as an axiom that man has an intuitive perception of a
Deity, in the face of the fact that whole races of savage
men have no such perception, and have not got beyond
rude fetichism and a vague superstitious fear of ghosts
and evil spirits, while others, further advanced, have
made their own anthropomorphic gods, obviously from
reflections of their own faculties and passions on the
distant mists of the unknown, like the spectres of the
Brocken ? We can trace the idea of Deity, step by step,
from early attempts to explain phenomena of nature,
astronomical, legendary, and linguistic myths, and
reverence for departed ancestors and heroes, up to
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 293
the philosophical conceptions of a Plato or a Marcus
Aurelius. In the same way we can trace, step by step,
the transformation of the tribal God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, into the national God of Israel, who was at
first only better and stronger than the gods of the
surrounding nations, but finally became the sole God of
the universe, degrading the other gods to the category
of dumb idols. So, also, we can see the first crude
anthropomorphic conceptions of this Deity gradually
giving way to purer and nobler ideas. The God who
required rest on the seventh day becomes the Almighty
one at whose word all things were created. The jealous
and cruel God who withdrew His favour from the
chivalrous Saul, because he would not hew his captives
in pieces before the Lord, is transformed into the God
who "loves mercy and not sacrifice." The God who
found after His own heart the man whose depraved
mind could conceive such an act of foul villainy as
David practised towards Uriah, and who not only
condoned the crime, but rewarded it by giving the
succession to the son of the adulterous intercourse with
Bathsheba, has become the God of holy love and purity
of the New Testament. At which of these stages did
the philosophical intuition of God come in, which is
said to be an innate faculty of the human mind, and
the surest base of all our knowledge of the universe ?
Where is the inevitable intuitive perception of a personal
Deity in the minds of some of the deepest thinkers and
purest livers of the present day, who, like Herbert
Spencer, can discern nothing behind the veil but a
great unspeakable and unknowable?
After all we must fall back on Christianity for any
grounds upon which to trust, more or less faintly, in
294 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the " larger hope." The Christian religion, apart from
any question of miracles, is an existing fact. It is a
fact which for nineteen centuries has proved, on the
whole, in accordance with other facts and with the
deepest feelings and highest aspirations of the noblest
men and women of the foremost races in the progressive
march of civilisation. Why do we say that its moral
teachings, such as we find in the Sermon on the Mount,
and in St. Paul's definition of Christian charity, carry
conviction with them and prove themselves ? Because
they accord with, and give the best expression to, feel-
ings, which in the course of evolution of the human
mind from barbarism to civilisation have become
instinctive. We may be able to trace their origin and
development, we may be able to see that they are not
primary instincts, implanted at birth like those of the
lower animals, but secondary instincts, formed by the
action of a civilised environment on hereditary apti-
tudes. Still there they are, and being what they are,
and living in the age and society in which we actually
live, they are inevitable and necessary instincts, and it
requires no train of reasoning or laboured reflection to
make us feel that " right is right," and that it is better
for ourselves and others to act on such precepts as those
of " loving our neighbours as ourselves," and " doing as
we would be done by," rather than to reverse these
rules and obey the selfish promptings of animal nature.
Of the same order, though less clear and cogent, are the
teachings of the Gospel respecting God and immor-
tality. They are less clear and less cogent, because
the only evidence by which they could be demonstrated
from without, that of miracles, has broken down and
failed us; and because we cannot verify them experi-
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 295
mentally by an appeal to facts, as we can in regard to
the working of moral laws and precepts. But it still
remains that they are ideas which have arisen inevit-
ably in the course of the evolution of the human mind ;
and that they fit in with and satisfy, in a way which
no other ideas can do, many of the best and deepest
feelings which have equally been developed in that
mind, in the course of its progressive ascent from
lower to higher things. It remains also that true
science, while it can add nothing to this proof, takes
nothing from it, and while it excludes miracles and
supernatural interference after the order of the universe
has been once established, leads us back step by step
to a great Unknown, in which, from the very fact that
it is unknown, everything is possible.
Further than this it is not possible to carry the
proof. If we are to believe at all in a God, we must
be content to believe that He knows better than we
do what is right and consistent with the conditions
of our own existence and that of the universe ; and
that part of the scheme is, that at a certain stage
of the development of our race we should have to
exchange the certainty of simple and limited faith
for the fainter trust in a larger hope. We may, per-
haps, dimly discern something analogous in the progress
of each individual from childhood to manhood. He
has to part with many a simple belief and unhesi-
tating trust, and climb the hill of life staggering
under many a burden of doubt and difficulty ; and
yet it is better for him to " set a stiff heart to a
steep brae," and struggle upwards while life is in
him, rather than to remain an innocent child playing
at its foot.
296 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Anyhow, whether we like it or not, this is tho
fact we have to accept ; but the hill is steep, the
burden heavy, and we may well be grateful to any-
thing which, however vaguely, helps and cheers us
on the way ; and from this point of view, the ideas
of God and of a future life taught by the Christian
religion, accepted by so many good men, and hallowed
by so many venerable traditions and sacred associa-
tions, should be cherished, as far as it is possible to
do so without shutting our eyes to facts and indulging
in conssious insincerity.
For the same reason we shall do well to be tender
with the forms and creeds of this religion, even when
they appear to be getting obsolete, and their strict and
literal interpretation no longer consistent with known
truths. It is far better that the transformation requisite
to bring them into accordance with the evolution of
modern thought caused by the discoveries of science,
should take place gradually and spontaneously from
within, rather than forcibly and abruptly from without.
Evolutionists specially ought to trust to the healing
influences of time, and the inevitable though gradual
survival of that which is most in harmony with its
existing environment.
Already a great deal has been silently done in this
direction. Intolerance and fanaticism have almost dis-
appeared from all cultured minds. Even in the ranks
of the clergy themselves, many, in all denominations,
are devoting themselves more and more to good works,
and less to theological disputes and sectarian wranglings.
The metaphysical side of Christian dogma is fast
receding into the far distance. The Athanasian Creed,
which once convulsed empires and occupied a foremost
CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT MIRACLES. 297
place in the thought of the age, has become a mere
form, read once or twice a year by lukewarm preachers
to indifferent or scandalised audiences, who would be
only too glad to have a decent excuse for dropping it
out of sight altogether. Let any sincere Christian put
to himself candidly the question what part the " Holy
Ghost," or the definition of the " Logos," really has in
the living faith which guides his actions, and he will be
astonished to find into what infinitesimal proportions
these once vital dogmas have actually faded. It will
be the same with all dogmas which, in their literal and
historical interpretation, contradict established facts.
They will be either forgotten, or, if they contain a
kernel of spiritual meaning, will be transformed into
truths taught by parables.
In the meantime, it behoves those who see more
clearly than others the absolute certainty of the con-
clusions of science, and the inevitably fatal results
to religion of staking its existence on literal inter-
pretations which have become flatly incredible, to
do their best to assist the transformation of the old
dogmatic theology into a new " Christianity without
miracles," which shall retain the essential spirit, the
pure morality, the consoling beliefs, and as far as
possible the venerable forms and sacred associations
of the old faith, while placing them in thorough
accordance with freedom of thought, and with the
whole body of other truths, discovered and to be dis-
covered, respecting the universe and man.
CHAPTER X
PRACTICAL LIFE.
Conscience Right is Right Self-reverence Courage Respectabi-
lity Influence of Press Respect for "Women Self-respect of
Nations Democracy and Imperialism Self-knowledge Conceit
Luck Speculation Money-making Practical Aims of Life
Self-control Conflict of Reason and Instinct Temper Manners
Good Habits in Youth Success in Practical Life Education
Stoicism Conclusion.
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power ; that of itself
Would come uncalled for ; but to live by rule,
Acting the rule we live by without fear,
And because right is right to follow right,
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.
TENNYSON, GEnone.
IN these lines, which he puts into the mouth of
the goddess of wisdom, Tennyson, the same poet who
has already condensed the essence of modern thought
in the lines already quoted from " In Memoriam,"
gives us what may be well called " the Gospel of
practical life." It is clearly our highest wisdom to
follow right, not from selfish calculation or hope of
reward, but because ''right is right;" in other words,
because we have a standard within us which tells us,
PRACTICAL LIFE. 29
in an unmistakable voice, what to do and what to
refrain from doing. For practical purposes, it is com-
paratively unimportant how this standard got there ;
whether, according to old creeds, by direct inspiration,
or, as modern science tells us, by the slow evolution
of primitive faculties, and the accumulation through
countless generations of hereditary influences tending
towards the survival of the fittest, both of individuals
and of societies, in the struggle for life. In either
case the standard is there, not as a vague and
theoretical, but as an absolute and imperative rule,
and the difficulty is not to discern it, but to act up
to it.
It may be that it is to a great extent the product
of education, and depends on the environment in
which we are brought up. It may be that if I had
been kidnapped when a child by Comanche Indians,
I should have grown up with a Very different moral
standard touching the taking of scalps and the prac-
tice of treacherous murder. But I have not been sa
kidnapped, and having been born and brought up
in a civilised country of the nineteenth century, it
is inevitable that outward influences combined with
inward capacities should give me a conscience, which
tells me in clear enough accents whether I am doing
right or wrong. And it is equally certain that by
acting in accordance with this conscience, I shall, on
the whole, be doing better for myself and better for
others than by disregarding it. It is none too easy
to make our life even a tolerable approximation towards
doing right for the sake of right, and it would be
folly to allow any theoretical considerations as to the
origin of the idea of right to be an excuse for relaxing
300 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
any of the constant and strenuous effort which is
requisite to keep our feet from straying from the
straight path. It is much wiser to cast around us
for influences and inducements to strengthen the inward
law, and to endeavour by clear insight to bring reason
to the aid of faith, and enable us to see intelligently
the main causes both of our weakness and of our
strength.
This is what the poet does for us in the lines
above quoted. Rightly considered, "self-reverence, self-
knowledge, and self-control" are the three pillars which
support the edifice of a wise and well-ordered practical
life.
Self-reverence, in its widest meaning, includes the
faculty of forming some ideal standard superior to the
lower nature of animal man, and recognising in our-
selves some power of approximating to it. The higher
the standard the nobler will be the man who cherishes
it and tries to attain to it, but it is by no means a rare
gift confined to a few select natures. On the contrary,
it is the commonest and most universal incentive to
good conduct. Even in the rudest and simplest form
of admiration for physical courage, it makes heroes of
many a common soldier and sailor. If poor Tommy
Atkins, fresh from the plough-tail, stands firm in the
shattered squares of Waterloo, or on the bloody ridge
of Inkermann, it is because he has been brought up in
the fixed idea that a Briton must not run away from a
Frenchman or a Russian.
In civil life the idea of respectability, though not a
very elevated one and apt to degenerate into narrow-
ness, and what Carlyle and Arnold sneer at as " Gig-
manity" and "Philistinism," is yet one of very universal
PKACTICAL LIFE. 301
and, on the whole, beneficial influence. A large majority
of the middle and upper working classes lead decorous
lives very much because they feel it incumbent on them
to be "respectable," in their own eyes and those of
their neighbours. In the case of one half of the human
race, the female half, the feeling of self-respect and the
desire to be what is called respectable afford the
strongest and most constantly present securities both
for good morals and good manners. The immense
majority of British women are modest maidens and
faithful wives, not so much from any cold calculation
of the balance of advantages, or from fear of conse-
quences, as from an instinctive feeling that they cannot
be otherwise without losing caste and forfeiting their
own self-respect and that of their neighbours.
From these common and universal forms of " self-
reverence " we rise, step by step, to the higher ideals,
which, in every rank and every condition of life, give us
among gifted natures what may be called the "salt of
the earth," and the shining examples which guide the
world to higher things noble men and noble women.
A Sidney, dying on the field of Zutphen, hands over
the cup of water to a wounded soldier because his soul,
nourished on noble thoughts, and his fancy, fed by the
old ballads which, like that of " Chevy Chase," stirred
him like a trumpet-blast, had led him to conceive
an ideal of a perfect knight which would have been
tarnished by any shade of a selfish action. Gordon
sacrifices his life at Khartoum, not only cheerfully but
almost instinctively, because the suggestion that he
might save himself by abandoning those who had trusted
in him seems an absolute impossibility.
It is a great advantage of the present day that
302 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
education and the press bring such instances of devoted
heroism vividly before millions who would never other-
wise have heard of them. The influence of the press,
both in the way of books and newspapers, is happily
in this country almost entirely one which makes for
good. There is not a noble act done throughout the
world, by high or low, by private or officer, by
soldier or civilian, which is not held up for praise
and admiration ; while any signal instance of cowardice
or selfishness is held up to contempt. Newspaper
correspondence and leading articles have, to a great
-extent, superseded sermons, and do the practical
moral work of the world in asserting the right and
rebuking wickedness in high places. In like manner
all the higher works of poetry, fiction, and biography
have a good tendency, and are read by an ever-
increasing number of readers. Enid and Elaine,
Jeanie Deans, Laura Pendennis, Lucy Roberts, are the
sort of models set before girls ; while boys who have
any heroic fibre in their nature are fed with such lives
us those of Lawrence and Gordon. For all, but
especially for the young, there is no help to self-
improvement so great as to read good books in a
generous spirit; and nothing which dwarfs the mind
so much as to debauch it by frivolous reading, and by
the moral dram-drinking of sensational rubbish, until
it loses all natural and healthy appetite for the pure
and elevated. An affectation of narrow knowingness
is also a very fatal tendency in the youthful mind. A
man from whose mouth such words as "rot" and
" humbug " are constantly heard is, in nine cases out of
ten, a very poor, rotten creature himself.
Among the many advantages of self-respect, not
PRACTICAL LIFE. 303
the least important is that it teaches respect for others.
The petty jealousies and suspicions, the senseless quar-
rels, the slanderings and backbitings, which so often
turn sour the wine of life, disappear of themselves when
a proper standard of self-respect has been firmly estab-
lished, and a high ideal of human life has become part
of our nature. As Tennyson says :
Like simple noble natures credulous
Of what they wish for, good in friend or foe ;
while on the other hand
The long-necked geese of the world
Are always hissing dispraise, because their natures are little.
There are some who delight in running down every-
thing and everybody, and whose appetite for scandal
is so great that they are positively unable to refrain
from believing and spreading an ill-natured tale, if it
affects some eminent man, and still more if it affects
a well-known woman. Such are assuredly not the
sort of persons whom we should like to resemble our-
selves, or to see our sons and daughters resemble.
I have always found through life, a safe rule to go by
was, if you hear an ill-natured story of a man, discount
nine-tenths of it as a lie, and if of a woman, don't
believe a word of it.
Perhaps the best test of the amount of real t: self-
reverence " in an individual or a nation, is to be found
in the tone and manner in which women are treated. A
low tone invariably bespeaks a low nature, and testifies
to innate coarseness and snobbishness, however high
may be the rank and polished the outward varnish of
the person who indulges in it. On the other hand the
304 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
roughest miner or backwoodsman is already more than
half a gentleman, if his attitude towards women is one of
chivalrous courtesy. Nothing looks more hopeful for
the future of the human race than to see that the
female half of it are constant gainers by the progress
of freedom and education. It goes a long way to
reconcile one to the dangers of democracy, to find
that in the newest and most democratic countries of
the world, such as the United States and British
colonies, women can travel alone without fear of
insult, and have far more innocent liberty and free-
dom of thought and action than they have in older
societies. Whatever may be the case as regards men,
for women there can be no doubt that there is a
progressive scale upwards from East to West, from
despotism to freedom, from Turkey to America.
What has been said of individuals is even more
true of nations. Self-respect is the very essence of
national life. A great nation may suffer great disasters,
and survive them, if the spirit of its people remains
intact. England survived the war of American inde-
pendence, and Prussia recovered from the defeat of
Jena. But if a nation loses its vigour and self-respect,
if it begins to groan under the burdens of extended
empire, and to prefer comfort to honour, ignoble ease to
noble effort, the hour of its decline has sounded.
Imperial Eome did not long survive when she began
to contract her frontiers and buy off barbarians. The
most fatal thing any Government can do for a country
is to destroy its sense of self-respect and teach it to
acquiesce in what is felt to be dishonourable.
Looking forward to the future of the great British
Empire, this is evidently a turning-point of its destinies.
PRACTICAL LIFE. 305
The triumph of democracy is an inevitable fact ; for
knowledge is power, and whether for good or evil,
the masses have either acquired, or are fast acquiring
knowledge, and with equal political rights numbers will
tell. How will this democracy of the future affect
Imperial interests, and what will be its attitude in
regard to foreign and colonial policy ?
On the one hand it may be hoped that by making
our institutions more popular, and going down to the
heart of the masses, our policy will acquire fresh
energy and our public men fresh vigour. The work-
ing classes are very patriotic, and, on the whole, more
open to the influence of generous ideas than the class
immediately above them. In the recent instance of
the great civil war in the United States, we have seen
a democracy making greater sacrifices of men and
money for the idea of maintaining national greatness,
than was probably ever voluntarily made by any
monarchical or aristocratic country. The Copper-heads,
who preached peace where there was no peace, and
advised letting the erring sisters go their way rather
than spend lives and money in the attempt to coerce
them, found no response from a nation who felt that
the union was their union, and its greatness the
separate personal possession of each individual citizen.
But, on the other hand, demagogues will never be
wanting to flatter the people, and angle for power
by appealing to their lower instincts and advocating
measures of present ease and popularity. If a necessity
arises for maintaining by the sword an empire which
has been won by the sword, the army of parochial
politicians who gauge everything by the standard of
pounds, shillings, and pence, will be reinforced by the
30 G MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
far more respectable body of sentimentalists and
humanitarians, who shrink from the shedding of
blood in wars the abstract justice of which is not
absolutely demonstrated. A large number, perhaps a
majority, of platform orators will therefore be found
now, as it was in the days of Demosthenes, to denounce
armaments, ridicule precautions, minimise responsi-
bilities, and look upon India, the Colonies, and
extended empire generally, as troublesome encum-
brances rather than as glorious possessions. The two
conflicting ideals constantly set before our future
political rulers, the four millions whose votes decide
the fate of policies and of ministries, will be, on the
one hand, that our first duty is to hand down the
British Empire to our sons no less great and glorious
than we received it from our fathers ; on the other,
that it is better to stay at home, mind our own.
affairs, avoid entanglements, contract responsibilities,
pass reform bills, and reduce taxes, trusting to the
" silver streak " and the chapter of accidents to protect
us from invasion. It is the old story of the fable of
Hercules, which presents itself constantly to each
individual and to every nation. Shall we follow the
strait and narrow path which leads upwards, or the
broad and easy one which leads, with a pleasant slope
to a lower level ? Would it have been better for Paris
to give the golden apple to Minerva, counselling " self-
reverence, self-knowledge, self-control," or to Venus,.
promising pleasure?
PEACTICAL LIFE. 307
SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as ithers see us !
BURNS.
A gift which is unfortunately as rare as it is neces-
sary. Without self-knowledge to see our faults how
shall we correct them ? How shall we become wise if
insensible to our follies ? How shall we achieve success
if we learn no lessons from our failures ? There are some
men so blinded by vanity that they go through life
committing ungentlemanly actions while fancying them-
selves perfect gentlemen ; who are convinced that all
men admire them and all women are in love with them,
while in reality every one sees through them and laughs
at them. A thoroughly impervious vanity is like a
waterproof, which throws off the wholesome rain on the
outside, while on the inside it is soaked with unhealthy
exhalations.
Fortunately this type of vanity is not a common
one with our English race, who are too proud and self-
reliant to feel the petty anxiety of the really vain man
to be always shining in the eyes of others. "With us it
takes more the form of priding ourselves on artificial
distinctions, and attaching an exaggerated importance
to matters of trivial importance. Your commonplace
English swell, for instance, is apt to class all mankind
under two categories those who associate with lords
and wear clothes of a fashionable cut, and those who do
not, and to set down all the former as the " right sort,"
and all the latter as " brutes."
It is a sign of narrowness to make a fetich of these
or any otner arbitrary distinctions between an upper
308 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
ten and the rest of mankind, and self-knowledge is
never more required than to show the hollowness of
adventitious advantages which are not supported by
intrinsic merit. A true gentleman feels
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that,
and feeling this, he holds out the hand of hearty
human sympathy to peasant as well as to peer. If
born to rank and riches, self-knowledge tells him that
lie is simply placed on a pedestal, where, if he fails
to act on the maxim that " noblesse oblige," the failure
will be the more conspicuous. No man who really
knows himself can ever be conceited, for he must be
aware how far he has fallen short in practice of his
own ideal standard, and how constantly " he has done
things he ought not to have done, and left undone
things he ought to have done."
On the other hand, there is an opposite extreme
from which self-knowledge will save a man : that of
undue despondency and want of proper confidence and
self-reliance. There are men who fail in everything
they undertake because they have not the heart to
undertake it resolutely, and who at last sink down
into the hopeless condition of querulous mental invalids,
who cherish their ailments rather than combat them,
and are rather proud than otherwise to be considered as
interesting victims of untoward circumstances.
For all the relations of practical life the one essen-
tial requisite of success is to see things as they really
are, and not as we wish them to be ; and for this
purpose self-knowledge is the foundation of clear in-
sight. If the focus of the glass is wrongly adjusted
PEACTICAL LIFE. 309
it will show only distorted images, but if a clear eye
looks through a properly focussed glass, outward objects
will be truly represented.
Perhaps the commonest of all delusions is that of
being born under a lucky star. A man gambles, bets,
or speculates because he thinks he is lucky and sure
to win. Now, there is in reality no such thing as
luck, it is all a question of averages. The only ap-
proach to what may be called luck is, that a fool
will probably have more of it than a wise man, for
as the fool foresees nothing, whenever fortune's die
turns up in his favour he sets it down to luck, while
the wise man, who has schemed and worked for the
event, calls it foresight. But the actual average of
events, which depend entirely on chance, will be the
same.
If a man plays at rouge et noir with one chance
in a hundred in favour of the bank, it is certain that
if he plays often enough, he will lose his capital once
at least for every hundred times he plays. Or, if he
speculates on the Stock Exchange, the turn of the
market and broker's commission will, in the long run,
certainly swallow up his original capital. And yet
men will gamble and speculate, because they cannot
resist the pleasing illusion that they are lucky, and
that it would be very nice to win a large stake without
having had to work for it.
There is nothing for which self-knowledge is more
indispensable in practical life than to enable a man to
steer a straight course between opposite extremes, and
to discern clearly the boundary line between right and
wrong. The law of polarity, by which things good in
themselves if pushed to extremes become bad, and
310 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
every truth develops a corresponding error, is of daily
and universal application in practical affairs.
Take, for instance, the much-debated question of the
pursuit of money. Poets and novelists are never tired
of denouncing the "Auri sacra fames," and there is no
doubt that, when carried to excess, it is the fertile
source of crime ; and even in a less degree, it leads to
meanness and dishonesty, and has a degrading influence
on the individual or the nation who give themselves
up too exclusively to the worship of the "almighty
dollar." But, on the other hand, the desire, or rather
the necessity under the conditions of civilised society, of
making money, is by far the most powerful and all-per-
vading influence of practical life. And, within due
bounds and under proper conditions, it is a healthy and
beneficial influence. At the lowest stage it obliges
men to work instead of being idle, and this is an
immense advantage both to the community and to
the individual. An idle man, in every grade of society,
is generally a worthless and often a bad man ; while an
honest working man, whether the work be of the head
or hand, is far more likely to be happy and respectable.
Again, the necessity of earning money is a wonderful
test of the real value of a man in the world's market.
We should be all very apt to become pretentious wind-
bags of conceit, if we were not brought to our senses
by the wholesome douche of having to work for a
livelihood. Many a man who fancies himself intended
for a poet or politician, and some who by accident of
birth or fortune are pitchforked into prominent posi-
tions, would find it difficult to point out any occupation
in which they are honestly worth a couple of hundred a
year.
PRACTICAL LIFE. 311
Even in the higher departments of art and litera-
ture, it may be questioned whether the healthy, natural
desire to turn an honest penny has not inspired greater
works than a morbid appetite for fame. Shakespeare's
ambition was to retire to his native town with a
moderate competency ; Walter Scott's to become a
laird, with a family estate, in the border-land of the
chief of his clan "the bold Buccleugh." And, in
the present day, literature is becoming more and more
an honourable profession, which men take to, as they
do to law or medicine, as a means of earning a
livelihood.
It must always be borne in mind that under the
practical conditions of modern civilisation, money
means not only the possibility of bare existence, but
nearly all that makes existence tolerable health, re-
creation, culture, and independence. The number and
locality of the rooms a man lives in, the number of
cubic feet and purity of the air he and his family
breathe, are questions of rent; the food they eat,
the clothes they wear, the books they read, the holi-
days they enjoy, are all questions of money. And
above all, without money there is no independence.
An absolutely penniless man has to fall back on crime
or the workhouse; a poor man is at the mercy of a
thousand accidents ; sickness, fluctuations of trade,
caprice of employers, pressure of creditors, may at
any moment reduce him and those who depend on
him to want. It admits of no question, that the
first duty of every one is to endeavour to raise himself
above this level of ignoble daily cares, and' plant him-
self in a position where he can face the present and
look forward to the future with tolerable equanimity.
312 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
As we rise in the scale of society the problem becomes
more difficult. Money-making is very apt to be
pushed to excess and lead to gambling and dis-
honesty ; while the worship of wealth, which is
perhaps the besetting sin of the age, is distinctly
the cause of much lax morality and snobbish vulgarity.
But on the other hand, money is power, and a large
fortune honestly acquired and well spent, gives its
possessor unrivalled opportunities for doing good. He
can assist charities, patronise art, and if gifted with
force of character and fair abilities may become a
legislator and statesman, and enrol his name in the
annals of his country. It is hard to say that if a
man has an opportunity of making a large fortune
honestly, and feels that he has it in him to use
it nobly, he should refrain from doing so because
moralists cry " Sour grapes," and tell him that riches
are deceitful.
But for nothing is " self-knowledge" more requisite
than to enable a man to see clearly how high he can
safely aim, and what sort of stake he can prudently
play for. The immense majority of mankind have
neither the opportunities nor the faculties for playing
for very high stakes, and must be contented with
the safe game for moderate and attainable ends.
One such end is within the reach of almost every
one:
To make a happy household clime
For weans and wife,
Is the tiue pathos and sublime
Of human life.
So says Burns, who has a rare faculty of hitting the
right nail on the head ; and the ideal he sets before us
PRACTICAL LIFE. 313
in these simple lines is at once the truest and the most
universal. The man who fails in this is himself a
failure ; while the man who by his industry and energy
supports a family in comfort and respectability accord-
ing to their station, and who, at the same time, by
control of temper, kindness, unselfishness, and sweet
reasonableness makes his household a happy one, may
feel, even though fortune may not have placed him in
a position of higher responsibilities, that he has not lived
in vain, that he has performed the first duties and
tasted the truest pleasures of mortal existence, and that,
whatever there may be behind the impenetrable veil,
he can face it with head erect, as one of " Nature's
gentlemen."
SELF-CONTROL.
This is, after all, the vitally important element of a
happy and successful life. The compass may point truly
to the pole, the chart may show the right channel amidst
shoals and rocks, but the ship will hardly arrive safely
in port unless the helmsman stands at his post in all
weathers, ready to meet any sheer of the bow by a
timely turn to starboard or to port. So self-reverence
and self-knowledge may point out ever so clearly the
path of duty, unless self-control is constantly present we
shall surely stray from it. At every moment of our
lives natural instinct tells us to do one thing, while
reason and conscience tell us to do another. It is by
an effort that we get up in the morning and go about
our daily work. It is by an effort that we refrain from
indulgences and forego pleasures, control our passions,
restrain our tempers. The uncultured man is violent,
selfish, childish ; it is only by the inherited or acquired
314 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
practice of self-control that he is transformed into the
civilised man courteous, considerate, sensible, and
reliable.
The necessity of self-control in all the more im-
portant relations of moral and practical life is so obvious
that it would be only repeating commonplaces to enlarge
on it. But there is often danger of its being overlooked
in those minor morals of conduct which make up the
greater part of life, and determine the happiness or
misery of oneself and others.
For instance, control over the temper. A man
never shows his cousinship to the ape so much as when
he is in a passion. The manifestations are so exactly
similar irrational violence, nervous agitation, total loss
of head, and abdication of all presence of mind and
reasoning power. To see a grown-up man reduced to
the level of a spoiled child, or of a monkey who has
been disappointed of a nut, is a spectacle of which it
is hard to say whether it is more ridiculous or painful.
Even worse than occasional violence is the habitual
ill-temper which makes life miserable to those who are
obliged to put up with it. We call a man who strikes
a woman or child with his fist a brute ; what is he if he
strikes them daily and hourly, ten times more cruelly,
with his tongue ? A ten times greater brute. And
yet there are men, calling themselves gentlemen, who
do this, either from sheer brutality of nature, or oftener
from inconsiderateness, coarseness of fibre, and inability
to exercise self-control in minor matters.
There is one very common mistake made, that of
considering relationship an excuse for rudeness. The
members of a family may relax something of the stiff-
ness of company manners among themselves, but they
PRACTICAL LIFE. 315
should never forget that it is just as much ill-breeding
to say a rude thing to a wife, a sister, or a brother, as it
would be to say it to any other lady or gentleman. In
fact, it is worse, for the other lady can treat you with
contempt and keep out of your way, while the poor
woman who is tied to you feels it keenly, and has no
means of escape from it. Good manners are, in
practical life, a great part of good morals ; and there
is something to be said for religions which, like the
Chinese, lay down rules of politeness, and make salva-
tion depend very much on the observance of rites and
ceremonies intended to ensure courtesy and decorum in
the intercourse of all classes of the community in daily
life.
Although not so bad as the indulgence of a violent
or morose temper, a great deal of unhappiness is
caused by a fussy and fidgety disposition, which
makes mountains out of molehills, and keeps every
one in hot water about trifles. This is one of the
common faults of idleness, as genuine work both
strengthens the fibre to resist and leaves no time to
brood over petty troubles.
The excuse one commonly hears from those who
give way to these petty infirmities is, " that they cannot
help it, they are born with thin skins and excitable
tempers." This is the excuse of sloth and weakness.
If, as the poet says,
Man is man, and master of his fate,
what sort of an unmanly creature must he be who
cannot master even the slightest impulse or resist
the slightest temptation, and allows himself to be
ruffled into a storm by every passing breath, like a
316 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
shallow roadside puddle? If he will not try lie cer-
tainly will not learn ; but if he will honestly try to
correct faults, he will find it easier every time, until
the fancied impossibilities fade away and are forgotten.
A man who is so much afraid of tumbling off that
he will never mount a horse, may fancy that Nature
has disqualified him for riding ; but for all that, nine
men out of ten, if obliged to try say as recruits in
a cavalry regiment though they may not all turn
out accomplished horsemen, will all learn to ride well
enough for practical purposes.
It is peculiarly important for the young to set
resolutely about correcting bad habits and forming
good ones, while the faculties are fresh and the brain
supple ; for, in obedience to the law by which mole-
cular motions travel by preference along beaten paths,
every year cuts deeper the channels of thought and
feeling, whether for good or evil. A brain trained
to respond to calls of duty soon does so with ease
and elasticity, just as the muscles of the blacksmith's
arm or of the ballet-dancer's leg acquire strength and
vigour by exercise ; while, on the other hand, motion
is a pain and self-control an effort to the soft and
flabby limb or brain which has been weakened by
self-indulgence.
It is scarcely necessary to say that for success in
practical life, self-control is the one thing most needful.
To take the simplest case, that of a young working
man beginning life with health, knowledge of a trade,
or even without it with good thews and sinews, he is
the most free and independent of mortals, on one con-
dition that he has saved 10. With this, he is a
free agent in disposing of his labour, he can make his
PHACTICAL LIFE. 317
contract with an employer on equal terms, he can carry
his goods to the best market, and is practically a citizen
of the world, ready to start for San Francisco or
Melbourne if he thinks he can better himself. With-
out it, he is a serf tied to the soil, he cannot move from
place to place, he must take whatever wages are
offered him or starve.
But how to save the 10 ? That is a question
of daily and weekly recurrence ; whether to spend an
extra shilling in the pleasant way of going to a public-
house and sitting with a pipe and a jug of ale by the
fireside among jolly companions, or to forego the plea-
sure and save the shilling. A shilling a week saved
will, in four years, give him the 10, and go a good
way to establish habits which, if he is enterprising and
goes to a colony, or clever and has any luck at home,
may readily make the ten a hundred, or even a thousand
pounds. So in every class of life, the man who gets
on is the man who has schooled himself never to ask
whether a thing is pleasant, but whether it is right and
reasonable ; and who always keeps a bright look-out
ahead, and does his best at the task, whatever it may
be, that is set before him.
Education really resolves itself very much into
teaching the young to acquire this indispensable
faculty of self-control. The amount of positive know-
ledge, useful in after life, acquired at our English
public schools, is really very little beyond the three
K's. A boy who could teach himself French or Ger-
man in five months spends five years over Latin and
Greek, and in nine cases out of ten forgets them as
soon as he leaves school or college. Almost everything
we know that is worth knowing we teach ourselves
318 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
in after life. But the discipline of school is invaluable
in teaching the lesson of self-control. Almost every
hour of the day a boy at school has to do things that
are disagreeable and abstain from doing things that
nature prompts, under pain of getting a caning from
the master or a thrashing from other boys. The
memory also is exercised, and the faculty of fixing the
mind on work is developed, by useless almost as well
as by useful studies. In this point of view even that
ne plus ultra of technical pedantry, the Latin grammar,
with its " Propria quse maribus " and " As in presenti,"
may have its use in teaching a boy that no matter how
absurd or repulsive a task may be, he has got to tackle
to it or worse will befall him.
But it is in a moral sense that the influence of a
good school is most valuable. The average boy learns
that he must not tell lies, he must not be a sneak or
a coward, he must take punishment bravely, and con-
form to the schoolmaster's standard of discipline and
the school-boy's standard of honour. In this way the
first lesson of life, stoicism, becomes with most English
lads a sort of instinct or second nature.
For stoicism, after all, is the foundation and primary
element of all useful and honourable life. Whether
as Carlyle's "Everlasting No," or as George Eliot's
advice to take the pains and mishaps of life without
resorting to moral opium, the conclusion of all the
greatest minds is that a man must have something of
the Eed Indian in him and be able to suffer silently,
and burn his own smoke, if he is to be worth anything.
And still more a woman, who has to bear with and
make the best of a thousand petty annoyances without.
PRACTICAL LIFE.
complaint. Men can bear on great occasions, but in
the innumerable petty trials of life women as a rule
show more self-control and moral fortitude. What
would the life of a woman be who could not stand
being bored with a smiling face, put up with the-
worries of children and servants with cheerful for-
titude, and turn away an angry word by a soft
answer ?
There is much more that might be said, but my
object is not to preach or moralise, but simply to
record a few of the practical rules and reflections which
have impressed themselves on me in the course of a
long and busy life. I do so in the hope that perchance
they may awaken useful thoughts in some, especially
of the younger readers, who may happen to glance
over these pages. This much I may say for them,
I have tried them and found them work well. I have
lived for more than the Scriptural span of threescore
and ten years, a life of varied fortunes and many
experiences. I may say, in the words which my
favourite poet, Tennyson, puts into the mouth of
Ulysses :
For ever roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known, cities of men,
And councils, climates, governments.
And the conclusion I come to is, not that of the
Preacher, " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," but rather
that life, with all its drawbacks, is worth living ; and
that to have been born in a civilised country in th&
nineteenth century is a boon for which a man can never
be sufficiently thankful. Some may find it otherwise
from no fault of their own ; more by their own fault ;
320 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
but the majority of men and women may lead useful,
honourable, and on the whole fairly happy lives, if they
will act on the maxim which I have always endeavoured,
however imperfectly, to follow
FFAR NOTHING; MAKE THE BEST OF EVERYTHING.
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTEPw
Gladstone's "Dawn of Creation" and "Proem to Genesis."
Drummond's " Natural Law in the Spiritual World."
SINCE the above work was written, two essays have
appeared which require notice ; one, from the celebrity
of its author, the other from its extensive circulation.
I refer to Mr. Gladstone's articles in the Nineteenth
Century, on the "Dawn of Creation and of Worship,"
and on the " Proem to Genesis ; " and to Professor
Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World."
The first essay attempts to prove the inspiration
of the Bible from the anticipations of the conclusions of
modern science alleged to be contained in the Book of
Genesis. The second, that of Professor Drummond,
assuming this inspiration and the Calvinistic creed of
theology based upon it, professes to show that the
latter is the inevitable result of the same identical
natural laws as prevail throughout the domain of
Science.
I propose to deal first with Mr. Gladstone as a
theologian.
322 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
"THE DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP."
Mr. Gladstone's article in the Nineteenth Century
on the " Dawn of Creation and of Worship " is exactly
what might have been expected from him eloquent,
rhetorical, diffuse; anything, in short, except logical
and closely-reasoned. His mental attitude towards
these questions may be described in two words, as that
of a man who is ecclesiastically-minded and Homerically-
minded.
In fact, about one-third of his essay is taken up by a
digression, which is almost entirely irrelevant, as to the
extent to which the Olympian gods, as described by
Homer, do or do not bear traces of being personifica-
tions of natural powers, and do or do not possess
attributes which point to derivation from sources
common to the author of the "Iliad" and the author
of Genesis. It is needless to point out what a very
remote bearing this speculation can have on the serious
and vitally-important question, whether the account of
the creation of the world and of man contained in the
Bible is or is not consistent with the ascertained facts of
modern science. That the Homeric gods are to a certain
extent derived from solar myths is beyond doubt.
Phoebus, the shining one, whose arrow-rays, darted in
wrath, bring pestilence, is clearly in some senses the
sun ; and it admits of no question that the labours of
Hercules are principally, if not wholly, taken from the
signs of the Zodiac. But there are other elements mixed
up with these, and if it should be proved that some of
them are borrowed from ancient mythologies common to
the Aryan and Semitic races, which is far from being an
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 323
ascertained fact, it would go a very little way towards
settling the question whether the narrative of Noah's
ark is a true narrative.
The digression is chiefly interesting as illustrating
the working of Mr. Gladstone's mind, which is eminently
excursive, prone to elaborate details and to dwell on
irrelevant issues to an extent which obscures the main
argument. It is also a mind eminently sentimental and
emotional, and he seems to think that questions of pure
scientific fact can be decided by impassioned appeals to
the feelings connected with old forms of faith. In such
appeals it is needless to say that Mr. Gladstone is afc
home, and that those who are already convinced will
find in this, as in his other writings, strains of lofty, if
somewhat vague and verbose, eloquence to read and to
admire. Nor can it be denied that any candid reader,
whether convinced or not, must feel his admiration in-
creased for a man who, amidst the exciting occupations
of political life, can keep his mind open to such subjects
,and snatch a leisure hour to write upon them.
But when we pass from these side issues to the
central question, we cannot allow our admiration for
Mr. Gladstone to give more weight to his assertions and
arguments than if they proceeded from some unknown
Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones. The issue is quite definite
and precise. Is or is not the account of the creation
contained in the Old Testament true that is, consistent
with real facts which no one can dispute ? Mr. Glad-
stone undertakes to prove that it is true, and that its
accordance with facts, as ascertained by modern science,
goes a long way to prove the inspiration of the volume
in which it is contained.
To sustain this weighty proposition it is obvious that
Y 2
324 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the first requisite is to be thoroughly acquainted with
the most recent discoveries in astronomy, geology, zoology,
physiology, and, in fact, with all branches of modern
science. The time is long past when the facts had to be
tested by their correspondence with the theory of an in-
spired revelation ; nowadays it is the theory which has to
be tested by its correspondence with the facts. Mr. Glad-
stone enters upon this arduous contest with the gallantry
and confidence of an Arab who takes the field armed with
sword and spear, to oppose, for the first time, an adversary
armed with rifle and revolver. He says himself that he
is " wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which
carries authority," and the most cursory perusal of his
essay is sufficient to show it. For instance, he states
that the fourfold division of animated creation set forth
in Genesis, viz. :
1. The water population ;
2. The air population ;
3. The land population of animals ;
4. The land population consummated in man
" is understood to have been so approved in our time
by natural science, that it may be taken as a demon-
strated conclusion and established fact." Is it possible
that Mr. Gladstone never heard of the iguanodon of the
Wealden, or of the small insectivorous and marsupial
animals of the Oolite, or of the labyrinthodon and large
batrachians of the Trias, or of the scorpion of the
Silurian, all of which lived on land many millions of
years before a single species of any fish now inhabiting the
waters, or of any birds now inhabiting the air, had come
into existence ? Can he ever have visited the South
Kensington Museum, and seen the fossil from (Euingen,
of the feathered creature, half bird, half reptile ? And
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 325
is he ignorant of the great mass of evidence tending to
show how the existing forms of bird life were developed
from reptilian life, at a period enormously remote, but
still long subsequent to the existence of many species of
that "land population" which he complacently assumes
that modern science has proved to have had no existence
prior to the creation of the population of air and water ?
If Mr. Gladstone will go to the British Museum, he will
see there a slab of sandstone from one of the very oldest
formations, and probably deposited more than 100,000,000
years ago ; and what will he see on this slab ? Little
pits made by rain- drops, higher on one side than the
other, showing that the shower fell during a smart
breeze ; ripple-marks made by the tide exactly similar
to those now made in the estuary of the Mersey or
Solway, and numerous castings and tracings made in
the wet sand by worms. What does this prove ? That
at this remote period the winds blew, the rain fell,
the tides ebbed and flowed, implying the existence of
their cause the sun and moon ; that an animal creation
existed, which, as it lived entirely on land, although
moist land, can hardly be described as falling within the
category of either a water or an air population.
It would be easy to multiply instances, but it is
superfluous to do so, when the late President of the
Royal Society, Professor Huxley, the highest living
authority on those questions, has so recently as in the
last number of the Nineteenth Century said, " If I know
anything at all about the results attained by the Natural
Science of our time, it is ' a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact ' that the fourfold order given by Mr.
Gladstone is not that in which the evidence at our
disposal tends to show that the water, air, and land
326 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
populations of the globe have made their appearance."
To those who have the most elementary acquaintance
with works like those of Lyell, Huxley, and Haeckel,
the assumption that such a succession is proved by
science must appear as amazing as if Mr. Gladstone had
stated it to be a demonstrated conclusion that the earth
was flat and not round. His other arguments in support
of the Genesis account of creation are of the same
nature : those of a man fifty years behind his time in
everything that relates to modern science.
The history of creation contained in the first chapter
of Genesis, if the words are taken in their obvious and
natural meaning, is perfectly clear and consistent. It
is, as Mr. Gladstone says, " a singularly vivid, forcible,
and effective popular narrative ; or, if we like to take it
so, a sublime poem " of what ? Of the cosmogony
common to the early thinkers of the ancient world, and
which must inevitably have been the first conception of
those who, in the infancy of science, began to attempt
an explanation of the origin of the phenomena presented
to the natural senses. Man and his habitation the earth
were assumed to be the central and primary facts of the
universe. The earth was first formed out of chaos ;
light separated from darkness, the seas from the land ;.
and the whole surrounded by a firmament or crystal
vault, solid enough to separate the waters above, which
caused the rain, from the waters below, and to support
the heavenly bodies which revolved with it in twenty-
four hours round the earth. In this firmament the sun
was placed to rule the day, and the moon to rule the
night, and, as its name, " the measurer," denotes, to
measure times and seasons. The stars also were added
as things of minor importance, probably for ornament,.
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 327
or to aid the work of the moon in nights when the
lunar orb was invisible. The inorganic world being thus
created, the earth was conceived to have been peopled,
once for all, with its existing animal life by three suc-
cessive stages, viz., the fish, or water population ; the
birds, or air population ; and land animals ; and the
whole work crowned by the creation of man in God's
" own image." This work was conceived to have been
carried out by an anthropomorphic Deity, or magnified
man, who worked like a man, by regular spells of day-
work, surveying each evening the work of the preceding
day to see that it was properly done, and resting on the
seventh day after his week's labours. This is the plain,
simple, and obvious meaning which the narrative must
have conveyed to every one to whom it was addressed
at the time, as it did to every one who read it until
quite recently. The question is, is it a true narrative,
that is, consistent with the facts now established ; and,
if untrue, can the volume be inspired which contains
mistakes on matters of such importance ?
The first observation is, that to bring the question
at all within the limits of reasonable discussion it is
necessary to assume that the words of the narrative are
to be taken in a non-natural sense ; that is, in a sense
different from the obvious meaning which they must
have conveyed to those to whom they were addressed.
This presents no difficulty to Mr. Gladstone, whose
mind has a singular capacity for using words in this
non-natural sense, and saying things which may mean
almost anything that the different political or other
proclivities of different hearers may choose to find in
them. Thus he has no difficulty in assuming that the
" firmament," which supports the stars and separates
328 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
the waters, may mean simply an expanse ; or that if the
writer of Genesis says "days" he means "periods,"
notwithstanding their duration being expressly denned
by an " evening and a morning ; " and the reference to
them as an authority for the seventh natural day being
taken as a day of rest. It may be sufficient to say, that
to ordinary minds such a use of language by any
uninspired writer would be without hesitation termed
" Jesuitical," and that there is absolutely no authority
for it, except in the preconceived determination to
escape, per fas vel nefas, from the too direct antagonism
between Scripture and science. But waiving this point,
and allowing the fullest latitude for non-natural mean-
ings, the difficulty is only postponed. The assumption
that Laplace's nebular hypothesis, or any other hypo-
thesis at all consistent with known astronomical and
geological facts, can in any way be reconciled with the
" stages of the majestic process described in the Book
of Genesis " is as untenable as that of a solid crystal
vault, or of six literal days for creation. Mr. Gladstone
argues that if the author of Genesis mentions the crea-
tion of the earth as the beginning of the work, and
introduces the sun and moon only on the fourth day,
he may have meant, not that the sun and moon had no
previous existence, but that the " assignment to them of
a certain place and orbit respectively, with a light-
giving power," only took place long periods after the
geological structure of the earth had been completed by
the " emergence of our land and its separation from the
sea." It is, of course, obvious that the first condensa-
tion of any cosmic nebula must have taken place about
a central nucleus ; in other words, about a sun, and that
planets and satellites can only have been detached sue-
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 329
cessively, and with, their places and orbits assigned, aa
the rotating mass contracted. By no possibility could
an intermediate planet like the earth have been detached
out of its order before other members of its family.
Still more hazy are Mr. Gladstone's ideas respecting
the separation of light from dark, and wet from dry.
He seems to consider light and darkness as separate
substances, which, like white and black beans mixed
together in a bag, could be taken out and sorted into
two separate heaps. No other sense can be attached to
the employment of such a phrase as " the detachment
and collection of light." It is, of course, well known
that light is simply the vibration of an almost infinitely
rare and elastic medium called ether, and darkness the
absence of such vibration ; and that cosmic matter, even
in the earlier stages of nebulous formation, is self-
luminous, i.e., emits light. Light, therefore, must in-
evitably have long preceded the aggregation of this
matter into the planet known as the earth. The " de-
tachment of wet from dry, and of solid from liquid," is
open to still more obvious objection. It is evidently
the expression of one who supposed that the separation
of sea from land was a process which took place, once
for all, establishing the present configuration of the
earth's surface, whereas it is certain that there has been
a perpetual rising and sinking, and alternation of sea and
land, going on from the earliest geological periods. The
chalk, which now forms a large portion of continents
and rises into considerable hills, was formed at the
bottom of a deep ocean. The Wealden, which, below
the chalk, is the Delta formation of a large river, implies
the existence of a continent drained by that river which
has long since disappeared beneath the chalk ocean.
330 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
And so on for all the stratified formations forming nine-
tenths of the earth's crust, which must all have been
formed beneath water by denudation of older rocks,
and subsequently upheaved. Even in quite recent
times, and since the appearance of man, Britain has
been at one time an archipelago of islands in a frozen
sea, and at others part of a continent, roamed over by
the mammoth, the Irish elk, and the reindeer.
When we pass from inorganic to organic nature, the
account of the creation of animated being is in still
more direct opposition with facts. We have already
seen what a mistake Mr. Gladstone commits in sup-
posing that the succession of life was in the regular
order of a water, an air, and a land population. But
this is a mere nothing to the difficulty in reconciling
the creation of those three orders of being in three
successive days, with the enormous multitude of special
miraculous creations required to account for the vast
number of separate species actually existing in separate
zoological provinces of the earth, and for the incalcu-
lably vaster number proved by their remains to have
come into existence, flourished, and died out in the older
geological formations. Madeira alone contains no loss
than one hundred and thirty-four species of land snails
peculiar to this little group of islands, of which only
twenty-one are found in Europe or Africa. If we dis-
card the theory of evolution for that of miraculous
creation, we must suppose the miraculous act to have
been exerted one hundred and thirteen times in Madeira
alone for no other purpose than that of giving it a
variety of land snails.
It is, however, when we come to the creation of man
that the discrepancy between the account in Genesis and
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 331
the discoveries of modern science strikes us most
forcibly. According to Genesis, "God created man in
his own image," at a date which, measured by years or
generations, is comparatively recent. In the time of
Cuvier, on whose authority Mr. Gladstone relies, no
geological evidence had been discovered to confute this
statement, and the supposed absence of human remains
in connection with extinct animals, or in anything older
than the merest superficial deposits, was reasonably
thought to give it considerable support. But the case
was completely altered when hundreds of thousands of
undoubted human remains came to be discovered in the
gravels of ancient rivers, and securely sealed under beds
of stalagmite in caves, associated with remains of extinct
animals, and under conditions implying enormous
antiquity. No one who has the slightest acquaintance
with the subject any longer doubts that Palaeolithic man
must have existed at any rate during part of the Glacial
period, and in all probability much earlier. His ex-*
istence on earth must be measured, not by generations
or centuries, but by long periods, the units of which
cannot be less than ten thousand years. It is equally
certain that these primeval men existed in a state of the
rudest savagery, and that, instead of falling from a high
state, the course of the human race has been that of
slow and painful progress upwards from rude and almost
bestial beginnings. These discoveries, of which not
even a hint escapes from Mr. Gladstone to show that he
is aware of them, have practically revolutionised the
attitude of modern thought towards old creeds. It is
no longer possible to consider as inspired revelations,
writings which contain views as to man's origin as dia-
metrically opposed to actual facts as the legend of
332 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Deucalion and Pyrrha, and very much farther from the
truth than the account given in the poem of Lucretius.
If it requires some slight acquaintance with modern
science to recognise fully the impossibilities involved in
the account of creation given in the first chapter of
Genesis, none is required to perceive the manifest im-
possibilities of what may be called the second creation
of animated life, described in the narrative of the
Noachian deluge. Mr. Gladstone makes no reference
whatever to this, but it is as integral a part of the
Bible as the account of the original creation.
What does this narrative tell us ?
That God, seeing the wickedness of man, repented of
having created him and the other inhabitants of the
earth, and determined to destroy them ; but that Noah,
the one just man, found grace in His sight, and was
warned to construct an ark, or big ship, in which to save
from the impending flood himself and family, and a pair,
male and female, of every living thing of all flesh,
animals, birds, and reptiles. Another version makes the
number of each species taken into the ark seven of each
sex of clean animals and of birds, i.e., fourteen instead of
two ; but the smaller number may be taken, so as to
avoid the appearance of wishing to exaggerate the im-
possibility of the narrative. This being done, the flood
came, and covered " all the high hills that were under
the whole heaven," utterly destroying every living thing
upon the earth, except those who were saved with Noah
in the ark. The flood began on the 17th day of the
second month say the 17th February and lasted at
its height for a hundred and fifty days, the ark grounding
on Ararat on the 17th July, and the tops of the other
mountains being first seen on the 1st October. The ark
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER, 333
was opened, and the animals came forth on the 27th
February of the succeeding year, so that they were shut
up rather more than twelve months. The account of
Noah offering a burnt offering of every clean beast and
fowl may be omitted, though clearly inconsistent with
the first narrative, which says that only one male and
one female of each species were preserved; nor is it
necessary to dwell on the very rude anthropomorphic
conception of God which represents Him as promising
never again to destroy the earth because He was pleased
by the sweet savour of the roast meat.
Compare this narrative with actual facts. In the
first place, the number of cubic feet in an ark of the
given dimensions is easily calculated, and it is apparent
that it would be totally insufficient to accommodate
pairs of all the larger animals, such as elephants, giraffes,
rhinoceroses, bisons, buffaloes, oxen of various species,
horses, asses, zebras, quaggas, elks, and the various
species of the deer family, elands and other large ante-
lopes, lions, tigers, bears, and other carnivora, to say
nothing of all the enormous minor population of the
earth, the land birds, reptiles, snails, insects, and so
forth, which were all destroyed by a universal deluge
flooding the whole earth for a year. To say nothing,
also, of the vast stores of provender for the herbivora,
and flesh for the carnivora, which must have been
provided in the ark for more than twelve months' con-
sumption, and of the impossibility of arctic and tropical
animals living together for a year at the same tempera-
ture. Nor is the difficulty less, when they emerged from
the ark, of seeing how the herbivora could exist until a
new vegetation had sprung up on the earth soaked and
eodden by being for a year under water, or how the
334 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
carnivora could exist without preying on the single
pairs of herbivorous animals, which were the sole tenants
of that earth for long afterwards. Nor is it possible to
account for the actual distribution of animal life in
different geological provinces if it all radiated from the
common centre of a mountain in Armenia. Could the
kangaroo, for instance, have jumped at one bound from
the top of Ararat to Australia, leaving no trace of
its passage in any intermediate district ? Or how can
the narrative be reconciled with the fact of the existence,
long prior to any possible date of the Noachian deluge,
of an enormous variety, both of species and types of
land life, which were gradually developed into more and
more specialised forms, and which appeared at different
periods, grew, flourished, and finally decayed and dis-
appeared ? Was the mammoth, whose skeleton, still
covered with flesh and hair, was discovered on the frozen
banks of the Lena, a descendant of a pair of mammoths
who were saved in the ark ; or the Elephas meridionalis,
whose bones, twice the size of the largest existing
elephant, are found in the forest bed at Cromer ; or the
anthropoid ape and sabre-toothed tiger of the Miocene ;
or the palaeotherium and anoplotherium of the Eocene, or
any of the earlier inhabitants of the earth's land surface ?
No stretching of days into periods, or other use of
words in a non-natural sense, can in the slightest degree
get over the glaring contradiction between the naive and
almost infantile story of Noah's ark, and the facts, I will
not say of science, but of common sense and common
observation, which are patent to every decently well-read
schoolboy of the rising generation.
The real " dawn of creation " is that traced through
three different lines of scientific research :
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 335
.First, that of astronomy, showing the progressive
condensation of nebulae, nebulous stars, and suns in
various stages of their life history.
Secondly, that of geology, commencing with the
earliest known fossil, the Eozoon Canadiense of the
Laurentian, and continued in a chain, every link of
which is firmly welded, through the Silurian, with its
abundance of molluscous, crustacean, and vermiform
life, and first indication of fishes ; the Devonian, with its
predominance of fish and first appearance of reptiles ;
the Mesozoic, with its batrachians ; the Secondary forma-
tions, in which reptiles of the sea, land, and air pre-
ponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate
land animals began to appear ; and finally the Tertiary,
in which mammalian life has become abundant, and type
succeeding to type and species to species, are gradually
differentiated and specialised, through the Eocene, Mio-
cene, and Pliocene periods, until we arrive at the
Glacial and Prehistoric periods, and at positive proof
of the existence of man.
Thirdly, the line of embryology, or development of
every individual life, from the primitive speck of proto-
plasm, and the nucleated cell in which all life originates,
passing, as in the parallel case of types and species,
through progressive stages of specialisation from the
lowest, the amoeba, to the highest, man who, like all
other animals, originates in a cell, and is developed
through stages undistinguishable from those of fish,
reptile, and mammal, until the cell finally attains the
highly specialised development of the quadrumanous,
and, last of all, of the human type.
In like manner the " dawn of worship " is to be
found in the flint hatchets and other rude implements
336 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
deposited with the dead, as by modern savages, testi-
fying to some sort of belief in spirits and in a future
existence. This clearly prevailed in the Neolithic, and
possibly in the immensely older Palaeolithic period,
though the evidence for the latter is at present very
weak, and the first object which can be affirmed with
any certainty to be an idol or attempt to represent a
deity, dates only from the Neolithic period, as do the
cannibal feasts, which can be proved to have not infre-
quently accompanied the interment of important chiefs.
For anything beyond this we have to descend to the
Historical period, and turn to early monuments, myths,
and sacred books. The earliest records by far are those
of the Egyptian tombs of the first four dynasties, and
they tell us little more than this, that with a highly
developed civilisation, the idea of a future life was very
much that of a continuance of the present life, in a tomb
which was made to resemble the deceased's actual house,,
and with surroundings which repeated his actual belong-
ings ; while the whole complicated Egyptian mythology,
of symbolised gods and deified animals, was of later
origin. If we turn to the earliest mythologies of the
Aryan and of the mixed Semitic and other races of
Western Asia, we find them plainly originating, to a
great extent, in the personification of natural forces,
mainly of the sun, on which are engrafted ideas of
family, tribal, and national gods, and of deified heroes.
Sometimes, as the original meaning of the names and
attributes of these gods came to be forgotten, the
mythologies branched out into innumerable fables ; at
other times, among more simple and severe races, or
with more philosophic minds in the inner circle of a
hereditary priesthood, the fables of polytheism were
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 337
rejected, and the idea prevailed, either of a unity of
nature implying a single author, or of such a prepon-
derance of the national God over all others as led by a
different path to the same result of monotheism. The
real merit of the Jewish race and of the Hebrew scrip-
tures is to have conceived this idea earlier, and retained
it more firmly, than any of the less philosophical and
more immoral religions of the ancient world ; and this
is a merit of which they can never be deprived, however
much the literal accuracy, and consequently the inspi-
ration and miraculous attributes, of these venerable books
may be disproved and disappear.
Works like this of Mr. Gladstone's, however well
intentioned, are in reality profoundly irreligious, for if
like the throw of the gambler, who, when the cards or dice
go against him, stakes all or nothing on some desperate
cast religion is staked on the one issue that incredible
narratives are true, and were dictated by Divine inspira-
tion, there can be but one result. Every day brings to light
fresh discoveries confirming the conclusions of science, and
conflicting with the accounts of the creation of the world
and man, and of the universal deluge, given in the Old
Testament. Every day diffuses a knowledge of these
discoveries more widely among millions of readers.
What must be the result if men of " light and leading "
proclaim to the world that if these conclusions of science
are true there is an end of religion ? Evidently the
same as George Stephenson predicted for the cow who
should stand on the rails and try to stop the locomotive,
" Varra awkward for the coo." The really religious
writers of the present day are those who, thoroughly
understanding and recognising the facts of science,
boldly throw overboard whatever conflicts with them,
338 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
abandon all theories of inspiration and miraculous inter-
ferences with the order of nature, and appeal, in support
of religion, to the essential beauty and truth in Chris-
tianity underlying the myths and dogmas which have
grown up about it ; who, above all, appeal to the fact
that it exists and is a product of the evolution of the
human mind, satisfying, as nothing else can do so well,
many of the purest emotions and loftiest aspirations,
which are equally a necessary and inevitable product of
that evolution.
Mr. Gladstone's first essay having elicited a crushing
and conclusive reply from Professor Huxley, he followed
it up by a second one under the above title, which i&
chiefly remarkable for the rhetorical dexterity with
which he withdraws under a cloud of smoke from the
positions rendered untenable by the Professor's heavy
artillery, while at the same time he defends the equally
untenable positions, not within his opponent's line of
fire, by reiterated assertion.
Professor Huxley shows that the real facts, as
ascertained beyond all doubt by the researches of science,
do not correspond with the order of animated creation
described in Genesis. Mr. Gladstone admits that this
" pulverises his proposition that there was a scientific
consensus as to a sequence like that of Genesis, in the
production of animal life as between fishes, birds,
mammals, and man." He rides off by saying that the
writer of the account of creation in Genesis " is not
responsible for scientific precision, that nothing can
be assigned to him but a statement general, which
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 339
admits exceptions ; popular, which aims mainly at
producing moral impressions ; summary, which cannot
but be open to more or less of criticism in detail."
In a word, he says, " I think it is a sermon." But
how is an account of creation evaporated into a sermon
to prove revelation ?
Partly by evaporating revelation, which he tells
us does not require us to believe that the Bible is
strictly and literally true in all its statements, but
that it may have a human element of error and uncer-
tainty in the sacred text. This is virtually giving up
the whole case, for it opens the door for human reason
to inquire at every step, by the ordinary rules of
criticism, whether any given statement is part of the
divine inspiration, or part of the " human element " of
error.
Mr. Gladstone sees this, and shrinks from carrying
out this line of reasoning to its legitimate conclusions.
Accordingly he falls back on so much of his original
assertion as has been left undemolished by Huxley, and
endeavours to prove it by repeating it. Admitting that
" the statements of Genesis as to plants and reptiles
cannot in all points be sustained," he contends that
enough remains to prove revelation, notwithstanding
these material errors, from the facts, " First, that such
a record should have been made at all. Secondly, that
instead of dwelling on generalities, it has placed itself
under the severe conditions of a chronological order,
reaching from the past nisus of chaotic matter to the
consummated production of a fair and goodly, a furnished
and peopled world. Thirdly, that its cosmogony seems,
in the light of the nineteenth century, to draw more and
more of countenance from the best natural philosophy ;
z 2
340 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
and, Fourthly, that it has described the successive origins
of the five great categories of present life with which
human experience was and is conversant, in that order
which geological authority confirms." The first point
may "be briefly dismissed. All religions, down to those
of the rudest tribes, begin with cosmogonies. That
of the Chaldees begins, like that of Genesis, with chaos,
describes the separation of sea and land, and ends with
the creation of man ; only Bel is said to have made him
from clay animated with his own blood, while Jahveh.
is said to have made him from the dust of the earth.
The gist of the question lies in the third and fourth
propositions as tested by the second.
Now it is precisely this particularity of statement
which brings the narrative of Genesis into contradiction
with facts. If it had only stated that the universe of
sun, moon, stars, and earth had been evolved from
chaos, and that life had appeared on the earth in a
gradation from the lowest to the highest types, culmina-
ting in the creation of man, there would have been
nothing in it opposed to modern science, and, on the
contrary, it might have been accepted as a wonderful
anticipation of its discoveries.
But when it states, " under the severe conditions of
a chronological order," that the earth was created on
the third day, as defined by an evening and a morning ;
and the sun, moon, and stars on a subsequent day ; and
when the vault of heaven is described by a Hebrew
word, which, while it expresses the idea of expansion,
expresses also that of solidity, sufficient, as we are told
both here and in the account of the deluge, to uphold
waters and support the heavenly bodies a sense which
is given to it by all ancient authors and by the transla-
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 341
tion of the Septuagint it becomes evident that the
statement that " this cosmogony seems, in the light of
the nineteenth century, to draw more and more of
countenance from the best natural philosophy," is as
amazing as that respecting the order of animated
creation which has been " pulverised " by Professor
Huxley.
How could a firmament, which was a mere expanse,
support water, and let it down by opening " the
windows of heaven," when rain was required for a
universal deluge ? And how could there be a " day "
defined by an " evening and a morning," before the sun
had had "assigned to it a certain place and orbit and
light-giving power," and if it existed at all, existed only
in the form of a diffused and non-luminous nebulous
haze ? Evening and morning are perfectly definite terms,
which imply the existence of the sun and the opening
and closing of a natural day of twenty-four hours,
either by the apparent revolution of the sun round the
earth, or by the real rotation of the earth round its axis,
in either case in a " certain place and orbit " of the sun,
and with a " light-giving power."
The only attempt to support Mr. Gladstone's original
proposition is contained in the reiterated assertion that
he is not aware that any serious flaw is alleged in the
cosmogony of the Proem, and as regards its account of
the creation of animated life in the argument that the
words probably meant mammals only, and that the
Mosaic writer only meant such animals " as were
familiarly known to early man." But the words are
most express ; and the serpent, who belongs to the order
of reptiles which existed before birds, and from which
birds were probably developed, was certainly one of the
342 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
land animals with which Eastern nations were most
familiar, and with which men had the closest connection,
as is shown by the narrative of the Garden of Eden,
and the traces of Naga, or snake worship, which are
found in so many primitive and rude religions.
But, after all, the enormous difference between the
Biblical account of man's origin and fact comes out most
clearly in the narrative of Adam's fall and of the
Noachian deluge.
The impossibilities of the latter have been clearly
pointed out ; and it only remains to add that it requires
us to believe that all the existing races of mankind
Aryan, Semitic, Mongol, Malay, Negro, Negrito, Papuan,
American, Australian, and a multitude of others have
been developed from one family in less than 4,000
years, while we know, as a positive fact, from the
Egyptian temples, that the most marked of these races,
the Negro, existed, with all its present characteristics,
more than 5,000 years ago, and has not varied per-
ceptibly during that period.
As regards Adam's fall, the discovery of Palaeolithic
man is that which has really given the greatest shock
to received theological opinions ; for this discovery,
which is an entirely new one of the last half century,
though now confirmed by innumerable instances, not
only flatly contradicts the narratives of recent descent
from Adam and Noah, but it assails, in its most vital
point, the whole dogma of Pauline Christianity.
The two statements cannot both be true : one, that
man has fallen, the other, that he has risen ; one, that
he was created in God's image, with high moral and
religious faculties, and placed in a garden in a state of
innocence and happiness, from which he fell by au act
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 343
of disobedience, entailing a curse on his descendants
only partially redeemed by the atonement ; the other,
that he is the product of an evolution, tending ever
upwards, over immense geological periods, from savages
who chipped their rude flints on the banks of frozen
rivers, chased the mammoth and the reindeer on the
plains of Southern France, and held their cannibal feasts
in caves excavated by small streams which ran 100 feet
above their present level.
Which is true ? And can the book be inspired
which gives a totally false account of such a vital
matter ? This is the real question, of which Mr.
Gladstone's two eloquent essays scarcely even attempt
to touch the outer fringe.
DRUMMOND'S " NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD."
It is not surprising that this work has had an
immense circulation. It professes to do exactly what
multitudes of readers are anxious to see done, viz., to
reconcile science and religion, and show that the
dogmas of theology are not only not inconsistent with
natural laws, but actually based upon and identical with
them.
Professor Drummond brings to this task many
qualifications. He enters the arena, not like the great
majority of orthodox writers, armed only with the
obsolete bows and arrows of theological infallibility,
but equipped with the improved weapons of modern
scientific research. He understands what is meant by
laws of nature, and does not misrepresent or ignore
them. He is learned, he is candid, and he is sincere.
His style is clear, and his arguments and phraseology
344 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
are such that, while the few who have scientific know
ledge can understand and appreciate them, the many,
who do not understand, cannot fail to find them
profound and convincing where they chime in with
their preconceived opinions.
It is the more necessary, therefore, for those whose
sole object is that truth should prevail, to examine the
work closely, and endeavour to show clearly what it
aims to accomplish, how far it succeeds, and how far its
conclusions are vitiated by underlying fallacies.
The fundamental idea of Professor Drummond's
work is summed up in its title : " Natural Law in the
Spiritual World."
The object is to prove that the same laws of nature
which prevail throughout the organic and inorganic
worlds of science extend, with an unshaken and identical
continuity, into the world of spirits, and give positive
and scientific proof of the dogmas of religion.
To establish this it is clear that the fundamental
requisite is to begin with a precise definition and
sufficient proof of the two terms of the proposition :
"What is 'Natural Law'? What is the 'Spiritual
World 5 ?"
If, for instance, the proposition were that the same
identical law of gravity prevails in the astronomical and
geological worlds, we should have to begin by Laving a
clear idea of what we mean by astronomy and what by
geology. Astronomy means the knowledge of the sun
and its planets, of satellites, comets, meteors, and those
distant suns and systems called stars and nebulae as far
as their nature is disclosed to us by the telescope and
spectroscope. The law of gravity is shown to prevail
universally throughout this world, by experiments in
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 345
the fall of heavy bodies, and calculations from the
observed orbits of all heavenly bodies, from the solar
system to the remotest double stars.
Geology, again, is the science of the formation of the
planet which we inhabit, with its succession of strata
upon strata, slowly deposited, frequently depressed and
elevated, and identified by various types of life, appear-
ing, growing, declining, and dying out, in the different
formations. The prevalence of the identical law of
gravity throughout the vast periods of time embraced
by geology is easily proved from the phenomena of
denudation and stratification. It is clear that heavy
bodies have always gravitated, as they now gravitate,
towards the earth's centre, and that, throughout those
remote periods, mountains have been washed down by
rivers into the sea as they are now being washed down
and there subsided into stratified masses, which have
been brought up again by repeated upheavals.
But to feel this certainty, we must have a clear idea
of geology, and not a vague one, which may include all
manner of catastrophes, miraculous interferences, and
other phenomena unknown from any experience of
existing nature.
Apply this to Professor Drummond's proposition.
Its first term is clear enough ; there can be no doubt
what he means by natural laws, and no one can define
them more forcibly and distinctly.
He tells us : " No man can study modern science
without a change coming over his view of truth. What
impresses him about nature is its solidity. He is then
standing upon actual things, among fixed laws."
And again :
" There is a sense of solidity about a law of nature
346 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN 1 SOUGHT.
which belongs to nothing else in the world. Here at
last, amid all that is shifting, is one thing that is sure ;
one thing outside ourselves, unbiassed, unprejudiced,
uninfluenced by like or dislike, by doubt or fear."
But how of the other term of the proposition, the
" Spiritual World " ?
Here there is no attempt at definition, and even the
fact of its existence is asserted and not proved.
In his Introduction, all he says about it is that
"his proposal does not include an attempt to prove
the existence of the spiritual world. Does that need
proof?"
No, if you are content to keep to the sphere of
theology, and accept authority or intuition as suffi-
cient proofs. But yes, if you appeal to Caesar, and
asked to be tried by Caesar's laws ; in other words,
if you attempt to prove religious dogmas by scientific
reasonings.
He tells us, " The facts of the spiritual world are as
real to thousands as the facts of the natural world." So
were the facts of witchcraft and demonology. Does it
prove them to be true ? How is it possible to decide
whether certain laws do, or do not, apply to the spiritual
world, as long as we are left in entire uncertainty as to
what may be meant by it, and whether it is intended
to include everything that is not strictly matter, such
as human consciousness, individuality, intellect, and
morality ; or to be confined to the particular tenets of
one particular religious sect ? How can we argue with a
man about the laws of the spiritual world, without
knowing whether he is a Plato, a Confucius, or a
Comte, who embraces the whole sphere of humanity ; or
a LIuggletonian or Plymouth Brother, whose idea of it is
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 347
limited to the world of those who have been touched by
Divine grace to believe in the special doctrines of his
own minute congregation ?
In the present instance Professor Drummond's con-
ception of the " Spiritual World " is to be gathered, not
from any precise definition, but from a careful perusal
of his entire work, and by a gradual process of elimi-
nating all that he affirms to form no part of it.
Thus, we gradually discover that all the natural
elements of humanity, all that can be discovered by
natural reason, all that can be explained and demon-
strated, lie totally outside his idea of the " Spiritual
World."
" What now," he says, " specifically distinguishes a
Christian man from a non-Christian man ? Not a
higher morality, nobler character, benevolent sym-
pathies, and reverent spirit. The distinction between
them is the same as between the organic and inorganic,
the living and the dead."
And again :
"Were we to construct a scientific classification,
science would compel us to arrange all natural man,
moral or immoral, educated or vulgar, as one family.
But the spiritual man is removed from this family
utterly, by the possession of an additional characteristic."
What is this characteristic ?
The Professor asks and answers the question in the
following terms :
"What is the something extra which constitutes
spiritual life ? It is Christ. He that hath the Son
hath life."
He repeats this over and over again with ever-
increasing emphasis.
3-48 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
" The earthly mind may be of noble calibre, enriched
by culture, high-toned, virtuous, and pure. But if it
know not God ? "
"The Christian is an unique phenomenon. You
cannot account for him. And if you could, he would
not be a Christian."
If so, I am afraid the Professor's attempt to account
for him by biogenesis and other natural laws, must be
set down as endeavours to extinguish this " unique
phenomenon," and banish Christianity from the world ;
for, if this definition be true, there would no longer be
any Christians, if Christianity could be accounted for by
rational arguments.
But it would be unfair to take advantage of a
slip of the pen, or exaggeration of language, and we
pass this over to inquire what, after these explana-
tions, Professor Drummond's " Spiritual World " really
amounts to.
It is evident that it is simply our old friend, the
" Shorter Catechism," in a scientific dress. In other
words, it is the world of Calviuistic Christianity of the
peculiar system of theology which turns on the ideas of
original sin, fall, redemption, regeneration, election, and
predestination.
The Professor does not shrink from setting forth
this theory in all its grim repulsiveness.
"It is an old-fashioned theology," he says, "which
divides the world in this way, which speaks of men as
living and dead, lost and saved a stern theology all
but fallen into disuse. Nevertheless, the grim distinction
must be retained. It is a scientific distinction. He that
hath not the Son hath not life."
That is to say, that no amount of moral excellence
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 349
or intellectual superiority, ever has saved or ever can
save the natural man from the curse of death, entailed
on him by Adam's act of disobedience, and that a
limited number of elect only can escape from it and
inherit eternal life by virtue of the atonement, and
*' the breath of God blowing where it listeth, touching
with its mystery of life the dead souls of men, and
bearing them across the bridgeless gulf between the
natural and the spiritual."
This proposition, he tells us, is, in the first place,
made known to us and proved by revelation, and then
confirmed by showing that it is the result of the same
identical natural laws as those which prevail in the
domain of science.
The law on which he mainly relies is that of bio-
genesis, which, he says, " is the fundamental law of life
for both the natural and spiritual worlds."
Biogenesis means, that as far as is at present known,
all life seems to originate from pre-existing life, and
that the passage from the inorganic world of dead
matter to the organic world of life, is only made in some
unexplained way, which implies the intervention of
some agency not reducible to known laws of science,
and which therefore may be regarded as supernatural.
From this he argues that the same supernatural agency
must be assumed to continue throughout higher spheres
of existence, and bridge the passage from the natural
to the spiritual world just as it bridges that from
atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen into
protoplasm.
The first remark is that biogenesis is by no means
a demonstrably certain and universal law like that of
gravity. It simply amounts to this, that up to the
350 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
present time no demonstration has been given that life
can be produced otherwise than from pre-existing life ;
and that certain experiments which appeared to
establish the reality of spontaneous generation, have
been shown to be fallacious. But the best scientific
authorities who have been foremost in detecting the
fallacy of these experiments, are also foremost in de-
claring that as a question of probability and not of
positive proof, their belief -is that at some earlier stage
of the earth's existence, under conditions of heat,
pressure, and electricity, different from those we can
now produce in our laboratories, this passage from the
inorganic to the organic has taken place, and no one
would be greatly surprised to hear to-morrow of some
experiment by which protoplasm had really been
manufactured from chemical elements.
It is a long way from this to the certainty and
universality of laws like those of gravity and the
conservation of energy.
But waiving this objection, and supposing that
biogenesis was really a certain law, what would it
teach us ? By whatever process we attempt to sound
the depths of the universe, we soon arrive at the end of
our tether, and are arrested by the Great Unknown,
which we have no faculties enabling us to penetrate.
From nebulsG to stars, from stars to suns, from suns to
planets, from planets down through molecules to atoms,
we can explore our way, and connect all phenomena by
continuous laws. But what lies behind the atoms, what
are they, how came they there ? We know as little as
we do of life, if there be life, in Saturn ; or of what
space may contain beyond the limits reached by the
most powerful telescope.
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 35 1
If biogenesis really be a law, it simply brings us one
step nearer to this Great Unknown by following the line
of living matter up to protoplasm, than if we follow
that of inorganic matter up to atoms. It is no more
possible to prove theological d'ogmas from the laws of
protoplasm than it is from the atomic theory.
" All attempts to prove the extension of natural laws
from one sphere into another which is not in pari
materia with it, really resolve themselves into analogies,
and no one is more aware than Professor Drummond
of the danger in such cases of trusting to analogy.
He says: "The position we have been led to take
up is not that spiritual laws are analogies to natural
laws, but that they are the same laws."
And again :
"Nothing could be more false both to science
and religion than attempts to adjust the two spheres
by making out ingenious points of contact in detail."
The difference between analogies and proofs where
the subject is not in pari materia, will be at once
apparent if we consider the analogies between the world
of nature and that of the human mind. Poetry consists, to
a great extent, in the faculty of vividly conceiving and
expressing such analogies. When Byron compares the
flash of lightning in a midnight storm among the Alps,,
to the
Light of a dark eye in woman,
it is beautiful poetry.
But does this prove that because the tumult of
passion in a woman often ends, like the thunderstorm,
in a shower of tears, therefore the same identical laws
of electricity which cause the rain cause the tears ?
352 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
This is Professor Drummond's proposition, and its
fallacy will be at once apparent.
Again, the danger of founding religions on analogies
will be apparent, if we consider what the consequences
would be of extending this mode of reasoning to other
religions than Christianity, and other laws than bio-
genesis.
There is no more certain or more universal law than
that of the " conservation of energy," but if the human
soul is not a mere attribute of matter, but an inde-
pendent energy, it follows, if this law extends to it, that
it can never die, but only be transformed. The Cal-
vinistic theory of death for the immense majority, and
life for the few elect, disappears, and instead of it we
have a religion like that of the Brahmins and Buddhists,
teaching the transmigration of souls from one form of
life to another, and the final absorption of all the
separate rills of individual life in the great ocean of
Pantheism.
Again, polarity is a most universal law, and here we
really do know that it extends not only throughout the
inorganic and organic worlds, but also into what may
be called the natural spiritual world the world of laws
and morals, of arts and sciences, of practical conduct, of
social and political problems. There is scarcely a ques-
tion to which the apologue does not apply of the knights
who fought because they could each see only one side of
the shield, and with reference to which true wisdom has
not, in the words of the poet, to
Turn to scorn with lips divine
The falsehood of extremes.
What follows ? Shall we embrace the religion of Zoro-
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 353
aster, which certainly gives us the best embodiment of
this all-prevailing law, and presents it to us in the form
best adapted for a great many of the realities of
practical life ?
The real truth is that religion, in the sense in which
Professor Drummond uses the words " spiritual life,"
and in which the majority of the Christian world accept
it, can only be proved by revelation. This he admits
himself, for he says : " The revelation must be assumed.
The information, in the first instance, must be vouch-
safed as a revelation."
The truth therefore of any system of theology, which
professes to teach things undiscoverable by ordinary
human reason, must depend on two things.
Firstly, the evidence for the revelation by which it
is made known.
Secondly, its accordance with other known and un-
doubted natural laws.
The second point may be considered first, for, although
natural laws cannot of themselves discover or prove
dogmas beyond the province of natural reason, yet, as all
truth must be consistent with itself, it is not possible to
believe in any revelation which professes to teach things
absolutely irreconcilable with fundamental laws, either
of the scientific or of the moral and intellectual worlds.
No educated man could sincerely believe a theology
which taught that the earth was flat and not round, that
the law of gravity was that of the inverse cube and not
the square of the distance, or that cruelty and ingratitude
are virtues and not vices.
Tried by this test, the weakness of Professor Drum*
mond's assumption of a " spiritual world," based on the
lines of Calvinistic theology, is at once apparent.
2 A
354 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Stripped of high-sounding theological language, and
stated in plain English, what does it amount to ?
Suppose we read in Herodotus a narrative how some
great Asiatic king of kings say, Cambyses, the son of
Cyrus offended by some act of disobedience on the part
of the governor of a province, made a decree sentencing
all the inhabitants of that province to be put to death
on attaining a certain age ; how the monarch's only son
interceded for them with his father, but was told that
the laws of the Medes and Persians could not be changed,
and that none of the inhabitants of the province could
escape the penalty unless the son offered himself as a
sacrifice and atonement for them ; how the son, being a
noble and generous character, offered himself accordingly,
and was put to a painful death; and thereupon the
monarch remitted the penalty, not to all, but to a very
small percentage of the inhabitants of the province,
selected by lot, or by his favour, "blowing where it
listed."
Will Professor Drummond, or any one else, tell us
how this narrative differs from the Calvinistic scheme of
theology, or how it can be reconciled with those moral
laws of justice, mercy, and loving-kindness, which have
come to be fundamental laws in the conceptions and
consciences of all civilised races of mankind ?
If it were possible to conceive of any revelation of
such a scheme, supported by evidence so cogent and
irresistible that it was impossible to doubt it, the only
logical conclusion would be that the divine scheme of
the universe was that of Zoroaster ; a polarity between
the two opposing principles of good and evil, the latter
embodied in the father and the former in the son. But
the practical conclusion would probably be either blank
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 355
scepticism, or a belief that there was a mistake some-
where, either in the revelation, or in the interpretation
of it.
This, at any rate, is clear, that the evidence for such
a revelation must be of the most cogent and convincing
character to induce any reasonable man, who approached
the subject without prepossession, to entertain it for a
moment, and that without such evidence no possible
analogy between the scheme and some one or two out
of the many laws of nature, could induce him to
believe it.
Now, this is precisely the point which the defenders
of orthodox theology ignore or overlook. The ever-
increasing scepticism, of the age, of which they complain,
is based, not upon refined philosophical speculations, or
abstruse arguments, but upon certain plain and matter-
of-fact considerations, which the discoveries of modern
science have forced on the minds of thinking men.
Orthodox Christianity is based on revelation ; what
is revelation based on ? On the Bible the whole fabric
depends on the belief that the Bible is an inspired
record conveying a Divine message from God to
man.
Such a record it is clear cannot contain errors and
contradictions upon material points affecting the whole
scope and tenor of the message. If it appear, upon
strong primd facie evidence of scientific laws and facts,
that it does contain such errors and contradictions,
faith must be shaken ; and the first condition of re-
storing it must be to show, either that these scientific
facts are mistaken, or that the accounts in the Bible can
be reconciled with them. Thus, for instance, the
account of the creation of the material universe, earth,
2 A 2
356 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
sun, moon, and stars, given in Genesis, seems to be
absolutely inconsistent with the real facts as ascertained
by astronomy and geology that of the animated
creation still more so, whether as described in Genesis,
or even more palpably in the narrative of the deluge,
and what may be called the second creation of life, in
which all the varieties of the human species and the
whole innumerable varieties of animal land life are said
to be descendants of single pairs who were prisoned
together in the ark for more than twelve months, and
whose progeny radiated only some 4,000 years ago
from a single centre on a mountain in Armenia.
And most destructive of all to old beliefs, the recent
discoveries of the remains of Palseolithic man shatter
into fragments the account of man's descent from an
Adam created quite recently, in God's image, with high
faculties, in a state of innocence and happiness, from
which he fell by an act of disobedience ; and again, still
more palpably, from a Noah who was saved in an ark at
a date not nearly so remote from us as the historical
monuments of the earlier Egyptian dynasties.
If the facts really are that man's existence on the
earth can be traced back for enormous periods, during
which he has slowly but constantly progressed from a
state of the rudest savagery towards civilisation and
morality, how can this be reconciled with the theory of
Adam's fall, which is the foundation of the whole super-
structure of redemption and regeneration ?
And how can the facts be denied, unless we are pre-
pared to admit that the many hundreds of thousands of
Palaeolithic remains found, from Europe to China, have
been placed there by a conspiracy of all the geologists
of the world, to forge proofs contradictory of the Mosaic
narrative ?
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 357
Again, if we turn to the New Testament, is it
possible to consider writings inspired which, contain the
most distinct and definite prophecy that a certain event,
the end of the world, would take place within a certain
definite period, the lifetime of some of the existing
generation, when, in point of fact, it did not occur, and
has not occurred, for nineteen centuries afterwards ?
Or, how can we believe them inspired, if some of the
principal witnesses say of the cardinal miracle of the
ascension, that they were commanded to go to Galilee to
witness it, while others, who describe it fully and in
detail, say that they were commanded not to go to
Galilee, but to remain in Jerusalem, where the miracle
actually took place ? Or how can we account for the
oldest manuscript of the Gospel, which is certainly
one of the nearest, if not the nearest, to the original
narrative, that according to St. Mark, omitting alto-
gether any mention of any miraculous event connected
with the resurrection ?
These are the sort of difficulties which force them-
selves on the minds of all who have the most elementary
acquaintance with the facts of modern science and the
researches of Biblical criticism. They are plain questions
which require a plain answer ; and, until it is given, it is
idle to appeal to authority and tradition, or to think
that any amount of ecclesiastical scolding, or appeals to
misty metaphysics, or far-fetched analogies to natural
laws, can restore the simple creed of our ancestors, or
prevent the faith of educated men from becoming every
day fainter and fainter. If an answer can be given,
by all means let it be given. Why should men, like
Professor Drummond, who understand what natural
laws really mean, and are conversant with the discoveries
358 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
of modern science, be content to base the whole case for
their " spiritual world " on texts from St. Paul and
St. John, leaving the real foundations of belief to
be defended by champions who rush into the field with
the intrepidity of ignorance, and injure the cause they
advocate by the obvious weakness of their arguments ?
Let Professor Drummond, or any one else who is
thoroughly acquainted with the latest discoveries of
astronomy, geology, zoology, biology, palaeontology, and
Biblical criticism, face the real difficulties of orthodox
belief, and show by reasonable arguments how science
and religion can be reconciled, and he will meet with no
prejudiced opposition. On the contrary, the great
majority of mankind, including men of science, will be
only too glad to be able to exchange the fainter for the
larger hope. Because a man is acquainted with the
facts of science he is not enamoured of annihilation, and
would be delighted to find some secure basis on which to
rest hopes of a future life, and of again seeing lost and
loved faces; nor could he object to any additional sanction
from revelation being given to the Sermon on the
Mount, or St. Paul's definition of Christian charity.
But, if he is acquainted with these facts, and at all
imbued with the spirit of scientific inquiry which
characterises the age in which he lives, he asks for
evidence ; not absolutely certain or demonstrative
evidence, like that for a proposition of Euclid, but
reasonable evidence, such as, after standing being called
into court and cross-examined, would satisfy a com-
petent and impartial jury.
Such evidence has not hitherto been forthcoming,
and assuredly is not supplied by this work of Professor
Drummond's. In the meantime objections not captious,
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 359
but real, solid, reasonable objections are multiplying
every day ; and every attempt to answer them makes it
only clearer that the old theology rests on assertion and
authority, and not on fact and argument.
When the point of attachment of a chain has given
way it becomes almost a work of supererogation to test
the strength of each separate link. It may be sufficient
to say that, starting from the assumption that the
spiritual world is identical with the Calvinistic creed,
and that the truth of this creed is proved by revelation
and confirmed by biogenesis, the rest of Professor
Drummond's work consists of attempts to preach science
into this creed, and show that its peculiar tenets have
analogies in other natural laws.
Thus, the law of degeneration, by which organs
dwindle and disappear by want of use, is used as an
analogy for the decay of faculties by neglect, which, if
cultivated, might have raised the soul to a higher level.
The law of growth is quoted in support of the
doctrine of election, as showing that in either case the
growth is not the result of conscious effort, but of some
miraculous gift conferred by the grace of God " blowing
where it listeth." We cannot, " by taking thought, add
a cubit to our stature ; " and by the same law we are
told that we cannot by any amount of conscious effort,
raising us to a purer life and higher morality bring
ourselves one step nearer to salvation. It is true this is
flatly contradicted by the previous law, which attributes
the loss of salvation to neglect ; but such trifles as flat
contradictions do not much affect those who attempt to
" read science into religion," and they easily escape
detection if wrapped up in long scientific words and
lubricated by an unctuous theology.
360 MODEKN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Death is the subject of the next chapter, and the
argument is that, as death may be considered in the
last resort to be the ceasing to be in correspondence with
the environment, it is the inevitable fate of all who, not
having been led by Divine grace to adopt the Calvinistic
creed, are not in harmony with God ; while, on the
other hand, eternal life is the necessary attribute of all
who have thus been brought into harmony with an
eternal and unchanging environment.
It is wonderful how high-sounding theories are apt
to collapse when touched by the Ithuriel spear of plain
English. This of death being the ceasing to correspond
with the environment simply amounts to this : that if
we had not died we should be still alive a truism
which does not advance us much towards a solution of
the great problem of a future life. To the ordinary
apprehension of ordinary men the question of a future
life means this : shall we, after death, retain the con-
sciousness, or personal identity, which in this life
distinguishes each individual from the surrounding
universe. The practical test most would try it by is
shall we be able to meet and recognise those whom we
have loved and lost ?
The only elements reason is able to supply towards
this momentous question are that, as far as our ex-
perience and knowledge extend, this life of conscious
personal identity is indissolubly connected with a
material organ the brain. It did not exist before we
were born ; it only came gradually into existence as the
infant brain grew and received impressions ; it is sus-
pended when the action of the brain is suspended, as in
dreamless sleep and suspended animation ; it is strangely
distorted or duplicated in abnormal conditions of the
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 361
brain, as in trance or hypnotism. What will become of
it when the brain is dissolved into its elements ? No
voice comes from beyond the grave to tell us. It
is the mystery of mysteries.
Behind the veil, behind the veil !
It is simply childish to tell us that the unknown
can be solved by any analogy, more or less fanciful and
far-fetched, to the natural laws which bind together
phenomena which we really do know. Because matter
cannot be created or destroyed, but only transformed,
what does this tell us as to whether personal identity
will be continued after death, or annihilated, or absorbed
in the great ocean of an all-pervading spirit ?
The next chapter is on mortification. This hardly
takes the form of scientific argument, but is substan-
tially a sermon on the text of " If thine eye offend thee,
pluck it out." As far as any argument goes, the inference,
as stated by Professor Drummond himself, seems to be
that the best course would be for a man, directly he
felt the vivifying influence of Divine grace, to commit
suicide, and thus escape from the old environment of
the natural man into the safe refuge of eternal life. If,
in condescension to human weakness, this extreme
remedy is not adopted, the next best course is "to die
as much as he can," and withdraw from all the duties,
affections, interests, and pleasures of natural life, into a
rigid asceticism.
To become a Christian fakir is the ideal set before
us for those who have not the courage to adopt the
more complete remedy of suicide.
The chapter on eternal life is a continuation of the
same argument as that on death.
362 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
If Herbert Spencer, in a philosophical discussion on
life and death, tells us that with an eternal correspond-
ence between an organism and its environment the
organism would live for ever, he simply tells us, in
abstract terms, that if there were no cause for death we
should continue to live. This, Professor Drummond
calls " one of the most startling achievements of recent
science, and a contribution of immense moment to the
religious mind."
No one would probably be more surprised than
Mr. Herbert Spencer to find that this generalisation of
his had been accepted as a positive scientific proof of
the " Shorter Catechism." The Professor is much too apt
to forget the sage aphorism which applies to philo-
sophical and theological speculations, as well as to more
sublunary matters : " First catch your hare." First
prove the reality of your spiritual life, and it will be
time to consider the different scientific sauces with
which it may be dressed up.
In what possible way does Mr. Herbert Spencer's
generalisation affect the question whether the Bible is
inspired ; whether it is a true revelation of things other-
wise unknowable ; and if it be, whether the Calvinistic
creed is the true interpretation of it ? All these are ques-
tions which require to be established by solid proof, before
we can even enter on the discussion of whether anything
can be found in scientific laws or philosophical definitions,
which may be thought to afford a more or less fanciful
analogy to its peculiar dogmas.
After eternal life comes environment, and here,
perhaps, the contrast between the scientific lecturer and
the popular preacher comes out more sharply than in
any other chapter. The first half is taken up by
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 3G3
enumerating instances of the dependence of organisms
on their environment. He shows how the colour of
animals is modified by their surroundings ; how the
polar bear is white, the tiger striped, the flounder of
sandy hue ; how, without air, there could be no mam-
mals, without water no fish, without environment no
life. And then he jumps at once to this astounding
corollary, that these facts are a mere scientific re- state-
ment of the saying of Christ : " Without me ye can do
nothing ; " and the rest of the chapter is very much in
the tone of an ordinary sermon on the text of the "lilies
of the field," or, "take no thought for the morrow,"
inculcating absolute dependence on the spiritual en-
vironment, "which is God."
Conformity to type.
The scientific portion of this chapter is based on the
fact that, within a limited range of time types breed
true, and species of animal life are distinguished from
one another by differences which remain constant and
admit of classification. The theological inference
drawn is that, "As the bird-life builds up a bird the
image of itself, so the Christ-life builds up a Christ the
image of Himself, in the inward nature of man."
The practical conclusion is that this establishes the
doctrine of predestination. " Whom He did foreknow,
He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of His Son."
He adds : " One must confess that the originality of
the entire New Testament conception is most startling."
No wonder, for to any ordinary mind it must appear
startling to be told that predestination is a certain fact
because dogs are not bred from birds' eggs.
To establish even the faintest analogy to the Christ-
3G4 MODERN" SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
life which is assumed, it would be requisite to prove
that higher types have invariably been evolved from
lower ones, by some miraculous influence transforming
at once a certain number of favoured individuals.
Directly the contrary is known to be the case.
Types have arisen, flourished, in some cases decayed
and died out, in others been transformed, not by any
sudden process, but by the slow accumulation over long
periods of time, of individual peculiarities, accumulated
and fixed by the action of heredity and environment.
Bird-life was not always bird-life ; it began as reptilian
life, and the Archoeopteryx is more of a lizard than of a
bird.
If " conformity to type " really taught anything, it
would tell rather in favour of death than of life, for it is
certain that many highly organised types of life have
died out and disappeared during past geological ages,
and science, in the case of the moon, which being a
smaller body than the earth has gone through its course
of evolution quicker, points rather to ultimate death
than to the passage into a higher stage of existence, of
all suns, planets, and their inhabitants. But it would
be as unscientific to draw conclusions from this, or from
the law by which all energy tends to run down into one
uniform ocean of rest, as temperatures become equalised,
in favour of death as the law of the Unknown, as it is
for Professor Drummond to draw from the same pre-
mises the conclusion of a Christ-life. It is either
altogether unknown, or known only by revelation, and
the first condition of the problem is to prove the
revelation.
Parasitism and semi-parasitism.
These chapters give, in much detail, instances of the
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER. 365
natural law by which organisms who take life too easily
and lean on others for support, degenerate and fall low
in the scale of existence.
Thus the hermit crab, who is too lazy to make his
own shell, and borrows the cast-off shell of some mollusk,
loses the shell-secreting faculty, and falls behind the
more laborious common crab. This is called semi-
parasitism, while parasitism proper extends to the cases
where the animal lives in another living animal, and
degenerates into a mere sac, absorbing nourishment and
laying eggs.
The conclusions drawn from this collection of in-
teresting facts are certainly most extraordinary. " Roman
Catholicism is an organisation specially designed to
induce the parasitic habit in the souls of men. It offers
the masses a molluscous shell." Even more startling
it is to be told that " one of the things in the religious
world which tends most strongly to induce the parasitic
habit is going to church" The italics are not mine
but the Professor's. And again : " In those churches,
especially when all parts of the worship are subordinated
to the sermon, this species of parasitism is peculiarly
encouraged."
Nay. more, the better the preacher the greater is the
danger, and if " Providence had not mercifully delivered
the Church from too many great men in its pulpits," the
consequences would have been most disastrous to a large
circle of Christian people. Church-going Christians may
perhaps find some consolation in the obvious fact, that if
parasitism be such a deadly danger its extremest form
would be found in the very spiritual life which Professor
Drummond is attempting to prove. A more complete
analogy to the parasitic sac cannot be found than
366 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
that of the man who, fastening on to the Calvinistic
creed, and arriving at the conviction that he is one of
the elect, proceeds, as the Professor advises, " to die as
much as he can," and abstracts himself from all the
interests and duties of his natural environment.
The chapters are chiefly interesting as showing the
length to which a learned and sincere man, who starts
from the predetermination to believe a particular creed,
can go on inventing arguments in its support, which, if
they were worth anything, would really be most
conclusive against it.
Classification. The argument of this last chapter
is not very apparent. No doubt all the facts of the
inorganic and organic worlds, and those relating to
natural man, admit of being arranged and classified.
Religions also may be classified so far as they relate to
known facts. Thus Mahometanism and Christianity may
be classified as two of the world's religions, for there is no
doubt of the fact that there are many millions both of
Mahometans and of Christians. Or, again, religions may
be classified as monotheistic or polytheistic, for, as a
matter of fact, both have existed. But this tells us
nothing of their intrinsic or relative truth.
So, if we assume the existence of Professor Drurn-
mond's spiritual world, those who belong to it, or even
without assuming its existence, those who believe in it,
may fairly be classed as a distinct sect from the rest of
mankind. But this no more proves its reality than the
classification of negroes as fetish-worshippers proves the
truth of fetish worship. As usual, he has to fall back
on texts, aud quotes from St. John and St. Paul, sayings
which seem to establish the reality of a wide distinction
between carnal and spiritual life.
SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTEPw 367
It might fairly be asked how we can be certain that
many of these sayings are not merely the highly-coloured
metaphorical expressions in which the Eastern mind
invariably clothes its ideas, and whether they ought to
be taken in the strict and literal sense, which the words
present to the more practical and scientific European
intellect.
But apart from this question, how does the fact that
natural phenomena admit of classification, advance in
the slightest degree the proposition that, in addition to
the known inorganic and organic kingdoms, there must
be a third unknown kingdom, which may be best desig-
nated as the " Kingdom of God ? " There may or may
not be such a kingdom, but assuredly, apart from reve-
lation, we can no more prove or disprove from natural
laws, that we shall live after death, than we can that we
have lived before birth.
It would be easy, taking each chapter in detail, to
show the fallacies involved in many of the analogies,
and the extent to which scientific facts have been dis-
turbed by the preconceived determination to make them
square with the theory of a " Spiritual Life." For
instance, when in order to prove the doctrine of eternal
life, we are told, " that as we ascend in the scale of life
we also rise in the scale of longevity," forgetting that,
in this case, the parrot and the tortoise would take
precedence of man as heirs of immortality.
Or again, when to prove original sin and redemp-
tion, we are told that there is in human nature a prin-
ciple constantly dragging it down to a lower level,
which can only be counteracted by the Christ-life ; for-
getting that long before Christ appeared, humanity had
risen, intellectually, from the fabrication of stone
368 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
hatchets to the perfection of tools and technical skill
shown in the pyramids ; and morally, from the cannibal
feasts of the cavern of Chaleux to the ethics of a
Socrates and a Plato.
But objections of detail are irrelevant, when it is so
obvious that the whole edifice of Professor Drummond's
superstructure rests on the assumption that the spiritual
life of his definition is a proved and undoubted fact.
This again rests on the assumption that certain
texts, quoted almost entirely from the writings of two
of the many writers whose works constitute the Bible,
St. Paul and St. John, are inspired revelations of the
word of God, and therefore absolutely and certainly
true.
Take this away, and nothing remains of the peculiar
"Spiritual World" and "Christ-life," which are the
axioms upon which he builds up every one of his sup-
posed analogies to natural laws. For we can hardly call
proof the assertion that these axioms are self-evident
to what he admits to be an almost infinitesimally small
portion of the whole world, and even of the Christian
world. If this were proof it would apply equally to
every religion and every superstition, or sect of religion,
that has ever existed in the world.
And in the same manner the analogies would apply
as well, or in many cases better, to other totally different
forms of religious belief.
This has been already shown generally of his main
proposition, and it can be shown in detail of each one of
the natural laws which form the subject of the separate
chapters.
For instance, those of degeneration and parasitism
fit in far better with what may be called the Catholic
SUPPLEMENTAL. 369
Christianity of the great majority, which places works
above faith, and seeks to rise to a higher level by
strenuous and persistent effort, than with a theory
which makes salvation depend on a sudden miraculous
act of Divine grace, fixed by predestination, or " blowing
where it listeth."
Or, if a learned Brahmin or Buddhist read the
chapter on mortification, he would exclaim: "Why, here
is my faith, and the essence of my religion." Why does
the holy fakir sit naked in the rain and wind, with his
hands clasped till the nails grow through the flesh, or
upraised till the muscles become rigid, if it be not to
" die as much as he can," detach himself from the evil
environment of the natural world, and so anticipate the
time when his little rill of illusive individual existence
may be absorbed in the mighty ocean of the universal
Spirit ?
And so of each of the chapters. Better analogies
could readily be found for each of them in other creeds ;
better, because they would not be mutually contra-
dictory, as these are in assigning in one place persistent
effort, and in another, asceticism and passive acquiescence
in predestined grace, as the conditions of attaining
spiritual life.
The truth is, as we have already said, that Professor
Drummond, like so many other theological writers,
begins at the wrong end.
There is absolutely no foundation for his super-
structure, except in the assured belief :
First, in revelation as taught mankind by an in-
spired book ;
Secondly, in the particular interpretation given to it
by the Caivinistic creed.
.? B
370 MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Let him begin at the beginning, and lay the foun-
dation stone, solidly and securely, and it will be time to
examine whether the edifice he has built upon it is
likely to stand, or is destined to be one of the many
enthusiastic speculations, which, in his own words,
speaking of his own creed, " rise into prominence from
time to time, become the watchwords of insignificant
parties, and die down ultimately for want of lives to
live them."
THE END.
MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT.
By S. LAING.
THE TIMES.
" Mr. Laing is a man of active mind, and he has had a busy and
rather multifarious life. He is on good terms with his work, his fellow-
woi-kers, and his fellow-thinkers. He treads a beaten path. If he does
not pretend to originality it is because science is not original except to
those who devote themselves to some one field of investigation. He
reports what is known, or believed or not believed, by the majority of
scientific men. The character of the work is foreshadowed in its
divisions and titles. Two hundred pages are given to ' Science,'
followed by about one hundred professedly given to ' Thought.' The
thought, however, is scientific, and it is science that dominates from
the first page to the last. In the first part Mr. Laing exhibits with
much power and effect the immense discoveries of Science, and its
numerous victories over old opinions whenever they have had the rash'
ness to challenge conclusions with it. These discoveries are not so
familiar to the world at large but that any ordinary reader may learn
much from a writer combining matter and style, and conveying solid
information in simple yet striking language. In a comparatively small
compass are here displayed the results of recent inquiries into the
composition and constitution of the earth and of the universe, into the
nature and laws of matter, into the development of organised and
animated existence, into the history of man, into the myths of all races
and the faiths of all people ; into force, motion, electricity, light, and
heat. As one turns over the glowing pages one is tempted to lament
hat a man so qualified to instruct and to illustrate should have been
almost exclusively occupied in absorbing official and practical duties,"
THE PALL MALL GAZETTE.
" Apart from the uselessness and undue multiplication of all such
books, Mr. Laing's brief statement of an agnostic creed is good enough
and sensible euough in its own way. It is the expression of a sensible,
well-read, compromise-loving Briton's final conclusions upon religious
matters. The first part is a rapid and clearly written resume of all that
Modern Science and Modern Criticism have done to sap the foundation
of current theologies and the current dogmas. This resume is admirably
done. Mr. Laing manages to condense into a few short chapters an
amount of salient information on matters astronomical, geological,
archaeological, and historical ; and withal he condenses it cleverly. . . ,
The evidence of geology against the Mosaic cosmogony ; the evidence
of biology, and especially of evolutionism, against the story of creation;
the evidence of the palaeolithic flints and the reindeer age cave-men
against the nai've history of Adam and Eve ; the evidence of human
development against the entire Biblical conception of man's importance
in the scheme of nature all marshalled with considerable skill, and
enforced by excellent and typical examples. The anxious but unlearned
inquirer who really wishes to know how much recent researches iiave
effected towards undermining the groundwork of the existing creeds,
cannot do better than turn to Mr. Laing's pleasantly written pages."
THE SCOTSMAN.
"In his first part Mr. Laing has presented the chief results of
modern scientiGc investigation with singular terseness and lucidity, and
what is more, he has contrived to indicate by simple and impressive
illustrations the methods by which these results have been attained.
And this he has done in a style so simple and elementary, yet so
sufficient for his purpose, that any fairly intelligent reader who has
never been able to give attention to scientific subjects may fully grasp
the sum of the knowledge he seeks to impart. . . . The chapters of
the second part are of genuine interest as showing the conclusions of a
practical man who belongs neither to the philosophers nor the theo-
logians, but has intelligently studied the researches and reasonings
of both, and has formed his judgment between them on the principles of
common sense, and by means of the ordinary rules by which men weigh
evidence in ordinary life."
THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW.
"From the first page to the last the book is charmingly written,
with temperance and wisdom that will win a hearing for the author
from many who may not share his views."
JOURNAL OP SCIENCE.
The successive chapters of the first part of the work discuss Space,
Time, Matter, Life, the Antiquity of Man, and Man's place in Nature.
As a whole the picture given of the Universe and of its development is
clear, and on a level with the present state of human knowledge."
LANCET.
"This work is something more than a compilation. It is true that
the author has contributed nothing new to Science, but he has filtered
a large amount of information, and the outcome is that he has admirably
selected and arranged his material, and added to it the impressions it
has made upon a highly cultivated intellect. The author's style is
clear and terse, and the work as an exposition of Modern Science is
decidedly interesting."
ACADEMY.
'It would be unjust to conclude without acknowledging that Mr.
Laing is always candid and generally accurate, that he writes a clear
and vigorous style, and that he has brought together a number of facts
and arguments which will be studied with interest both by those who
go farther than he does, and by those who do not go so far."
NATIONAL REFORMER.
"This handsome and most interesting volume purports to give a
clear and concise view of the principal results of modern science and of
the revolution which they have effected in Modern Thought. It is
divided into two parts : the first showing the results of very close and
careful research, presenting the teachings of modern science on Space,
Time, Matter, Life, the Antiquity of Man, and Man's place in Nature :
and the second part dealing with Modern Thought, Miracles, Christianity
without Miracles, and Practical Life."
BIRMINGHAM DAILY POST.
" Such a work as this of Mr. Laing's may be accepted with thank-
fulness. In the first part he presents concisely the principal results of
Modern Science and of the revolutions which they have effected in
Modern Thought. This part of the work the author alludes to with so
much modesty that those who take mm at his own valuation will
scarcely realise what is involved in presenting a clear, concise view of
the results of Modern Science. It means that many weighty and
thoughtful books have been studied and mastered, their contents
assimilated. It means a logical and orderly mind capable of arranging
infinite details of a complex and disconnected character in a har
monious and orderly whole. This task has been carried out with
judgment in the selection of facts to be presented and lucidity of
presentation. The growth of the ideas of Space, Time, Matter the
attempts to gather the secret of the great mystery of life the Antiquity
of Man, and Man's place in Nature, these are traced and examined, the
light which the researches of Lyell and Lubbock, Huxley, Proctor, and
Darwin have thrown on them is displayed. Thus ' the common property
of thinking minds ' is set forth in eminently attractive prose."
SPECTATOR.
"By far the greater portion of the book consists of a summary of
contemporary Science as bearing upon the great questions of Time,
Space, Matter, Life, and Man. . . . His last chapter on 'Practical Life'
is full of wisdom which is not wholly worldly."
SCOTTISH REVIEW.
"Among readers of a more robust and sceptical tendency this volume
of Mr. Laing's seems likely to take a place somewhat analogous to that
which Mr. Drumraond's 'Natural Law in the Spiritual World' has
acquired among their orthodox brethren. Both books deal largely with
Science, and both mix up Science with Theology and Eeligion. It is
clear, logical, straightforward, and remarkably outspoken."
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
NEW YORK.
" Modern Science and Modern Thought" is a remarkable and vigorous
article from a new English work, by S. Laing. The liberal tendencies
of modern opinion following the revolution of scientific ideas are
presented in a very effective manner."
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