Of the chasms which separate species, the same author writes,-" It was this gap, and this only, which Darwin undertook to fill up by his great work on the origin of species, but notwithstanding the immense amount of material thus expended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it must be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an individual of one species has transgressed the limits between it and other species." 1

Transcending all the rest is the gulf that separates the brute from man. It is Professor Huxley himself who tells us that the "divergence of the Human from the Simian Stirps" is "immeasurable and practically infinite." Who made it so ? Huxley believes, with Cuvier, that "the possession of articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man." But whence did he derive an endowment so unique and so invaluable? "Men have words, which are projected ideas; brutes have only sounds, which are projected sensations. Brutes vociferate: men speak. The physical organization is wedded to the mental capacity-a mouth, and wisdom. Neither, apart, would effloresce into Language: both must conspire and combine. So the one mind which has thoughts to 1 See Appendix, Note H.

be interpreted is furnished in the human tongue with an all-accomplished interpreter." But whence came this one mind which has

thoughts to be interpreted"?

What is the origin of Mind? What is the genesis of Thought?

18. For Thought is no mere "function of the brain"; nor is it 'medullary matter that thinks." "The function of the lung is not unintelligible; it can be followed throughout, and understood throughout. Though the peculiarity of vitality mingles there, it can still, in a certain aspect, be called a physical function, and its result is of an identical nature. If, and so far as, the function is physical, the result is physical. So with the stomach: function and result are there in the same category of being. The liver is so far a physical organ that it can be seen, it can be touched, it can be handled; but is it otherwise with the bile, which is the result of its function? Can it too, not be seen, and touched, and handled? Is it not essentially of the same nature? Is it not physical, in the same way and to the same extent as the liver is physical? But look now to the brain, and the so-called product of its function. Do we any longer find the same identity of the terms? No; the terms there are veritable extremes—

extremes wider than the poles apart-extremes sundered by the whole diameter of being. The result here, then, is not like the result of any other function. It is wholly unique; something quite new, fresh, and original; something unprecedented, something unparalleled, absolutely single and singular, absolutely sui generis. The result here in fact, is the very antithesis, the very counterpart of the organ which is supposed to function it.

"An organ, after all, consists of parts; but thought has no parts, thought is one. Matter has one set of qualities; Mind, another; and these sets are wholly incommensurable, wholly incommunicable. A feeling is not square, a thought is not oval. No function of the body, and no function of any machine out of the body, presents any parallel to the nature of thought." 1

Before this problem of the genesis of Thought, Materialism is dumb. And yet this same Thought ("without precedent," "without parallel,") has changed the face of the world. "From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, the first seed sown

1 Dr. Stirling's “Materialism in relation to the Study of Medicine," p. 8.

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or root planted, a grand revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the world's history had had no parallel, for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe,— a being who was in some degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance in mind.

"Here then we see the true grandeur and dignity of man. On this view of his special attributes, we may admit that even those who claim for him a position and an order, a class, or a sub-kingdom by himself, have some reason on their side. He is, indeed, a being apart, since he is not influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings. . Man has not only escaped 'natural selection' himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power from nature which, before his appearance, she universally exercised.” 1

Conclusive as is this testimony in itself, it is doubly so on account of the quarter from which it comes. From a very different quarter comes

1 Mr. Wallace, in the Anthropological Review, May, 1864.

the characteristic, but concurrent testimony of Thomas Carlyle :

Capabilities there were in me" (says Teufelsdröckh) "to give battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of Darkness: does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle; and so leave a little Order, where he found the opposite? Nay, your very Daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and ever organizes something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; and of mute dead air makes living music, though only of the faintest, by humming.

"How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; who has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of the Poets' and Prophets' inspired Message, and how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear mention: but cannot the dullest hear Steam-engines clanking around him?" 1

What then, is the origin, and who is the originator of "that subtle force which we term Mind"?

19. Man, as defined by Professor Huxley, is "a conscious automaton," "endowed with free-will"; and in his Essay on "The Physical Basis of Life" he confesses that "our volition counts for

1 "Sartor Resartus," chap. iv.

2 Fortnightly Review, November, 1874, p. 577.