fundamental principles, but also because it is now plainly to be foreseen that what the Philosophy of Evolution has already accomplished is but an earnest of what it is destined to achieve. We know the results which have followed in the science of Astronomy by the mathematical proof of the law of gravitation; and can we doubt that even more important results will follow in the much more complex science of Biology from the practical proof of the law of Evolution? I at least can entertain no doubt on this head; and forasmuch as this enormous change in our means of knowledge and our modes of thought has been so largely due to the almost unaided labours of a single man, I do not hesitate to say, even before so critical an audience as this, that in all the history of science there is no single name worthy of a veneration more profound than the now immortal name of Charles Darwin.

Do you ask me why I close this lecture with such a panegyric on the Philosophy of Evolution? My answer is--If we have found that in the study of Life the theory of Descent is the keynote by which all the facts of our science are brought into harmonious relation, we cannot doubt that in our study of Mind the theory of Descent must be of an importance no less fundamental. And, indeed, even in this our time, which is marked by the first opening dawn of the science of Psychology, we have but to look with eyes unprejudiced to see that the Philosophy of Evolution is here like a rising Sun of Truth, eclipsing all the lesser lights of previous philosophies, dispelling superstitions like vapours born of darkness, and revealing to our gladdened gaze the wonders of a world till now unseen. So that the cardinal conclusion which I desire you to take away, and to retain in your memories long after all the lesser features of this discourse shall have faded from your thoughts, is the conclusion that Mind is everywhere one; and that the study of Comparative Psychology, no less than the study of Comparative Anatomy, has hitherto yielded results in full agreement with that great transformation in our view of things, which, as I have said, is without a parallel in the history of thought, and which it has been the great, the individual glory of this age and nation to achieve. G. J. ROMANES.

POSTSCRIPT.

Many and various have been the criticisms to which this lecture has already given rise, so that, in now submitting it to the readers of the Nineteenth Century, I am impelled to make one additional remark. Within the time at my disposal in a lecture it was not possible to give more than a carefully balanced epitome of what I conceive to be the leading principles of Comparative Psychology, and

the directions in which it seems to me of most importance that these principles should be applied. Naturally, therefore, no one division of my subject has here been treated with any attempt at completeness, and thus the unsympathetic critic has an easy task to perform when he indicates the apparent disproportion between my premisses and my conclusions. Of such criticisms I have neither the right nor the desire to complain; they were clearly to be foreseen as the result of first publishing my work in so condensed a form. But I do desire to address this one remark to my critics as a body. Let it not be supposed that by pointing out sins of omission in this résumé you have proved negligence or one-sidedness against the labour of which it is the result. It is needless to say that I gladly welcome all criticisms, even such as give me credit for being myself so far an idiot as not to have observed that a parrot can talk, or that a deafmute has a human kind of look about the face, together with latent' (inherited?) capacities of which animals are destitute. But, while gladly welcoming criticisms from every quarter, I would suggest that, at least when rendering the more superficial and the more hackneyed of ideas, they might be conveyed in a form which recognises the possibility of my having met with these ideas before.

It seems desirable, however, to add a few explanatory statements with regard to the Arctic foxes; for in my oral exposition of the circumstances as communicated to me by Dr. Rae, I somewhat unduly sacrificed lucidity to compression. The only supplementary matter which it seems desirable to add I will quote from Dr. Rae's letter to me :

'In the cases seen by myself and by a friend of greater experience, the trench was always scraped at right angles, or nearly so, to the line of fire.' This fact Dr. Rae explains by the hypothesis :-‘ If the trench is to be a shelter one-thinking, as the fox must, that the gun, or something coming from it, was the danger to be protected from or guarded against-it must be made across the line of fire, for if scratched in direction of the gun, it would afford little or no protection or concealment, and the reasoning power or intelligence of the fox would be at fault.

'My belief is that one of these knowing foxes had seen his or her companion shot, or found it dead shortly after it had been killed (paired foxes do not necessarily always keep close together, because they have a better chance of finding food if separated some distance from each other), and not unnaturally attributed the cause of the mishap to the only strange thing it saw near, namely, the gun. It was evident that in all cases they had studied the situation carefully, as was sufficiently shown by their tracks in the snow, which indicated their extremely cautious approach when either the stringcutting or trench-digging dodge was resorted to."

Lastly, I should like to take this opportunity of requesting the

readers of the Nineteenth Century to favour me by sending to the undermentioned address brief accounts of any well-marked instances of the display of animal intelligence which may have fallen within their own notice or that of their friends. None of these instances will be published by me without permission; but I desire to accumulate as many of such instances as possible, in order that I may obtain a wide basis of suggestion as to the directions in which experiment may be most profitably employed.

18 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, N.W.

G. J. R.

FAITH AND VERIFICATION.

'An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.'

In my former essays on the religious question of the day, what I have tried to make evident has been this: I have tried to make evident that to all moral life, Religion-a belief in God-is essential; and that to all human culture, to all that gives our existence either zest or dignity, a belief in the moral life is essential. I am now going to approach the subject from a somewhat different point, and I conceive myself to be addressing a somewhat different audience. My arguments hitherto have been addressed to those who deny not only that religion is true, but also that it is useful; to men who look on it as a piece of antique lumber—a machine that may have done some good work in its time, but which at its best was inadequate and clumsy, and which now is broken; which the world must put away, and let its place be taken by a more efficient substitute. That religion might be broken I did not attempt to deny. I contended merely that, if it were, its loss was incalculable, and that no substitute could be found for it. Now I am addressing those with whom no such contention is necessary. Neither of these conclusions need be forced upon such, for they admit both already; and they admit this further, which I did not admit-not only that if religion went it would leave them desolate, but that it actually has gone, and that it actually has so left them.

This class is fully as important as the other; and though it is more silent, it is probably far larger; it is certainly making more converts; at some times it embraces the very men who at other times are most opposed to it; it is a desolate, dismal class, one of the ghastliest of the time's phenomena; and it seems every day to be increasing. To the best of my knowledge I am not speaking at random. Let a man have watchful eyes, and a wish to observe beneath the surface; let him mix in any society beyond that of a single set, and he will see the signs all round him of a state of things like this. It is said that in tropical forests one can almost hear the vegetation growing. One may almost say that with us one can hear faith decaying.

Within a certain limited circle there is nothing new in this. The causes of this decay have been maturing for three hundred years, and

their effects prophesied for fifty; indeed, not prophesied only, but in some degree accomplished. But what is only now beginning is their general action. Hitherto they have influenced few except the professed thinkers. Now their work is beginning on the mass of lay humanity, whose various powers of thinking may be great or small, but whose special occupation is not thought. We must all of us know this; we can all of us see it. What I have said has been only a general statement, but particular examples of the truth of it must come thick to all of us. Let us compare our friends of to-day with our friends of five years since, and note from how many of them the hold of religion, which was then hardly loosening, is now altogether loosened. The influences of unbelief are breathing everywhere, like a wind in a lighted garden. It makes but little noise, and we might hardly know that it was a wind at all, if the lamps were not all flickering, and so many of them expiring fitfully.

Now what I say is, that this loss of faith, complete as it may be, is a thing bitterly regretted by many, who are most ready to own to it. They may often sneer at faith, and say it will never come back to them; and this bitterness against it may often seem a sign of their being glad to be rid of it. But it is as the bitterness of a woman against her lover, which has not been the cause of her deserting him, but which has been occasioned by his deserting her. To men in a condition like this, a strange blankness has come over human life. They may hear others vociferating that it is solemn; they feel quietly that it is only sad. It is not serious, it is only not amusing. This state of mind and its prevalence is very apt to be overlooked, because it is not a state of mind that, in common intercourse, readily finds utterance. Indeed not this only, but in common intercourse it tends for the time to disappear. People cannot be always exclaiming in drawingrooms that they have lost their Lord; and the fact may be temporarily forgotten because they have lost their portmanteau. All serious reflections are like reflections in water. A pebble will disturb them for a moment, and make a dull pond sparkle. But the sparkle dies, and the reflection comes again. And there are many about us, though they never confess their pain, and perhaps themselves hardly like to dwell on it, whose hearts are aching for the God that they no longer can believe in. Their lonely hours, between the intervals of gaiety, are passed with barren and sombre thoughts; and a cry rises to their lips, but never passes them.

Amongst such a class the most unlikely people may at times be found, or at least they may be found with leanings that would soon bring them to belong to it. Thus Professor Clifford, one of the most jubilant of our atheistic essayists, has admitted that theism, under certain forms, might ennoble and comfort man; and such faith as that of Charles Kingsley's has awakened his deepest reverence. An example more important still is that of