i 9 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or four thousand generations we shall get a man-monkey fully equal 

 in intelligence to the average Hottentot. Thence upward we cannot 

 deny the possibility of development without heterodoxy. In short, 

 by interpolating a sufficient number of terms we may form an ideal, 

 which, for any thing we can say, may be an actual series ending with 

 the man and beginning with the inferior animals, in which there shall 

 not be a single violent transition. The question whether reason is or 

 is not specially distinct from instinct is simply irrelevant. In one 

 case we must suppose that it begins by entering in homoeopathic 

 doses ; in the other, that it is simply the development of certain lower 

 faculties ; in either case the animal will shade into the human intellect 

 by degrees as imperceptible as those by which night changes into 

 dawn. Indeed, it is impossible to see why except from fear of 

 certain conclusions, which is not a logical ground for dissent the 

 possibility of a passage from brute to man should ever have been de- 

 nied on a priori grounds. Whether the theory is confirmed or con- 

 futed by observation is an entirely open question ; but it is strange 

 that it should be pronounced impossible when we are ready to admit 

 infinitely greater changes. If you can imagine a monkey to have 

 been developed from a sea-anemone, an animal from a plant, or living 

 from inorganic matter and none of these changes, however little 

 reason we have to believe in their actual occurrence, are supposed to 

 be obnoxious to any insurmountable objection a priori why can we 

 not admit that a monkey may possibly become a nian ? 



It is here that .we come upon the confusion already noticed. It re- 

 sults from mixing metaphysical inquiries about the what? with scien- 

 tific inquiries into the how? A man of science says (possibly he 

 makes a mistake, but that is not to the purpose), Mix such and such 

 elements under such and such conditions, and a living organism will 

 make its appearance. The theologian sometimes meets this statement 

 as if it were equivalent to an assertion that life is nothing but an ar- 

 rangement of matter. He has really said nothing of the kind: he 

 does not know what is the essence of life or of matter ; he has merely 

 to do with the order in which phenomena occur ; and has absolutely 

 no concern with the occult substratum in which they are supposed to 

 inhere. The utmost that he can ever say if he can ever say so much 

 would come to this : Bring together a set of the phenomena which 

 we call molecules, and there will result a series of the phenomena 

 which we call vital ; but what molecules are, or what life is, is a ques- 

 tion beyond his competence. Similarly, when he proceeds a step far 

 ther and traces the origin of our moral sense to some dumb instinct in 

 the animal world, he is not really speaking treason against the dignity 

 and importance of morality. Mr. Browning, in one of his poems, 

 speaks of some contemptible French author who explained the origin 

 of modesty by referring, as only a very free-speaking person could 

 refer, to the mode in which the sexual instinct operated upon savage 



