(Lks i. 1. Bill ffitbrarg Nortli (Earalina g>tat^ Imuerailii QH369 D41 S00321681 L ^^•^VN^VX-. J8^ C^*ijwL>i iLU>/>uci THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE DATE INDICATED BELOW AND IS SUB- JECT TO AN OVERDUE FINE AS POSTED AT THE CIRCULATION DESK. '^3 iS8U - n i981 MOV 1 6 1983 AtK 2 5 19 NOV 1 6 1988 UtC 7, ^ \j 1991 mim vk^'^^ • PB 2 ! 199Z y- NOV 6 2001 "■* IS DARWIN RIGHT? OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN BY WILLIAM DENTON, AUTHOR OF "our PLANET," " SOUL OF THINGS," "GENESIS AND GEOLOGY," ETC. WELLESLEY, MASS.: DENTON PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1882. Copyright, i88r. By WILLIAM DENTON. Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, St" Co., IJJ Franklin Street, Boston. INTRODUCTION. In this volume I present to the public substantially what I have been presenting in my lectures for more than twenty-five years, giving here, however, greater promi- nence to the spiritual origin of man ; for the question of man's natural origin is generally decided in the affirma- tive, and the great question now is as to the means by which the result was naturally produced. The writino-s of Lyell taught me in youth that the present condition of our planet is the result, not of miracuk)us achieve- ment a few thousand years ago, but of the operation of natural causes during many millions of years. The "Vestiges of Creation" first led me to believe in man's natural origin ; and my own investigations in mesmer- ism, spiritualism, and psychometry, showed me the de- fectiveness of the theories advanced by Darwin, Huxley, and others of the natural selection school. Nobler men do not live than some of them are in many respects ; but when they seek to account for the existence of all organic forms, and entirely ignore the spiritual side of the universe, infinitely its most important side, their theories 3 4 INTRODUCTION. cannot be otherwise than most radically defective. Sci- entific men run in ruts, as theologians so generally do : hence the popularity of Darwinism to-day. But, with a knowledge of the spiritual in the universe and in man, there will come a great modification of the views of naturalists regarding the origin of organic forms. This work is written for the general reading public, and is made as plain as possible, that the average reader may understand its arguments, which I shall be very glad to see overthrown if they are not in agreement with abso- lute truth. Twenty-two years ago I had a discussion with Mr. Gar- field, now president-elect, on the subject of man's origin, many false reports of which have been published in some of his biographies, and in campaign documents in various Republican papers. In some of these I was represented as an atheist ; one who was completely discomfited, but who sought during the debate to inveigle his oppo- nent into the discussion of subjects not related to the matter in debate. Every statement is utterly false. In that debate I took the affirmative of the following propo- sition : " Man, animals, and vegetables are the product of spontaneous generation and progressive development ; and there is no evidence that there was any direct crea- tive act on this planet." Mr. Garfield took the negative, which required him to present evidence of direct creative action : this he neither did, nor attempted to do. If Mr. INTRODUCTION. 5 Garfield then believed in man's miraculous origin, as given in the book from which he took the texts for his sermons, he did not choose to defend it, for reasons best known to himself; if he did not believe it, he stood before the public in a very false position. Nearly or quite every argument used by me in the twenty speeches made in that debate are given in this volume, to which Mr. Gar- field was utterly unable satisfactorily to reply, and to which, I venture to say, neither he nor his friends can now reply. I trust the time will come in our Republic when it will not be considered necessary to lie, either to vilify or glorify a candidate for its presidency. WILLIAM DENTON. Wellesley, Mass., Dec. 5, 1880. CONTENTS. MAN'S NATURAL ORIGIN. Natural Laws 17-46 Vitality 17-26 Variation 26-28 Tendency 28-30 Hereditary Transmission 30-32 Modification 32-39 Symmetry 39-41 Natural Selection 41-46 Pointers indicating Man's Natural Origin. Metamorphosis of Animals 46-58 Anatomical Similarity ' 58-61 Linking Forms 61-65 Rudimentary Organs 66-70 Paleontological Resemblance 70-72 Geological Succession 72-74 Insular Organic Resemblance 74-76 Antiquity of Man 76-91 Brutal Characteristics 9^-97 Objections to Man's Natural Origin . . . 97-115 8 CONTENTS. MAN'S SPIRITUAL ORIGIN. Pointers indicating Man's Spiritual Origin . ii 5-187 Man-ward Progress of Our Planet . . . 116-133 The Race Development of Animals . . . 133-136 Organic Distribution 136-146 Persistency of Type 146-155 Multiplicity of Human Origins .... 155-167 Language 167-176 Tendency to Beauty 176-178 Human Faculties 178-179 Spiritual Faculties • . 179-187 IS DARWIN RIGHT? OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. MAN'S NATURAL ORIGIN. We live in a world teeming with life. On the moun- tain-top, where winter reigns forever, with only snow for mould, there grow luxuriantly beautiful organic forms ; the deep sea caves, illuminated only by the light that has struggled through a thousand fathoms of water, are crowded with tenants ; sixteen hundred feet below the surface of the ground, in the darksome mine, lighted only by the occasional glimmer of a miner's candle, grow snow-white fungi on the massive timbers that support the shelving roof. Vegetable life : the pine clothing the mountain-side, the ash in the swamp, the chestnut on the ridge, the feathery palm, grass rolling in verdant waves, the fringing fern, the carpeting moss, the clinging lichen. Animal life : the humped buffalo feeding on the prairie, the lion lurking in the jungle, bears berrying among the bushes, sea-fowl overshadowing the rocky islet 9 lo IS DARWIN RIGHT? like a cloud, seals scrambling over the rocks, and fishes in shoals moving through the waters. Life within life : animalcules everywhere, too small to be seen by the unassisted eye, but feeding on every leaf, and swimming in every drop. Man, monarch of all, inquiring. Whence these various living forms, and how came I into exist- ence? One of the first questions of lisping infancy, and often the subject of greatest interest to the aged sage. Answers to these questions, however numerous, range themselves into two divisions ; those of the one ascrib- ing all organic existences to the operation of natural law, and the other to miracle. There is nothing that the study of natural science so profoundly impresses upon the human mind as the universality and continuous oper- ation of law. The more we become familiar with the heavens and the earth, the more clearly we see their varied phenomena to be the offspring of natural causes : indeed, the very existence of our planet and of similar bodies in space is now generally attributed to their action. Herschel, La Place, Comte, Humboldt, Mitch- ell, Agassiz, and, indeed, almost every scientific person familiar with the discoveries of astronomy and the facts of geology, have been led to believe that our planet, as well as the whole solar and astral systems, came into their present form by the operation of law. Whirled from the sun probably, as drops are from a revolving grindstone, our planet was, by the law of grav- OK, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. \\ itation, moulded into its present shape. As it cooled, a rocky crust formed upon its surface by the operation of the law of cohesion, which binds particles of matter together and forms solid bodies. Thus ice is produced in winter, and rock from the liquid vomited out of the volcano. In that rocky crust we find hundreds of minerals, produced by the law of chemical affinity, which unites unlike particles of matter, and by their union pro- duces new substances. Oxygen, an invisible gas, and calcium, a yellowish-white metal, combine, and form lime ; lime and sulphuric acid unite, and produce gyp- sum ; oxygen and silicon are changed into silica, which we see in the form of quartz and flint, and the more precious forms of agate, amethyst, and opal. Many of the minerals thus formed are in symmetrical shapes, such as cubes, octagons, and hexagonal prisms \ and in them we see the operation of another law, that of crystalliza- tion, by which mineral atoms, under favorable condi- tions, arrange themselves in beautiful order, so that when the substance is known, and the conditions surrounding it, we can tell with certainty the shape that it will assume. When we thus learn that law has been operating for millions of years, rounding the globe, forming its crust, producing the various minerals that constitute the sub- stance of that crust, and shaping them into symmetrical forms, what more natural than to believe that the domain of law extends over the organic productions that sue- 12 /S DARWIN RIGHT? ceeded these? The operation of cohesion depends upon the previous operation of gravitation ; for, unless gravitation brought the particles of matter near, cohesion could not bind them ; the operation of chemical affinity, in the production of mineral substances, depends upon the previous operation of cohesion ; no lime could be formed by the union of oxygen and calcium, if cohesion had not first brought the particles of calcium together ; neither could crystallization produce its forms, unless the other laws had pre-existed and pre-operated. Hence we have a natural pyramid, of which gravitation is the base, and crystallization the summit. If these are all natural, if no miraculous agency is concerned in their manifestation, why, when we advance but a step beyond, should we drag in miracle to account for what we behold? Immediately above crystallization is vegetable and animal life ; above organic life, sensa- tion ; and above sensation, reason ; and why may not these additions to the pyramid be just as natural as the underlying courses? Where shall we call in miracle to aid in its erection ? There seems to be no greater step from crystallization as seen on a window-pane in a frosty morning, or in the dendritic forms which the oxide of manganese occa- sionally assumes (Figs, i to 3), to the simplest forms of life, such as the jelly-like amoeba, than there is from the amorphous mass of quartz which cohesion produces, to OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 13 the transparent hexagonal prism, which is the product of crystalHzation. Why should we consider the crystal, with its gleaming sides, to be natural, — the product of law, — and call in the supernatural to account for a being so low in the scale of existence that it does not even possess a stomach, and appears to be as simple in structure as a drop of gum ? Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. Fig. I. Dendrite on Slate; 2. Dendrite on Chert; 3. Dendrite on Sienite. (Original.) Breathe on the window-pane on a cold winter's morn- ing, and mark the result. Obedient to the law of crystal- lization, see how those particles of frozen moisture range themselves in beautiful order ! No regiment ever moved at the word of command with greater precision, no tree ever leafed or blossomed into more perfect beauty, than these arborescent crystals, that, but for their frequent appearance, would astonish and delight us. Examine 14 /S DARWIN RIGHT? the snow-flakes that drop by milHons at our feet (Fig. 4). When particles were first arranged into an organic being, is it not probable that the process was just as natural in that case as in the others? Nearly all intelligent persons now acknowledge that the rocks composing the earth's crust were formed by the operation of natural law ; granitic rocks by the slow cool- ing of fiery fluid matter under pressure ; metamorphic Fig. 4. Snow-Flakes. rocks from the decomposition and disintegration of the granitic, and the re-formation and crystallization of the material ; and the fossiliferous rocks by the agency of water, and the assistance of plants and animals. No person at all acquainted with geology now believes that seas, rivers, lakes, and mountains were made by miracle, though this notion was once very common. In accordance with law, the mountains were heaved, the ocean's bed hollowed, the valleys formed ; by its opera- tion we have sunlight and darkness, thunder, lightning, and storms ; by it rivers run, oceans ebb and flow, and OK, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 15 the wide domain of life is under its continual jurisdic- tion. But a few years ago the thunder's roll in the heavens was the voice of a personal deity ; the lightning's flash was the glare of his angry eye ; the tornado, that found a paradise before it and left a desert behind it, was the blast of his nostrils ; and the earthquake, that swallowed a city at a gulp, was his agent to punish a guilty peo- ple. Now, back of the lightning and thunder, we dis- cover the electricity that goes up with the ascending vapor : the intensely heated atmosphere precedes the hurricane, and beneath the earthquake lies the cooling globe. The oil that we burn in our lamps, the coal we consume in our stoves, the salt, the iron, the silver, and the gold, were all deposited where we find them by natu- ral causes. From the rounded acorn, a hundred of which may be carried in the pocket, grows by impercepti- ble degrees the oak, whose branches overspread an acre ; and from an almost invisible tgg a Lyell is developed, who reveals the secrets of the earth's deep foundations, and a Humboldt, before whom the whole scientific realm lies hke a map. And though provinces of nature have been repeatedly set aside, and we have been solemnly assured that they were exceptions to the rule, yet, as science has advanced, these have become so narrowed, we may be sure that universal intelligence will make all men eventually believers in the universal operation of natural law. 1 6 IS DARWIN RIG II r? These laws are, as I believe, but the modes of opera- tion of an unseen, but ever present, ever active, and what, for want of a better word, we must call intelligent, spirit ; but a spirit which, as far as we can tell by our own experience and that of our fellows, operates invaria- bly by law : and it is therefore most reasonable to suppose that all forms of life, including man, have come into existence by natural processes, which we may reasonably suppose are still at work upon our globe. The great mistake that many scientists as well as theo- logians appear to me to make, is in supposing that this is a dead world, in a dead universe, and only made alive by the operation of some exterior force. Darwin thinks that all living beings came from one or a few forms, " into which life was first breathed ; " thus giving us a dead world, into which an exterior power breathed life. If this was ever done, the great probability is that life was breathed into a man. Why should a miracle-worker bridge the chasm between death and life for an invisible monad, when the bridge would just as easily carry a man ? The difference between the universe such persons be- lieve in, and that in which we live, is great as the differ- ence between a natural tree and an artificial one. In the artificial tree, made in a day, a wooden trunk is fashioned, holes are bored, limbs inserted, twigs put into them, and leaves and fruit attached. It may appear beautiful ; but OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 17 there is no life in its heart, no sap in its branches, no circulation through its leaves. It is no more a tree than the chair in which its maker sits. The natural tree re- quires centuries for its perfection, but it is alive from deepest radicle to topmost leaf. Break a branch, and every rootlet feels and resp)onds to the demand for mate- rial to repair damages. Day and night the living currents flow through its veins, bearing color to the blossom, honey to its cup, sugar to the fruit, and down for its cheek to ward off the attacks of the insect robber. Strip off every leaf, and it re-clothes itself; -and, though winter makes it bare a hundred times, a hundred times it renews its beauty. No less alive is the world in which we dwell, and the universe of Avhich it forms to us such an impor- tant part ; and it is this that rendered man a possibility upon our planet. NATURAL LAWS. YITALriY. The first agent that appears to have been, and to be concerned in the production of living beings, is Vitality. As there is a crystallizing force, that under favorable conditions produces crystals, without preceding crystallic germs from which they grew, so there appears to be a life-producing force, which, from what some call "dead matter," under favorable circumstances produces 1 8 /S DARWIN RIGHT? animals and vegetables in their simplest forms. Philip Henry Gosse, the well-known English naturalist, says, " If we take a bunch of leaves^ of the common sage for example, or a few twigs of hay, and, tying them into a bundle, suspend them in a jar of water, allowing the con- tents to remain untouched, but exposed to the air, some interesting results will follow. If we examine it on the second day we shall find a sort of scum covering the sur- face, and the whole fluid becoming turbid and slightly tinged with green. If now we take with the point of a quill or pin a minute drop pf this liquid, and examine it with a good microscope under a magnifying power of about two hundred diameters, we discover the water to be swarming with animal life." Wherever we place organic substances in decay, if the air in never so small a quantity can get at them, living beings will be produced. The common supposition is that germs or eggs floating in the atmosphere (frop into the vegetable infusions, and there find conditions favor- able for their development. This is of course possible : it is even probable. To know whether they do, or not, has been the aim of a great many distinguished experi- menters, who are about equally divided in opinion. In July, 1862, Professor Wyman of Harvard College, Cambridge, published in " The American Journal of Science " the results of thirty-seven experiments, under- taken for the purpose of determining whether living OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 19 beings could be developed in a closely-sealed vessel, where previously neidier life nor the germs of life existed. The juice of beef and mutton, solutions of sugar and gelatine, and some other substances, were used in these experiments. In all of them the juice and solutions were exposed to the heat of boiling water, and in four of them to a heat of from 250° to 307°, or from 38° to 95° above the boihng-point, from fifteen minutes to two hours. In some cases the necks of the glass vessels con- taining the solutions were heated red-hot and twisted round before the exposure to the heat ; and in others, after boiling, the air was allowed to pass into the vessels through an iron tube filled with wires heated to red- ness, or through a glass tube filled with asbestos and platinum-sponge red-hot ; so that if any living germs had existed in the air they would have been destroyed in their passage. After being thus filled with air, these latter vessels were also hermetically sealed, and left in a warm apartment. In the course of a few days or weeks, life was found in all of them except two, and even in one that was heated to 307°, which is far beyond what experiment has demonstrated to be the limit of vital endurance. Professor Clark of Harvard College, who gives a de- tailed account of these experiments, says, ^'' The fact that the experiments with the sealed flasks proved, if any thing can be proved beyond the reach of change or 20 ZS- DARWIN RIGHT? improvement, is that beings with motion, undoubted living beings, were produced where life could not have existed previously.^ No failures to obtain living beings under any circumstances can overthrow the evidences of spontaneous generation furnished by such experiments as these. More recently Dr. Bastian has experimented under conditions still more unfavorable. He placed boiling ^ \'^\^'^ -°-°'^ oo o ® ^5^'''^» ^'^ Fig. s. Some of the most common forms of life, supposed to have been produced spontaneously: Bacteria, Torulce, &c., 8oo times the natural size. (After Bastian.) solutions of sugar, carbonate of ammonia, phosphate of soda, and turnip-juice, in glass vessels ; and, while the steam from them was issuing from the necks of the ves- sels, they were hermetically sealed, and placed in an iron digester, where they were exposed for four hours to a heat of 295° Fahrenheit. Yet even under these extreme * Mind in Nature, p. a6. 0R\ THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 21 conditions minute organic forms were found in the liquids after a few days ^ (Figs. 5 and 6). Professor Cantoni of Pavia has obtained infusoria in the fluids of hermetically sealed flasks, after an exposure in a Papin's digester to a temperature of 242° F.^ Some remarks of Mr. Wallace regarding the experi- ments of Bastian, detailed in his " Beginnings of Life," are valuable. " Some of these comparative experiments are very suggestive. Hay infusion, for instance, exposed Fig. 6. Bacteria, Toruhe, and other infusoria, found in an infusion of commoa cress, in an air-tight flask, after it was heated to 272° F. for twenty minutes. Magnified 800 times. (After F)astian.) to air, produced abundance of bacteria in forty-eight hours, and these had increased considerably in sixty- eight hours. A similar infusion, sealed up after the fluid became cold, behaved in a similar manner. The same in a flask with a neck two feet long, and having eight flexures, remained unchanged for twelve days. A similar infusion, hermetically sealed during ebullition, on the other hand, showed turbidity in forty- eight hours, 1 Beginnings of Life, vol. i., pp. 456-475. ^ Beginnings of Life, vol. i., p. 436. 22 IS DARWIN RIGHT? which subsequently increased, and bacteria, vibriones, leptothrix, and torulce were found in abundance. Here, then, whatever inference may be drawn from the first three experiments is entirely negatived by the fourth. Other experiments show that ammonia-tartrate solution, sealed in vacuo, at a temperature of 90° F., produced in eighty-four hours abundance of bacteria ; while the same solution, if boiled at 212° F., and exposed to the air in flasks covered with paper caps, remained quite clear for nine days ; yet as soon as it was inoculated with living bacteria, they increased rapidly, and produced turbidity. These, and a number of other equally suggestive experi- ments, indicate that the conditions favorable to the oiigin and to the increase of these low forms, are not always identical. Both are very complex ; and we cannot avoid the conclusion that the advocates of the universal germ theory have been somewhat hasty in founding their doc- trine upon insufiicient data, for the most part of a nega- tive character." Thousands of experiments have been tried, first and last, to settle this question whether living beings are pro- duced without parentage ; yet, in the estimation of many eminent scientists, it remains undecided yet. Pasteur, Tyndall, Huxley, and others, do not believe we have any evidence of life without pre-existent life to produce it ; while on the other side we have Bastian, the author of "The Beginnings of Life," Clark, Wyman, some of whose OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 23 experiments have been given, Draper, the well-known physiologist, Wallace, and Owen, the greatest hving com- parative anatomist. The fact that life abounds wherever conditions are favorable for its development, that even hot springs have their tenants, that every island is peopled, and every lake and stream has living forms adapted to its waters, indi- cates that life as naturally develops by virtue of inherent law, as crystals, under favorable conditions, from mineral solutions. In the production of crystals we see many of the phenomena which are displayed in the production and growth of organized beings. All crystals are formed of small, angular solids, as all organized bodies are of cells. There has been a germ controversy regarding the formation of crystals, as there is now one regarding the formation of living beings ; some chemists supposing that minute crystals floating in the air were the cause of crystallization in mineral solutions.^ As animals can be modified by surrounding conditions, so can crystals. " Common salt usually crystallizes in the form of a cube ; but, if urine be present in the solution, it takes the fonii of the octahedron."- When carbonate of lime is slowly precipitated in viscid solutions of gum, instead of the particles arranging themselves in octahedral or hexagonal crystals, the combined particles assume the form of * Beginnings of Life, vol. i., p. 300. ^ Youmans' New Chemistry, p. 50. 24 /S DARWIN RIGHT? calculi, with distinct concentric layers. Crystals can even make repairs, so that when an angle is broken, it will be replaced. Mr. Rainey, quoted by Bastian,^ tells us of the appearance of the first visible globules, when carbonate of lime is precipitated in a viscid solution. " The appearance which is first visible is a faint cloudi- ness ; the particles are too small to be seen by the micro- scope ; in a few hours exquisitely minute globes appear, too small to be measured, then dumb-bell-like bodies and egg-shaped particles with them, and these gradually enlarge." In fact, the appearances are at first almost identical with those that are seen in vegetable infusions, as organisms gradually form in them. Tyndall's experiments seem to many persons to de- monstrate that all living beings must come from germs. He placed in sixty glass flasks an infusion of turnip-juice. The ends of the flasks were drawn out to a fine point ; and, after the infusion had boiled for five minutes, the small end was closed by melting the glass with a blow- pipe. They were taken to the Alps, in Switzerland, in the month of July. The ends of four of them had been broken on the way, and these were full of life ; the rest, except two that were destroyed, were all clear. The fifty- four were exposed to the sun by day, and placed in a warm kitchen at night : four were casually broken, but the fifty remained perfectly clear ; there was no life in them. 1 Beginnings of Life, vol. i., p. 303. OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 25 Then twenty-three of the fifty were opened in a hay-loft, and the remaining twenty-seven on the edge of a diff overlooking a glacier. All the flasks were then placed in a warm situation near a stove, with the necks open ; and in three days twenty-one out of the twenty-three opened in the hay-loft were filled with living beings ; while after three weeks those opened near the glacier were without a trace of life. It is evident that in this case there was something in the air of the hay-loft that was favorable to the develop- ment of life ; but it by no means follows that this con- sisted of germs or eggs. The experiments of Wyman, Mantagazzi, Bastian, and a host of others, many of whom have had much more practice than Tyndall, who have found living beings in sealed glass vessels after they had been exposed to a heat much more than sufficient to kill germs if they had existed, can never be negatived by such experiments as Tyndall's, were they multipHed a thousand-fold. In the flask of the experimental philosopher to-day we have, apparently, on a small scale, what existed on the earth during the early geologic periods on a large scale ; and, if living beings are produced to-day by the opera- tion of natural causes, there is no need to call in miracle to account for their appearance long ago. It may be objected that there existed no juice of beef or mutton, infusions of vegetable matter, nor solutions of 26 IS DARWIN RIGHT? minerals produced from organic substances, in the early condition of our planet, as there were in the sealed flasks of the experimenters. True ; but there were warm oceans, containing matter in an extremely fine state of subdivision from the action of water on rock for ages, and containing as much life as infusions do when sub- jected for hours to a heat of 295°. The Hquids in the flasks, we may reasonably suppose, are only favorable to the development of life, because they give us the neces- sary components of organic bodies in an extremely divided state. In both cases the matter is destitute of life ; and the production of living beings in unorganized matter, to-day, reveals to us, apparently, how it came into existence in the beginning. VARIATION. Vital force, however, appears only to produce life in extremely minute forms ; and these, by the ordinary process of generation, could only continue to produce similar forms. There must have been a power and a disposition to deviate from the original stock, or the first living beings would have perpetuated only forms similar to themselves, and filled the world forever. But there is in nature a disposition to vary, or a law of Variation. We say like produces like ; and this is true, but like pro- duces unlike, also : the boy is like his father ; but no boy is exactly like his father, nor girl like her mother ; and in OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 27 most large families, and some small ones, there will be a child of whom the father asks, "Who does that child take after ? I am sure it is no one on our side of the house ; " and the mother is equally sure that it is no one on her side of the house. A variation in the offspring has made its appearance, for which the progenitors are unable to account. The seeds of apples and peaches, as we know, produce fruits that differ from those of the parent trees. By taking advantage of the tendency in plants to sport into varieties, our gardeners are constantly producing new flowers and improved fruits. Dr. Hooker, quoted by Lyell, says, "The element of mutability pervades the whole vegetable kingdom ; no class, no order, nor genus of more than a few species, claims absolute exemption from it." So strong is the tendency to variation, that seedlings from fruit of the same tree and in the same season differ at times consid- erably. Col. Le Couteur, who paid great attention to wheat-culture, found that the grains of wheat in the same ear differed so greatly that he was compelled, in his attempts to grow the best, to select each grain separately.^ Van Mons, Darwin informs us, " reared a multitude of varieties from the seed of one grape-vine, which was completely separated from all others, so that there could not, at least in this generation, have been any crossing ; and the seedlings presented the analogues of everv kind, ^ Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., p. 378. 2S /S DARWIN RIGHT? and differed in almost every possible character, both in the fruit and foliage." ^ In Darwin's Origin of Species we are told of two flocks of Leicester sheep, kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, and purely bred from the original stock of Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. There is not a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all ac- quainted with the subject, that the owner of either of them has deviated in any one instance from the pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock ; and yet the difference between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so great that they have the appearance of being quite different varieties.^ TENDENCY. We cannot, however, regard variation as a creator. It may change the color of a snail's shell, but how could it give to the snail a fin ? it may modify the tail of a fish, but we cannot conceive of its forming a foot ; in a man it may give a longer finger or toe, but it could not put an eye at the end of his finger, or an ear at the end of his toe. Variation, to be of service in the production of the higher forms of organic being, from the simple forms spontaneously produced, must operate in a definite direc- tion, and there must be underlying it the power to push ^ Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., p. 401. 2 Origin of Species, p. 39. OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 29 the organic form subject to it to a more advanced stage. How could an animal destitute of wings vary until it became a bird? Suppose it to be an amphibian, like a frog, variation undirected would be as likely to operate in an infinite variety of ways as in the direction of feathers and wings. Suppose a variation in a frog in the direction of the bird, it could hardly fail to be a detriment ; and the animal in which it appeared, in the struggle for life, would be more likely to die than to live and perpetuate the bird-like peculiarity. Pin-feathers on a frog would nei- ther help it to swim, dive, nor jump ; and, the more like wings its forelegs were, the less use they would be in administering to its necessities. If the first step in the direction of a bird could be taken, for which no cause can be imagined, how could it be retained till the chance came among an infinite number of another varia- tion concurring with the previous one, and pushing the animal a step nearer to the bird? The chances are almost -infinite against the possibility of such a second step being taken. How long, by any hap-hazard process, would it be before an amphibian was transformed into a bird ? Millions of concurring steps, balancing each other, would be necessary ; and it would seem that the whole time of our planet's life would be exhausted before more than the merest beginning could be made. Behind variation must be Tendency. Without the eyes of tend- ency, variation would wander bhndly in an aimless maze 30 IS DARWIN RIGHT? forever ; with this for a guide it has unerringly struck the road to fish and reptile, beast and man. Tendency com- pels variation, and variation in certain directions ; form- ing steps by which life advances to the highest forms. HEREDITARY TRANSMISSION. But, unless these varieties could be transmitted to the descendants of their possessors, they would die with them, and never influence their progeny. Variation has be- come operative in producing advanced forms of life by the influence of another law, — that of Hereditary Trans- mission. The existence of this law is known to nearly all, but the potency of its influence is known to but few. An English paper informs us that a man six feet six inches in height was summoned before a court ; and the questions asked him on that occasion revealed the fact that his father was six feet three inches, his mother six feet, and his four brothers and sisters averaged six feet three inches. The Jew has a strongly aquiline nose, and this nose is represented on the faces of Jews in Egyptian paintings that are more than three thousand years old. The very nose that figures on the face of the Jew that walks down Broadway to-day, adorned the countenance of Abraham as he sat at the door of his tent in the days of old. Early in the last century a child was born in Suffolk, Eng., with semi-horny excrescences of almost half an OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 31 inch in length thickly growing all over his body. The peculiarity was transmitted to his children, and was last heard of in a third generation. The persistence of mental traits, in consequence ap- parently of the operation of inheritance, is remarkable. As Ribot remarks, " The French of the nineteenth cen- tury are, in fact, the Gauls described by Caesar. In the Commentaries, in Strabo, in Diodorus Siculus, we find all the essential traits of our national character : love of arms, taste for every thing that glitters, extreme levity of mind, incurable vanity, address, great readiness of speech, and disposition to be carried away by phrases. There are in Caesar some observations which might have been written yesterday. 'The Gauls,' says he, 'have a love of revolution ; they allow themselves to be led by false reports into acts they afterwards regret, and into decisions on the most important events ; they are de- pressed by reverses ; they are as ready to go to war with- out cause as they are weak and powerless in the hour of defeat.' " ^ So strong is this law of heredity, that even accidental variations and artificial deformities are at times trans- mitted. Ribot tells us that a man whose right hand had suffered an injury had one of his fingers badly set. He had several sons, each of whom had the same finger crooked. He quotes Quatrefages, who tells us that the 1 Heredity, p. no. 32 IS DARWIN RIGHT? Esquimaux cut off the tails of the dogs they harness to their sledges, and the pups are often born tailless.-^ The tendency to transmit a perfect form is, however, much stronger than the tendency to transmit deformities, or there would be no necessity for the Jew to practise cir- cumcision, or the descendants of many generations of shavers to torment their faces with a razor. By the operation of the law of vitality, the waters of the early oceans were caused to swarm with minute living beings. By the law of variation, governed by innate tendency, these commenced, as soon as they began to propagate, to deviate from the ancestral form toward higher organic forms ; and, by the law of heredity, the deviations were transmitted, and new and more advanced forms of life came into existence. The law of hereditary transmission appears at first to be antagonistic to the law of variation ; for, if it operated perfectly, there could be no deviation from the parental form ; but tendency, operating with variation, overrides heredity, as the power of the magnet upholds its arma- ture contrary to the operation of gravity. MODinCATION. In addition to these is another important law, that of Modification. A pine that will grow in a temperate cli- mate to one hundred and fifty feet, on the timber-line of ^ Heredity, p. 9, OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. t^^ the mountains is no higher than a man's head, though its trunk may be as thick as his body. In the Southern States the Virginia cherry grows to the height of one hundred feet, but at the Great Slave Lake it is but five feet high. The service-tree in Western Virginia is fre- quently eighty feet high : on the Rocky Mountains, in Wyoming, it is only a bush. In all these cases, surround- ing conditions have modified the plant subjected to them. The cabbage in the West Indies grows to be a small tree. Animals living in high mountain regions, where the air is rare, have lungs adapted to the atmosphere they are compelled to breathe. Men in such countries have broader shoulders and longer trunks than those living near the sea-level. Lyell tells us of some Englishmen who were carrying on mining operations at a high level in Mexico, who sent to England for greyhounds of the best breed, that they might hunt the hares which abound- ed in the country. It was found, however, that, owing to the rarity of the air, the greyhounds were compelled to lie down and gasp for breath, while the hares ran off with ease and left them. But the whelps of these greyhounds, when grown up, could run down the Mexican hares just as easily as their progenitors had done English hares ; for they had become modified to suit the conditions that surrounded them.^ Of the cabbage and the cauliflower Lyell says, " A bit- 1 Principles of Geology, p. 594. 34 ^S DARWIN RIGHT? ter plant, with wavy sea-green leaves, has been taken from the sea-side, where it grew like wild charlock, has been transplanted into the garden, lost its saltness, and has been metamorphosed into two distinct vegetables, as unlike each other as each is to the parent plant, — the red cabbage and the cauliflower."^ I suppose there are persons, who, if asked to name which of all the plants was most likely to have been specially created for the service of man, would unhesitatingly reply, the cabbage ; and yet the cabbage has been made by man, out of a plant very unlike the modified product. But Lyell remarks, '' It is easy to show that these ex- traordinary varieties could seldom arise, and could never be perpetuated in a wild state for many generations, under any imaginable combination of accidents." They show the wonderful power of surrounding conditions to mould the organic forms subjected to them ; and these are suffi- cient, as we know, to produce differences as great as those that distinguish species ; but, apart from innate tendency, it is, I think, extremely difficult to pass beyond this step in a progressive direction. All large caves have tenants which have become modi- fied by the peculiarities of their underground life. Pro- fessor Schiodte discovered, in three Austrian caves, the proteus, a wood-louse, and three kinds of beetles, all blind, or the eyes reduced to rudimentary specks. ^ Principles of Geology, p. 588, OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 35 In the Mammoth Cave is a bhnd fish, which has on the exterior no visible eyes. We are told by some that here is evidence demonstrative that all animals were miraculously formed for the places that they occupy. The blind-fish was made for the Mammoth Cave ; and the Creator, knowing that it would live in absolute dark- ness, made it destitute of eyes. When, however, we ex- amine the almost transparent blind-fish, we see that this explanation of its origin does not at all harmonize with the facts. In the head of the blind-fish, beneath where its eyes should be, two small dark objects appear under the skin : these are eyes ; and attached to them is the optic nerve, leading to the optic lobe of the brain, as in fishes having full possession of sight. How shall we account for this? Consider the blind-fish a miraculous creation, and its peculiar construction can never be ex- plained. It was evidently modified into its present pecul- iar form. The Mammoth Cave was hollowed by a stream that once ran upon the surface, and was occupied by fish, as our streams are to-day. This stream found a crevice in the lime-rock, and down it went, introducing its fish to a life of darkness. Conditions were so unfavorable that most of them perished, but this survived. For want of the stimulus of light, the eye became smaller. Tie up your right arm, and never use it, and it will shrivel to half the size of the left in a twelvemonth. It transmitted this diminished eye to its descendants born in this cave ; 36 IS DARWIN RIGHT? their eyes became smaller still, for want of stimulus, and retreated into the head ; and, in process of time, the skin covered the eye, and the blind-fish of the Mammoth Cave was produced. Many insects and crustaceans are found in this cave, in some of which the eyes are absent, and in others they are reduced to mere specks. Fig. 7 represents a carabid Fig. 7. Anophthalmus Telkampfii. (After Packard.) beetle, first found in the Mammoth Cave by Tell Kampf, from whom it receives its specific name. It is destitute of wings and totally bhnd, and has doubtless become wingless and blind in consequence of the disuse of wings and eyes resulting from its cave life. The Hadenoeais subterraneus (Fig. 8) is a wingless grasshopper, found also in the Mammoth Cave. I caught it, or one closely allied to it, in Wyandotte Cave, Indiana. Its antennae and legs are proportionally longer than those of its rela- tions found on the surface, probably because they had to do duty for eyes. In the Wyandotte Cave of Indiana OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 37 is also a blind fish, almost, if not absolutely, identical with that of the Mammoth Cave. The caves are too far apart for the fishes to have descended from the same modified progenitors; but the conditions surrounding them, after they were swept into the respective caves, being almost identical, they have been modified into similar beings. I have seen a tadpole four years old, kept in a drug- FiG. 8. Hadenoecus Subterraneus. (After Packard.) gist's store, out of the sunlight : conditions were un- favorable for its perfect development; and, although a giant, it was only a gigantic tadpole. The notornis and the apteryx are small, wingless birds, found in New Zealand ; and the dinornis, palapteryx and aptornis were wingless birds that once lived there, but are now only known by their fossil remains. These birds, living in a country where beasts that might prey upon them were unknown, and where flight was unnecessary 38 /S DARWIN RIGHT? for food, their wings were so little employed that they became too small for flight, and by disuse have so dimin- ished, that in some living species the wing is only repre- sented by a horny claw. External surroundings cannot, however, create hands, feet, eyes, ears, and brains. The cavern darkness has taken away the exterior eyes of the a7)iblyopsis ; but light has failed to give eyes to the protozoa, though they have been on the planet since the Laurentian times. Webbed feet are very useful to water-birds, but the water never made them. The water-ousel lives almost entirely in the water, like a duck ; it feeds on shell-fish and water insects ; its food and habits are almost the same as the grebe ; its ancestors lived a similar life for as many years as naturalists have been acquainted with them, and prob- ably for a million years before that : yet its feet are no more webbed than those of a sparrow. There must be tendency before formation. An idiot can fire a palace of beauty, and leave only a pile of ashes ; but to build one requires an architect. From the dawn of life upon our planet, animals and plants have been surrounded by constantly improving conditions : the intense heat has diminished, poisonous gases have been eliminated from the atmosphere, the land surface of the globe has increased, and, accom- panying this advance, organic forms have improved, as geology demonstrates, with every new group of rocks OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 39 deposited. Had sunlight departed from the world in the Silurian age, birds, beasts, and men had never appeared upon our planet. Had the climate and atmosphere of the carboniferous period remained, it is not probable that man could ever have been developed here. The power to produce a frog exists in the tadpole, but light is essen- tial for its operation ; and thus there lay in the fcetal globe the power to produce a man, but the improve- ments of millions of years were essential to mould him to his present form, and it will require millions more to perfect him. SYMMETRY. Another law that has operated in the production of organic beings is the law of Symmetry. Lop off the Fig. 9. Fig. 95. Clay-Stones from the banks of the Connecticut River. (Original.) branches of a young tree, till there is nothing left but a bare stick, and soon a branch will grow to the right. 40 IS DARWIN RIGHT? another to the left, a new stem will shoot upward, and branches will symmetrically develop from this, and the tree is a thing of beauty once more. The very clay stones (Figs. 9, 9^^, 10, 10^), that grow in some clay beds, beneath the water-level of their locality, manifest as perfect symmetry as the crystals in the rocks below them, the flowers that bloom above them, and the human beings that see and admire them. The right hemisphere of Fig. 10. Fig. 105. Clay-Stones, foot of Mount Tom, Mass. (Original.) man's brain corresponds with his left ; and he thus has two brains, as he has two nostrils, two eyes, and two ears. Almost every part of his body is duplicate. Even diseases are symmetrical. Mr. James Paget, quoted by Mivart in his " Genesis of Species," referring to symmetrical diseases, writes, "A certain morbid change of structure on one side of the body is repeated in the exactly corresponding part of the other side." OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 41 He figures a diseased lion's pelvis from the Museum of the College of Surgeons, and says of it, " Multiform as the pattern is, in which the new bone, the product of some disease, comparable with a human rheumatism, is deposited, — a pattern more complex and irregular than the spots upon a map, — there is not one spot or line on one side which is not represented, as exactly as it would be in a mirror, on the other. The likeness has more than daguerreotype exactness." Symmetry, then, is one of the tools used by the omni- present spirit in moulding the frame of man ; and we are symmetrical because the law of symmetry has presided over the upbuilding of our structure. NATURAL SELECTION. Then, we have the law of Natural Selection, so ably elucidated by Charles Darwin. I do not believe that it has been as effectual in its operation as Darwin and the Darwinians suppose ; but, that it has assisted in produ- cing our present forms of animal and vegetable life, there can be no doubt. It is the gardener that trims the tree of life, lops off the imperfect branches, and destroys the sprouts that might divert its energies ; but it is not the creator that gave life and form to the tree, and sent through its veins the invigorating sap. Life pushes into the field continually more beings than can possibly survive. A cod will produce at a birth from 42 IS DARWIN RIGHT? four to nine millions ; a full-grown elm will perfect in one season a hundred million seeds ; a pair of rabbits in a hundred and fifty years, if they were unrestrained, would stock the entire land-surface of the globe. The result of this superabundance of life is a grand struggle for exist- ence, in which the weak, the ill-formed, the bad-condi- tioned, are killed off, and those animals and plants most in harmony with their surroundings survive, and perpet- uate their harmonious organization to their posterity. In a fish, that which assists it in the struggle may be dense- ness of scale, length of fin, or length of tooth, enabhng it to distance its pursuers or hold its slippery prey ; in the bird it may be length of wing, strength of claw or bill, or some modification of color, by which it baffles the keen eyes of its enemies : whatever gives an animal or plant the advantage, puts a weapon into its hands, with which it kills those who do not possess it, and it then appropri- ates the place for itself, and entails it for those of its posterity who possess the same advantages. Thus the most perfect types of organized being are preserved by a general providence, that watches with sleepless eye, and works for the benefit of the whole. In Scotland we find a red grouse feeding among the red heather of the mountains and moors. "Here is a special providence," says a believer in the miraculous : "the hawks and the eagles, that hunt by sight, cannot see the red grouse among the equally red heather, and Oi^, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 43 thus it escapes." But suppose that originally grouse were white, and one, by the operation of the law of vari- ation, was born red : the hawks and eagles being unable to see it, it escapes, and gives birth, by the law of inherit- ance, to birds of its own color ; they also escape ; the white ones being all the time weeded out, in consequence of being so conspicuous, the grouse are at length all red as we find them. Here is a providence that cares for hawks and eagles as well as grouse : it watches over flea and philosopher, and works for the perfection of every living creature. By the operation of these and doubtless many other laws, through the immense ages of our planet's past, life has advanced, as a tree advances to fruit, and we are here as the grand result. " But do you mean to say," inquires an objector, " that these blind laws, to which you have referred, could ever make the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the thinking brain, and the soulful man?" Most emphatically no! But the laws are by no means blind : they are to me the modes of operation of the all-seeing and all-knowing spirit, without whose direction a man could no more be produced from the " insensate clod," than a bowlder roll- ing down a mountain torrent could be fashioned into a perfect copy of the Venus de Medici by the accidental blows of the rocks with which it came in contact. Grant a law of life : what should cause this life to be manifested in a sexual form and be thus perpetuated? 44 IS DARWIN- RIGHT? Grant a law of variation : mere variation would operate to make an animal smaller as well as larger, less perfect as well as more perfect, to form an eye behind as well as before, on the tail as likely as the head ; it would start a nose on the hand as readily as the face, an ear on the foot, and develop a tongue between the fingers as readi- ly as between the jaws. How long would it be before undirected variation could produce a perfect eye in an animal otherwise bhnd ? About as long as it would take for the letters of the alphabet thrown promiscuously down to arrange themselves into a beautiful poem. But we cannot leave these laws out of sight, nor deny their operation. I hear two men discussing about the way in which babies become men. " I tell you, they do it," says one. "Who do it?" says the other. "Why, the fairies." — "Do what?" — "Why, transform the ba- bies into men." — "What have the fairies to do with it, pray?" — "They have every thing to do with it, and without their influence such a thing as a man could never be." — "But how do you suppose the fairies accomplish this work?" — " I will tell you: you have noticed that babies sleep a great deal? " — " Certainly." — " Well, that is when it is done : they pass inside the child, for you know they can go anywhere and do any thing ; they enlarge the brain, expand the skull, extend the limbs, and, in short, do all that is needed to be done to make the infant into a man." — "But did you ever see this pro- OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 45 cess, which you thus describe ? " — " Oh, no ! the fairies, you know, are invisible, and therefore we can never see them at work." — "But how, then, do you know that the fairies do all this?" — "Because there is no other way in which we can account for such a wonderful change as the transformation of a baby into a man." — " I regard your story as a monstrous fable." — " How, then, do you think that babies are changed into men?" — "Well, I do not profess to know entirely how it is done, but there are some things connected with the matter that I do know : you have noticed that babies frequently require nourish- ment?" — "Yes." — "Well, that has a great deal to do with it. If they did not take food into the system, they would die, and could not become men. You must have noticed also that they breathe : this is of great impor- tance ; and if they were prevented, for even a few min- utes, death would be the consequence. They sleep also : and this is important ; lack of sleep would end in lack of life, and the transformation of the baby into the man would cease." Then I hear the first exclaim, " But do you mean to say that blind eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing, can change an utterly helpless and know- nothing infant, weighing eight or ten pounds, into the strong and hearty man, who masters the world, scales the heavens, and makes all the forces of nature minister to his needs?" To which the 'second replies, "Oh, no ! I do not say that : more than all else, infinitely more, is 46 IS DARWIN RIGHT? the spirit of the child derived from the father and the mother. It is this that presides over its organization, from the time it is an ail-but invisible dot till it is born, and then makes eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping subservient to the building-up of the wondrous structure that we call a man. So the universal spirit, never for an instant absent from the world, has operated by means of these laws during millions of years, and through myriads of forms, till at length it was able to say, '" I have made a man, but mil- lions of years will even yet be necessary to finish him." POINTERS INDICATING MAN'S NATURAL ORIGIN. METAMORPHOSIS OF ANIMALS. In addition to these laws, whose existence can be demonstrated and their operation seen, there are what I call pointers, which, although they do not demonstrate that man came into existence naturally, and without the operation of miracle, yet they point very significantly in that direction. The first pointer is the metamorphosis of animals, or the change of form that they undergo from the time they are conceived until they are fully formed. All animals are alike to the eye when in their primitive egg state ; and, in passing to their mature form, all the OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 47 higher animals go through a series of significant changes. J. W. Draper, the well-known physiologist, says, " All ani- mals proceed from eggs as simple in structure as the simplest infusoria produced spontaneously, and no art can distinguish one of the highest class from one of the lowest." Professor Clark, of Harvard College, Cambridge, says, " All animals, from the monad, the gum-drop amoe- ba, up to man, at one time cannot possibly be distin- guished from one another. . . . You could not tell the Fig. II. Fig. 12. Fig. 13. Fig. h. — Primitive Egg of a Trout. Fig. 12. — Primitive Egg of a Hen. Fig. 13. — Primitive Human Egg. (After Haeckel.) one from the other any more readily than you could dis- tinguish a drop of water from Cochituate Lake from that of Mystic River." (Fig. 11, Fig. 12, and Fig. 13.) So, it is highly probable that man's original ancestors, in the earliest ocean containing organized life, were equally undistinguishable from the progenitors of other types of life that swarmed in the ocean with them. The mosquito is first an ^gg, then a worm ; at last an insect on filmy wings, " blowing its shrill trumpet," as it 48 IS DARWIN RIGHT? prepares to attack us for our blood. The silkworm is an ^gg, then a worm, eating and growing from thirty to forty days, when it weaves its enclosing case, and passes into the chrysalis state. While in this condition strange transformations take place : its jaws are changed into a coiled tongue, its stomach is shortened, compound eyes take the place of simple eyes, antennae make their appearance upon the forehead, wings spring from the sides, and out issues the queenly moth. The frog commences its existence, like all other ani- mals, with the ^gg, as we see them in spring in the pools by the wayside, surrounded by jelly. In about a month it leaves the ^gg, but it is in a very imperfect condition. The head is quite large ; but there are no traces of ears, nostrils, lungs, or even gills. About the fourth day after its birth, ears and nostrils make their appearance, and little branching gills. The mouth is soon furnished with a horny beak, and the tail is lengthened and widened : the animal is now a tadpole, and we should call it a fish if we did not know what it was destined to become. It breathes by means of gills, as the fish does, propels itself through the water with its long, broad, flat tail, as the fish also does, and 'feeds upon the plants that grow in its watery abode : there is no trace of either internal or external limbs. In the hinder part of the body two bud- like swellings appear, and two like them in the front, which develop into limbs, when the tail is gradually OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 49 absorbed, and at length disappears from sight. While these changes are taking place, others, less observable but more important, are going on. The mouth increases in size and gape ; the horny lips are replaced by teeth ; the intestines are shortened ; the gills dwindle in size ; the lungs, that before were solid and small, enlarge and be- come cavernous ; the fish-heart is modified, a third cham- ber being developed by the expansion of one of the large arteries ; the vessels that convey blood to the gills are gradually suppressed, the work of the gills is at length forever done ; the water is no longer a suitable place of abode ; the frog gasps, takes its first full breath, leaps upon the land, and croaks its joy at finding itself in such a superior condition. (Fig. 14.) But the other day it was a fish feeding upon water-plants, with a horny beak ; and now it is a frog, with rows of teeth, a changed stomach, and a changed appetite, and woe to the fly that comes within the range of its glutinous tongue ! Why is the insect first a worm, and the frog first a fish ? Geologically we have reason to beheve that worms preceded insects, and fishes preceded frogs, by milHons of years ; and it appears that every animal shows us in its development the road over which its ancestors trav- elled during the early ages of the world. What is true of all animals below man is equally true of him. The existence of man on this planet com- 50 IS DARWIN RIGHT? mences with an ovum, or tgg, formed in the body of the female, which is about yjy of an inch in diameter, or barely visible to the naked eye. It contains a yolk, con- FiG. 14. — Metamorphosis of the Frog. i. The embryo frog in the egg; 2. At a more advanced stage; 3. Tadpole four days after being hatched; 4. At a more advanced stage; 5. A stage farther, when its gills have dwindled; 6. The per- fect tadpole; 7. The gills are now gone, and hind limbs are seen; 8. Frog nearly perfect. sisting of a multitude of granules ; and in this is a trans- parent vesicle which is called the germ vesicle, and this contains a small round dark spot called the germ-spot. (Fig. 15.) OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 51 ^^'hen impregnated by the sperm-cells of the male, the Fig. 15. — The Human Egg greatly enlarged. (After Haeckel.) germ vesicle and germ-spot disappear, and the ^gg then Fig. 16. — The impregnated INIammalian Egg. (After Haeckel.) presents the appearance of a drop of gum or speck of jelly (Fig. 16), resembling the simplest forms of life known to us, the amoeba. 52 IS DARWIN RIGHT? Soon after its formation a round kernel is formed in its interior, which occupies the centre of the cell ; and in the centre of that is a small dot called the nucleolus. This cell, the product of both parents, in which the first Fig. 17. — The Mammalian Egg shortly after impregnation, when it Is called the Parent Cell. (After Haeckel.) germ of the future individual appears, is called the parent cell. (Fig. 17.) The next step in the evolution of the man is the division of the kernel into two, just as the amoeba divides to form a new animal. (Fig. 18.) These repel each other, separate, and attract the matter contained in the parent cell, and thus form two cells, which contain, as the first did, a nucleus and central dot or nucleolus. The cells soon change from a globular to an oval form, (Fig. 19.) One of the Mvo is larger and more transparent than the OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 53 Other ; and, as the cells continue to divide, the larger and lighter increase at a quicker rate than the cells produced Fig. i8. — An Amoeba in the act of reproduction. A. The whole Amoeba: B. The Amoeba dividing; C a and Cb. The two halves, now independent individuals. (After Haeckel.) from the smaller and darker, till they form what is called Fig. 19. — Gjmmencem.ent of Cleavage in the Mammalian Egg. (Haeckel.) a morula or mulberry mass, consisting of a multitude of small cells, of which the organs of the future animal are 54 /S DARWIN RIGHT? to be built. The larger, lighter, and more active cells form eventually a layer, called the animal layer, from which the skin, the spine, the spinal marrow, the brain, and the entire bony skeleton, are produced ; the smaller, darker, and more sluggish cells also form a layer, called the vegetative layer, from which the organs of digestion and reproduction are made. Fig. 20. — The Primitive Trace. These layers form a circular germ-area, the centre of which is occupied by a transparent area, which is like- wise circular. In the centre of the transparent space, in the germ-area, a line makes its appearance, where the future spinal column will be : this is called the primitive trace, which is the foundation of the man. (Fig. 20.) OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 55 At the end of the second week the human being is one- twelfth of an inch in length : as yet there is no distinc- tion between fish, reptile, bird, mammal, or man, all being formed in the same way, and having the same appearance. The trace enlarges, its edges thicken, rise, and bend forward in front, till they join, and form a tube, which is destined to contain the brain and spinal cord : this is sometimes called the spinal tube. At the same time the edges of the under side of the primitive trace bend back- ward, curve, unite, and form a second tube, which be- comes the abdominal cavity, enclosing the alimentary canal and the reproductive organs : this is sometimes called the intestinal tube. When the human being is three weeks old, it is about one-sixth of an inch in length : a swelling exists where the head is to be, and the first rudiments of the eye, the ear, and the brain, make their appearance. The limbs are entirely wanting, there is no real face, and nothing to distinguish man from opossum, dog, or ape. At the end of the fourth week the human embryo is nearly half an inch long ; the head with its various parts can be plainly distinguished ; the heart shows all four compartments, and nearly fills the chest cavity ; the rudi- ments of the lungs appear, and all the essential parts of the body may be seen. Yet even now, as Haeckel says (to whose work " The Evolution of Man," I am indebted 56 IS DARWIN RIGHT? for most of this description), in this stage we are still un- able to discern any characters essentially distinguishing the human embryo from those of the dog, the rabbit, the ox, the horse, or, indeed, of any of the higher mammals." (Figs. 21, 22, 23, 24.) It is true, the head is a little Fig. 21. Fig. 22. Fig. 23. Fic. 24. Fig. 21. — The Embryo of the Fish at an early period of its development. Fig. 22. — The Embryo of the Chick. FiG. 23. — The Embryo of the Hog. Fig. 24. — The Embryo of the Man. larger in man than in the hog, and th^" tail is a little shorter ; but the tail of man when he is a month old is double the length of his legs. At eight weeks old the human embryo can scarcely be distinguished from that of the highest apes, but after this its human character is firmly established. Dr. Roget tells us that "the human embryo is not exempt from the same metamorphoses" (that is, those to which the lower animals are subject), "possessing at one period branchiae and branchial apertures similar to OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 57 those of the cartilaginous fishes, a heart with a single set of cavities, and a brain consisting of a longitudinal series of tubercles ; next losing its branchiae, and acquir- ing lungs, while the circulation is yet single, and thus imitating the condition of the reptile ; then acquiring a double circulation, but an incomplete diaphragm, like birds ; afterwards appearing like a quadruped, with a caudal prolongation of the sacrum, and an intermaxillary bone ; and, lastly, changing its structure to one adapted to the erect position." ^ Agassiz says of the human brain, " It first becomes a brain resembling that of a fish, then it grows into the form of that of a reptile, then into that of a bird, then into that of a mammiferous quadruped, and finally it assumes the form of a human brain ; 'thus comprising in its foetal progress an epitome of geological history, as if man were in himself a compendium of all animated nature, and of kin to every creature that lives.' " - And Agassiz' conjecture is probably the exact truth, and the correct explanation of these wonderful resemblances. Huxley says, " It is very long before the body of the young human being can be distinguished from that of the young puppy." It may be considered an unfortunate circumstance, that the mental similarity continues much * Roget, Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii., p. 443. 2 Preface to Footprints of the Creator. 58 ^ IS DARWIN RIGHT? But why do human beings resemble protozoans, the simplest forms of life ; then worms, brainless fishes, true fishes, so that they even have gills and gill apertures ; why do they advance through forms that closely resem- ble those of the reptile, the bird, the lower mammal, and the ape, before they assume the proper human type? Are not these so many steps by which man has ascended to his elevated position? Is it not safe to say that if there had never been a protozoan, produced sponta- neously, there never could have been a worm ; without a worm never a fish ; without a fish never a reptile, bird, or man? All the facts connected with man's metamorphoses from the tgg to the perfect being, and they are millions, unite in pointing to man's natural and therefore to man's brutal origin. In this sense the brute is father of the man. ANATOMICAL SIMILARITY. Another pointer is the anatomical similarity between man and the lower animals. The number of limbs in the vertebrates of all ages has been four. The first true fishes balanced themselves with four fins, as our present ones do ; their forward fins corresponding with our arms, the hinder ones with our legs. The reptile walks with four feet ; the bird with two, because the other twp have become wings, and are needed for flight : they are but OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 59 feathered arms. The monkeys are said to have four hands ; but in reahty they have two feet, that are fre- quently used as hands, which they somewhat resemble, and two hands that are frequently used as feet. We share our digits with vast numbers of both living and extinct forms. Our earliest star-fishes have five fin- FiG. 25. Fig. 26. Fig. 25. — Palceaster Ruthveni. Fig. 26. — Palasterina Primceva. Both from the Upper Silurian of Great Britain. (After Salter). gers (Figs. 25 and 26), as have most of our living ones. The fingers of the crinoids are always some multiple of five, while their cups, when angular, are always five-sided, and their stalks nearly always so. The old labyrinthodon left a five-digited track on the Triassic sandstones, that looks marvellously like the impression of a rude human hand. (Fig. 27.) In the foot of the musk-rat, in the paw of the bear and lion, in the flipper of the dolphin, the wing of the bat, and the undivided paddle of the whale, are the same number of bones, and in the same places, as in the hand of the man who writes an article to disprove man's natural origin. 6o IS DARWIN RIGHT? Man has seven cervical vertebrae in his neck ; so has the giraffe that feeds upon the mimosa-trees, twenty feet high, and the pig that can hardly be said to have a neck at all. All the higher apes have the same number of vertebrae Fig. 27. — Track of the Labyrinthodon. as man ; their teeth are the same ; and so close is the general resemblance between them and man, that Owen, our highest authority in comparative anatomy, says, " I cannot shut my eyes to the significance of that all-per- vading similitude of structure — every tooth, every bone, strictly homologous — which makes the determination of the difference between ho7no and pitJiecus " (that is, between man and the monkey) " the anatomist's diffi- culty." ^ As late as the sixteenth century, human anato- my was taught and studied from the skeleton of the monkey alone. The anatomical differences that exist between the various famihes of monkeys are greater than those that exist between the anthropomorplious apes — such as the chimpanzee, the orang, and the gorilla — and man. 1 Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London for 1857. OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 6 1 Why this close anatomical resemblance? A miracu- lous creator could hardly be supposed to follow the same model in creating man that was used for these brutes, so immeasurably his inferiors ; and in this similarity of form, which exists between man and the animals below him, we have a pointer whose significance may be denied, but can hardly be doubted. LINKING FORMS. The linking forms, which exist between man and the lowest types of life, constitute another pointer. Man does not float like a balloon, completely cut off from all below him, but is uniteei with the lowest organisms by a series of animal forms, that are like so many layers of stone in a pyramid, of which he forms the apex. It is now generally acknowledged that animals and plants are so closely linked in their lowest forms, that they pass into each other by insensible gradations. The protozoa, as Page says in his geological hand-book, " appear almost to occupy a sort of neutral ground between animals and vegetables." Hence they are called by some naturalists Phytozoa, or plant-animals. Professor Clark, one of the best of microscopists, says, " To this day there remains a doubt as to the animal or vegetable nature of certain forms, which have characters that lead on the one side to plants, and on the other to animals."^ Sponges have ^ Mind in Nature, p. 151. 62 IS DARWIN RIGHT? been placed on both sides of the Hne by many natural- ists ; and, though now regarded as animals, they are rooted, manifest no feeling, and appear lower in the scale than some plants with which we are acquainted. It is but a step from the protozoa to the opalina, a creature covered with vibratory cilia, that is frequently classed with the protozoa, but is allied very closely to cer- tain worms. Various classes of worms carry us near to the line of the lowest of the vertebrates, like the amphi- oxus, a fish, and yet destitute of skull, brain, jaws, limbs, and jointed vertebral column. Step by step we pass along the line of the fishes, till we come to forms which are exceedingly difiicult to class either with fishes or with amphibians. The proteus of the Austrian caves, the lepi- dosiren or mud-fish, and the axolotl of Mexico, are fish- like animals with long tails, and possess both lungs and gills. In the water they can breathe by means of their gills, and in the air by means of their lungs. In zoologi- cal works to-day these forms are sometimes classed with amphibians and sometimes with fishes. From the am- phibians to the true reptiles the distance is not great ; but from the reptiles that crawl, to the birds that fly, the space is wide : geology, however, enables us to bridge or nearly bridge the chasm between them. The ptero- dactyle was a flying lizard with bird-like characteristics. (Fig. 28.) The Jurassic and cretaceous beds furnish us with skeletons of dinosaurs that walked upon their hind- OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. ^2. legs alone, and were apparently on the march to the bird ; while Solenhofen presents us with a bird having reptilian teeth and a reptihan but feathered tail, and the cretaceous beds of Kansas have yielded birds with rep- tilian jaws and bristling teeth. (Fig. 29.) Fig. 28. — Restored Skeleton of the Pterodactyle. The species represented is Pterodactylus Crassirostris. There is considerable space to-day between the bird and the mammal, and doubtless we shall yet discover between them many intermediate fossil forms. Yet in the ornithorhynchus we see a mammal with webbed feet ; broad flat jaws, destitute of teeth, that resemble those of a duck ; an animal that has but one excretory orifice, hke a bird, and produces eggs, but they are hatched before thev leave the oviduct. 64 IS DARWIN RIGHT? When we advance from the lower mammals to man, we approach a chasm that has been regarded as infinitel}^ wide and that requires a miracle to span ; but, as Huxley says, " no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals that immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world Fig. 29. — Jaws of Fossil Birds from the Cretaceous Beds of Kansas. Lower Jaw of Ichihyorttis Dispar. Lower Jaw of Hesperortiis Regalis. (After Marsh.) and ourselves." If we look at brain-capacity, where we find the greatest disproportion between the quadrumana and man, we learn that the difference between the brain- capacity of the average Australian and the largest Cau- casian is five and a half cubic inches greater than be- tween the average gorilla and the smallest Australian. If the small brain-capacity of the Australian will not prevent him from rising in the scale of manhood till individ- uals of his race shall equal the highest Caucasian brain endowment, the nthe smallness of the brain-capacity of OR, THE ORIGIN- OF MAN. 65 the ape-like forms that parented humanity may not have prevented them from advancing to the brain-capacity of the lowest Australian. The fact, however, is, as has been frequently said, man is widening the gap between him- self and the lower animals continually, and must have been doing so for ages, by killing off the animals that are most like himself, their wants and his being almost identical, and by advancing in cerebral power and gen- eral manhood. What the brain-capacity of the animals was, from which human beings are directly descended, it may be difficult to say, as they have long since perished ; but human skulls of the greatest age show us, by the general smallness of their size and their inferior develop- ment, that the gap between brutality and humanity was, in all probability, much narrower in ancient times than it is at present. I do not suppose, as Darwinians do, that all the steps taken by animals in their progressive march were neces- sarily minute. They may have been as great as would enable animals to pass from one variety to another, and in some cases the steps may have been as wide as those that separate specific forms of the same genus. There may be indeed a magnetic force, of whose operation we have obscure indications, that in the past time of our planet's history was much more active than at present, and by whose agency greater organic changes took place, and with greater rapidity, than is possible at the present time. 66 IS DARWIN RIGHT? RUDIMENTARY ORGANS. One of the most significant pointers is the existence of what are called rudimentary organs, or what might be more properly called redundant organs. In addition to those organs which animals possess, that are in general use, there are other organs or parts of organs, that are no t of the slightest utility, but point back to ance stral f orms of life^ in which they were of use. All ruminants, except camels, are destitute of incisors in the upper jaw. Most persons are familiar with the fact that the cow has a hard pad, occupying the place which in us is occupied by the upper incisor teeth. The unborn calf, however, has incisor teeth in the upper jaw, that never cut through the gum, and are therefore never of the slightest use to the animal. As the blind-fish of the caves lost its eyes because it never used them, so these animals, we may suppose, are descended from an animal that possessed incisors in the upper jaw and used them ; but some de- scendant of this animal, by a variation in its structure, was able to crop grass by a lateral motion of its lower jaw, the assistance of its tongue, and mere pressure upon the upper jaw, and in process of time the upper incis- ors were lost. The unborn animal never having been modified, in the foetal calf we have a representative of the unmodified upper-incisor-using ancestor, probably of the early tertiary times. OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 67 The horse and its probable ancestors furnish us with interesting examples of rudimentary or redundant organs. In the leg of the horse we find what are called splint bones, which answer to the index and ring fingers of the human hand : there are, however, no exterior toes to correspond with these interior bones, except in special cases, in which horses are occasionally seen with two small hoofs attached to these bones. Until the discovery Fig. 30. — Modifications of the Foot of the Horse, i. Foot of the Recent Horse; 2. Foot of the Hipparion ; 3. Foot of the Miohippus ; 4. Foot of the Orohip- pus. (After Marsh.) of horse-like animals in the tertiary deposits, no one could imagine what was the meaning of these bones and the occasional appearance of extra hoofs. In European beds belonging to the pliocene, the high- est division of the tertiary, we find an animal called the hipparion, about the size of an ass, but greatly resembling the horse in anatomical structure. It had, however, a small toe on each side of the hoof, that never reached 68 /S DARWIN RIGHT? the ground. (Fig. 30.) If this animal, which was very abundant before the horse made its appearance, was the ancestor of the horse, we may account for the sphnt bones in the leg of the horse, and the occasional appear- ance of dangling toes on its leg. They are heirlooms from the ancestral hippario7i. But what is the meaning of the toes that never touch the ground in the leg of the hipparion ? To discover the meaning of these, we must go still farther back. In the miocene beds of the United States we find a horse-like animal about the size of a sheep, called the miohippiis, furnished with three serviceable toes on each foot ; but the middle toe is the longest and much the largest, and must have been most used. There is also a rudimentary splint-bone on each fore-leg, and we now naturally look still farther back for the meaning of this. In the middle eocene we find the orohippus, another horse-like animal, but not much larger than a fox ; in it we find the rudimentary splint-bone of the miohippus re- placed by a perfect and serviceable toe, though the hind- legs have but three toes, as have those of the miohippus. In the lowest beds of the eocene are found the re- mains of the eohippus (dawn-horse). This was no larger than a fox, yet had considerable resemblance to the horse, and had on its fore-feet four serviceable toes, and a rudimentary fifth toe. We look still farther back, there- fore, for a five-toed true eohippus : it has not yet been OJ^, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 69 discovered, but may be found in the cretaceous beds, as a diminutive horse about as large as a rabbit. All mod- ern horses may not have descended from the horse-like animals whose names I have mentioned, for in my opin- ion horses have been developed along several lines ; but I have no doubt that all of them passed through similar metamorphoses in the course of their development, and the traces of the ancestors can be seen in their more developed progeny. True whales, those from which the whalebone is ob- tained, have no teeth ; but the foetal whale has from sixty to seventy teeth on each side of the jaw. The whale is probably descended from some carnivorous mammal, that had teeth and used them ; but some of its descendants became so varied that baleen took the place of teeth, which only appear to-day in the unmodified foetus. The apteryx of New Zealand is a wingless bird ; yet the wing-bones, reduced to mere rudiments, are there. Living as its ancestors did in a country where there were no mammals to disturb it, flight was unnecessary, and by disuse the wings became smaller ; and the modified de- scendants of the flying ancestors have but horny claws where the wings once were. Boas and pythons, those gigantic snakes, have rudi- mentary hind-limbs, consisting of a few small bones sus- pended in the muscles on each side, and terminated in a horny claw, which appears on the outside. These rudi- 70 /S DARWIN RIGHT? mentary limbs are good evidence that their remote an- cestors could walk. Among lizards to-day we may almost see the steps by which ancient lizards were modified into snakes. In the family of the scincidcE, we find the genus scincus, with short feet and a body nearly cylindrical and covered with scales. In seps the legs are very weak and set far apart ; so that it trusts little to its limbs, and wrig- gles along like a snake. It is not surprising to find ani- mals in which the reduction of the limbs has been carried farther still, and only a few bones in some cases are left to show where the limbs have been. Nor is man destitute of similar indications of his pre- vious ancestors. In most persons the ability to move the ears is gone, though the rudiments of the muscles by which the motions were once effected are still there. (Fig. 31.) In the skeleton of man we can still see the bones of the tail, that must have characterized his pro- genitors, but which was lost long before the appearance of humanity. PALEONTOLOGICAL RESEMBLANCE. The resemblance that exists between living animals found in certain districts of country and the fossil ani- mals found in the recent tertiary deposits of the same districts is another pointer. In South America there are found at this time the sloth, the armadillo, the cavy, or guinea-pig as it is some- OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 71 times called, the ctenomys, and platyrrhine or broad-nos- trilled monkeys ; but none of these are found in Europe, Asia, or Africa. In accordance with this the bone-caves of South America, belonging to the recent tertiary period, furnish us with fossil sloths, armadillos, cavys, ctenomys, and platyrrhine monkeys : they are not, however, of the same species as the living ones, and they are generally Fig. 31. Rudimentary Ear-Moving ]Muscles in the Human Head. (After Haeckel.) much larger ; but none of these are found in recent ter- tiary deposits of Europe, Asia, or Africa. If the present mammals of South America are the modified descendants of its tertiary mammals, this is just what we should expect ; but if the species of animals were miraculously created, no good reason can be given why these forms should have been restricted to the South American continent, when they can just as well live on all the others. 72 IS DARWIN RIGHT? New Zealand has very few indigenous mammals, a bat, a mouse, and perhaps a kind of fox, being all ; but it has a family of wingless birds, of which there are three spe- cies. In accordance with this no fossil mammals have been found in New Zealand, but several species of wing- less birds, some of gigantic size. Of more than forty species of mammals indigenous to Australia, all but one or two are marsupial ; and the fos- sil mammals, though in some cases as large as the rhi- noceros, were also marsupial. If the wingless birds of New Zealand and the pouched mammals of Australia are naturally descended from similar, though generally more gigantic, wingless birds and pouched mammals of the tertiary times, this is just what we should expect to find ; but, if animals were specially created for their respective localities, why should such countries as Australia, Tas- mania, and New Zealand be destitute of the horse, the sheep, the bos, and the goat, to which they are so well adapted ? GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION. This is also an important pointer. Had man made his appearance on the planet with no preceding forms at all resembling him, had the animals of the present time had no predecessors in the earlier times with which we could connect them, we should have naturally supposed that they were created instantly and full-grown. But man is OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 73 only the last link of a chain that extends through the ages : we do not see all the links ; but we see a sufficient number to assure us that they are all there, and the chain has never been broken. If man has come by gradual advancement from the simplest organic forms produced spontaneously, we should find, as we trace living beings backward through the geologic ages, that they constantly become simpler in structure, and bear a nearer resem- blance to the primitive forms, from which we may reason- ably suppose them to have been developed. This is just what we find. Below the pliocene tertiary, all traces of man are lost, but his brute relations, the monkeys, are numerous : as we descend, these become smaller in size, and possess smaller and smoother brains, till in the creta- ceous beds all traces of the monkey are gone. Mammals, however, remain until we reach the triassic age, when we find the largest smaller than a rabbit and as bird-like in its organization as the opossum. Below the trias the highest animals are reptiles, whose remains are found through the triassic age and the Permean, when they also disappear, and amphibians, the next lower organic link, are the highest representatives of life. These continue until we reach the earliest portion of the carboniferous period, when we bid farewell to the amphibians. Back- ward still to discover what life's organic beginnings were like. Here in the Devonian are fishes, enormous fishes, mailed fishes, but nothing higher has yet been found ; 74 IS DARWIN RIGHT? for millions of years we retreat through the Devonian, through the Upper Silurian, the fish dwindling in size and numbers at every step, till at last even fishes have van- ished. But shells remain, some of them enormous ; orthoceratites, fifteen to twenty feet long, their muscular arms outspread and their spire-like shells pointing up- ward, as they crawl over the sea-bottom and seize their prey. We pass through the Silurian into the Cambrian ; and, as we go, the shells dwindle, till the largest is no larger than the finger-nail ; and the shells in their turn disappear. Is there any thing left ? In the very lowest beds of the Cambrian we find radiated, fan-like forms, belonging, it is generally believed, to the radiata ; and these are the highest expressions of life. If eozoon should prove to be an animal, then in the very lowest beds in which the remains of organic beings have been found, the protozoa, the lowest of all animals, are the only evidences that we find of life's organized embodiment. INSULAR ORGANIC RESEMBLANCE. The resemblance that is found between animals and plants on islands and those found on the neighboring mainland constitutes another important pointer. On the Galapagos Islands, which are six hundred miles north- west of South America, are found birds, tortoises, igu- anas, crabs, beetles and plants, nearly all differing specifi- cally from those of other localities. Darwin, who visited OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAM. 75 the islands, and carefully examined the animals and plants, says, " Here almost every product of the land and water bears the unmistakable stamp of the American continent. There are twenty-six land-birds, and twenty- one, perhaps twenty-three, of these are ranked as distinct species, and are supposed to have been created here ; yet the close affinity of most of these birds to American species in every character, in their habits, gestures, and tones of voice, was manifest. So it is with the other animals and with nearly all the plants." The animals and plants of New Guinea in like manner resemble those of Australia, to which the island is contiguous. Those found in Java are like those living on the Asiatic conti- nent. Cape Verde species resemble those of Africa, near to which it lies ; and those of New Zealand are like the species living on x\ustralia, the nearest large body of land. We cannot conceive that a Creator, as the Galapagos Islands successively came up from the bottom of the sea (for they are volcanic), made the birds, tortoises, igu- anas, crabs, beetles, and plants for them like those of the nearest land, yet specifically distinct from them. It is evident that when the Galapagos Islands arose from the deep, they received most of their tenants from the neigh- boring continent : some may have been developed there, some flew there, some were blown by the winds, others wafted by the waves, and still others carried by birds 76 JS DARWIN RIGHT? Separated as they were from the original forms for long periods of time and under different conditions, they devi- ated from them so far as to produce new species, but the likeness to their progenitors is still retained. Had the islands never received any tenants from other localities, they would probably have been peopled by animals and plants exclusively indigenous ; but for life to advance from the protozoa, to reptiles and birds, may require, even where conditions are favorable, vast ages for its accomplishment. ANTIQUITY OF MAN. If man first made his appearance upon this planet about six thousand years ago, then we can be sure he is not of natural origin : nothing short of a miracle could have given him in so short a time the perfection to which we know he had attained at about that period. If we can prove that he has been here for a hundred thousand years, it does not follow that he was not miraculously created ; but, taken with a multitude of other concur- ring facts, this also points in the direction of man's natural evolution. It is but a short time since it was generally taught, and almost universally believed, that the earth is but six thou- sand years old, and that it, together with the rest of the universe, compared with the known portion of which our planet is small as an invisible atom, were made in six OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 77 days, of twenty-four hours each. This Liliputian chro- nology is, indeed, still insisted upon by some antiquated theologians, and taught in many of the Sunday schools, even of New England. The young but lusty science of geology has made great havoc with this venerable idea : tearing down the curtain our ignorance had woven, it revealed to our astonished gaze ages innumerable, stretching away into the past so far that our mental eyes were strained in the attempt to see their distant boundary, while marching through them we beheld a procession of innumerable life-forms, many of them such as painter never limned and of which poet never dreamed. It seems strange to us now, that, with so many marks of the earth's great age surrounding us, we could ever have made so grave a mistake as we did. Here are trees that must have been saplings at the dawn of creation, supposing that creation to be as- recent as was then believed ; deltas, such as those at the mouths of the Mis- sissippi and Ganges, that must have taken at least half a million of years to form ; canons a mile deep, made by rivers that must have rolled through them for ages ; and seven miles of fossiliferous rocks, abounding with the remains of myriads of strange beings, that could only have come into existence and become extinct during periods too large for the human intellect to grasp. The evidences of man's great antiquity are now as 78 IS DARWIN RIGHT? clearly presented to the eye of the archaeologist, as that of the earth's so much greater age is presented to the vision of the geologist ; so that, as J. P. Leslie says, " we can regard as perfectly certain that the known historical period is a mere nothing in point of time, compared with the periods during which our race has actually inhabited the earth ; or, as Lyell significantly expresses it, this historical period is comparatively only a creature of yesterday. In this opinion all students of the subject now agree, even those who were formerly the most obsti- nate of its opponents." Again he says, " My own belief is but the reflection of the growing sentiment of the whole geological world, — a conviction strengthening every day, as you may with little trouble see for your- selves, by glancing through the magazines of current scientific literature, — that our race has been upon the earth for hundreds of thousands of years ! "^ If we had to depend upon tradition alone for our knowledge of past events, we should be able to look back but a short distance in the history of humanity. In this country the great events of the American Revolu- tion would be vivid in the minds of many, and we might learn the truth with regard to the most important ; but the discovery of America by Columbus would exist only as a faint tradition, and the history of the world before that time would be all but a perfect blank. In fact, it has * Man's Origin and Destiny, p. 66, OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 79 been found that tribes having no written records lose the most important events in their history in a hundred years. By printed and written documents, handed down from one generation to another, we can, however, pass up the stream of time, and mark important events that have transpired for thousands of years. We thus learn that Jesus, the Galilaean reformer, lived nearly nineteen cen- turies ago ; that Socrates, the sage of Greece, died four centuries before that; that the poet Homer sang about five centuries earlier ; and that Solomon's reign in Jeru- salem is separated from our time about twenty-nine hundred years. All scholars agree that dates received from written documents prior to this are very uncertain. The date of Abraham's birth has been placed at about thirty-five hundred years ago, and this is probably not far from the truth ; yet, in the time of Abraham, Egypt was a flourishing nation, with kings and princes, and a civili- zation of great antiquity. When written documents fail, monuments and inscrip- tions, especially those of Egypt, enable us to travel much farther into humanity's past. The Pyramids of Egypt are in some respects the most remarkable exhibitions of man's constructive ability on the globe. The largest covers about twelve acres : it is four hundred and fifty feet high, and is estimated to contain more than six million tons of stone. Lenormant, the French historian, says of it, " With all the progress of knowledge, it would 8o /S DARWIN RIGHT? be, even in our days, a problem difficult to solve, to con- struct, as the Egyptian architects of the fourth dynasty have done, in such a mass as that of the pyramid, cham- bers and passages, which, in spite of the millions of tons IDressing on them, have, for sixty centuries, preserved their original shape, without crack or flaw." The age of this pile is uncertain, but may be safely set at five thousand years. Humboldt makes the following statement regarding the age of it, and the two pyramids in its vicinity : " The valley of the Nile, which has occu- pied so distinguished a place in the history of man, yet preserves authentic portraits of kings as far back as the commencement of the fourth dynasty of Manetho. His dynasty, which embraces the construction of the great pyramids of Ghiza, Chefren, and Cheops, commences more than thirty-four hundred years B. C." But this was in the fourth dynasty of Eg}^ptian kings ; civilization in Egypt must have been vastly older than this. Humboldt, referring to the age of that pre-exist- ing civilization, says, " In the dimness of antiquity, which constitutes, as it were, the extreme horizon of true histor- ical knowledge, we see many luminous points or cen- tres of civilization, simultaneously blending their rays. Among these we may reckon Egypt, at least five thou- sand years before our era." ^ Baldwin says, " It is now as certain as any thing else in ancient history, that Egypt * Cosmos, vol. ii., p. 114, Harper's edition, 1856. OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 8i existed as a civilized country not less than five thousand years earlier than the birth of Christ." ^ We are back now nearly seven thousand years, and we fjnd Egypt is a civilized country ; and this presupposes a })eriod of many thousand years, during which the people were passing from a condition of barbarism to that of civilization. Can any light be shed upon this still more ancient time ? We find in all civilized countries, where the materials could be obtained, that man passed suc- cessively through an age called the stone age, when his implements were made of stone, and another called the bronze age, in which they were made of bronze, before he attained to the iron age and historic civilization. We have reason to believe that iron was used in Egypt when the Pyramids were built. But we find bronze chisels in her ancient mines, and bronze adzes, hatchets, saws, fal- chions, and battle-axes in her most ancient tombs. Older than all these, however, was her stone age, when iron, tin, and copper were alike unknown. Enormous quanti- ties of flint implements have been discovered in Egypt, says W. Boyd Dawkins." Sir John Lubbock found flint implements in Egypt in great numbers, on the slopes of the hifls, on the lower plateaus, and, "in fact, wherever flint was abundant and of good quality." Several that he found resembled those discovered in the gravel-beds of the Somme.^ Many have been found by other col- 1 Pre-hlstoric Nations, p. 32. ^ Nature, vol. xiii., p. 245. 3 Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. iv., p. 215. 82 IS DAI^lV/iV RIGHT? lectors ; and it is unquestionable that in the valley of the Nile, man advanced from gross barbarism, at a time when a rudely fashioned stone was his only weapon to defend himself against the wild beasts that must have then lurked in the valley, step by step, doubtless painfully and slowly, to brick-moulding, monument-chiselling, pyramid- raising, and the civilization that characterized him seven thousand years ago. The earliest portion of this stone age, judging from w^hat we know of it in otlier countries, must have been enormously remote. In England, Wales, Scotland, Ire- land, on the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland Islands, in Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Scandinavia, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, China, and Japan, have been found within the last twenty-five years, hundreds of thou- sands of arrows, celts, chisels, axes, hammers, knives, and other articles of stone, which represent the stone age in human history, long before man had formed the first letter to record the steps of his progress. Around the shores of the lakes of Switzerland and Northern Italy, we can read most clearly the story of the bronze age and the more recent part of the stone age in human history ; for during that time human beings occu- pied houses built on platforms laid upon piles driven into the lakes around their borders ; and for thousands of years there they lived, worked, kissed and married, quar- OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. %7^ relied, laughed, wept, and died, dropping from time to time their tools and utensils into the lake, where they were covered with mud, and were thus well preserved. At Morges on Lake Geneva, at Nidau on Lake Bienne, Estavayer, Cortaillod and Corcelettes, on Lake Neu- chatel, 4,416 objects of bronze were found, consisting of axes, knives, lances, sickles, pins, rings, ear-rings, brace- lets, fish-hooks, (S:c., yet not a particle of iron, and but few objects of stone. At Morges fifty bronze axes were found, and not one of stone. At these places it is evident there were settlements during the age of bronze. In them lived a people who melted copper and tin, and cast various bronze articles, for a bar of tin and moulds for casting have been found. These people, as we have learned from their remains, cultivated the soil, domesticated animals, and possessed the arts of turning pottery and weaving cloth. How long this was ago we cannot yet tell. It may have been since the Pyramids were built ; but, if so, we cannot regard it as long subsequent to that event, for history knows nothing of these lake-dwellers. But before them dwelt a people in Switzerland much more rude, — the men of the stone age. At Wangen on Lake Constance, Pont de Thiele on Lake Bienne, at jNIoosedorf on Lake Moosedorf, and at Wauwyl on Lake Lucerne, there have been collected 3,994 articles made of stone and bone, axes, flakes, whetstones, corn- S4 IS DARWIN RIGHT? crushers, axe-handles, awls, &c., yet not a single article of bronze or iron. M. Lohle found at Wangan, on Lake Constance, eleven hundred axes, one hundred whet- stones, one hundred and fifty corn-crushers, two hundred and sixty arrow-heads and flint-flakes, besides three hun- dred and fifty articles of bone, and one hundred of earthenware, and yet not a trace of metal. These were a ruder people : they cut down trees by burning around them, and cutting off the charred por- tion wirh their stone axes ; their pottery is very rude and coarse ; the potter's wheel was unknown, and the baking was poorly done : the only ornamentation consists of simple lines or furrows. They were by no means sav- ages : they practised spinning and weaving to a certain extent, and made rude cloth of flax ; they had domesti- ca'"ed the dog, pig, horse, f^oat, sheep, and at least two kindh, of oxen. They fed very largely on the flesh of wild animals ; among thf.m the urus, or great fossil ox, the bison, the elk, the stag, and the wild boar, which are no longer found in Switzerland, and the beaver, bear, and ibex, which are now rare. The Swiss archaeologists gen- erally assign to this stone period an age of from five to seven thousand years. Many of the stone tools and weapons found in the Swiss lakes, and which represent this age, are very well formed, and others were finished by laborious rubbing and polish- ing. There was, however, a still older period in human OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 85 Tiistory, when all the stone weapons and implements were rude and unpolished. The time when the Swiss lakes were occupied by men who were in the stone age, and the time when men carefully fabricated and polished their arti- cles of stone, has been called the neolithic age, or the new stone age ; and the older tmie, when they made only rude and unpolished weapons, has been called the paleolithic age, or the old stone age ; and this carries us very much farther into the past. When we go backward to the old stone age in France, Belgium, and Great Britain, we find ourselves in a strange land, and in strange company. S'.icep and goats are entirely v/anting ; the hog is very rare, and there is no reason to think it was domesticated ; while the remains of strange animals, some of which are only strange, however, in those countries, are found in great abundance, such as the mammoth, reindeer, musk- ox, ibex, marmot, chamois, and the woolly rhinoceros, indicating a very cold climate ; and the cave-lion, cave- tiger, cave-hyena, machairodus, hippopotamus, and other species of rhinoceroses and elephants, in all probability smooth-skinned, indicating a warmer climate, and one even warmer than exists to-day in the countries where we find these remains. We thus find the paleolithic age naturally dividing itself into two periods, in the former of which the climate was very much colder than it is now, like that of Northern Greenland and Lapland, and the other in 86 IS DARWIN RIGHT? which it was considerably warmer, something Hke that of Southern Africa. The cold period, we have good reason to believe, was the glacial period, and the warm period was pre-glacial, or pliocene tertiary, before the winter of the ages came on. In caves of France, Belgium, and Great Britain, have been found in great abundance implements of stone and bone, associated with the remains of various arctic ani- mals, showing us that man must have lived in the heart of Belgium and France a life very similar to that of the Esquimaux, surrounded as he was by similar conditions to those that surround them ; while in the same countries we find abundant evidence of his occupation of those lands during the previous warmer time, when the hippo- potamus bathed in the Tees and the Humber, when gigantic elephants wandered through the woods of France and England, when lions lurked in their caves, and various species of the rhinoceros wallowed in their pools. From Mr. Pengelly's careful study of the formation of stalagmite in Kent's Cave in Devonshire, England, he calculates for the formation of five feet of it, which cov- ers up implements that were deposited by man, and the bones of extinct animals, no less a period than three hundred thousand years.^ This may be an extravagant ' Lecture of William Pengelly, F.R.S., on the time that has elapsed since the era of the cave-men of Devonshire. OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 87 estimate ; but the stalagmite covering represents but a small portion of the period of man's occupancy of the South of England, as presented in this cave. I have seen the beds of gravel in the neighborhood of Abbe- ville, from which M. de Perthes obtained so many flint weapons (Fig. 32), in connection with the remains of the Fig. 32. — Spear of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age, from the gravel-beds of Abbeville, France. (Original.) elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, &c. ; and I have no doubt that those weapons lay on the banks of the Somme during the pre-glacial time, as I have seen innumerable chert weapons lying on the banks of American streams, and that they, when the ice suddenly melted that lay over the country to the north during the glacial period, were swept by the waters of the swollen river into the old bed of the stream, now the gravel deposit, where they are discovered at the present time. I think no geologist can place the commencement of the glacial period nearer to our own time than a hundred thousand years, and then 88 /S DARWIN RIGHT? he must tliink there is a strong probabiHty of its being much more remote. Still more ancient must be the remains of man, found in pliocene beds of California. Professor J. D. Whitney, in a lecture delivered in Cambridge, Mass., thus refers to the most ancient human remains known to us at the present time : " During the pHocene, California and Ore gon became the theatre of the most tremendous volcanic activity that has devastated the surface of the globe. The valleys of the rivers in the Sierra were filled, and much of the country, particularly toward the north of California, was entirely buried in lava and ashes. Since then the rivers, seeking new channels, have made for themselves deep canons, leaving their old beds deeply buried under the lava. These old buried river-gravels are very rich in gold, and extensive tunnelling into the sides of the mountains and under the old lavas has been done. In one of these old river-bottoms, under the solid basalt of Table Mountain, many relics of human art have been obtained." In 1866 a skull was found on Bald Mountain, near Angels, in Calaveras County, one hundred and thirty feet from the surface, under four beds of lava, and in close proximity to a petrified tree. " The age of these deposits under the lavas is known to be pliocene, on account of the remains of the contem- poraneously buried flora and fauna, which were almost totally unlike the flora and fauna of California at the OR, THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 89 present time. That the skull was found in these old, intact, cemented gravels, has been abundandy proved by evidence that cannot be gainsaid. At the time it came into the speaker's hands, the skull was still embedded in a great measure in its originally gravelly matrix. ... In and about the skull were found other human bones, "^^^H including some that must ^^^- 33- — Calaveras County Skull. Care- fully drawn from a photograph. have belonged to an in- fant." (Fig. ^2>-) When lecturing at Sonora, near where the skull was found, I visited the spot, and talked with men who were conversant with the facts regarding its discovery, and became satisfied that there is no reasonable doubt of its genuineness. We only need to glance at the position of the skull (Fig. 34), and learn the facts regarding the age of the beds that lie above it, to learn that man's age upon this planet is immense. Professor Whitney sums up the facts in connection with the discovery of human remains and relics in ancient Californian deposits, in language of which the following is a portion : " There is a large body of evidence, the strength of which it is impossible to deny, which seems to prove that man existed in Califor- IS DARWIN RIGHT? 1. I 4 7 8 % 10 nia previous to the cessation of volcanic activity in the Sierra Nevada, to the epoch of the greatest extension of the glaciers in that region, and to the erosion of the pres- ent river canons and valleys, at a time when the animal and vegetable creations differed en- tirely from what they now are, and when the topographical features of the State were ex- tremely unlike those exhibited by the present surface." ^ Man in California saw a lava stream flow for forty miles down the bed of the old Stanislaus River ; and we now see that lava stream, in consequence of the wearing- down of the surrounding rocks, a mountain, known as the Table Mountain. "There has been, therefore," says Whitney, " an n Ir ■ .;' .•.-.•.*.■--.. .,-.-. ■*^^J\^,§^^^^^