cries out that here is "a change of front in face of the enemy"!

Further twisting is caused by unintelligent study of the subject criticised. Mr. Mivart, for example, attributes to the evolutionists the opinion that "virtue and pleasure are synonymous, for in root and origin they are identical." This misrepresentation arises from imperfect apprehension of the fact that, according to the doctrine of evolution, differences in kind result from the accumulation of differences in degree. One might as well say that evolutionists consider the workings of Newton's genius to be identical with reflex action, since in its root and origin all mental activity was a kind of reflex action. Nay, one might as well say that evolutionists consider a man indistinguishable from a cuttle-fish, since in their root and origin the vertebrate and molluscan types have been proved by Kovalevsky to be identical.

For the rest, Mr. Mivart evinces frequent want of sagacity as to the really vital points of the case in which he appears as an advocate. He takes great pains to show that some savage races have degenerated in civilisation, and also that the intellectual difference between the lowest men and the highest apes far exceeds the structural difference. But this is, after all, a misconception of the requirements of

the argument; for on the one hand the Darwinian theory nowhere requires an uninterrupted progress, but rather implies a complicated backward and forward movement, of which an irregular progress is the differential result. And as to the second point, it is just one of the triumphs of Darwinism, as regards speculative consistency with facts, that it does account for the alteration in the series of effects which occurs as we approach the origin of mankind. For when intelligence has increased pari passu with physical advantages up to a certain point, the variations in intelligence begin to become more valuable than any variations in physical constitution, and consequently become predominantly subject to the operation of natural selection, to the comparative neglect of purely physical variations. A change of this sort, if prolonged for a sufficient length of time, would go far to account for the greatness of the mental difference between men and apes, as contrasted with the smallness of the structural difference.

That Mr. Mivart should fail to appreciate this point, long since suggested by Mr. Wallace, is perhaps not to be wondered at, since he reduces the inquiry to a mere controversy in which he holds a brief against the Darwinians. What his own views may be as to the origin of man he nowhere explicitly

states. But, in spite of his hostility to Mr. Darwin and his theories, he takes pains to proclaim himself an evolutionist-within such limits as a profound study of Suarez and St. Thomas Aquinas may determine.

December 1876.

III.

DR. BATEMAN ON DARWINISM.1

DR. BATEMAN'S argument against Darwinism is based upon a fallacy which is quite commonly shared by those who have failed to comprehend the doctrine of evolution. This is the fallacy of supposing that the Darwinian theory can be overthrown simply by insisting upon the obvious fact that the intelligence and acquirements of man are enormously -almost incommensurably-greater than the intelligence and acquirements of the highest apes. As urged in the case of language, Dr. Bateman's argument is not original with him, as he seems to suppose; it has already been urged by Max Müller, a

1 Darwinism Tested by Language. By Frederic Bateman, M.D. With a Preface by E. M. Goulburn, D.D., Dean of Norwich. London. New York: Scribner and Welford. 1878.

2 On this point see my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, 1874, Part II., chaps. xxi., xxii,

writer far more distinguished for brilliancy of expression than for profundity of thought. In substance it consists of three propositions:

"I. That articulate speech is a distinctive attribute of man, and that the ape and lower animals do not possess a trace of it.

"2. That articulate speech is a universal attribute of man, that all races have a language, or the capacity of acquiring it.

"3. The immateriality of the faculty of speech."

It is perhaps hardly correct to call this last point a "proposition," nor is it easy to determine precisely its purport or its relevance. We are told farther on that although "a certain normal and healthy state of cerebral tissue is necessary for the exterior manifestation of the faculty of speech," it by no means follows that speech is located in a particular portion of the brain, or is the "result of a certain definite molecular condition of the cerebral organ." Of course it does not follow; but the conclusion, however interesting to phrenologists and materialists, is irrelevant to the discussion of the Darwinian theory, or to that of the origin of language. In such inquiries all that any one needs to know is that the faculty of speech implies, among other things, the presence of a brain, and whether this "faculty" is