the ape, should have been developed by the simple action of natural laws, and that the animal man, so absolutely identical with them in all the mean features and many of the details of his organisation should have been formed quite other unknown way. But if the researches of geologists and the investigations of anatomists should even demonstrate that he was derived from the lower animals in the same way that they have been derived from each other, we shall not thereby be debarred from believing, or from proving, that his intellectual capacities and his moral nature were not wholly developed by the same process. Neither Natural Selection nor the more general theory of evolution can give any account whatever of the origin of sensational or conscious life. They may teach us how, by chemical, electrical, or higher natural laws, the organised body can be built up, can grow, can reproduce its like; but these laws and that growth cannot even be conceived as endowing the newly arranged atoms with consciousness. But the moral and higher intellectual nature of man is as unique a phenomenon as was conscious life on its first appearance in the world, and the one is almost as difficult to conceive as originating by any law of evolution as the other. We may even go further, and maintain that there are certain purely physical characteristics of the human race which are not explicable on the theory of variation and survival of the fittest. The brain, the organs of speech, the hand, and the external form of man, offer some special difficulties in this respect, to which we will briefly direct attention.

In the brain of the lowest savages, and, as far as we yet know, of the prehistoric races, we have an organ so little inferior in size and complexity to that of the highest types (such as the average European), that we must believe it capable, under a similar process of gradual development during the space of two or three thousand years, of producing equal average results. But the mental requirements of the lowest savages, such as the Australians or the Adaman Islanders, are very little above many animals. The higher moral faculties and those of pure intellect and refined emotion are useless to them, are rarely if ever manifested, and have no relation to their wants, desires, or well-being. How, then, was an organ developed so far beyond the needs of its possession? Natural Selection could only have endowed the savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possesses one but very little inferior to that of the average members of our learned societies.

The author then goes on to remark on how the human hand has been "foreshadowed" in apes in a way beyond their absolute needs, and then he asks :--

How did man acquire his erect position, his delicate yet expressive features, the marvellous beauty and symmetry of his whole external form-a form which stands alone in many respects more distinct from all the higher animals than they are from each other? Those who have lived much among savages know that even the lowest races of mankind, if healthy and well fed, exhibit the human form in its complete symmetry and perfection. They all have the soft smooth skin, absolutely free from any hairy covering on the dorsel line, where all other mammalia from the marsupials to the anthropoid apes have it most densely and strongly developed. What use can we conceive to have been derived from this exquisite beauty and symmetry and this smooth bare skin, both so very widely removed from his nearest allies? And if these modifications were of no physical use to him—or if, as appears almost certain on the case of the naked skin, they were at first a positive disadvantage-we know that they could not have been produced by Natural Selection.

After a few more remarks as to the organ of speech, the author concludes as follows:

While admitting to the full extent the agency of the same great laws of organic development in the organ of the human race as in the organ of all organised beings, there yet seems to be evidence of a power which has guided

And so

the section of those laws in definite directions and for special ends. far from this view being out of harmony with the teaching of science, it has a striking analogy with what is now taking place in the world, and is thus strictly uniformitarian in character. Man himself guides and modifies nature for special ends. The laws of evolution alone would perhaps never have produced a grain so well adapted to his uses as wheat; such fruits as the seedless banana, and the bread-fruit; such animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or the London dray horse. Yet these so closely resemble the unaided productions of nature, that we may well imagine a being who had mastered the laws of development of organic forms through past ages, refusing to believe that any new power had been concerned in their production, and scornfully rejecting the theory that in these few cases a distinct intelligence had directed the action of the laws of variation, multiplication, and survival, for his own purposes. know, however, that this has been done; and we must therefore admit the possibility that in the development of the human race a Higher Intelligence has guided the same laws for nobler ends.

We

Such, we believe, is the direction in which we shall find the true reconciliation of science with theology on this most momentous problem. Let us fearlessly admit that the mind of man (itself the living proof of the Supreme Mind) is able to trace, and to a considerable extent has traced, the laws by which the organic no less than the inorganic world has been developed. But let us not shut our eyes to the evidence that an Overruling Intelligence has watched over the action of those laws, so directing variations, and so determining their accumulation, as finally to produce an organisation sufficiently perfect to admit of, and even to act in, the indefinite advancement of our mental and moral nature.

These admissions seem to us important indeed if, as we are informed and believe, they are made by no less a person than one of the original authors of the theory of Natural Selection! But we cannot refrain from calling attention to one more point of human structure. We allude to the organ of hearing,* especially the structure and arrangement of the fibres of Corti. It can hardly be contended that the preservation of any race of men in the struggle for life could have depended on such an extreme delicacy and refinement of the internal ear. A perfection only exercised in the enjoyment and appreciation of the most perfect musical performances. Here surely, we have an instance of an organ preformed, ready to hand for such action as could never by itself have been the cause of its development, as the action has only been subsequent, not anterior. We do not know what may be the minute structure of the internal ear in the highest apes, but if (as from analogy is probable) it is much as in man, then à priori we have an instance of anticipatory development of a most marked and unmistakable kind. And this is not all. There is no reason to suppose that any animal besides man appreciates musical harmony. It is certain that no other one produces it.

Harmonising with these facts of preformation, we may quote a recent writer (Mr. Hutton) in Macmillan's Magazine.+ This writer is combating (in a way which seems to us unanswerable) Mr. Herbert Spencer's utilitarian genesis of morals, and aptly objects an argumentum ad hominem, saying that if such has been their origin" surely

*

For an excellent but simple account of this, see the eighth of Professor Huxley's Lessons in Elementary Physiology, published by Macmillan.

+ No. 117, July, 1869, p. 272.

if anything is remarkable in the history of morality, it is the anticipatory character of moral principles."

The Quarterly Review, as we have seen, recognises the action of an Overruling Intelligence in the evolution of the "human form divine"; but surely if we are to go so far, a similar action may well be traced in the production of the horse, the camel, or the dog, so largely identified with human wants and requirements. Mr. Murphy finds it necessary to accept the wide-spread doctrine of "intelligence" as the agent by which all organic forms have been called forth from the inorganic. But surely on no higher grounds than those taken by all these writers, it may fairly be urged that the action of intelligence is not manifested alone in the production of man, in that of the animals which minister to him, or in that of all organised life, but no less in the crystalline and other mineral structures, the laws of chemical composition, of geological evolution of heat, of motion, and of the solar system-of the whole siderial universe. If such really be (as we believe) the direct teaching of mere physical science, philosophically considered-if intelligence may thus be seen to preside over the evolution of each system of worlds, and the unfolding of every blade of grass-this grand result then harmonises indeed with the teachings of Faith, and enables us to discern in the natural order, however darkly, the Divine Author of Nature-Him "in Whom we live, and move, and are."

Liberals and Illiberals.

Of the three great questions which have to be settled by English statesmen, before it can be fairly said that the policy of governing Ireland on principles of justice and in accordance with the belief and the wishes of its inhabitants has been fully entered on, the last session of Parliament has seen one at least successfully solved. Without going into the details of the Irish Church Bill, or discussing the questions which might be raised as to some of its provisions, it is enough to say that a measure has been passed which has been accepted by the nation as an adequate embodiment of the sincere wish of the Government to destroy the iniquitous ascendancy of the last three hundred years. As we write, three days have been appointed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin for the offering of solemn services of thanksgiving to God for a step on the part of our ruling statesmen which is said to "lay the solid foundation of union and peace in the country." We question whether a single prayer was offered up for the preservation of the hideous "Establishment" which has just been destroyed; but it is, at all events, a novel fact in the history of our times to find the Church of the Irish people solemnly thanking God for justice from the hands of secular rulers. The first of the three questions of the day is therefore settled. The Land question is to follow, difficult and intricate indeed, and calling for the largest-minded statesmanship and for unexampled boldness in the conception of the measure which is to secure for the Irishman on his own soil the home which he has so long been forced to look for on the further shores of the ocean. Behind the Land question, if indeed it be not ripe for consideration at the same time with that, there is a third knot of immense importance to VOL XI. OCTOBER, 1869.

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be untied or cut by vigorous and enlightened statesmanship the question as to both Primary and Secondary Education, as to the schools for the children of the poor, and the Colleges and Universities where other classes are to be provided with the higher branches of secular Education.

No excuse can be needed for the discussion of this third question at the present time. Its elements are far better ascertained than the elements of the question which relates to the tenure of land in the country. It has, indeed, its difficulties, but they are not difficulties intrinsic to itself. There is little or no question as to justice, little or no doubt as to the wishes and interests of the people. With England before us, and considering the system of Poor Schools which has long and successfully been established there, it is impossible to assert with the slightest reason that the education of the poor is a problem which cannot be satisfactorily settled. Even in England, where the Protestant Establishment is predominant-at least, among the influential classes of society-we have not only a denominational system of popular Poor School Education, founded and widely developed by the assistance of Government, but we have the great national Universities thrown open to a certain extent already, while no one doubts that a large measure of still further extension will become law without resistance, as soon as the Government chooses itself to take up the matter which has been so amply discussed while remaining in the hands of private members of the Liberal party. When Lord Carnarvon, in last July, induced the House of Lords to reject the second reading of Sir John Coleridge's University Tests Bill, it was only on the plea that time was required for the consideration of alternative projects tending in the same direction; and, we may add, the details of the measure suggested by the Conservative earl were far more revolutionary and sweeping than the bill to which he objected. Again, the last session of Parliament witnessed the production and discussion of a measure for primary education in Scotland -rejected at the last moment, on a point of etiquette, by a small majority in the House of Lords, to the very great