zoo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been felt. " Nobody thinks," says Voltaire, " of giving an immortal soul 

 to a flea ; why should you give one any the more to an elephant, or a 

 monkey, or my Champagne valet, or a village steward, who has a trifle 

 more instinct than my valet ? " The difficulty of drawing the line is 

 enhanced to the imagination when we assume that the flea is the re- 

 mote ancestor of the village steward, and believe that one has melted 

 by imperceptible degrees into the other. The orthodox may be ex- 

 cused for trembling when they see that central article of their faith 

 assailed, and are in danger of being deprived of the great consolations 

 of their religion heaven and hell. It would be preposterous to at- 

 tempt to argue so vast a question in our space. This much, however, 

 may perhaps be said without offence : Whatever reasons may be drawn 

 from our consciousness for the belief that man is not merely a cunning 

 bit of chemistry a product of so much oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon 

 must remain in full force. We may doubt how far the belief ever 

 rested on metaphysical arguments, and, indeed, it seems to be the or- 

 thodox opinion that it must be accepted on the strength of revelation. 

 It would therefore only be affected so far as Darwinism and the meth- 

 ods to which it gives rise tend to explain the origin and growth of a 

 faith to which all believers cling so fondly. And, whatever the result 

 may be, it is at least natural to suppose that it would rather tend to 

 modify than to destroy the belief, to set bounds to the dogmatic con- 

 fidence with which we have ventured to define the nature of the soul 

 than to uproot our belief in its existence. After all, it would not be a 

 very terrible result if we should be driven to the conclusion that some 

 kind of rudimentary soul may be found even in the lower animals. 

 The Spectator, which is a very amiable and reasonably orthodox jour- 

 nal, has lately been asking whether we have any excuse for refusing 

 immortality to well-conducted cats, or to that admirable and fortu- 

 nately authentic dog which watched for ten years upon its master's 

 grave. Poor beast ! we should be willing to hope that he has found 

 admission to the equal sky; but without jesting on so awful a subject, 

 or venturing into mysteries where the boldest metaphysician walks 

 with uncertain tread, we would simply say that we can see no reason 

 why our new conceptions of the facts assuming that they establish 

 themselves should not be accommodated to a spiritual form of belief. 

 After all, it will be hard to convince men that because thought and 

 feeling arise from certain combinations of matter, therefore they are 

 made of matter. But we pause at the threshold of such sjieculations. 

 There is, however, one other thing to be said, and it may be said 

 plainly and without irreverence. After all, why is the 'belief in im- 

 mortality so essential to the happiness of mankind ? It is not because 

 we, as virtuous people, think it necessary that a place should be pro- 

 vided where the virtuous may receive an interminable pension for their 

 good deeds, and the bad be tormented to the end of time. Some 

 people, it is true, ask for a kind of penal settlement in another world, 



