O 
 
 CO 
 
 LO 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
V 
 
EVOLUTION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HUMAN RACE FROM APES 
 
 &-C. 
 
EVOLUTION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HUMAN RACE FROM APES 
 
 AND OF 
 
 APES FROM LOWER ANIMALS 
 
 A DOCTRINE UNSANCTIONED BY SCIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS WHARTON JONES, F.R.S. F.R.C.S. 
 
 MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF BIOLOGY OF PARIS, OF 
 THE IMPERIAL-ROYAL SOCIETY OF PHYSICIANS OF VIENNA, AND OF 
 
 THE ROYAL MEDICAL SOCIETY OF COPENHAGEN; PROFESSOR OF OPHTHALMIC 
 
 MEDICINE AND SURGERY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, AND OPHTHALMIC SURGEON 
 
 TO THE HOSPITAL; FORMERLY LECTURER ON PHYSIOLOGY AT THE CHARING 
 
 CROSS HOSPITAL ; AND FULLERIAN PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN 
 
 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN ; ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1876 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
\r*-Y 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON, BART. 
 
 M.D. D.C.L. LL.D. F.R.S.E. F.R.C.P. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 PHYSICIAN IN ORDINARY TO H. M. THE QUEEN IN SCOTLAND 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION WHICH MET IN EDINBURGH IN 1875 
 
 PRESIDENT ELECT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF 
 
 SCIENCE TO MEET IN GLASGOW IN 1876 
 
 ETC. 
 
 THE WORTHY SON OF AN HONOURED AND LEARNED FATHER 
 
 fljis SSork 
 
 WITH SINCERE RESPECT AND IN TOKEN OF HIGH APPRECIATION OF 
 
 THE SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL VALUE OF HIS LABOURS 
 
 THROUGHOUT A LONG AND DISTINGUISHED 
 
 PROFESSIONAL CAREER 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGES comprise two Lectures 
 originally delivered to audiences of Ladies and 
 Gentlemen in the Botanical Theatre of University 
 College, London : the first on the evening of 
 October 29, 1874, and the second on the evening 
 of October 12, 1875. 
 
 I now publish them, in the hope that they may 
 serve as a means of counteracting efforts made 
 throughout the country by half-informed persons to 
 propagate the Doctrine of Evolution. Those efforts, 
 it may be observed, are manifested under two 
 different characters. Thus, while the more logical of 
 the Propagandists referred to do not shrink from 
 the conclusions which necessarily flow from the 
 doctrine, a weak-minded class commit the absurdity 
 of trying to reconcile the doctrine with Belief in a 
 personal FIRST CAUSE. 
 
 Perhaps, the explanations herein offered will 
 help to disabuse the minds of some, at least, of those 
 
Vlll ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 who may have already been led unwittingly to 
 accept the Doctrine, and will fortify with rebutting 
 reasons those who, on the other hand, have instinc- 
 tively recoiled from it. 
 
 In conclusion, let it be observed that, in con- 
 testing the scientific soundness of the Doctrine of 
 Evolution, and arguing for the reasonableness of the 
 common belief that all things were created by design 
 and for a purpose, I necessarily refer to the Creator's 
 wisdom and power, but I abstain from any theo- 
 logical discussion. Even if the conditions under 
 which my Lectures were delivered had permitted, it 
 would have been out of place to introduce Theolo- 
 gical arguments, seeing that my aim was, as already 
 intimated, simply to combat the claims set up for the 
 scientific validity of the Doctrine of Evolution not 
 supererogatorily to defend Revelation. 
 
 It is commonly assumed by Evolutionists, and 
 tacitly granted them, that there are only two funda- 
 mental alternatives between which a definite decision 
 has to be made, viz. Revelation or Evolution. But 
 this I emphatically deny. Unbelief in Revelation 
 and a personal Creator is no doubt the alternative of 
 the admission of Evolution, but admission of Evolu- 
 tion is not the necessary alternative of Unbelief. 
 Excluding all belief in Revelation and a personal 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. IX 
 
 Creator, for argument's sake, I hold that the Doctrine 
 of Evolution, unsanctioned as I believe I show it to 
 be by Science, cannot be accepted as the alternative 
 on any consideration, and must, therefore, be uncon- 
 ditionally and absolutely rejected. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ' OUR present advanced knowledge in Natural 
 Science has not rendered the idea of Evolution a 
 bit more probable than it was in former times. And 
 it must be firmly denied that the conceit of " Natural 
 Selection by Survival of the Fittest " has, in any 
 degree, imparted to the theory more substantial body 
 than it had before, or raised it to the Scientific posi- 
 tion which Darwin and his followers claim for it.' 
 Such are the words with which I conclude my second 
 lecture. 
 
 There are various processes in Nature to which 
 the idea of 'Natural Selection 'is logically enough 
 applicable, but it is amusing to observe how instances 
 of the kind have been illogically twisted, and adduced 
 as tests in proof of the soundness of the idea as 
 applicable to the Doctrine of Evolution, and even in 
 proof of the doctrine itself. Natural Selection, in the 
 sense in which it is applied to Evolution by Mr. 
 Darwin, let it be repeated, is a mere conceit. When, 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 therefore, it is adduced as the efficient cause of the 
 supposed transmutations of lower into higher animal 
 forms, one phantom is virtually conjured up as the 
 cause of another. 
 
 The doctrine of Evolution in general, however/ 
 without any attempt to explain its cause, appears to 
 be somewhat more defensible by itself. And for 
 this reason, I think that Mr. Huxley, my friend and 
 former pupil in Physiology at the Charing Cross 
 Hospital, the ablest General perhaps whom the Bri- 
 gades of the * Evolutionary Army ' can boast of, 
 shows good strategy by manoeuvring chiefly in de- 
 fence of the position of Evolution pure and simple. 
 Even Professor Haeckel, who pipes so lustily in 
 praise of Darwinism that he might be appropriately 
 viewed as Piper to the Fairy -dance described in the 
 lines with which I conclude my first lecture, has for 
 the burden of his tune : ' Phylogenesis recapitulated 
 in Ontogenesis' 
 
 In his notice of Professor Haeckel's book on 
 Anthropogenesis in the journal called the ' Academy ' 
 for January 2, 1875, Mr. Huxley adduces, as an 
 example of what Geology teaches in favour of Evo- 
 lution, the actual historical process, as he considers it, 
 by which one species of animal now living, the horse, 
 came into existence during the Tertiary epoch. ' The 
 evidence,' says Mr. Huxley, ' based on the analogy 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 of known developmental facts ' (or, as Professor 
 Haeckel would call them, Ontogenetic facts) that a 
 ' three-toed Hipparion form, which lived in the Mio- 
 cene epoch, gave rise by suppression of the phalanges 
 of its rudimental toes and other slight modifications, 
 to the apparently one-toed later tertiary horse is 
 satisfactory to my mind as satisfactory,' Mr. Huxley 
 continues, as the evidence based on the analogy 
 of known structural facts (that is, the known correla- 
 tions of anatomical structure) which leads him to 
 entertain no doubt that the said extinct Hipparion 
 had a simple stomach and a certain kind of heart. 
 
 The two classes of facts here referred to, the 
 structural or anatomical facts, and the developmental 
 or ontogenetic facts, do not equally warrant by analogy 
 the inferences which Mr. Huxley would respectively 
 draw from them.. To infer from an examination of 
 two given skeletons of extinct animals, the anatomical 
 characters of the soft parts of their bodies, which have 
 disappeared from decay, is a simple matter of com- 
 parison and induction. It is, in fact, no more than 
 saying that the fossil bones and teeth before you, 
 present, the one. set, the peculiarities of the bones 
 and teeth of a horse or ass, for example ; and 
 the other set the peculiarities of those of a rumi- 
 nating animal, such as a sheep, or ox ; and that 
 therefore, it is in the highest degree probable that the 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 animal of which the one fossil skeleton is the remains 
 belonged to the Equine family of the order Pachy- 
 dermata, and that it had a simple stomach, with all 
 the other general peculiarities of organisation which 
 characterise that group ; whilst the animal of which 
 the other fossil skeleton is the remains belonged to 
 the order Ruminantia> and that it had a compound 
 stomach, with all the other general peculiarities of 
 organisation which characterise animals that chew 
 the cud. 
 
 Whilst then it is a simple matter of comparison 
 and induction to infer from an examination of the 
 fossil skeleton of an extinct animal the anatomical 
 structure of the other organs of its body which have 
 disappeared from decay, it is the merest assumption 
 to assert that a comparison of the observable mode 
 of the embryonic development of an individual 
 animal, with the various persistent forms throughout 
 the zoological scale, supplies facts from which the 
 doctrine of Evolution may be legitimately deduced. 
 
 In regard to the three-toed Hipparion form, we 
 can recognise, with Mr. Huxley, in its bones and 
 teeth, characters indicating a near alliance to the 
 horse. We may also, on the other hand, recognise 
 in the embryo of the horse indications transitory 
 indications of the phalanges of a would-be three-toe 
 development, but to say, for that reason, that the 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 Hipparion was the ancestor from which the horse of 
 the present day was evolved is an inconsequence ; 
 the two questions being altogether different. 
 
 The endeavour of Cuvier to construct from the 
 study of fossil bones an anatomical and physiological 
 history of the individual -animal of which those bones 
 'are the sole remains, we thus see, was quite logical ; 
 but is wholly different in principle from the fallacious 
 attempt to make the facts of Ontogenesis or indivi- 
 dual embryonic development prove the validity of 
 Phylogenesis, or Evolution of the line of all living 
 forms by gradual increase and modification of struc- 
 ture throughout innumerable generations, in the 
 course of millions of years, from a spontaneously 
 produced shapeless mass of protoplasm, like a flake 
 of the white of egg. 
 
 This leads me to the question of the influence of 
 time. It is obvious that none of the metamorphoses 
 which we can observe in the course of development 
 of the young of animals going on before us, can be 
 appealed to as having any bearing on the subject of 
 Evolution other than that of Ontogenesis as the 
 alleged recapitulation of Phylogenesis, so fully con- 
 sidered in my second lecture. Seeing that genera- 
 tions and generations innumerable are appealed to as 
 constituting fundamental conditions for the transmu- 
 tations of Evolution, the variations undergone by Mr. 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 Darwin's pigeons in the course of a few generations 
 are nothing to the purpose nothing to the purpose 
 certainly, -if the three or four thousand years com- 
 prised in Egyptian records cannot be admitted as a 
 sufficiently long time for the manifestation of evolu- 
 tionary changes. 
 
 I have above alluded to applications which may 
 be logically enough made of the general idea of 
 Natural Selection in illustration of various processes, 
 and commented on the illogical reasoning which 
 would appeal to such instances as tests in proof of 
 the soundness of the idea of Natural Selection in its 
 application to the alleged Evolution of organised 
 beings. An example of such a mistake is presented 
 in the title of Schleicher's work : ' Darwinism tested 
 by the Science of Language.' The production of 
 language, however, to quote from Professor Dwight 
 Whitney, of Yale College, U.S., had nothing to do 
 as a cause with the development of man out of any 
 other or lower race. The only development in which 
 language was concerned is the historic development 
 of man's faculties. Language, therefore, in its be- 
 ginnings, can be considered only as connected with 
 the history of man as man not with any alleged 
 evolution from apes, as Mr. Darwin argues. 
 
 Mr. Huxley, assuming that the Doctrine of 
 Evolution cannot be gainsaid, observes : 4 If the 
 evolution of all living forms, by gradual modification, 
 
PREFACE. XV11 
 
 is an historical fact (?), why should the attempt to 
 reconstruct the details of that momentous history be 
 regarded as less philosophical or less laudable than 
 the attempt of a Niebuhr or a Mommsen to build up, 
 from ruined monuments, fragmentary inscriptions, 
 and obscure and often contradictory texts, a con- 
 nected and intelligible history of Rome ? ' As to 
 attempts like those of Niebuhr and Mommsen here 
 referred to, they belong, it need scarcely be observed, 
 to a category altogether different from that to which 
 we must relegate the attempts of Evolutionists to 
 reconstruct the details of their * momentous history ' 
 of the origin of all living forms. Niebuhr and 
 Mommsen's building up of a connected and in- 
 telligible history of Rome has a parallel in Cuvier's 
 reconstruction of the anatomical and physiological 
 history of an extinct animal from the study of its 
 fossil remains ; but no parallel in any reconstruction 
 of an ideal history founded on assumption, such as 
 that which Mr. Huxley advocates. Here let it be 
 particularly understood, that by these words I of 
 course impugn the palpable facts of paleontology 
 which Evolutionists mix up with their history as 
 little as Niebuhr questioned the facts interwoven 
 with the myths in the old poetical legends of the 
 country. 
 
 Historical and ordinary anatomico-physiological 
 
 a 
 
XV111 PREFACE. 
 
 researches have much in common in respect to 
 method the object of both being to ascertain facts 
 and to trace out their concatenations and correlations. 
 In lately editing for the Camden Society the life and 
 times of my ancestral kinsman, brave old Bishop 
 Bedell, of Kilmore 'Saint, Sage and Hero' as he 
 has been happily characterised by Mr. Gladstone, 
 I followed, in a small way, the example of Niebuhr 
 and Mommsen, inasmuch as I searched or had 
 searches made in all directions, for original documents 
 wills, state papers, letters, and the seals thereto 
 attached, parish registers, diocesan registers, tomb- 
 stones, &c. In doing so, the aim was to obtain 
 authentic information from genuine contemporary 
 documents, in regard to the true reading of which there 
 could be no doubt, and thereby to correct various 
 current misconceptions. This, it is obvious, was 
 merely the prompting of common sense and duty 
 although I believe that habits of scientific method in 
 physiological and pathological researches may have 
 materially aided the exercise discrimination in my 
 genealogical and historical inquiries. 
 
 T. WHARTON JONES. 
 
 35 GEORGE STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, LONDON : 
 January i, 1876. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION IN GENERAL, AND MR. 
 DARWIN'S DOCTRINE ' OF NATURAL SELECTION* 
 IN PARTICULAR. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 PROFESSOR HAECKEUS SCHEME OF THE LINE OF 
 MANS DESCENT FROM LOWER ANIMALS, . . .34 
 
LECTURES. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION IN GENERAL, AND 
 MR. DARWIN'S DOCTRINE OF 'NATURAL SELEC- 
 TION^ IN PARTICULAR. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 Like the Philosophy of Epicurus, the theory of Evolution excludes 
 all idea of a personal FIRST CAUSE, p. 3. The doctrine of Evo- 
 lution rests mainly on conceit and assumption, and is unsanctioned 
 by science, p. 4. Alleged origin of man and animals by successive 
 evolution throughout a long period of time from some simple 
 living being which had itself been spontaneously generated by the 
 assumed operation of natural physico-chemical laws, p. 4. Evo- 
 lution a very ancient idea, and one which has often been repro- 
 duced in a more or less modified form, p. 4. Lamarck's scheme 
 of Evolution published in France between seventy and eighty years 
 a g> P- 5- Mr. Charles Darwin's objection to Lamarck's scheme 
 as affording no explanation in respect to the mode in which the 
 alleged process of evolution took place, p. 6. Evolution in its very 
 first principles is a reproduction of the old Epicurean doctrine 
 as recited by Lucretius in his poem, ' De Rerum Natura,' p. 6. 
 True Evolutionists agree with Lucretius and Descartes in deny- 
 ing design in Nature, p. 7. Mr. Charles Darwin's doctrine of 
 ' Natural Selection ' in explanation of the mode in which the 
 alleged evolution of higher from lower grades of organisation has 
 taken place, p. 7. Such a doctrine is fundamentally no more than 
 what Epicurus taught in Athens, and Lucretius after him sang in 
 
 B 
 
2 SUMMARY. 
 
 Rome, and is a mere truism so far as there is any meaning in it, 
 p. 8. The doctrine of Evolution by ' Natural Selection ' is now so 
 associated with Mr. Darwin's name, that it has come to be desig- 
 nated ' DARWINISM.' Nay, the doctrine in general is now confoun- 
 ded under that name, p. 9. According to the doctrine of Evolu- 
 tion, Mankind are merely the sons and daughters of Apes ; which 
 latter were themselves descendants, through the lowest mammals, 
 of frogs and fishes ; whilst those fishes came from an ascidian 
 mollusk," which itself descended, through worms and protozoa, from 
 a spontaneously generated cytode, p. 10. The time occupied in 
 this assumed series of evolutions has been inconceivably long ; but 
 to speak of it as indicating the antiquity of man is to confound in 
 the calculation the altogether different question of the antiquity of 
 Manas Man, p. n. Mr. Darwin thinks that the fundamentally 
 similar construction of the human arm and hand, for example, the 
 fore legs and feet of quadrupeds, wings of bats, flappers of seals, 
 paddles of whales, and wings of birds, inexplicable on any other 
 supposition than common descent, p. n. But such similarity of 
 plan in construction does not logically prove that animals must 
 have been evolved in the manner alleged, p. 12. That every thing 
 was created by design and for a purpose is perfectly explanatory to 
 common sense, and in no way contradicted by Science, p. 13. Rudi- 
 mentary organs alleged to be ' instruments without use,' but they 
 are certainly in no case without a use of some kind in the economy 
 in which they occur, p. 14. The limbs and lungs of the frog come 
 into use when they come into existence, while the tail and gills of 
 the tadpole fall out of use in proportion as they shrink and disap- 
 pear. This takes place according to a law of the economy of the 
 frog, not by use or disuse, p. 1 6. According to the Evolution doctrine, 
 it depended on the chance of circumstances whether the pretended 
 transmutations of structure took place nfthis or that manner, p. 21. 
 The transitional resemblances observable in the form and structure 
 of animals from worms up to man indicate not evolution but unity 
 of design and designer, p. 22. To Evolutionists, however, trans- 
 itional resemblances are inexplicable except on the assumption of 
 lineal descent, p. 22. Homologies of structure have been long ago 
 traced out in more or less detail, but their demonstration does 
 not in any way really help the doctrine of Evolution, p. 24. As to 
 the alleged evolution of man from apes and the affinity between 
 him and them, it is to be observed that though the tail-less apes 
 have a counterfeit presentment of the human form, they are unmis- 
 
SUMMARY. 3 
 
 takably brutes, and do not in respect to mental powers rise above 
 other brutes lower in the zoological scale, much less make the 
 most distant approach to man, p. 25. Mind can never have been 
 evolved from a mind not in existence by means of any absurdly 
 alleged exertion of the nonentity, p. 27. Unfounded nature of the 
 assertion, that the peculiarly endowed brain-cells of man could ever 
 have been evolved from differently endowed brain-cells of lower 
 animals, p. 28. Any increased mental activity of an ape could 
 never have led to the evolution of the human mind, p. 29. Accor- 
 ding to the theory of Evolution, function determined structure, 
 but this is an absurdity. The idea that function preceded mecha- 
 nism is virtually admitting design, but shifting it from the Creator to 
 the Creature, p. 30. From the first, Man was endowed with moral 
 and intellectual faculties, and a capacity for development and im- 
 provement, p. 30. Advance in culture means merely that the in-, 
 herent capabilities of man's nature have been called forth by educa- 
 tion^ not acquired by evolution, p. 31. No valid grounds for the 
 thesis that man ever existed under any other embodiment than that 
 of MAN, p. 32. 
 
 LADIES and GENTLEMEN, Amongst those who 
 encountered St. Paul at Athens and sneeringly 
 asked ' What will this Babbler say ? ' were certain 
 philosophers of the Epicurean sect. 
 
 Like the philosophy of these same Epicureans, 
 the Theory of Evolution excludes all idea of a 
 personal Creator all idea of design and all idea of 
 a moral order in the world. 
 
 Involving, as it thus does, the tremendous issue 
 of sapping the foundations of religion, such a theory, 
 to deserve being entertained, ought, at least, to be 
 constructed on facts the most exact and pertinent 
 and arguments the most logical and conclusive. 
 There ought not to be adduced in support of it any 
 conceits or assumptions under the guise of inductions 
 
 B 2 
 
4 EVOLUTION AN ANCIENT IDEA. 
 
 alleged to be legitimately drawn from scientific 
 investigation. But I do not hesitate to maintain 
 that, instead of the conditions of true science, the 
 doctrine of Evolution rests mainly on conceit and 
 assumption. Its inductions have far outrun facts, 
 and the conclusions deduced from those inductions 
 are recklessly sweeping. 
 
 While no pious plea, or any other consideration, 
 ought to be permitted to influence the conclusions 
 which may be justly and rigorously deducible from 
 scientifically established truths, we must resist all 
 speculations, how much soever vaunted, which it 
 may be sought to impose upon us in the name of 
 science though without the sanction of science and 
 by the assumed authority of peculiarly constituted 
 minds. 
 
 The remarks I am about to make will show how 
 far we may be justified in rejecting such speculations 
 as those comprised in the Theory of Evolution. 
 
 Man and animals were not originally created in 
 their present form, but have been evolved, in the 
 course of successive descent, by gradual growth, 
 development and transmutation of structure, 
 throughout a long period of time, from some simple 
 living being which itself had been spontaneously 
 generated according to natural physico-chemical 
 laws : Such is the general expression of a very 
 ancient idea, and one which has often been re- 
 produced in a more or less modified form. Not to 
 
LAMARCK'S ' PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE.' 5 
 
 go further back than the end of the last century and 
 beginning of the present the doctrine was advo- 
 cated by Dr. Erasmus Darwin in England, and 
 Lamarck in France. The latter it was who in his 
 ' Philosophic Zoologique' drew out a scheme of 
 evolution in a systematic form and in all its conse- 
 quences. 
 
 Lamarck's conclusion was, that Nature, in pro- 
 ducing successively all the species of animals, and in 
 commencing with the most simple, to complete her 
 work with the most perfect, has gradually added to 
 the complexity of their organisation. Under the 
 influence of the circumstances into which these 
 animals fell, in their distribution all over the habitable 
 globe, each species has acquired the habits belonging 
 to it, and the modifications in its parts, which obser- 
 vation shows it to possess. Everything, therefore, 
 argues Lamarck, concurs in supporting his assertion, 
 that it is not the form of the body or of its parts 
 which gives rise to the habits and mode of life of" 
 animals ; but on the contrary, that it is the habits, 
 mode of life, and other influences, which have, in the 
 course of time ages and ages determined the form 
 of the body and parts of animals, With new forms 
 new faculties have been acquired, and Nature has 
 gradually come to fashion animals such as we now 
 see them. 
 
 Mr. Charles Darwin, the grandson of Dr. Eras- 
 mus Darwin before referred to, objects to Lamarck's 
 scheme of evolution, which I have just recited, as 
 
6 LUCRETIUS' 'DE RERUM NATURA.' 
 
 affording no explanation of the mode in which the 
 alleged progressive transmutation of organic bodies 
 from the lowest to the highest grades has taken 
 place. 
 
 Before proceeding to consider Mr. Darwin's own 
 edition of Evolution, let rne stop to declare more 
 particularly what the doctrine, under whatever aspect 
 or form it may be viewed, logically implies in regard 
 to Nature and the non-existence of God. The 
 doctrine of Evolution excludes, as I have before 
 said, all idea of a personal Creator. According 
 to it, all that we have been accustomed to re- 
 gard as evidences of design, and as the \vork 
 of an Almighty, Wise, and Beneficent God, 
 are the result merely of the spontaneous and 
 necessary operation of the inherent properties of 
 matter. 
 
 Evolution, we thus see, is in its very first prin- 
 ciples virtually a reproduction improved, indeed, 
 by a more advanced science of the old Epicurean 
 doctrine recited by Lucretius in his poem ' De Rerum 
 Natura.' ' It was not by design,' said he, ' that 
 atoms framed the world ; but after many fruitless 
 collisions they chanced to fall into such motions as 
 produced the world and all that is in it. At first 
 monsters of all kinds were formed which could not 
 grow up nor continue their kind. They all, therefore, 
 perished off.' ' The members and organs of the 
 body,' further said Lucretius, ' were not formed by 
 design, but, having been formed, they came to be 
 
* DARWIN'S ' NATURAL SELECTION.* 7 
 
 applied to the uses for which they were found 
 adapted/ 
 
 Matter, according to the advocates of the doctrine 
 of Evolution, is eternal ; and natural physico-chemical 
 forces are, as I have stated their contention to be, 
 the causes of the phenomena hitherto ascribed to a 
 Supernatural creative power. There is, they say, 
 with Lucretius and Descartes, no final cause or 
 design in Nature ; nor any moral order in the 
 world. On the contrary, everywhere there is war 
 of all against all everywhere a struggle for 
 existence. 
 
 To come now to Mr. Charles Darwin's own views 
 as to the mode in which the alleged progressive 
 transmutation of organic bodies from the lowest to the 
 highest grades has taken place. The efficient cause in 
 operation Mr. Darwin considers to have been what he 
 calls ' Natural Selection ' a process described by him 
 as follows : ' Amid the struggle for existence which 
 has been always going on among living beings, varia- 
 tions of bodily conformation and structure, if in any 
 degree profitable to an individual of any species, will 
 tend to the preservation of that individual, and will 
 generally be inherited by its offspring.' 
 
 Thus is * Survival of the Fittest ' the condition 
 for * Natural Selection/ 
 
 A fundamental point in the doctrine of Evolution, 
 as I have before intimated, is that it has been only 
 very gradually that the alleged growth, development, 
 
8 ' NATURAL SELECTION ' IMPLIED 
 
 and transmutations of organic structure and form 
 have taken place from generation to generation, and 
 that, therefore, it has been only in the course of long 
 ages of time that the animal kingdom has attained 
 its present state of organisation, by evolution from a 
 hypothetical spontaneously generated living being, 
 consisting of no more than a structureless mass of 
 protoplasm, like a flake of the white of an egg. 
 
 This point in the doctrine of Evolution, it is 
 obvious, renders impossible anything like a just 
 comparison of its import with the facts which our 
 minds can, in consequence of our very brief tenure 
 of existence and limited experience, properly grasp. 
 We may, however, concede to Evolutionists all the 
 millions of years which they postulate, and yet 
 decline to receive their doctrine. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Darwin's ' Natural Selec- 
 tion.' The preservation of favourable and the decay 
 or lapse of injurious variations, constituting ' Natural 
 Selection ' by the ' Survival of the Fittest ' in the 
 ' Struggle for Existence ' seems no more than what 
 Epicurus taught in Athens, and Lucretius, after him, 
 sang in Rome, before the commencement of our era ; 
 and is a mere truism so far as there is any meaning 
 in it. The more healthy and well developed indi- 
 viduals are, they have, no doubt, a better chance 
 of surviving and continuing their kind than the 
 less well developed ; though it is difficult to perceive 
 that they would be thereby elevated above the condi- 
 
IN THE EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY. 9 
 
 tion and degree of organisation proper to their 
 race. Could survival of the fittest lead to 
 more than an improvement of the breed, and 
 eventually, perhaps, to a variation of the species ? 
 But are not variations prone to disappear, and a 
 recurrence to the original type ensue ? And what, 
 it may be asked, constitute favourable and what 
 injurious variations ? The acquisition, to answer the 
 question broadly, by one kind of animal of a struc- 
 ture or organ proper to another kind, though of 
 more perfect development, would not be a favourable 
 variation. For, as Lucretius himself admitted, 
 4 thence would rise vast monsters.' 
 
 The idea of ' Natural Selection by Survival of 
 the Fittest ' is thus as well as the first principles 
 of Evolution clearly implied in the Epicurean 
 Philosophy. ' Of the multifarious beings formed by 
 the fortuitous concourse of atoms/ said Lucretius, 
 ' the fittest alone survived' ( Many races of regularly 
 organised creatures ' to quote again from Monro's 
 excellent translation of Lucretius 'must have died 
 off because they wanted some natural power by 
 which to protect themselves.' * * * ' These fell 
 a prey to others, and disappeared unable to endure 
 the struggle for existence! 
 
 oo J 
 
 The ' Natural Selection ' theory, though thus 
 foreshadowed about 2000 years ago by Epicurus 
 and Lucretius, is now so associated with the name of 
 Mr. Charles Darwin as is even the doctrine of 
 Evolution in general that Evolutionists look up to 
 
10 DESCENT OF MAN FROM APES? 
 
 him as the prophet of their faith, and boldly assert 
 that he has done for Biology what Newton did for 
 Astronomy ! In regard, however, to this comparison 
 of Natural Selection with Universal Gravitation, it 
 may be remarked that we look in vain for any real 
 basis to the conceit of Natural Selection, like the 
 accurate measurements of Picard and the profound 
 calculations of Newton, from which the grand law of 
 UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION was deduced. 
 
 According to the principles of Evolution, which 
 I have thus briefly sketched, MANKIND are merely 
 the Sons and Daughters of APES ; and if we trace 
 our ancestors still further back through the lowest 
 mammals to frogs, and thence through fishes to 
 invertebrates, we shall probably find among the 
 latter, our two great-grandparents in what degree, 
 shall I say the million-millionth ? rolled into one, 
 in the shape of an hermaphrodite ascidian mollusk, 
 molluscoid, or worm whichever you choose to call 
 it; whilst, passing back from this ascidian pro- 
 genitor through protozoa, we come in the last 
 instance to our alleged FIRST PARENT, a spontaneously 
 generated cytode I 
 
 Such is, in bare outline, the genealogy of Man, 
 which has been propounded with the claim of being 
 a special deduction from the Evolution theory. 
 
 Evolutionists, as I have said, claim a very high 
 antiquity for the human race. It appears, however, 
 difficult to understand in what way the argument 
 
HOMOLOGIES OF STRUCTURE. II 
 
 can be supported by the concession of this postulate ; 
 for as Man's history could have begun only at the 
 time of his first appearance on the earth, it is im- 
 material whether the period of his existence thereon 
 be reckoned by thousands or by millions of years. 
 The scientific question of his origin would remain 
 the same. But Evolutionists, in their claim of a very 
 high antiquity for the human race, mix up this ques- 
 tion of the antiquity of Man as Man with the other 
 and altogether different question, viz. that of the 
 whole time occupied in the assumed series of evolu- 
 tions, from a protogen to an asciclian mollusk, and 
 from an ascidian mollusk up to a human body. 
 
 Into the composition of animal bodies certain 
 structures and organs enter as fundamental materials ; 
 but in accordance with the particular nature of the 
 different kinds of animals, they are variously modi- 
 fied, as regards both the degree and character of 
 their development. 
 
 Of the homologous, or similar fundamental 
 materials, for example, which compose our arms and 
 hands, the fore legs and feet of quadrupeds are formed, 
 the wings of bats, the flappers of seals, the paddles 
 of whales, the pectoral fins of fishes, &c. By a some- 
 what different modification of the same materials 
 also, the wings of birds are constructed. 
 
 According to Mr. Darwin this fundamentally 
 similar composition of the human arm and hand, 
 the bat's wing, the whale's paddle, &c., is utterly 
 
12 HOMOLOGOUS STRUCTURE 
 
 inexplicable on any other view than descent from a 
 common progenitor, together with subsequent adapta- 
 tion to diversified conditions. ' Thus/ continues 
 Mr. Darwin, ' we can understand how it has come 
 to pass that man and all other vertebrate animals 
 have been constructed on the same general model, 
 why they pass through the same early stages of 
 development, and why they retain certain rudiments 
 in common/ * Consequently/ he adds, ' we ought 
 frankly to admit their community of descent ; to 
 take any other view is to admit that our own struc- 
 ture, and that of all the animals around us, are a 
 mere snare laid to entrap our judgment/ ' are a 
 mere snare ' let me repeat the words, ' laid to 
 entrap oitr judgment / ' 
 
 In like manner, Mr. Darwin might have said 
 that all our intuitive ideas respecting the existence 
 of God must be, and are, mere snares laid to entrap 
 our judgment. But by whom or by what laid ? let 
 me ask. By the operation of natural physic >chemical 
 laws ? 
 
 To Evolutionists who adopt such a dictatorial 
 mode of arguing as this, no other answer ought to 
 be given than that of Job to Zophar the Naama- 
 thite : ' No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom 
 shall die with you/ 
 
 The similarity of plan in the construction of 
 their organs does not logically prove that animals 
 have been evolved from each other the higher 
 from the lower as Evolutionists maintain. Affinities 
 
NO PROOF OF COMMON DESCENT. 13 
 
 and homologies of structure do not entrap my judg- 
 ment at least, but are to me manifestations of the 
 unity of the Creator's plan. 
 
 Our knowledge of the existence of the material 
 world, let me add, is not more certain than our 
 knowledge of the existence of God the Creator. 
 While our sensations lead the mind by intuition to 
 believe in the existence of matter ; our mental per- 
 ceptions as surely lead us. by intuition to believe in 
 the existence of God. 
 
 But to return : In the prevailing order of this 
 world, everything we see works together in con- 
 formity. It is, therefore, perfectly explanatory to 
 common sense, and in no way contradicted by 
 science, that everything was planned and created by 
 the same Divine mind and power. Admitting fully 
 that this is no scientific explanation, I maintain that 
 it is equally no scientific explanation gratuitously to 
 assume the dogma, that peculiarities of conformation 
 in animals depend on inheritance from a progenitor 
 which had, by chance, the part of the body possess- 
 ing the peculiarity of conformation congenitally 
 modified in structure so as to be different from that 
 which was proper to its earlier progenitors. 
 
 Rudimentary organs, according to the doctrine 
 of Evolution, are ' instruments without use ' * parts 
 without anything to do ' and which present them- 
 selves merely because they have been inherited 
 from a progenitor in which they existed fully 
 
14 RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. 
 
 developed and capable of action ! ' In order,' says 
 Mi. Darwin, 'to understand the existence of rudi- 
 mentary organs, we have only to suppose ' let me 
 repeat the words ' we have only to suppose that a 
 former progenitor possessed the parts in question in 
 a perfect state, and that under changed habits of life 
 they became greatly reduced, either from simple 
 disuse or through the natural selection of those 
 individuals which were least incumbered with a 
 superfluous part, aided by the other means previously 
 indicated/ 
 
 Many such rudimentary structures Mr. Darwin 
 affirms to be neither beneficial nor injurious to the 
 animal in which they exist ; and the probability is, 
 according to him, that all organised beings, including 
 Man, possess many modifications of structure of no 
 service either now or formerly ! 
 
 That an organ even of the least developed char- 
 acter found in any one animal is of no use in the 
 economy of that animal, but has been merely 
 reproduced in what is called a rudimentary form, 
 because the organ it represents had existed in^ a 
 more fully developed state in some alleged remote 
 ancestor, I do not hesitate to pronounce a mere gra- 
 tuitous assertion, the hasty assumption characteristic 
 of amateur anatomy and physiology. How rudi- 
 mentary soever an organ may be and how unim- 
 portant soever, comparatively speaking, and though 
 it does not perform the function proper to its 
 homologue as more fully developed in other 
 
USE AND DISUSE OF ORGANS. 15 
 
 animals, it is still in my opinion not without a use 
 in the economy in which it occurs. The small 
 wings of the wing-powerless birds, for example, are 
 not useless, though they do not enable the animals 
 to fly. The wings of the ostrich aid it in running ; 
 the wings of the penguin serve as paddles in swim- 
 ming. 
 
 What Mr. Darwin, following Lamarck, says of 
 the use and disuse of organs use as the cause 
 of increased development, disuse as the cause of 
 deterioration of structure appears to me to be the 
 result, in a great measure, of ill-observed and ill- 
 explained facts > and therefore no argument in support 
 of his doctrine, as he illogically imagines. 
 
 That animals have had their form and structure 
 and, consequently, their functional endowments 
 transmuted by Natural Selection or any other process 
 of Evolution in a long course of ages, and that they 
 have thereby become adapted for habits and a mode 
 of life different from those for which their ancestors 
 were originally created, are propositions not supported 
 by any legitimate induction from real facts. 
 
 Very exaggerated and illogical notions pass 
 current as to the effects of use and disuse on organs. 
 Enlargement and increased physical strength are 
 considered the proper effects of use ; diminution of 
 size and impaired physical strength the proper 
 effects of disuse; whatever be the nature of the 
 organ in question, though this is really applicable 
 
1 6 METAMORPHOSES OF TADPOLES 
 
 chiefly to bones and muscles. But enlargement with 
 increased physical strength, and diminution of size 
 with impaired strength, are quite different things 
 from transmutation. 
 
 Organs are used because they are fit for use ; 
 organs are not used because they are unfit for use. 
 We can, for example, observe how the limbs and 
 lungs of the frog come into use, and how the tail 
 and gills of the tadpole fall into disuse ; and how 
 the animal from being virtually a fish comes thereby 
 to be an air-breathing Batrachian. 
 
 Trie limbs of the young frog thus metamorphosed 
 come into use because they have come into existence 
 under all the conditions fitting them and exciting 
 them to perform their appropriate actions. The 
 animal in the tadpole state has no need of the limbs 
 before they are formed ; and when they have been 
 formed the animal must necessarily use them, 
 because the conditions for their action have come 
 into existence along with themselves. 
 
 Let us now see how an organ falls out of use and 
 disappears. This process we can observe in the tail 
 of the tadpole. That organ does not disappear 
 because it ceases to be used, but ceases to be used in 
 proportion as it shrinks and disappears ; while the 
 fore legs of the future frog become, like its already 
 developed hind legs, free and fit for action. 
 
 These changes constitute a stage in the natural 
 process of development to the perfect frog-state, when 
 the respiration by gills is at the same time superseded 
 
TO THE FROG STATE. 17 
 
 by the completed development of the lungs. The 
 gills disappear not because they cease to be used, but 
 they cease to be used because they shrink and 
 disappear by a law of the economy of the frog ; whilst 
 by the same law lungs are developed and the animal 
 breathes air. Lungs thus come into use beca^ise they 
 have come into existence, not because the animal first 
 accustoms itself to live on land and breathe air. 
 
 It is when the fore legs become free and the 
 animal thereby fitted for progression on land, that the 
 tail shrinks and disappears, and the gills for respira- 
 tion in water are superseded by lungs for breathing 
 air. It is not until the fore legs have become deve- 
 loped that the young frog is able to make its way out 
 of the water to breathe air. If by accident the 
 animal, now in the frog phase of development, cannot 
 get a footing on dry land, it is liable to be drowned 
 just as surely as the tadpole was to die from asphyxia, 
 like a fish, if taken out of the water. No sooner 
 does the young frog reach dry land than it begins to 
 jump, its strong hind legs being already fitted for 
 the purpose without any previous practice, except in 
 swimming before it left the water. 
 
 We thus see that in the process of metamorphosis 
 the young frog is structurally prepared for its new 
 conditions of life. The tadpole is not first placed in 
 the new conditions and then has its structure changed 
 under the influence of those conditions in order to 
 be adapted to them. All parts of the structure of 
 the frog being in conformity, one change in the 
 
 c 
 
1 8 SMALL WINGED BIRDS. 
 
 organisation of the tadpole is necessarily accom- 
 panied by others originating certainly not by chance^ 
 biit by design. 
 
 The large and heavy birds of oceanic islands, says 
 Mr. Darwin, have wings so rudimentary that they 
 are incapable of flight ; and this he explains by 
 supposing that the progenitors of those birds not 
 having been exposed to the attacks of beasts of prey, 
 were not necessitated to fly, so that their wings came 
 at last by this disuse in the course of generations so 
 reduced in size as to be unfit for flight. On this I 
 would observe, that though not necessitated to fly to 
 escape the attacks of beasts of prey, the birds, 
 supposing they had ever been capable of flight, would 
 have been necessitated to exercise that faculty in 
 looking out for food. The power of using their 
 wings would not, therefore, be likely to have come to 
 be lost. 
 
 But, let me ask, why suppose those wing-powerless 
 birds to have been descendants of birds with well 
 developed wings ? Would it not be easier, according 
 to the principles of the Evolution doctrine, to suppose 
 if we must suppose anything that the first evolved 
 birds possessed mere rudiments of wings, and that 
 the birds of oceanic islands were descended from them 
 without increased development of wing. 
 
 That organs have become rudimentary by 
 degeneration from parent to offspring in the manner 
 Mr. Darwin here assumes, appears to me quite a 
 fancy. 'There is no proof whatever no reason of 
 
INSTINCTS OF NEW FLEDGED BIRDS. 1 9 
 
 any kind to suppose that an organ which we now find 
 rudimentary in any given animal was ever at any 
 time in the progenitors of that animal other than 
 rudimentary. An animal in possession of wings 
 fitting it to fly will fly. The young bird when 
 fledged will essay its wings like as the young frog I 
 have mentioned does its legs in jumping on emerg- 
 ing from the water, being impelled thereto by the 
 internal feeling which the possession of wings imparts. 
 ' The new fledged offspring ' requires not to be 
 ' tempted to the skies ' by the old bird. Ducklings 
 hatched by a common hen do not imitate their foster- 
 mother, but in obedience to their own instincts, which 
 depend on their whole organisation, rush to the water 
 and swim. 
 
 If, it may here be remarked, one organ could, by 
 disuse and natural selection, become rudimentary, as 
 Mr. Darwin assumes, all the organs of animals one 
 after another might by chance of circumstances and 
 in the course of time become more and more rudi- 
 mentary, so that the descendants of organisms of 
 high development might, thereby, become eventually 
 reduced to the protozoon-state, whence they are 
 alleged to have been originally evolved ! 
 
 Dexterity in the exercise of the function of an 
 organ has been often attributed exclusively to in- 
 creased power of the organ itself from practice, 
 whereas animals, as we have seen, make use of their 
 
 c 2 
 
2O TRAINING OF THE SIGHT. 
 
 organs as well at first as afterwards ; and as regards 
 man, his dexterity for a purpose really depends, in 
 the greatest degree, on the individual improvement, 
 by education and experience, of the logical cunning 
 of his mind in the exercise of his organs. 
 
 In exemplification of such erroneous views as to 
 the acquirement of increased power by organs from 
 practice, I may instance the common notion that the 
 eyesight of civilised men is inferior in acuteness to 
 that of savages. Among civilised men, numbers are 
 endowed with eyesight as acute as can be for any 
 distance, far or near. The training of the eye- 
 sight for any particular purpose is a different question, 
 and means the education of the mind to exercise the 
 sight and to interpret the particular visual percep- 
 tions. Those savages who have first-rate emme- 
 tropic sight do not see better than civilised men who 
 also possess emmetropic sight, that is, who possess 
 eyes with an optical conformation and adjusting 
 mechanism as perfect as can be for vision at any 
 distance ; but being more familiar with his hunting 
 ground and the objects there met with, the savage 
 can recognise the objects where they are and what 
 they are, and the traces of them^ better than the un- 
 rained civilised man, at great distances. On the 
 other hand, it will be found that savages, though 
 they may see near and minute objects well enough, 
 cannot distinguish them and appreciate their various 
 details so well as civilised men who 'have been much 
 practised in the nicer examinations and manipulations 
 
CHANCE IN ' NATURAL SELECTION.' 21 
 
 common in civilised life. But to return from this 
 digression. 
 
 In the natural history of an organism we recog- 
 nise something more than the manifestation of 
 physical and vital forces physical forces as the 
 attribute of the machinery and vital forces as 
 the mainspring of its action. We recognise in the 
 aggregate plan a Divine Idea, and in the fulfilment 
 of the purpose an Almighty Hand. From the com- 
 mencement of its development the body of an animal 
 is in a continuous process of change, and yet it 
 remains unchanged in plan. The transformations 
 merely run in a circle, so that there is no progressive 
 evolution ; but the different races, so long as they 
 exist, continue to retain each its own characters. 
 
 Our experience does not permit us to admit more ; 
 nor can we logically infer more from any existing data. 
 
 In the production of the elaborate mechanism of 
 organised and living beings, manifesting to ordinary 
 comprehension design for the fulfilment of a purpose, 
 Evolutionists, as before stated, exclude the idea of a 
 Creator and attribute it all to chance, which is really 
 the meaning of Natural Selection. Or, if organised 
 and living beings were not exactly and directly 
 evolved by chance, they were produced in some 
 such way as this : At an incalculably remote period 
 a living body was spontaneously generated, under 
 the operation of mechanical or physico-chemical 
 laws, a body of extreme simplicity of composition 
 
22 TRANSITIONS IN FORM AND STRUCTURE 
 
 and structure, indeed, but so marvellously endowed 
 that it comprised within itself the potentiality of 
 passing through, in its descendants, a series of meta- 
 morphoses, in the course of long generations, of this 
 or that kind according to the chance of circumstances. 
 The eventual, though unpreordained, result of which 
 has been the vegetable and animal kingdoms such as 
 we now find them. 
 
 Even on a superficial survey we may recognise 
 transitional resemblances in the form and structure of 
 animals from worms up to Man ; while a deeper insight 
 discloses in the plan of thek organisation such a unity 
 of design, that the whole animal kingdom appears 
 like one chain of beings successively more and more 
 developed. The chain, speaking of animals as we 
 find them living on the earth at the present day, does 
 not, indeed, appear to be an unbroken one through- 
 out. Where, however, interruptions occur, connect- 
 ing links may, in many cases, be traced in the fossil 
 remains of animal forms which are now extinct.- 
 
 The general gradation in form and structure, and 
 the unity of plan in question appear to Evolutionists 
 inexplicable, except on the assumption that the higher 
 are lineal descendants through a long series of genera- 
 tions of the lower animal forms. This alleged inex- 
 plicability, however, appears to me to exist not in the 
 thing itself, but in the peculiarly constituted mind 
 which entertains the idea. No scientific reason can 
 be adduced in support of the doctrine of a progres- 
 
NO PROOF OF EVOLUTION. 23 
 
 sive transmutation of forms by descent from the lowest 
 to the highest grades. It is not a legitimate induction 
 from the facts of the case, nor a deduction from any 
 established principles. Seeing that the conditions of 
 life are fundamentally similar for all living beings, it 
 would be surprising, indeed, if there was not a unity 
 of plan recognisable in their organisation. We can 
 conceive of nothing more perfect than what we find, 
 and anything conceivably different would have been 
 less perfect. Every living thing extinct or existing 
 in short, has held or holds a place important in the 
 plan of the Almighty, Wise, and Beneficent Creator. 
 The transitions of form the homologies and 
 analogies of structure observable in the organic 
 kingdoms cannot be admitted, then, as indicative of 
 any such thing as a progressive development, whereby 
 animals have by chance or spontaneously, or by 
 Natural Selection whichever you choose to call it 
 been transmuted from a lower to a higher grade of 
 organisation. Among the astonishingly numerous 
 and varied forms of animal life, a certain resemblance 
 we have seen may, indeed, be traced indicative, as 
 before observed, of a unity in the conception and 
 design of the whole, the same creative power being 
 manifested in the worm which is so magnificently 
 displayed in the human body. But though all organic 
 forms thus resemble each other, no two kinds are 
 exactly alike. There is a line of demarcation by 
 which each kind or form is, and has been, circum- 
 scribed. 
 
24 NATURE OF MAN. 
 
 An exposition of the affinities, homologies, and 
 adaptations of structure throughout the animal king- 
 dom, is a great aim of Philosophical Anatomy. And 
 the subject has been long ago pretty successfully 
 worked out even to the tracing of transitions between 
 invertebrates and vertebrates. But how well made 
 out soever the affinities, homologies, and adaptations 
 of structure may be, their demonstration does not help 
 to confirm the doctrine of Evolution. The question 
 is one beyond the pale of science, and any addition 
 of facts will still fail to fill up the proof. 
 
 If thus we cannot discover sufficient evidence 
 that the lower animals were evolved from each other, 
 we might well abstain from any further discussion of 
 the subject of Evolution. But, in pursuance of my 
 design, I invite you to study with me the Nature of 
 MAN ; and in doing so we shall examine the facts and 
 arguments which have been adduced in support of 
 the alleged evolution of the human race from 
 Apes. 
 
 Whilst some minds are quick in detecting differ- 
 ences, others more readily perceive resemblances. It 
 is a great aim with naturalists to detect specific 
 differences so as to add new species to their catalogues ; 
 whereas comparative anatomists seek rather to dis- 
 cover resemblances in structure that they may 
 thereby enlarge the domain of their doctrine of 
 homologies. But as in their eagerness for discovery 
 some persons are prone to draw a distinction without 
 
APES UNMISTAKABLY BRUTES. 25 
 
 a difference, so there are others who will recognise 
 an identity without a resemblance. A tendency to 
 this latter turn of mind seems to manifest itself when 
 it is contended by Evolutionists that the higher apes 
 are more closely allied to man than they are to the 
 lower members of their own order. That the orang, 
 chimpanzee, gibbon, and gorilla have a counterfeit 
 presentment of the human form is true, but still in 
 every single visible character they are unmistakably 
 brutes ; whilst as regards internal quality, they exhibit 
 not the most distant approach to man. Nay, they 
 cannot even be said to excel many mammals of a 
 rank below that of the order to which they are 
 referred in zoological classifications. 
 
 The numerous points of structure in the human 
 body which can be traced as homologous with points 
 of structure in the bodies of the lower animals, have 
 all been long recognised as evidences that man and 
 the lower animals have been constructed according to 
 one common plan ; but, let me repeat, they afford no 
 proof that man has descended from apes. 
 
 Considering, as before observed, the general 
 conditions of animal life in this world, and consider- 
 ing the perfection of every creature after its kind and 
 in its own sphere of life, we can not conceive a reason 
 why organisation should have been different from 
 what we find it to be in man, or in any other animal, 
 nor any reason to infer from the similarity of organisa- 
 tion which prevails among animals that the higher 
 must have been evolved from the lower that man 
 
26 MENTAL POWERS OF MAN 
 
 has descended from apes, apes from lower mammalian 
 forms, or that the lowest mammals have been evolved 
 through still lower vertebrates from invertebrates. 
 
 In regard to the Mental Powers of Man and the 
 lower animals, Evolutionists assume that the differ- 
 ence, great as it is, is in degree only, not fundamental ; 
 and in respect to connecting words with definite ideas, 
 Mr. Darwin says, that * it does not appear altogether 
 incredible ' mark the argument, ' not incredible / ' 
 * that some unusually wise ape- like animal should, have 
 thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so 
 as to indicate to his fellow apes the nature of the 
 expected danger.' ' This/ he continues, ' would have 
 been a first step in the formation of a language.' On 
 this I would remark, that to give point to such a 
 supposition, we must, at the same time, assume it as 
 ' not incredible ' that the fellow apes, to whom the 
 growl was addressed, were able to understand the 
 meaning of it, and, therefore, already as wise as 
 the growler. 
 
 Mr. Darwin admits that ' the mental powers of 
 some early progenitor of man must have been more 
 highly developed than those of any existing ape, 
 before even this most imperfect form of speech could 
 have come into use ! ' No doubt of it, I say, though 
 we must look upon any such early progenitors of man 
 as imaginary beings, like the Yahoos of Gulliver's 
 travels. 
 
 In regard to the curious argument of a relation 
 
WITHOUT PARALLEL IN BRUTES. 27 
 
 between the continued use of language and the 
 development of the brain, it may be asked : How 
 could the continued use of language, admitting such 
 for argument's sake, have reacted on a mind not in 
 existence, by enabling and encouraging the non-entity 
 to carry on long trains of thought ? But in reality 
 the use of language at all presupposes, as before 
 observed, already existing intelligence. For as 
 James Harris, in his ' Hermes' remarks : 'If, like 
 lower animals, men had been by nature irrational, 
 they could not have recognised the proper subjects 
 of discourse.' 
 
 The formation and development of language 
 call it evolution if you will is a question quite apart 
 from that of the alleged evolution of the human 
 race from apes. The question belongs only to the 
 history of Man as Man. 
 
 In accordance with the Evolution doctrine, that 
 the mental faculties of man, high as they are, have only 
 been gradually developed from the more lowly facul- 
 ties of his progenitors, the brutes, Mr. Darwin says : 
 ' In each member of the vertebrate series the nerve- 
 cells of the brain are the direct offshoots of those pos- 
 sessed by the common progenitor of the whole group. 
 It thus becomes intelligible] he says, let me repeat 
 the word * intelligible] 'that the brain and mental 
 faculties should be capable, under similar conditions, 
 of nearly the same course of development, and conse- 
 quently of performing nearly the same functions/ 
 
 The peculiar brain-cells of man, it is to be 
 
28 NO DIFFERENTIATION OF NERVE-CELLS. 
 
 observed, in reply to this statement, through which 
 his high intelligence is manifested, have no known 
 prototype or rudimentary representatives in the 
 lower animals ; and as nothing can come of nothing, 
 so it is impossible to admit that the human brain 
 could ever have been evolved in the course of any 
 number of generations from that of an ape or other 
 brute, in which there is no manifestation of anything 
 like human mind even in the most rudimentary 
 degree. 
 
 In regard to cells generally, it is important to 
 remember a fundamental principle in their biology 
 a fundamental principle overlooked by Evolutionists, 
 viz., that they are of various kinds, each kind 
 possessing its own peculiar vital endowments, and 
 its own mode of further development. One kind of 
 cells cannot give origin to another kind of different 
 endowments. There is no such thing as ( differenti- 
 ation/ in the sense in which Evolutionists employ the 
 term. As, therefore, the cells from which the optic 
 nerve, for example, is developed cannot be developed 
 into the auditory nerve, nor the cells from which the 
 auditory nerve is developed, into the optic nerve ; 
 moreover, as the optic nerve cannot perform the 
 function of the auditory nerve, nor this the function 
 of that ; so, as none of the brain-cells of an ape can 
 perform functions like those performed by the pecu- 
 liar cells of the human brain, through which man's 
 high intelligence is specially manifested, there is no 
 reason to believe that any of the brain- cells such as 
 
NO FUNCTION WITHOUT MECHANISM. 29 
 
 are possessed by apes could have come by repetition 
 of generations to acquire the endowments fitting them 
 for the performance of the highly specialised func- 
 tions proper to those cells of the human brain in 
 question. 
 
 How, therefore, can it be maintained that by 
 increased mental activity reason could have been 
 acquired by apes through Natural Selection aided by 
 inherited habit ? There might, indeed, be increased 
 mental activity in the ape, but that would be, never- 
 theless, nothing more than ape mental activity, not 
 man's even in the slightest degree ; and what does 
 not exist cannot be inherited. The more an ape's 
 mental activity is increased, the more intensely apish, 
 indeed, it must prove. 
 
 In accordance with the teaching of the theory of 
 Evolution that function determines structure, Mr. 
 Darwin argues that as the mental faculties were 
 gradually developed, the brain would become larger. 
 But surely this is putting the cart before the horse, 
 for the truth is that the mental faculties are mani- 
 fested only in proportion to the existing size and 
 quality of the brain. Function cannot precede 
 mechanism. The rails had to be laid down, and the 
 steam-engine put into working order, before we could 
 be conveyed from London to Brighton in an hour 
 and a half. The telegraph cable had to be submerged 
 in the Atlantic before messages could be flashed 
 between London and New York. 
 
30 CUVIER versus ST.-HILAIRE. 
 
 This view as to function determining structure 
 is, we have seen, associated with the direct denial of 
 design in the Creation ; though, oddly enough, 
 design is implied in the doctrine of Evolution, only 
 it is shifted from the Creator to the living beings 
 themselves from the Creator to the creature. 
 Thus, according to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the acqui- 
 sition of new parts in the course of its development 
 was the result of the animal's own exertions to 
 obtain what it longed for ; or, according to Lamarck, 
 new organs having become necessary in consequence 
 of new wants, efforts were made by the animal to 
 acquire the desiderated organ, and so it came into 
 existence ! Lamarck even represents the hypothe- 
 tical immediate ape-progenitors of man as planning 
 and executing the various steps requisite for advanc- 
 ing themselves to the dignity of manhood ! 
 
 Against such views, which were upheld by 
 Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, in the memorable discussion 
 at the French Academy of Sciences, in 1830, the 
 Baron Cuvier raised his voice and maintained, what 
 our common sense acknowledges, that living beings 
 were created by design and for a purpose. 
 
 Man was created with his faculties intellectual 
 and moral capable and ready in the individual to 
 be elicited under the proper conditions. The least 
 civilised man in early times could not have been 
 lower than some savages of the present day. Now, 
 the lowest savage individually, it has been found, 
 
ADVANCE IN CULTURE. 3! 
 
 has a capacity of being raised by education, con- 
 tinued from childhood, to a degree of intelligence 
 not manifested by his kinsmen in their savage state 
 and to which, by no training, under any circumstances, 
 can brutes be brought to make the most distant 
 approach. 
 
 Advance in culture means merely that the in- 
 herent capabilities of man's nature have been called 
 forth by education^ not acquired by evolution. It has 
 not been by any fundamentally improved develop- 
 ment of his corporeal frame or mental capacity in 
 the course of generations that man has advanced to 
 his present stage of civilisation and knowledge, but 
 by the preservation, communication; and transmission 
 of experience, acquired in all the various ways of 
 life in successive generations. This power to pre- 
 serve, communicate and transmit the knowledge 
 acquired by experience is a grand and characteristic 
 attribute of man, the wisdom and experience of the 
 individual being thus not lost to society by his death. 
 
 In the earliest times known to history men 
 existed with mental endowments as great as those 
 for which the most eminent men of modern times 
 have been distinguished, but they had not the 
 advantage of the same amount of accumulated 
 knowledge on record from which to start. The 
 mental capacity of man now is not greater than it was 
 some hundred years ago, and yet his achievements in 
 science, discovery, and invention within that time have 
 been unparalleled in the history of any former period. 
 
32 MAN NEVER OTHER THAN MAN. 
 
 As just said, man as we know him in his earliest 
 records, industries, and arts Egyptian, Assyrian, 
 Indian, arid Jewish was as well endowed formerly 
 as he is now. His mental capacity was as great, 
 and his corporeal frame as perfect. No doubt, con- 
 temporary with those civilised communities, there ex- 
 isted then, as now, tribes like the Australians, Papuans, 
 Andamanese, Esquimaux, Fuegeans, &c., here and 
 there, lost perhaps in barbarism, but nevertheless 
 possessing all the capacity for being educated. 
 Conversely, the remains of- man and his industry 
 which have been discovered under geological condi- 
 tions undoubtedly denoting very remote antiquity, 
 are, perhaps, not to be viewed as indications that 
 prehistoric man was everywhere in the apparently 
 low, savage, isolated state in which the people 
 evidently were, whose remains have been discovered, 
 for, possibly, contemporary with them there may have 
 been civilised communities elsewhere on the earth. 
 
 The question of the origin of Man, it must be 
 concluded, is one entirely beyond the pale of Natural 
 Science. But when, where, and howsoever his first 
 advent on the earth took place, this much is certain, 
 that there are no valid grounds in support of the 
 thesis that he ever existed under any other present- 
 ment or embodiment than that of Man. 
 
 And now in conclusion : a great aim of Philoso- 
 phical Anatomy, we have seen, is to discover and 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANATOMY. 33 
 
 elucidate the Affinities, Homologies, Analogies, and 
 Adaptations of Structure throughout the Animal and 
 Vegetable Kingdoms ; but I have observed that, 
 how well made out soever the subject may be, the 
 demonstration of Affinities, Homologies, Analogies, 
 and Adaptations of Structure does not add to the 
 confirmation of the Doctrine of Evolution ; nor does 
 the Doctrine of Evolution necessarily follow, in 
 any respect, the demonstrations of Philosophical 
 Anatomy. The two, however, having become 
 associated by recent teachings in the minds of 
 students, younger naturalists, who are impressed 
 more by the surface than the depths of things, see 
 in every homology of structure a manifestation of 
 Evolution by Natural Selection, by Survival of the 
 Fittest, in the Struggle for Existence. 
 
 As the Schoolmen of the dark ages lost them- 
 selves in trying to make of the Philosophy of 
 Aristotle what it was not ; so Evolutionists seem to 
 be trying to make out of Philosophical Anatomy 
 what it does not really countenance. 
 
 The result in this case being as unprofitable as 
 the Quiddities of the Schoolmen, we may, perhaps 
 not unjustly, apply to the followers of Darwin the 
 Poet's censure of the ' Sons of Aristotle : ' 
 
 * They stand 
 
 Locked up together hand in hand. 
 Every one leads as he is led : 
 The same bare path they tread, 
 And dance like fairies a fantastic round, 
 But neither change their motion, nor their ground.' 
 D 
 
34 LECTURE II. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 PROFESSOR HAECKEUS SCHEME OF THE LINE OF 
 MAN'S DESCENT FROM LOWER ANIMALS. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 Mr. Darwin's recognition of the excellence of Professor 
 Haeckel's exposition of the doctrine of Evolution, p. 36. 
 Haeckel's assumption of the truth of the doctrine of Evolution and 
 his estimate of the value of its influence in promoting the progress 
 of Philosophy and Science, p. 36. His denial of any limit to 
 natural knowledge, p. 37. Anthropogenesis treated of under 
 the two distinct heads of Ontogenesis, or the embryonic develop- 
 ment of the individual, and Phylogenesis, or lineal descent of 
 the race by evolution from the most simple organisms, p. 38. 
 Ontogenesis viewed as a short and rapid recapitulation of Phylo- 
 genesis, p. 39. The first living body alleged to have arisen as a 
 mass of protoplasm, like a flake of white of egg, by spontaneous 
 generation, p. 40. By development of a nucleus in a small mass of 
 this protoplasm (with or without a cell-wall around it), a nucleated 
 cell, such as an amoeba, was formed, p. 40. By proliferation from 
 this amoeba, similar cells were produced, and these being aggre- 
 gated together constituted a Synamcebium, p. 41. Which Syn- 
 amoebium by an alleged ' differentiation ' of its component cells was 
 evolved into a more complex organism, p. 41. Denial that any such 
 process of ' differentiation ' takes place in nature, p. 42. Such 
 pretended ' differentiation ' constitutes the false foundation on which 
 the superstructure of Evolution is in a great measure built, p. 43. 
 True ' differentiation] wherein it consists, p. 43. The Ontogenesis 
 of Protozoa a simple process of cell-development, p. 44. In the 
 case of animals generally, the young individual originates from an 
 egg, but the formation and development of the egg itself comprise 
 the different stages of cell-life, p. 44. The Blastoderma composed of 
 
SUMMARY. 35 
 
 originally heterogeneous cells, not of homogeneous cells transmuted 
 by an alleged process of * differentiation^ p. 45. The blastoderma in 
 the various metamorphoses it undergoes towards the development 
 of the embryo, considered by itself, resembles lower forms of organ- 
 isation, p. 48. The embryonic development of man similar to that 
 of other mammifera^ but this fact is no proof that man was evolved 
 from lower mammifera, p. 51. Nor is the fact of the resemblance 
 of the embryo of mammifera to that of lower vertebrate, any 
 evidence of the evolution of a mammal from a frog or fish, p. 52. 
 Equally little is the resemblance which may be traced between ver- 
 tebrata and invertebrata any evidence that the lancelet, for example, 
 was evolved from an ascidian mollusk, p. 57. Comparison of the 
 plan of organisation of a lobster and that of a vertebrate animal, p. 53. 
 The difference not so great between them, if we recognise that what 
 is commonly considered the ventral aspect of the body of the lobster 
 is really homologous with, or corresponds to, the vertebral or dor- 
 sal aspect of a vertebrate animal, p. 53. Unfounded nature of the 
 alleged near relationship between an ascidian mollusk and the am- 
 phioxus or lancelet, by evolution of the latter from the former, p. 56. 
 The structure in the tail of the ascidian larva, supposed to be the 
 homologue of the cor da dorsalis of the vertebrate embryo, denied 
 to have any such signification, p. 56. The vertebrate ancestral forms 
 through which Haeckel hypothetically alleges the human race to 
 have been successively evolved were : the amphioxus or lancelet 
 tribe of fishes ; lampreys ; fishes of the shark tribe j fishes like the 
 lepido-siren ; perennibranchiate batrachiaris, like the proteus and 
 axolotl ; salamanders ; lizard-like creatures ; monotremata, or' 
 animals like the ornithorhyncus ; marsupialia, or animals like the 
 kangaroo rat ; half apes, like the lemur j tailed apes j tail-less 
 or men-apes, like the orang ; speechless~ape-men, p. 60. In this 
 series of hypothetical animal forms transitional resemblances may 
 be traced or assumed ; but this constitutes no evidence in favour 
 of the doctrine of Evolution, p. 68. Evolution, in short, from be- 
 ginning to end is an hypothesis unverified and unverifiable^ p. 68. 
 
 LADIES and GENTLEMEN, In the Lecture on 
 Evolution, which I delivered in this theatre on the 
 2 Qth of October last year, I examined only the more 
 general and prominent points . of the doctrine, as 
 
 D 2 
 
30 ANTHROPOGENESIS. 
 
 pourtrayed in Darwin's ' Descent of Man.' Taking 
 now as a text, Professor Haeckel's recently 
 published work on 'ANTHROPOGENESIS,' 1 I propose on 
 the present occasion to give a connected view of the 
 alleged line of Man's Descent, tracing the ancestral 
 forms through which, according to Haeckel, the 
 human race was successively evolved. 
 
 Mr. Darwin, in his ' DESCENT OF MAN,' I may 
 premise, refers to Professor Haeckel's former work 
 on the * HISTORY OF CREATION ACCORDING TO 
 NATURAL LA\vs' 2 as affording a very complete 
 expositipn of the doctrine of Evolution, and observes 
 that if the book had appeared earlier, he would 
 probably not have published his own. Haeckel's 
 present work comprises a course of lectures on the 
 Origin of Man, delivered to a popular audience at 
 Jena, in the university of which he is a Professor. 
 
 Assuming with all the zeal and earnestness of 
 conviction that the doctrine of Evolution is true, 
 and so self-evident that it cannot be justly gainsaid, 
 Professor Haeckel maintains that the recognition of 
 the descent of man throughout innumerable genera- 
 tions, from the lowest organisms, is the only means 
 calculated to guide us to a better comprehension of 
 the significance of the facts of embryonic development. 
 The better comprehension of the significance of the 
 facts of the embryonic development of man, thus 
 
 1 Anthropogenic Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen, von 
 Ernst Haeckel, Professor an der Universitat Jena. Leipzig, 1874. 
 
 2 Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, von Dr. Ernst Haeckel, Pro- 
 fessor an der Universitat Jena. Berlin, 1870. 
 
LIMIT TO NATURAL KNOWLEDGE ? 37 
 
 acquired, Haeckel, moreover, considers to be the light 
 which can alone illumine the path leading to real pro- 
 gress in Philosophy and Science. 
 
 That there is any limit to natural knowledge 
 such as is commonly assumed, Haeckel denies, and 
 bitterly censures Professor Du Bois Raymond's 
 Essay on the subject, read at the Leipzig Meeting 
 of German Naturalists in 1873, protesting against 
 the Berlin Professor's ' Ignorabimus! 
 
 Suppose, argues Haeckel, that our single- cell 
 amoeban ancestors of the Laurentian period could have 
 been told that their descendants of the Cambrian 
 period would become a many-cell worm, they would 
 not have believed it possible. As little would these 
 worms have believed it possible that their descendants 
 would flourish as vertebrates like the Amphioxus 
 tribe and equally little would such skull-less vertebrates 
 have believed that descendants of theirs would be in 
 time developed into animals with skulls. In like 
 manner, our Silurian proto-Jish ancestors would never 
 have believed that any of their Devonian grand- 
 children would exist as Amphibia and their Triassic 
 great grandchildren as Mammifera. So would those 
 mammifera have held it impossible that in the 
 Tertiary time, certain of their great great grand- 
 children would acquire Human Form and at the 
 same time become so highly 'gifted as to be qualified 
 to pluck the precious fruit of the tree of knowledge. 
 The unanimous answer from all would have been, 
 says Haeckel : ( IMMUTABIMUR ET IGNORABIMUS/ 
 
38 ONTOGENESIS AND PHYLOGENESIS. 
 
 We shall never be changed We shall never know 
 it' 
 
 It is this ' Ignorabimmj continues Haeckel, with 
 the unflinching confidence of a true Evolutionist 
 shall I say the dogmatism and intolerance also ? 
 which Professor Du Bois Raymond would interpose 
 as a barrier to the progressive development of 
 science, and thus aid the ' Church Militant ' in its 
 crusade against freedom of thought and truth, reason 
 and culture, development and progress ; a war in 
 which Evolutionists, who are the Soldiers of Truth, 
 can have no better ally than ANTHROPOGENESIS ; for 
 the real history of man's origin Haeckel considers to 
 be the heavy artillery of the evolutionary army ! 
 
 Such are the sentiments, Professor Haeckel 
 frankly lets us know, with which he enters on his 
 subject. 
 
 ' ANTHROPOGENESIS ' Professor Haeckel treats 
 under the two distinct heads of Ontogenesis and 
 Phylogenesis : Ontogenesis, or the embryonic deve- 
 lopment of the individual man by ordinary generation 
 in the short period of 280 days ; and Phylogenesis, or 
 man's alleged descent by Evolution, in the course of 
 millions of years, from the lowest, organisms, and in 
 the last instance from apes. 
 
 Ontogenesis Evolutionists regard as a short and 
 rapid recapitulation of Phylogenesis the individual 
 animal in the course of its development from the 
 ovum to its complete form, passing rapidly through 
 
NUCLEATED CELLS. 39 
 
 the most important of those metamorphoses, which 
 its alleged successive progenitors in the course of 
 innumerable generations slowly underwent by evolu- 
 tion, towards the form of its more immediate ancestors. 
 Thus in the course of the development of a human 
 being in utero> the embryo, at a certain stage some- 
 what resembles a fish, by and by a frog-like creature, 
 and next a mammal the mammalian form, be it 
 observed, appearing first like that of the Monotremata 
 or ornithorhyncus tribe the lowest of the class ; then 
 like that of the Marsupialia or kangaroo tribe 
 afterwards like that of quadrupeds and apes, until, 
 at last, the perfect human form is attained. 
 
 But before even the embryo appears, the ovum 
 itself, in the various preliminary metamorphoses it 
 undergoes in consequence of fecundation, presents 
 to the eyes of Evolutionists recapitulations of the 
 primaeval and very simple forms which constituted, 
 they allege, the beginnings of the phylum or line of 
 man. 
 
 The facts and arguments adduced by Haeckel 
 in support of these evolutionary views I proceed to 
 examine. 
 
 What is called a nucleated cell is a microscopical 
 corpuscle of albuminous nature in respect to substance ; 
 and in respect to structure comprising two essentially 
 distinct parts, viz. protoplasm and nucleus. These 
 two parts may be enclosed within a membraneous 
 vesicle a third element of structure, but this cell- 
 
4O SPONTANEOUS GENERATION OF CYTODES. 
 
 wall, though it has given name to the whole, is found 
 not to be a constant or essential part of the structure of 
 the body, for in certain cases an enclosing membraneous 
 wall is never formed around the nucleated mass of 
 protoplasm. But the nucleated cell, it is to be 
 observed, does not represent the lowest stage of 
 organic and living individuality. A more elementary 
 phase of living existence is found in the cytode, a body 
 which consists merely of a shapeless mass of proto- 
 plasm without a nucleus. 
 
 Of cytodes, nucleated cells and tissues developed 
 from them, the bodies of animals are composed. But 
 there are in Nature animal organisms of so simple 
 a character as to consist of no more than a single 
 cell, such as the amoeba, or even no more than a 
 cytode, such as ^protamceba. 
 
 The amorphous living substance composing 
 cytodes is assumed by Evolutionists to have origi- 
 nated in the first instance by spontaneous genera- 
 tion. 
 
 The elementary organism thus first presented 
 itself as a cytode, and subsequently by the development 
 of a micleus in its substance and a cell-wall around it 
 the phase of complete nucleated cell was attained. 
 
 From such hypothetical original single-cell ani- 
 mals like the amoeba which, it is assumed, already 
 existed in the early part of the primordial time, 
 Professor Haeckel thinks it may be affirmed a priori 
 that similar cells were produced by proliferation 
 that these new amoebae formed by aggregation 
 
ALLEGED DIFFERENTIATION OF CELLS. 41 
 
 together a community to which he gives the name 
 of Synamoebium ; and that, though originally homo- 
 geneous in composition, structure, and endowments, 
 they came at last by a process of ' differentiation ' to 
 form a many-cell organism possessed of differently 
 endowed organs which all worked together for a 
 common end. 
 
 To prove the validity of these phylogenetic 
 presuppositions, Haeckel appeals to facts which 
 ontogenesis or embryonic development, as he alleges, 
 actually brings before our eyes at the present day, 
 such as the formation of the blastoderma. This 
 membrane is composed of cells into which the 
 yolk of the egg is resolved in the process of division 
 and subdivision which takes place after fecundation, 
 which cells, though at first homogeneous, as he alleges, 
 subsequently differentiate themselves, so as to form 
 the various organs of the embryo. And thus, argues 
 Haeckel, is his biogenetic fundamental law confirmed, 
 viz., that the development of the individual is a short 
 and rapid recapitulation of that of the line. 
 
 This argument seems to run in a circle, inasmuch 
 as it assumes that cells having been spontaneously 
 generated and having multiplied by proliferation, 
 then set to work to ' differentiate ' themselves, so as 
 to become transformed into more complex animal 
 bodies ; whilst to prove this assumption another is 
 made, viz., that the cells composing the blastoderma, 
 though at first homogeneous, afterwards 'differentiate' 
 themselves to form the more complex organs of the 
 
42 DOCTRINE OF DIFFERENTIATION 
 
 embryo. Letting the fallacy of the argument pass, 
 I would comment on the root of it, viz., on the doctrine 
 of * differentiation! according to which homogeneous 
 cells may be developed into this or that, or indeed 
 any structure ; a doctrine which Haeckel and others 
 advocate as a fundamental part of the theory of 
 Evolution. Like as men in a community, says Haeckel, 
 occupy themselves each in a different employment 
 to the advantage of the whole, so the cells which 
 had become aggregated together to form a SYN- 
 AMCEBIUM, though originally homogeneous both in 
 substance and endowments, subdivided their labour 
 and engaged spontaneously in different modes of 
 action ; some metamorphosing themselves in one 
 way, some in another, and, at the same time, 'acquir- 
 ing new endowments so as to be qualified for the 
 performance of new functions. 
 
 This comparison would seem to imply that these 
 primaeval cells worked with both purpose and will, 
 in order to acquire new forms and new endowments,, 
 thus promoting their own evolution. Our knowledge 
 of cells, however, does not warrant any such view of 
 their powers. We see only that cells run through 
 the different phases of development, growth, and 
 metamorphoses proper to them, each kind according 
 to its own destiny, and that they thus unconsciously 
 fulfil the purposes of their life. 
 
 Granting any number of generations through 
 which cells may be supposed to have descended, 
 
OF CELLS UNFOUNDED. 43 
 
 the Evolution argument, I contend, is not thereby 
 strengthened. 
 
 When, by virtue of their original intrinsic quali- 
 ties, differently composed and endowed cells are, 
 under the appropriate conditions, developed into 
 tissues, for example, each kind in its own proper 
 way, we may truly call the process one of ' differentia- 
 tion ; ' but there is certainly no such process, if by 
 the expression is meant the development of different 
 kinds of tissues from one and the same kind of cells 
 by their own desires and efforts. The reality of 
 such a process is, in fact, the very thing to be con- 
 tested, as the false foundation on which the super- 
 structure of Evolution has been, in a great measure, 
 built. 
 
 Though resembling each other in their general 
 characters, organic cells, let me repeat, are of various 
 kinds each kind possessing its own peculiar endow- 
 ments physical and vital and its own mode of 
 further development into tissues and organs. One 
 kind of cells cannot give origin to another kind with 
 different endowments, nor be developed by the 
 chance of circumstances into this or that kind of 
 structure. Cells react vitally under varying condi- 
 tions, but each only in its own way. If the condi- 
 tions be unusual, the cell still reacts after its own 
 manner, according to its inherent endowments, so 
 far as the unusual conditions permit. The cell may 
 indeed become morbid, languish, and die under the 
 
44 ONTOGENESIS OF PROTOZOA. 
 
 influence of unfavourable conditions, but it never 
 reacts so as to be converted into something of a 
 fundamentally different nature. 
 
 No such process as absolute ' adaptation', like 
 what Haeckel describes, can thus be admitted any 
 more than ' differentiation' 
 
 The elements in respect to shape composing the 
 various tissues of the animal body are formed out of 
 the substance of cells, their nuclei and intercellular 
 substance. And though thus similar in the mechan- 
 ism of their development, tissues differ from each 
 other, not only in shape but also in endowments 
 physical and vital because they are developed each 
 tissue from a different kind of cells. In short, let 
 me reiterate : different cells, though they may 
 resemble each other in external aspect and general 
 points of structure, are potentially different in their 
 internal qualities. No transmutation, therefore, can 
 under any change of circumstances, take place of 
 one kind of cell into the tissue which is the proper 
 product of the development of another kind of cell. 
 
 The ontogenesis of Protozoa, we have seen, is 
 literally nothing more than an example of simple cell 
 development. In the case of animals generally, the 
 individual originates from an ovum or egg. The 
 first formation of the ovum, however, as well as its 
 development into the young animal, may be viewed 
 as merely different phases of the same process of 
 cell-life. Pro fesso^ Haeckel regards the ovurn itself, 
 
BLASTODERMIC CELLS HETEROGENEOUS. 45 
 
 as having the significance of a cell ; the yolk repre- 
 senting the protoplasm, the germinal vesicle, the 
 nucleus, and the vitellary membrane, the cell-wall. 
 Gigantic a cell, I may remark, as the yolk of the 
 common hen's egg must, in that case, be looked on, 
 still more gigantic a cell must be the yolk of the 
 ostrich's egg, and more gigantic still must have been 
 the yolk of the eggs of the extinct birds of Mada- 
 gascar and New Zealand. But such a view of the 
 character of the ovum ought not to be entertained. 
 An ovum, on the contrary, must be considered as a 
 much more complex and very highly specialised 
 organism. 
 
 The germinal vesicle is not a nucleus with a 
 micleolus, but is itself a nucleated cell. Through 
 the combined influence of it and the fecundating 
 cells, the yolk is constituted a special blastema, out 
 of which the blastoderma, or germinal membrane 
 the structure from which the embryo originates is 
 developed by a remarkable process of cell-formation. 
 The cells composing the blastoderma are, in their 
 endowments, potential as well as actual, of different 
 kinds, though formed in common from the yolk. 
 But the yolk, it is to be remarked, is a substance of 
 heterogeneous composition, and affords materials for 
 the development of the different kinds of cells, just 
 as a fluid containing different salts in solution yields, 
 on evaporation, different kinds of crystals. Hence, 
 in the development of the embryo, the variou:. 
 tissues - and organs have their origin in different 
 
4-6 STRUCTURE OF THE EGG. 
 
 kinds of cells, and not in homogeneous cells by any 
 alleged process of differentiation or transmutation. 
 
 In man and the mammifera, the ovum as it exists 
 in the ovary or egg-bed, though so very minute in 
 size as to be no more than visible as a speck 
 to the naked eye, comprises all the essential parts of 
 an egg, viz. the germinal vesicle, yolk, and yolk 
 membrane. Professor Ernst von Baer, who first 
 discovered the ovarian ovum of man and the Mam- 
 malia, mistook it for the homologue of the germinal 
 vesicle of the bird's egg which had been discovered 
 a short time before by Professor Purkinje ; but the 
 discovery of a real germinal vesicle in the human 
 and mammalian ovum by Valentin in Germany, 
 Coste in France, and myself in this country, demon- 
 strated the true nature and significance of that body. 
 In the bird the ovum leaves the egg-bed as the 
 full-sized yolk ; whilst by the superaddition of the 
 white and shell around the yolk, which takes place 
 in the oviduct, the whole egg of the bird when 
 laid, is, as is well known, larger still. 
 
 The first observable changes which take place in 
 an ovum as the immediate consequence of fecundation 
 are : the disappearance of the germinal vesicle, 
 and the cleavage or division and subdivision of 
 the yolk, resulting in the resolution of its substance 
 into the different kinds of cells composing the 
 blastoderma. * 
 
 In the ovum after fecundation, when the germinal 
 vesicle has disappeared, Haeckel thinks i* to be 
 
DIFFERENCE IN SIZE OF OVA. 47 
 
 recognised the ontogenetic representative of the 
 spontaneously generated simple cytode, which he 
 hypothetically assumes as the first ancestor of man, 
 as well as of all other animals. To say nothing of 
 the Evolution doctrine, in the interest of which 
 Haeckel thus expresses himself, but taking his 
 comparison of the newly fecundated ovum to a 
 simple cytode as involving a question merely of 
 homology, the view appears to me an exaggerated 
 piece of transcendentalism. And not less extreme 
 in its transcendentalism is the idea that the yolk of 
 the ovum, after it has been converted into blasto- 
 dcrmic cells by division and subdivision, is the 
 ontogenetic recapitulation of a Synamcebium. The 
 globular blastoderma of the mammiferous ovum, for 
 example whether we view it in respect to its forma- 
 tion, or in respect to its wondrous though well-known 
 and verifiable potentialities when formed I hold to 
 be a very different thing from an aggregation of 
 simple homogeneous cells which can never give 
 origin to anything else than cells like themselves. 
 
 When the ovum is minute in size, as in man and 
 the mammifera for example, the yolk is, after fecunda- 
 tion, all resolved into the cells forming the blasto- 
 derma ; but when the yolk is large, as in birds, it is 
 in part only resolved into blastodermic cells, this 
 partial resolution into cells taking place in the region 
 of the cicatricula, or spot where the germinal vesicle 
 was imbedded. The explanation of the difference 
 in size between the ovum of a bird and that of a 
 
48 GERMINAL LAYERS OF BLASTODERMA. 
 
 mammal is that the former, not having to be hatched 
 in a womb, contains all the material necessary for the 
 development of the chick, whereas the latter contains 
 sufficient materials only for the formation of the first 
 traces of the embyro ; the materials for the further 
 development of the embryo and fcetus being" derived, 
 within the mother's womb, from her blood through 
 the medium of the placenta. 
 
 To return to the ovum in the stage of globu- 
 lar blastoderma. In some animals, chiefly in- 
 vertebrate, though also in the lancelet, and probably 
 in some higher vertebrata as well, the surface is 
 beset with vibratile cilia. This planula-larva form 
 Haeckel considers to be, ontogenetically, a recapitu- 
 lation of a hypothetical many-cell protozoon which 
 he names PLAN.EA, and which he supposes first made 
 its appearance in the primordial time. In the next 
 stage of development the blastoderma becomes 
 separated into two distinct strata of cells, named the 
 primary germinal layers. The cells composing these 
 layers are different from each other in general aspect. 
 That they are different also in endowments and poten- 
 tialities as regards future development, we shall see. 
 r With the separation of the blastoderma into the two 
 ) J germinal layers, respectively named : the outer, 
 EXODERM (otherwise animal or serous layer), and 
 the inner, ENTODERM (otherwise vegetative or mucous 
 layer), an important step towards the fundamental 
 construction of the embyro is made. 
 
 The ovum of man and the mammifera in this 
 
GASTR^A THEORY. 49 
 
 stage of development, Haeckel compares to the 
 gdstrula larva of many of the lowest animals the 
 form value of which is that of a sac with a single 
 opening the wall consisting of two layers an 
 exoderm covered with vibratile cilia, and an entoderm 
 lining the cavity, while the single opening is the 
 protostoma or primitive mouth. The lowest animals, 
 such as sponges and the simplest polyps, continue 
 throughout life in this two-leaved form ; but the 
 ovum of man and the mammifera rapidly passes 
 through it towards the higher stages of development 
 proper to them. 
 
 To the correspondence in form value between the 
 gastrula larva and the ovum of the higher animals 
 in the stage of development under notice, Haeckel 
 applies his biogenetic fundamental law, thus : Man, 
 and all other animals which pass through a stage 
 of development in which their body consists of an 
 exoderm and an entoderm, must have descended from 
 a primaeval stem-form, the whole body of which con- 
 sisted throughout life of only two different strata of 
 cells or germinal layers, similar to the lowest zoo- 
 phytes of the present day. We are, therefore, he 
 continues, justified in admitting that in early times 
 such a common stem-form did exist ; and to this 
 hypothetical being, which he considers full of 
 significance, Haeckel gives the name of GASTR^A. 
 
 In all animals, except the zoophytes referred to, 
 the two primary germinal layers of the blastoderma 
 subdivide in the further course of development into 
 
 E 
 
5O SECONDARY LAYERS OF BLASTODERMA. 
 
 secondary layers, which constitute the foundation of 
 the different systems of organs of the embryo. 
 
 The cells composing each of these secondary 
 layers are at first, says Haeckel, quite similar, but 
 they soon become differentiated. That the cells of 
 one layer differ from those of another is evident ; 
 but that they were originally homogeneous not only 
 in form but also in endowments and potentialities, 
 and that they spontaneously differentiated themselves, 
 is the very thing to be contested, as I have before 
 shown. True differentiation consists in this : Out 
 of a collection of originally heterogeneous cells, one 
 kind is metamorphosed into one structure, another 
 kind into another, in the further course of develop- 
 ment, by virtue of their own inherent powers, just 
 as, to repeat the illustration, different kinds of crys- 
 tals are deposited from a mixture of the solutions of 
 different kinds of salts. 
 
 The secondary layers of which Ihe blastoderma 
 comes to consist are found not only in the ova of 
 man, the mammifera and other vertebrata, but also 
 in that of mollusca, arthropoda, echinodermata, the 
 higher worms and higher zoophytes a fact in com- 
 parative ontogenesis which Haeckel interprets as 
 being of the highest phylogenetic significance. To 
 another mind, however, the fact only shows what 
 has -been long recognised, that all forms are con- 
 structed according to a common plan. 
 
 The most important phenomena of general sig- 
 
EMBRYO OF MAMMIFERA. 51 
 
 nificance, according to Haeckel, observable in trac- 
 ing the ontogenesis of man must be recognised in 
 the fact that the development of his body from the 
 very commencement takes place in the same manner 
 that the development of the body of other mammifera 
 does, and that all the peculiarities of individual de- 
 velopment which distinguish the mammifera generally 
 from other vertebrata are to be found also in man. 
 This I admit, but I cannot admit the validity of the 
 inference which Haeckel draws from it in support of 
 the doctrine of Evolution. 
 
 The development of the embryo of certain mam- 
 miferous animals a rabbit or dog, for example has 
 been -well made out ; and in a few instances the 
 opportunity has presented itself of examining even 
 the human embryo, thrown off by miscarriage, at a 
 very early stage of its' development ; and enough 
 has been thereby ascertained to show that, in main 
 features, the early human embryo does not differ 
 much externally from the correspondingly early 
 embryo of other mammiferous animals. But not- 
 withstanding that .the ova of man and mammiferous 
 animals thus resemble each other, the ova of no two 
 kinds are exactly alike even in outward appearance ; 
 whilst potentially they differ from each other just as 
 the different kinds of animals do which spring from 
 them. Though the mechanism of the process of de- 
 velopment into the embryo be the same, the resulting 
 animal is different. By virtue of their own inherent 
 vital endowments and potentialities, the constituent 
 
 E 2 
 
52 EMBRYO OF A MAN AND A DOG. * 
 
 cells of the blastoderma of any given kind of animal 
 undergo their own peculiar metamorphoses, and, 
 as development proceeds, the new being, built up 
 with the structures into which they are fashioned, 
 acquires more and more the characters of the parent 
 animal. This is, I would repeat, an example of true 
 differentiation, 
 
 Haeckel and other advocates of the Evolution 
 doctrine, dwell upon the resemblance between the 
 early embryo of a man and the early embryo of a 
 dog. But here, as everywhere else throughout their 
 arguments, they are led away by a superficial 
 resemblance in outward appearance, and pass over 
 unnoticed the internal qualities and hidden power, 
 by which the two somewhat externally similar 
 aggregations of cells are at last unerringly developed 
 the one into a man, and the other into a dog. 
 
 As to the resemblance of the human embryo in 
 common with that of other mammiferous animals 
 to the embryo of the lower vertebrata, it is to be 
 observed that as the plan of development in all is 
 similar, so at every stage there are indications of a 
 similarity of structure ; but indications only. 
 
 Then again, as to a resemblance between the 
 lowest vertebrata and the invertebrata, there is no 
 doubt that here also, indications of similar organisa- 
 tion may be detected. In the ovum of arthropods 
 a crustacean like the lobster for example, it is found 
 
HOMOLOGIES OF A LOBSTER. 53 
 
 that the primitive trace of the embryo and the central 
 organ of the nervous system on the one hand, and 
 the blastodermic vesicle on the other, do not differ 
 in their topographical relationship to each other from 
 the correspond ing parts in the ovum of the vertebrate 
 animal. Putting out of view now the vertebral 
 column and more complete development of the central 
 organ of the nervous system of the vertebrate animal, 
 it may be said that the subsequent difference between 
 the vertebrate and arthropod is that the aspect of 
 the body where the primitive trace and the central 
 organ of the nervous system appeared, becomes in 
 the vertebrate animal what is known as the dorsal 
 aspect or back of its body, and in the arthropod what 
 is commonly called the ventral aspect of its body or 
 belly. Fundamentally, however, the dorsal aspect 
 or back of a vertebrate animal, is homologous with 
 the so-called ventral aspect or belly of a lobster or 
 insect; and we shall be correct in saying that the 
 real difference between vertebrate and arthropodous 
 animals is not that the central organ of the nervous 
 system or spinal marrow is situated along the back 
 in the vertebrate, arid along the belly in the arthro- 
 podous animal ; but that in their natural prone 
 position, vertebrate animals have their vertebral 
 aspect or back directed upwards, whereas the natural 
 position of arthropodous animals is the reverse of 
 this, being that in which the vertebral aspect of their 
 body is downwards the aspect in them commonly 
 called the back being in reality, as I have before 
 
54 HOMOLOGIES OF A LOBSTER. 
 
 said, that which is homologous with the belly of 
 vertebrate animals. 
 
 To suit the inverted position of arthropodous 
 animals, the mouth has been placed at what corre- 
 sponds to the back of the head in vertebrate animals, 
 and in order to permit the necessary communication 
 between it and the stomach, which retains its relative 
 position, the oesophagus or gullet passes through the 
 aesophageal nervous collar, which may be viewed as 
 the medulla oblongata of vertebrate animals split 
 into lateral halves by a longitudinal fissure a mere 
 mechanical adaptation like the passage of a tendon 
 through a split in another without involving any 
 real fundamental difference of structure or function. 
 
 The central organ of the nervous system in 
 arthropoda the so-called ventral chain of ganglions, 
 but really and absolutely the homologue of the spinal 
 cord of vertebrata, was shown in 1832 by my much 
 respected colleague, the late Dr. Grant, to be com- 
 posed of two columns the one ganglionic, the other 
 non-ganglionic. But in accordance with the mistaken 
 view as to the real dorsal aspect of the lobster or 
 insect's body, it was supposed that the relative position 
 of the two columns the ganglionic or sensitive 
 ' below,' and the non-ganglionic or motor ' above ' 
 was the reverse of what it is in vertebrate animals. 
 From my demonstration, however, of the true dorsal 
 aspect of arthropoda, it is evident that the relative 
 position of the two columns corresponds exactly with 
 
WINGS OF INSECTS. 55 
 
 that of the two columns of the spinal cord of 
 vertebrata. 
 
 According to my demonstration of the true 
 ventral aspect also, of arthropods, it is evident that 
 the so-called 'dorsal' vessel is not dorsal, but really 
 thoraco-ventral, and corresponds with the heart of 
 vertebrate animals not only in function, but also in 
 relative position is, in fact, homologous with it. 
 
 In both the vertebrate and arthropodous animal, 
 the trunk of the body is a chain of segments in the 
 former represented by the bodies of the vertebrae, 
 in the latter by the rings of the external skeleton. 
 But, even in arthropods, we discover evidences of 
 an internal segmentation in the chain of ganglia 
 forming the real posterior or sensitive column of their 
 spinal cord. 
 
 Though the articulated extremities of arthropods 
 are productions of their external skeleton, and as 
 such may be compared to productions of the external 
 or dermo-skeleton of vertebrate animals, like the 
 dorsal, caudal, and anal fins of fishes, the same view 
 cannot, perhaps, be taken of the wings of insects. 
 It is worthy of observation that the wings of insects 
 correspond to the limbs of vertebrate animals in 
 relative position and in number, being turned to- 
 wards the real ventral aspect of the body and being 
 never more in number than two pairs, sometimes 
 there is only one pair ; and as there are vertebrate 
 
56 CHORDA DORSALIS OF ASCIDIAN LARVA ? 
 
 animals destitute of limbs altogether, so there are 
 wingless insects. 
 
 The example of a transition of structure between 
 the invertebrata and vertebrata just adduced is not, 
 perhaps, such as would be recognised by Haeckel, 
 seeing that, in his opinion, arthropods have but a 
 remote phylogenetic relationship with the vertebrata. 
 It is in my opinion more indisputable, however, 
 than the notorious alleged homology between the 
 embryo of the ascidian mollusk and that of the 
 vertebrate amphioxus or lancelet, on which Darwin 
 and Haeckel rely with so much confidence as an 
 example of the connecting link between the inver- 
 tebrata and vertebrata. 
 
 It is difficult to recognise in the chord-like struc- 
 ture as described by Kowalevsky in the transitory 
 tail of the ascidian larva a homologue of the chorda 
 dorsalis of the vertebrata. If the single ganglion of 
 the ascidian correspond, as is supposed, to the so-called 
 supra-aesophageal ganglion of worms, the side on 
 which this single ganglion is situated must in that 
 case be really the ventral (as I have shown) ; and 
 consequently the body supposed to be a dorsal chord 
 does not bear the proper relative position which in 
 the vertebrata the chorda dorsalis bears to the spinal 
 cord. In fact, Kowalevsky's cord has not, in my 
 opinion, the significance of a chorda dorsalis at all. 
 
 This disallowance of the alleged close relation- 
 ship in their ontogenesis between the ascidian and 
 
HAECKELS SEVEN TYPES OF ANIMALS. 57 
 
 the lancelet need not of itself, however, 'cause any 
 break in the phylogenetic chain, supposing for a 
 moment such a chain existed, for, as I have shown, 
 we have in the arthropods a very satisfactory trans- 
 itional link between invertebrata and vertebrata ; 
 whilst from arthropods to mollusks, and downwards 
 among the other subkingdoms of the invertebrata, 
 quite as good transitional links may be also traced. 
 
 Though I thus most freely admit a transitional 
 affinity between invertebrate and vertebrate animals, 
 I repeat that I cannot see in it any corroborative 
 evidence of a descent by evolution of the latter from 
 the former. And. as little can I see in the trans- 
 itional affinities among invertebrate animals any 
 evidence of evolution of the higher of them from 
 the lower. 
 
 In his scheme of evolution Haeckel recognises 
 seven types of animals, viz., Protozoa, Zoophytes, 
 Worms, Mollusca, Echinodermata, Arthropoda, and 
 Vertebrata. 
 
 From a branch of Protozoa he represents his 
 hypothetical GASTR/EA to have been evolved. This 
 ancient being, of which the gastrula larva is its 
 recapitulation in characters of remarkable identity in 
 the ontogenesis of the most different animals of the 
 present day, must, Haeckel thinks, have existed in 
 the Laurentian period of the Archolithic time. 
 
 From the ' Gastraea ' two different lines of the 
 animal kingdom, according to Haeckel, were 
 
58 GEOLOGICAL PERIODS. 
 
 evolved : in one direction the lower groups of 
 Zoophytes, and in another Worms. It is among the 
 Worms that the stem of Echinodermata, Mollusca, 
 Arthropoda, and Vertebrata is to be found ; but in 
 Haeckel's opinion, there is no relationship except 
 this remote one of common descent from Worms 
 between the Vertebrata and the three other sub- 
 kingdoms mentioned. The vertebrata, he considers 
 with Mr. Darwin, as we have seen, were evolved 
 directly from ascidian worms. So far as regards the 
 study of Anthropogenesis, therefore, both ontogenetic 
 and phylogenetic, by far the largest part of the animal 
 kingdom may be excluded ; the only stems, in fact, 
 which bear upon ANTHROPOGENESIS being Protozoa, 
 Worms, and Vertebrata. 
 
 In entering on the consideration of the Phylo- 
 genetic branch of Anthropogenesis, a brief view of 
 the geological periods at which the various ancestral 
 forms of man were, according to Haeckel, evolved, 
 is here premised. 
 
 The PRIMORDIAL, or ARCHOZOIC or ARCHOLITHIC 
 time, comprising the Laurentian, Cambrian, and 
 Silurian periods, is supposed to have extended over 
 many millions of years a duration longer than that 
 of all the subsequent times put together. It was in 
 the earliest period of this time that living beings 
 originited by spontaneous generation. From these 
 organisms, which were of the most simple nature, 
 sprang all the invertebrate ancestors of man, from 
 
GEOLOGICAL PERIODS. 59 
 
 these again, the lancelet and its congeners were 
 evolved, and from these lowest vertebrate forms, 
 Selachian and Ganoid fishes which existed in the 
 Silurian period, descended. 
 
 As yet all organised and living beings were in- 
 habitants of the waters. 
 
 To the Primordial time succeeded the PALAEO- 
 LITHIC, or PAL/EOZOIC or PRIMARY, comprising the 
 Devonian, Carboniferoiis, and Permian periods. The 
 Palaeolithic time was much shorter in duration than 
 the Archolilhic, but longer than the subsequent times. 
 In the Carboniferous period existed Amphibia, the 
 most ancient land and air-breathing vertebrates. 
 
 In the MESOLITHIC time, comprising the Triassic, 
 Jurassic, and Chalk periods, osseous fishes first ap- 
 peared, but this time was, in an especial degree, that 
 of reptiles the gigantic dragons and so-called flying 
 lizards. During this time also birds began to appear 
 as offshoots from lizards, of which the Archeopteryx 
 is an example a bird with a lizard's tail. Mammals 
 also appeared in the form of marsupialia. 
 
 In the CAENOLITHIC or TERTIARY time, compris- 
 ing the Eoccene, Miocene, and Pliocczne periods, which 
 was short, mammiferous animals lived in full develop- 
 ment, and the transition from apes to man commenced. 
 
 The next, or QUATERNARY time may, Haeckel 
 suggests, be designated the ANTHROPOLITHIC, as it 
 was the time when men, endowed with the faculty of 
 speech, were evolved from speechless ape-men, and 
 when the full development of the various human 
 
60 VERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN ? 
 
 races took place. This ANTHROPOLITHIC time com- 
 prised the Glacial, Post-Glacial, and Historic periods. 
 
 Under the head of Ontogenesis, I have anticipated 
 all that need be said relating to the Invertebrate 
 stages of the alleged phylogenesis of man ; I shall, 
 therefore here take up the line with the Vertebrate 
 stages, and then conclude with a retrospective 
 summary of the whole. 
 
 The series of man's vertebrate ancestors begins, 
 according to Haeckel, with a hypothetical animal 
 which lived during the primordial time, and of the 
 characters of which we have presented to us a dis- 
 tant idea in the still living amphioxus or lancelet. 
 
 The lancelet tribe just mentioned forms Haeckel's 
 ninth stage in the phylogenesis of man. His tenth 
 stage comprises cyclostomatous fishes, or fishes of the 
 lamprey tribe, which he names Monorrhina or single- 
 nosed, as they have only one nasal cavity a 
 character in which they differ from true fishes. 
 
 The eleventh ancestral stage of man was repre- 
 sented by proto-fishes. These, Haeckel considers, 
 were evolved from monorrhina by the division of the 
 single nostril into two lateral cavities, and by the 
 acquisition of branchial arches and a jaw skeleton, 
 of a swimming bladder and two pairs of limbs in the 
 shape of pectoral and abdominal fins besides other 
 characters. These proto-fishes, Haeckel thinks, 
 resembled the lowest squall (or fishes of the shark 
 tribe) of the present day, and already lived in the 
 
VERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN ? 6 1 
 
 Silurian period, as is indicated by the fossil remains 
 of teeth and fin spines. 
 
 Our twelfth ancestral stage, according to Haeckel, 
 was represented by animals which probably possessed 
 a distant resemblance to the still living lepido-siren 
 tribe of fishes. They were evolved from proto-fishes 
 by metamorphosis of the swimming bladder into a 
 lung, and conversion of the nasal cavities into air- 
 passages opening into the mouth. 
 
 With this stage began the series of man's ances- 
 tors breathing by lungs. A branch of Proto-fishes 
 or Selachii during the Devonian period, Haeckel 
 thinks, made the first successful attempt the first 
 successful attempt, to repeat the expression to live 
 on land and breathe air ; whereby the swimming 
 bladder became a lung with a corresponding change 
 in the structure of the heart. 
 
 From the amphibious fishes of the twelfth stage 
 just described, the perenni-branchiate batrachians^ 
 forming the thirteenth stage, were evolved. The 
 extinct unknown form from which man descended, 
 Haeckel designates by the name of AMPHIBIUM. It 
 retained its gills throughout life like the still living 
 proteus and axolotl ; and its evolution from the 
 amphibious lepido-siren took place by metamorphosis 
 of the paddle-like fins into legs with five-toed feet, 
 and by a higher ' differentiation ' of various organs, 
 especially the vertebral column. This perenni- 
 branchiate amphibium existed about the middle of 
 the Palaeolithic or Primary time perhaps before 
 
62 VERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN ? 
 
 the Carboniferous period ; for fossil Amphibia are 
 already found in coals. 
 
 Following our amphibian forefathers, as Haeckel 
 calls them, which retained their gills permanently, 
 there appeared other Amphibia which by metamor- 
 phosis at a later period of their life lost their gills, 
 but retained their tail. These hypothetical ancestors 
 of man forming the fourteenth stage of his line, 
 Haeckel thinks, were similar to the salamanders and 
 tritons of the present day. They originated from 
 the gilled amphibia by accustoming themselves 
 accustoming themselves, let me repeat the expression 
 at an advanced period of their life to breathe only 
 by their lungs ! Probably, they already lived in the 
 second half of the Primary time during the Permian 
 or perhaps the Carboniferous period. The proof 
 that such animals once existed is, in HaeckeFs 
 opinion, that tailed amphibia form a necessary 
 middle link between the preceding and the following- 
 stage. Let me repeat this exquisite specimen of 
 easy assumption, and evolutionary argument : * The 
 proof that sit,ch animals once existed is, that tailed 
 amphibia form a necessary middle link between the 
 preceding and the following stage / ' 
 
 The fifteenth phylogenetic stage was represented 
 by unknown lizard-like forms, which Haeckel names 
 Protamnia, as being the forerunners of those animals 
 the embyro of which, in the course of its develop- 
 ment in ovo, is enclosed by the membrane called 
 Amnion. Their advent dates probably from the 
 
VERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN ? 63 
 
 beginning of the Mesolithic or Secondary time per- 
 haps already from the Permian period of the Primary 
 time. 
 
 The Protamnia were the common stem, from 
 which were evolved in two diverging branches, 
 Reptiles and Birds on the one hand, and Promam- 
 malia on the other. With the Promaminalia only 
 we have to do as ancestors of man. 
 
 Among our forefathers, from the sixteenth to the 
 twenty-second stage, we are, says Haeckel, more at 
 home, as they all belonged to the great and well- 
 known class of Mammalia. The now long extinct 
 and unknown common stem-form of all Mammalia, 
 which Haeckel designates by the name of Promam- 
 mal, stood nearest the Ornithorhyncus and Echidna 
 of all now living animals. 
 
 Promammalia were evolved from Protamnia 
 probably in the Triassic period of the Mesolithic 
 or Secondary time, by ' increased development of 
 the internal organisation,' by the formation of a 
 lacteal gland to supply milk for the nourishment of 
 the young, and by the conversion of epidermic scales 
 into hairs. 
 
 Marsupialia, or animals of the Opossum and 
 Kangaroo, tribe, constitute the immediate transition 
 between the Monotremata and Placental Mammalia 
 as well in an anatomical as in an ontogenetical and 
 phylogenetical respect. Among the marsupialia, 
 therefore, ancestors of man must also have been 
 found. They originated from the Promammalian 
 
64 VERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN ? 
 
 Monotreme, by the partitioning off of the cloaca into 
 rectum and urogenital sinus, by development of 
 a nipple to the lacteal gland, and by the partial retro- 
 gression of the clavicle. 
 
 The most ancient of the marsupials lived in the 
 Jurassic period of the Mesolithic time perhaps 
 already in the Triassic period ; and, during the Chalk 
 period, Placental Mammals began to be evolved 
 from them. 
 
 The immediate stem-form of true apes and 
 through them of Man also comprised Prosimice or 
 half-apes, which originated probably in the beginning 1 
 of the Caenolithic or Tertiary time, from unknown 
 Marsupials related to the marsupial or Kangaroo 
 Rats, by the formation of a placental connection 
 between the mother and foetus, by the loss of the 
 marsupium or pouch, and the marsupial bones 
 supporting it, and by the greater development of the 
 corpus callosum of the brain. These our half-ape 
 ancestors probably possessed only a remote external 
 resemblance to the now existing short-footed half 
 apes, such as the lemur. 
 
 Of the true apes which were evolved from the half 
 apes, the CATARIITNE or thin-nosed tribe of the old 
 world alone possesses a near blood relationship to 
 man. Our extinct ancient forefathers of this group 
 probably resembled the nosed ape of the present clay, 
 though still covered with hair, and possessing a 
 long tail. They made their appearance about the 
 Eocaene period of the Tertiary time. 
 
VERTEBRATE ANCESTORS OF MAN ? 65 
 
 Of all still living apes, the nearest to man are 
 the great tail-less thin-nosed apes, the Orang and 
 Gibbon of Asia, and the Gorilla and Chimpanzee 
 of Africa. These anthropoid apes probably origi- 
 nated in the Miocaene period of the Tertiary time, 
 as did the unknown direct ancestors of man now 
 extinct. 
 
 Although the preceding man-like apes already 
 stood so near to man proper that the admission of a 
 transition stage is scarcely needed to complete the 
 line, we may, nevertheless, Haeckel says, consider as 
 such, speechless Ape-men. These ' FATHERS OF 
 MAN ' probably lived towards the end of the tertiary 
 time and were evolved from man-like apes by corru 
 plete habituation to the upright posture, and the 
 correspondingly greater differentiation of the pectoral 
 from the pelvic extremities, the anterior hand be- 
 coming in them the human hand, and the posterior 
 hand a walking foot. 
 
 TRUE MEN were evolved from Ape-men of the 
 preceding stage by the gradual development of their 
 vocal sounds into connected and articulate speech. 
 The acquisition of this faculty being naturally 
 accompanied hand in hand by the development of 
 other organs, and by the higher ' differentiation ' of 
 the larynx and of the brain. 
 
 This transition from speechless APE-MEN to the 
 true or speaking MEN first took place, probably, in the 
 beginning of the quaternary, or, as Haeckel proposes 
 to call it, the Anthropolithic time, that is the glacial 
 
66 MAX MULLER ON LANGUAGE. 
 
 period, though, perhaps, it may have already taken 
 place in the Pliocsene period of the Tertiary time. 
 
 Such is Professor Haeckel'sphylogenetic scheme. 
 After the arguments adduced in the preceding part 
 of this lecture against phylogenesis in general, it 
 would be supererogatory to make any further com- 
 ment on it here. I may, however, in addition to the 
 remarks on the evolution of language made in my 
 first lecture (p. 27), apply to what Haeckel says of 
 the development of speech, a word from Professor 
 Max M tiller. That eminent philologist strongly 
 dissents from the idea that language could ever have 
 had any connection with the alleged evolution of 
 man from apes, and maintains that, at the outset, 
 the possession of the faculty of speech by man con- 
 stituted a definite and distinct line separating him 
 from the lower animals. ' Language, and what is 
 implied by language,' M tiller considers to be * the 
 specific difference between man and beast.' 
 
 ' All the materials of our knowledge,' continues 
 M tiller, ' we share with animals. Like them we 
 begin with sensuous impressions, and then, like our- 
 selves and like ourselves only, proceed to the GENERAL, 
 the IDEAL, the ETERNAL. In many things, indeed, 
 we are like the beasts of the field ; but like ourselves 
 and like ourselves only, we can rise superior to our 
 bestial self, and strive after what is UNSELFISH, GOOD, 
 and GODLIKE.' 
 
SUMMARY OF LINE OF DESCENT OF MAN. 6j 
 
 To take now, in conclusion, a summary retrospect 
 of Haeckel's scheme of the Phylogenesis or line of 
 descent of Man : 
 
 MAN as he now is was originally evolved from 
 hypothetical speechless Ape-men ; these ape-men, 
 again, were evolved from hypothetical Men-apes 
 without tails, like the Orang ; these men-apes, from 
 hypothetical Apes zuith tails, like the nosed apes ; 
 these tailed apes, from hypothetical Half apes, like 
 the lemur ; these half apes, from hypothetical 
 Marsupial animals, like the Kangaroo rat ; these 
 marsupialia, from hypothetical Monotremata, like the 
 ornithorhynchuS)\w& without the duck's bill; these 
 monotremata, from hypothetical Zz^n/-/?/^ creatures 
 of which no living resemblance is known ; these 
 lizard-like creatures, from hypothetical water Newts 
 or Salamanders ; these salamanders, from hypothe- 
 tical Perenni-branchiate batrachians, like the proteus 
 or axolotl ; these perenni-branchiates, from hypothe- 
 tical fishes, like the Lepido-siren ; these double 
 breathing fishes, from hypothetical fishes of the 
 Shark tribe ; these proto-fishes, from hypothetical 
 Lampreys ; these cyclostomata. from hypothetical 
 Amphioxi or Lancelets, which lowest of vertebrate 
 animals again were evolved from a hypothetical 
 form of Ascidian mollusk or worm, low in the scale 
 of invertebrate animals. ; these ascidian worms from 
 hypothetical soft or cavitary worms ; these from 
 hypothetical solid worms ; these from hypothetical 
 Gastraada ; these from hypothetical Planccada ; these 
 
68 EVOLUTION A MERE HYPOTHESIS, 
 
 from hypothetical Synamoebia, consisting of a com- 
 munity of homogeneous cells ; these protozoa from 
 hypothetical single cell animals ; and these, lastly, 
 from hypothetical spontaneously generated cytodes. 
 
 Though this, it must be confessed, is a lame and 
 impotent conclusion, still Haeckel's phylogenetic 
 disquisitions have one great scientific merit, that, 
 namely, of leading to close and searching inquiries 
 into the natural affinities of animals in succession 
 from the lowest to the highest ; but, as I contend, with- 
 out proving any transition by evolution or lineal 
 descent. In thus rejecting the doctrine of Phylo- 
 genesis, I necessarily, at the same time, ignore 
 the teachings as to the true efficient causes of 
 Ontogenesis, which Haeckel most confidently claims 
 for it. 
 
 We thus see that EVOLUTION, from beginning to 
 end, is an unverified and unverifiable hypothesis, 
 The scheme may, indeed, be entertained, as it has 
 long been, more or less, as suggesting inquiries into 
 the natural affinities of organised beings ; and in 
 this respect I have just eulogised Haeckel's phylo- 
 genetic disquisitions. But when the doctrine is 
 promulgated as a kind of new revelation in Science, 
 and obtruded on us almost as an article of faith in a 
 propagandist and intolerant spirit, we are roused to 
 repel the attempted encroachment. 
 
 Our present advanced knowledge in Natural 
 Science has not rendered the idea of Evolution a 
 
NOT EXPLAINED BY NATURAL SELECTION. 69 
 
 bit more probable than it was in former times. And 
 it must be firmly denied that the conceit of Natural 
 Selection by Survival of the Fittest has, in any 
 degree, imparted to the theory more substantial body 
 than it had before, or raised it to the scientific posi- 
 tion which Darwin and his followers claim for it. 
 
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