To raise those faltering thoughts from earth to Heaven,

To clear the terrors of the thorny way,

Divine Consoler, for our comfort given,

Reveal, what dost thou say?

Thou knowest Death, tears from Thy sacred Eye,
On those dark nights when Thou didst pray in pain,
Have bathed the olives of Gethsemani

From eve to morn again.

And when Thy lifedrops on the Cross did flow,

Earth mourned, Thy Mother wept, but could not save,..
Like us, Thou left'st Thy Heart's best friends below,
Thy Body to the grave.

Oh, may my weakness by that Death divine
Yield on Thy Breast the agonising sigh,
When comes my hour, oh, then remember Thine,
Thou, Who didst deign to die!

And I will seek the spot where she I love

Breath'd out her last adieu upon Thy feet:
Her soul shall guide my soul to realms above,
By the same God to meet.

Oh! then when stretched upon my dying bed,
Serene, though mournful, calmly standing by,
May some lov'd one receive, when I am fled,
The sacred legacy.

Her sorrows soothe, her wavering faith sustain,
And hallowed by the spell of memories flown
From those that part to those that here remain,
Oh! mayst thou still pass on-

Till the Last Trumpet to destruction deep

Shall doom the quaking Earth, the roaring Flood, And wake the blest, who in the shadow sleep

Difficulties of the Theory of Natural Selection.

III.

BEFORE Concluding our remarks on Mr. Darwin's theory, we may as well perhaps just glance at a certain very wide subject connected with it. We say "connected with it," because Mr. Darwin, in his book on the origin of species, does not pretend to explain the genesis of the higher psychical phenomena of man. Nevertheless, some of his disciples are not equally prudent; and, indeed, the report has reached us that Mr. Darwin himself is engaged in the preparation of a work in which this question can hardly fail to be considered. It may be well then to glance at (for our space allows no more) the subject alluded to, which is the origin of the notion of "morality." As is no doubt known to most of our readers, it is asserted by some, that in spite of the great present difference between the ideas "useful" and "right," yet they are nevertheless one in origin.

They say that "Natural Selection," has through long ages preserved those individuals who had a liking for practices and habits of mind useful to the race, and has destroyed those of an extremely contrary tendency. The descendants of individuals so preserved have, they say, come to inherit such a liking, and finding this inherited tendency thus existing in themselves, have become apt to regard it as innate, and independent of all experience, whereas really it is only the result of the gradual accretion of useful predilections which from time to time arose in a series of ancestors naturally selected. This is the notion of some of our contemporaries, according to whom "morality" is, as it were, the congealed past experience of the race, and "virtue" is no more than a sort of "retrieving."

*

Some remarks made by Mr. Darwin appear to show his disposition to sympathise with this view. Thus, in his book on Animals and Plants under Domestication, he asserts that "the savages of Australia and South America hold the crime of incest in abhorrence;' but he considers that the abhorrence has probably arisen by "Natural Selection," the ill effects of close inter-breeding causing the less numerous and less healthy off* Vol. ii., p. 122.

spring of incestuous unions to disappear by degrees in favour of the descendants (greater both in number and strength) of individuals who naturally, from some cause or other, as he suggests, preferred to mate with strangers rather than with close bloodrelations; this preference being transmitted, and becoming thus instinctive in remote descendants.

But to meet Mr. Darwin merely on his own ground, it may be objected that this notion fails to account for "abhorrence" and "moral reprobation," for, as no stream can rise higher than its source, the original "slight feeling" which was useful would have been perpetuated, but would never have been augmented beyond the degree requisite to ensure the beneficial preference, and therefore would not certainly have become magnified into "abhorrence." It will not do to assume that the union of males and females each possessing the required "slight feeling" must give rise to offspring with an intensified feeling of the same kind, for, apart from reversion, Mr. Darwin has called attention to the unexpected modifications which sometimes results from the union of similarly constituted parents. He says,* “If two top-knotted canaries are matched, the young, instead of having very fine top-knots, are generally bald." In the same way, the union of parents with a similar aversion might result in phenomena quite other than the augmentation of such aversion, even if the two aversions should be altogether similar; while very probably they might be so different in their nature as to tend to neutralise each other. Besides, the union of parents so similarly emotional would be rare amongst such savages, where marriages would be owing to almost anything rather than to congeniality of mind between the spouses.

Again, care of, and tenderness towards the aged and infirm, are actions on all hands admitted to be "right," but it is difficult to see how such could ever have been so useful to a community as to have been seized on and developed by the exclusive action of the law of the "survival of the fittest." On the contrary, we are inclined to think that on strict utilitarian principles the rigid political economy of Tierra del Fuegot would have * Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., p. 295.

See the highly interesting Journal of Researches of Mr. Darwin (second edition), vol. i., p. 214, where he describes the habits of the natives of that part: "It is certainly true, that when pressed in winter by hunger they kill and devour their old women before they kill their dogs. The boy being asked why they did this, answered, 'Doggies catch otters, old women no.' They often run away into the mountains, but they are pursued by the men and brought back to the slaughter-house at their own firesides!"

been eminently favoured and diffused by the impartial action of "Natural Selection" alone. Similarly, admiration of acts of great self-denial done for the good of others, and tending even to the destruction of the actor, could hardly be accounted for on Darwinian principles alone; for self-immolators must but rarely leave direct descendants, while the community they benefit must by their destruction tend, so far, to morally deteriorate. But devotion to others of the same community is by no means all that has to be accounted for. Devotion to the whole human race, and devotion to God-in the form of asceticism-have been, and are, very generally recognised as "good," and (on the principle once more that a stream cannot ascend) it is to us simply impossible to conceive that such ideas and sanctions could have been developed by "Natural Selection" alone, from only that degree of unselfishness necessary for the preservation of brutally barbarous communities in the struggle for life. That degree of unselfishness once attained, further improvement would be checked by the mutual opposition of diverging moral tendencies and spontaneous variations in all directions, added to which we have the principle of reversion and atavism tending powerfully to restore the more degraded anterior condition, and, indeed, requiring the continued action of "Natural Selection" to prevent positive retrogression. It is certainly difficult to see how, through the action of "Natural Selection" alone, the maxim, Fiat justitia ruat cœlum, could ever have been excogitated, still less have found a widespread acceptance.

But no one disputes the complete distinctness, here and now, of the ideas of "duty" and "expediency," whatever may have been the origin of those ideas. No one pretends that ingratitude may in any past abyss of time have been a virtue, or that it may be such now in Arcturus or the Pleiades. Indeed, a certain eminent writer of the utilitarian school of ethics has amusingly and very instructively shown how radically distinct are the two ideas he endeavours to identify. Now, these ideas being so distinct now, the same difficulty meets us with regard to their origin that we met with before in considering the first beginnings of useful bodily structures. Darwinians would probably assert that the germs of morality exist in apes, especially as Mr. Darwin speculates as to whether the gorillas or ourang-outans in effecting

We allude to Mr. John Stuart Mill, a writer quite remarkable for the charming naiveté with which he every now and then, by a simple remark, takes the ground from under his own feet, and demonstrates the futility of his very argument. See Discussions on Sir William Hamilton, p. 103.

their matrimonial relations, show any tendency to respect the table of prohibited degrees of affinity. No tittle of evidence has yet been adduced pointing in such a direction, but surely if it were of such importance and efficiency as to result (through the aid of "Natural Selection" alone) in that "abhorrence" before spoken of, we might expect to be able to detect unmistakable evidence of its incipient stages. But in fact, did the most undeviating instinct guide apes and other brutes, in such matters, it would not indicate even the faintest germ of morality; moral reprobation is absolutely absent from every brute, however highly organised. It is interesting, on the other hand, to note Mr. Darwin's statement as to the existence of this feeling even in the very lowest and most degraded of all the human races known to us. As to the first beginning of the idea of "right," "Natural Selection" is impotent to suggest even an approach towards its explanation. For we need hardly remind our readers that acts may be materially moral to a high degree without being in the least formally so. Actions like those of the bee, the beaver, or the dog, however good as regards their effect on the community to which they belong, are absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of real goodness, because unaccompanied by consciousness and will directed towards the fulfilment of duty as an end. The confusion of thought resulting from confounding together these very distinct things is far from uncommon, and its effects are disastrous indeed! Were virtue a mere kind of "retrieving," then certainly we should have to view with apprehension the spread of intellectual development which might lead the human "retrievers" to regard from a new point of view their fetching and carrying! But here we enter upon a theme foreign to the immediate matter in hand, though a very tempting one, and one which we may, perhaps, before very long be able to treat directly and at some length.

* Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii.

Again Mr. Darwin bears witness to the existence of moral reprobation on the part of the Fuegians (Journal of Researches, vol. i., p. 215): "The nearest approach to religious feeling which I heard of was shown by York Minster (a Fuegian) who, when Mr. Bynoe shot some very young ducklings as specimens, declared in the most solemn manner, 'Oh, Mr. Bynoe, much rain, snow, blow much.' This was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting human food."

Professor Huxley asks: "Is mother-love vile because a hen shows it; or fidelity base, because dogs possess it?" (Man's place in Nature, p. 111). It is only metaphorically that "maternal love" can be attributed to the hen, or "fidelity" to the dog.