MOZLEY ON EVOLUTION. 7 6 7 



and occupying a sphere of vital activity immeasurably superior to the 

 dull existence passed by its four-gilled ancestors on the ocean-bed. 

 The shell degenerates more and more as the cuttle-fish race rises on its 

 own branch of the animal tree. Development in numbers succeeds 

 individual advance. The cephalopod tribes of to-day dawn fuller and 

 fuller as the Tertiary period progresses. Thus the fullness of cuttle- 

 fish life to-day, exhibited in all its strange weirdness, is interwoven, 

 like the lines of human history itself, with the warp and woof of the 

 past. And not the least important clew to the history of that past is 

 found in the apparently insignificant " shell " we have discussed ; since 

 in its mere degeneracy it leads us backward in an instructive glance to 

 those early times when the chief branches on life's tree had not reached 

 their full fruition, and to the days when the world itself was young. 







MOZLEY ON EVOLUTION. 



By HEEBEET SPENCEB. 



IN the "Reminiscences, chiefly of Oriel College," by the Rev. 

 Thomas Mozley, there occurs on page 1-16, vol. i, the following 

 passage : 



I had indulged from my boyhood in a Darwinian dream of moral philosophy, 

 derived in the first instance from one of my early instructors. This was Mr. 

 George Spencer, [honorary] Secretary of the Derby Philosophical Association, 

 founded by Dr. Darwin,* and father of Mr. Herbert Spencer. My dream had a 

 certain family resemblance to the " System of Philosophy " bearing that writer's 

 name. There was an important and saving difference between the two systems, 

 between that which never saw the light, and perished before it was born, with- 

 out even coming to wither like grass on the house-tops, and that other imposing 

 system which occupies several yards of shelf in most public libraries. The latter 

 makes the world of life, as we see, and take part in it, the present outcome of a 

 continual outcoming from atoms, lichens, and vegetables, bound by the necessi- 

 ties of existence to mutual relations, up to or down to brutes, savages, ladies and 

 gentlemen, inheriting various opinions, maxims, and superstitions. The brother 

 and elder philosophy, for such it was, that is mine, saved itself from birth by its 

 palpable inconsistency, for it retained a divine original and some other incon- 

 gruous elements. In particular, instead of rating the patriarchal stage hardly 

 above the brute, it assigned to that state of society a heavenly source, and de- 

 scribed it as rather a model for English country gentlemen that is, upon the 

 whole,' and with certain reservations. 



As I find, by inquiring of those who have read it, this passage 

 leaves the impression that the doctrines set forth in the " System of 



* It was more than a dozen years after Dr. Darwin's death in 1802 when my father 

 became honorary secretary. I believe my father (who was twelve years old when Dr. 

 Darwin died) never sawMiim, and, so far as I know, knew nothing of bis ideas. 



