MENTAL SELECTION MUST CONTINUE.

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in which that power can be exerted which for countless cycles of ages ruled supreme over all the earth."1

The struggle for existence will continue between man and man-for if it ceased man would cease to advance --and one result will be a continual improvement in mechanical skill and the applications of science, in intelligence and self-control. "Every industrial improvement is at once the product of a higher form of humanity, and demands that higher form of humanity to carry it into practice. The application of science to the arts, is the bringing to bear of greater intelligence for satisfying our wants; and implies continued progress of that intelligence. To get more produce from the acre, the farmer must study chemistry, must adopt new mechanical appliances, and must, by the multiplication of processes, cultivate both his own powers and the powers of his labourers. To meet the requirements of the market, the manufacturer is perpetually improving his old machines and inventing new ones; and by the premium of high wages incites artizans to acquire greater skill. The daily-widening ramifications of commerce entail on the merchant a need for more knowledge and more complex calculations; while the lessening profits of the shipowner force him to build more scientifically, to get captains of higher intelligence, and better crews. In all cases pressure of population is the original cause. Were it not for the competition this entails, more thought and energy would not daily be spent on the business of life; and growth of mental power would not take place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incentive to a higher education of children and to a more intense and long-continued appli

1 Natural Selection, p. 326.

cation in adults. In the mother it induces foresight, economy, and skilful house-keeping; in the father, laborious days and constant self-denial. Nothing but necessity could make men submit to this discipline; and nothing but this discipline could produce a continued progression."1

As men will have to hold their places and rear their families under the intensifying competition of social life, a larger body of emotion will be necessary as well as an increase of intellectual energy. But the brain will have become larger, and the greater power will be exercised with less of effort, having become more instinctive, spontaneous, and pleasurable. As, even when relieved from the pressure of necessity, large-brained Europeans voluntarily enter on enterprises and activities which the savage could not keep up even to satisfy urgent wants; so their still larger-brained descendants will, in a still higher degree, find their gratifications in careers entailing still greater mental expenditures.

The tendency will be that the good man shall survive and leave offspring, while the wicked disappears from the earth. We may expect that virtuous habits and tendencies will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance like instincts, and the lower impulses of our nature will be more easily conquered. In the end, pressure of population and its accompanying evils will disappear, and will leave a state of things requiring from each individual no more than a normal and pleasurable activity. "Changes numerical, social and organic, must,

1 Principles of Biology, ii. 499.

2 This is inferred from the fact that increasing evolution is necessarily correlated with a decline in fertility, so that families will be smaller.-Principles of Biology, ii. 506.

LONGING AFTER IMMORTALITY.

241

by their mutual influences, work unceasingly towards a state of harmony-a state in which each of the factors. is just equal to its work. And this highest conceivable result must be wrought out by that same universal process, which the simplest inorganic action illustrates." 1

It may occur to some minds, that while it is satisfactory to believe that the race will eventually subdue the earth and accomplish its own happiness, nature seems to be " careless of the single life"-in this struggle we are marched on to the field, strike our blow and receive our fatal wound, but are not permitted to share the joy of victory. To satisfy our longing, it seems to be necessary that each individual should continue to develop after death-that while the race is progressing here, we, who may have left the world, should be progressing in a career of our own. Looking along the line of human history, our own existence seems to be but a point; but if we could believe it is a line which crosses the other at right angles, touching it indeed only in one point, but having a continuation of its own and eventuating in eternity, we could be satisfied. Well, there is nothing in the doctrine of Evolution incompatible with such a belief; only, the evolutionist philosopher, pursuing his investigations along the former line simply, may not profess to know anything of the latter. Yet evolution in the latter line may be a fact, and the analogy of evolution in the former may be said to make it more probable, while the demand of the spirit for its own advancement pari passu with the advancement of the race, becomes almost a reason for believing in it. The future of the individual may then

1 Principles of Biology, ii. 508.

be conceived of as beginning with the present and growing out of it, as the earthly future of the race has the present state of mankind as its base to spring from.

"Such use may lie in blood and breath;
Which else were fruitless of their due,
Had man to learn himself anew
Beyond the second birth of death.'

§ 3. The Trustworthiness of Conscience.

"The unwritten law divine,

Immutable, eternal, not like those of yesterday,
But made ere Time began.”1

He who believes in the advancement of man from some lowly-organized form, will naturally ask how does this bear on the authority of conscience, on the belief in God, and the immortality of the soul? If the moral sense has been evolved from the social instincts (first gained through Natural Selection), if belief in God is not instinctive in man (or if, being so, the instinct has been evolved), if the hope of immortality is a late growth— in short, if we are descended from creatures who cannot be supposed to have had a conscience, an immortal soul, or an idea of God-how far can we trust our own instincts and aspirations in these respects? When did our progenitors begin to be immortal; where could you draw the line in the graduated ascent; or do we delude ourselves in supposing that we possess undying spirits?

The first thing to observe is, that the theory of Evolution has not presented us with any difficulty which did not exist before; for parallel questions may be asked regarding the manner of evolution of every human child 1 Sophoc., Antig.

NO NEW DIFFICULTY.

243

from its parents. The babe is developed from an ovule about the 125th of an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect from the ovule of other animals, and goes through a series of changes analogous to those which Evolution ascribes to the race. It is only in the later stages of development that the young human being presents marked differences from the young ape; while the latter departs as much from the dog in its developments as the man does. If the new being sees the light before the seventh month it will not live, and it is difficult to say at what period or stage before that it becomes worthy to be called a child. Much more difficult is it to determine at what stage before or after birth it becomes an immortal soul, attains to the possession of a conscience, and the idea of God. The fact of the evolution of the child is incontestible, and these difficulties connected with it existed before Mr Darwin investigated or Mr Spencer philosophised; and yet few persons have felt any anxiety about them. It is certain that there is no greater cause for anxiety because of parallel difficulties in the gradual evolution of the race: and Mr Darwin is justified in calling upon those who denounce his views as irreligious, to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a species, by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and Natural Selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding, he says, revolts at such a conclusion! The belief in God, Mr Darwin thinks, is not innate or instinctive, nor the belief in immortality; the moral