merely animal nature, and something altogether new, a capacity for apprehending abstract ideas, first appeared on this planet with the coming of man.

This consequence indisposes many persons to recognise the fact of man's fundamentally different nature. They feel they cannot imagine man's distinct origin. Of course they cannot, for they have had no experience of anything of the kind. The present writer cannot in the least imagine it. But inability to imagine a thing is no ground whatever for not believing that thing, if reason supplies us with good evidence in its favour. We continually accept as true things we cannot imagine, and we do so very properly. No one can imagine the validity' of an argument logically deduced from its principles, but we none the less accept it and act on it. Many persons believe that our world, together with the whole solar system, once consisted of incandescent matter and was utterly devoid of life: if they are right, then the coming of life, when it came, must have constituted a new departure. If the first living creatures were plants of some kind, and were without any power of feeling, then the coming of sentient life, when it came, must have been another break in continuity. So also with the advent of rationality! But had we been present at man's advent we might have seen nothing whatever miraculous about it. The essence of humanity is reason acting as here described. It is not man's bodily shape. His body, with all its processes of nutrition, feeling, development, etc., is undoubtedly like that of some sort of ape. But man's mere body is not man. If Swift's tale about the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos was true, it would be the horse-shaped Houyhnhnms who would be the true men and the man-shaped Yahoos, the true brutes. Let, then, the progeny of some mere animal have acquired, or had infused into them-by some unimaginable process-the idea of being' and the power of perceiving the qualities of

objects and their kinds, and such creatures would at once be men, even if unable to articulate, and only able to give in the most rudimentary way, bodily expression to their incipient ideas.

And now, in concluding, we would advert to a difficulty which has perhaps impressed not a few readers. They may very reasonably ask, How is it, if the doctrine of man's evolution is thus rationally untenable, that so many scientific men-learned zoologists and anatomists-hold it? The answer is, that the question of man's origin is a philosophic, not a scientific question, and that men may be very distinguished for scientific knowledge and yet be the victims of a very defective philosophy. Such is conspicuously the case in the present instance. The Darwinian view is supported by men, and only by men, who confound ideas' with faint revivals of past feelings.' It is on this account that not one of them has grappled with the essence of the question. But no progress can really be made in investigating the problem of man's origin except by those who have gained a true knowledge of what man is now. The present writer is profoundly convinced that the more deeply and thoroughly human. nature is studied, the more clear and decisive will be the conviction arrived at, that the powers of mental abstraction, and of language, which is its external sign, mark the most interesting and impassable limit to evolution.

ORGANIC NATURE'S RIDDLE.

MONGST the many sagacious sayings of the patient and

profound thinkers of Germany, not the least noteworthy was Schelling's affirmation that the phenomena of instinct are some of the most important of all phenomena, and capable of serving as a very touchstone whereby the value of competing theories of the universe may be effectually tested. His prescience has been justified by our experience. The greatest scientific event of the present time is the wide acceptance of the theory of Evolution, and its use as a weapon of offence and defence. It is used both against the belief that intelligent purpose is, as it were, incarnate in the living world about us, and also in favour of a merely mechanical theory of nature. Now it would be difficult to find a more searching test of that theory's truth than is supplied by a careful study of instinct. The essence of that view of nature which is associated with the name of Professor Haeckel,1 consists in a negation of the doctrine of final causes and an assertion of what he calls Dysteleology,'—that is, the doctrine of the purposelessness of the organs and organisms which people. a purposeless planet. That doctrine may be called the gospel of the irrationality of the universe, and it is a doctrine to

1 It is often associated unfairly with the illustrious name of the late Mr. Darwin. His special views lend themselves indeed to Haeckelianism, and have been pressed into its service; yet they are by no means to be identified therewith.

2 See ante, p. 268.

which a proof of the real existence of such a thing as instinct' must necessarily be fatal. Instinct has been defined1as a 'special internal impulse, urging animals to the performance of certain actions which are useful to them or to their kind, but the use of which they do not themselves perceive, and their performance of which is a necessary consequence of their being placed in certain circumstances.' Such an impulse is always understood to be the result of sensations; actions which take place in response to unfelt stimuli being referred, not to instinct, but to what is termed reflex action. In such action it is commonly supposed that the mechanism of a living body occasions a prompt responsive muscular movement upon the occurrence of some unfelt stimulation of the nervous system. The nervous system,

or total mass of nerve-stuff-which is technically called 'nerve-tissue-in the body of an animal, such as a beast, bird, reptile, or fish, is composed of two parts or divisions. One of these divisions consist of a voluminous and continuous mass the brain and spinal cord (or spinal marrow), which form what is called the central part of the nervous system. The second division consists of a multitude of white threads or cords—the nerves, which form what is called the peripheral part of the nervous system. Of these nerves one set proceed forth from the central part of the nervous system to the different muscles, which they can cause to contract by a peculiar action they exert upon them, thus producing motion. Another set of nerves proceed inwards, from the skin to the central part of the nervous system, and by their peculiar action give rise to various sensations, according as different influences or stimulations are brought to bear upon the skin at, or in the vicinity of, their peripheral extremities. Under ordinary circumstances, different stimulations of the surface of the body convey an influence inwards, which produces 1 See Todd's Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, vol. iii. p. 3.

sensation, and gives rise to an influence proceeding outwards to the muscles, resulting in definite and appropriate motions.

There are cases in which responsive actions take place under very abnormal conditions-as after a rupture of part of a man's spinal cord, or the removal of the whole brain in lower animals, such as the frog. A man so injured may have utterly lost the power of feeling any stimulation-pricking, cutting, or burning-of his legs and feet, the injury preventing the conveyance upwards to the brain of the influence necessary to produce sensation, and arresting it in the spinal cord below the point of injury. Nevertheless, such a man may execute movements in response to stimuli just as if he did feel, and often in an exaggerated manner. He will withdraw his foot if tickled with a feather, just as if he felt the tickling, which he is utterly incapable of feeling. Similarly a decapitated frog will make with his hind legs the most appropriate movements to remove any irritating object applied to the hinder part of its body. Such action is termed 'reflex action,' on the supposition that the influence conveyed inwards by nerves going from the skin to the spinal cord is reflected back from that cord to the muscles by the other set of nerves without any intervention of sensation. This action of the frog may be carried to a very singular extreme. At the breeding season the male frog tightly grasps the female behind her arms, and to enable him the more securely to maintain his hold, a warty prominence is then developed on the inner side of each of his hands. Now if such a male frog be taken, and not only decapitated, but the whole hinder part of the body removed also, so that nothing remains but the fragment of the trunk from which the two arms with their nerves proceed, and if under these circumstances the warty prominences be touched, the two arms will immediately close together like a spring, thus affording a most perfect example of reflex action. It