leet leaves a master-group, palpably supreme in framework and ground-plan over three other groups-the Articulate, the Convolute, and the Radiate-between which and the master-group the BARRIER OF BACKBONE stands impassable; at least till it is explained how a butterfly could become a bird, or a snail a serpent, or a starfish acquire the skeleton of the salmon or the shark. It is like the going forth of a Divine decree: One shall be taken, and three shall be left.'

"The second leet, Sub-vertebrates out of view, takes account of Vertebrates themselves as Mammals or Sub-mammals. Among the elect it makes an inner election. Besides the Backbone it exacts the Breast; shedding off, as before, three well-marked groups subordinate to the master-group of Mammals or Sucklers. These breastless tribes are Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes; holding high, low, and medium rank among themselves, not so much on the principle of skeleton, or its specialized offshoots, as on that of characters which are correlated to the development of care for their young. Still the Mammal, by its endowment of the fostering bosom, stands elect, aloft, and apart— Bird, Reptile, Fish, far beneath in the scale;

and till it is shown how an animal that never got suck stumbled on the capacity of giving what was never given it, the BREAST will stand, against all dreams of development, COMPANION-BARRIER to the Backbone. Again is heard the elective edict: 'One shall be taken, and three shall be left.'

"Third, last, innermost leet: note has to be taken among the Mammalia themselves, from the Marsupials to Man, of the presence or absence of one testing character, and that the chief-the Perfect Brain. This is found in one creature, occupying, as it were, the inner ring and core of the concentric circles of vitality, and in one alone. In the lowest variety of man it is present-present in the Negro or the Bushman as in the civilized European; and absent in all below man-absent in the ape or the elephant as truly as in the kangaroo or the duckmole. To all men the pleno-cerebral type is common to man, as such, it is peculiar. And till we hear of some Simian tribe which speculates on its own origin, or discusses its own place in the scale of being, we shall be safe in opposing the HUMAN BRAIN, with its sign in language, culture, capacity of progress, as BARRIER THE THIRD to Mr. Darwin's

1

scheme." "And thus, as in the former leets, are the triple tribe of under-brains walled off from the Brain of Man.2 A third time there falls a voice from the Excellent Glory: 'One shall be taken, and three shall be left."

Below the fish, how powerless comparatively, all creatures are! The primates of sub-vertebrate nature are the ant and the bee. Most mollusks are anchored to one spot for life, and the bulkiest of crustaceans, shorn of other locomotion, could only crawl in shallow waters among his rocks and sands. The advent of the backbone is the advent of animal power: the type of an all-pervading and resistless The wing of the eagle, the jaw of

energy.

1 "The Three Barriers: Notes on Mr. Darwin's 'Origin of Species."" Blackwood & Sons. Pp. 88, et seqq. To the highly-gifted author of this brilliant little book-a book as admirable in method as unanswerable in effectI gratefully record my obligations.

2 "By a purely inductive process, the sub-human mammalia have been carefully distributed into the wavebrained, the smooth-brained, and the loose-brained, represented respectively by the ape, the beaver, and the kangaroo; with a result, so far as the two departments of science are comparable, like that of the application of Kepler's laws to the planetary motions: the subjects of the classification fall, for the first time, into their true places-a mob of animals becomes a regular army."

the crocodile, the spring of the tiger, the teeth of the shark, the terrible coil of the boa-constrictor; the backbone is the basis of them all.

Below the mammal, again, how loveless, by comparison, is the world of life! There are no sub-mammalian mothers; animals below that line are parents or producers only. The crossing of that line is a great work of Deity. God creates a new thing in the earth when He hangs the nursling on the mother's breast, and bids the two be as one. Together with the prerogative of the nurturing bosom there start up everywhere, on land and sea, the most touching examples of brute devotion and of passionate maternity.

Deep calleth unto deep, and the cry is still Excelsior! Nature is a hierarchy of which the head is man. Mind, language, worship, civilization; the will to determine, the tongue to speak, the hand to do; these in their boundless purport-are all lacking until the Creator plants upon the scene the solitary owner of the Perfect Brain. Named in one word, all these are wisdom; and Man, "thinker of God's thoughts after Him," is, among uncounted myriads of lower existences, on this earth, Only Wise.

Of this superiority, the human

brain is the badge. The attempts that have been made to minimize, and even to efface its significance, will be noticed in the sequel ; but the force and effect of that significance are not to be invalidated and cannot be impaired by disputations in detail. The one broad characteristic fact remains beyond dispute: all healthy human brains are structurally perfect; but the highest brute brains are structurally imperfect. The human brain is pleno-cerebral ; all other brains are manco-cerebral. The human brain, in its least cultivated manifestations, retains the latent franchise of progressive reason; all other brains exhibit the rigid circumscription of unprogressive instinct. No brute is susceptible of human culture; while, on the other hand, of that culture there is no human infant that is not susceptible. Between these two, the difference thus seen is nothing less than a difference absolutely immeasurable.