WALLA CE ON "DARWINISM." 85 



that toads and frogs should find it necessary to pass through the 

 fish-like life of tadpoles — this class of facts may well puzzle the 

 thinking mind ; but the advantage of them is that they are facts ; 

 no one can dispute them ; and taking our stand upon them we 

 may guess that the processes of Nature are analogous, in cases in 

 which we can not distinctly prove that they are so. May it not 

 be, then, that the Eocene period of creation presented a condition 

 of things out of which a higher condition was evolved, not simply 

 by the perpetuation of advantageous variations, but much more 

 by virtue of an internal principle of growth, similar to, or at least 

 comparable with, the principle which develops the foetus or which 

 transforms tadpoles and caterpillars ? Adopting this view, we 

 should have in both cases a limit toward which transformations 

 tended ; as the butterfly is the ultimate form of the caterpillar, 

 and the caterpillar was the forerunner and necessary ancestor of 

 the butterfly, so equus may perhaps be regarded as the ultimate 

 form of orohippus, and orohippus as the forerunner and necessary 

 ancestor of equus. At all events, this view of the facts seems to 

 be tenable, and it is free from certain difficulties by which the 

 hypothesis of natural selection pure and simple is undoubtedly 

 beset. 



The question of growth, evolution, development, by an internal 

 power similar to, and comparable with, that which we see daily 

 and hourly at work all round about us, leads to the discussion of 

 another and very interesting question — namely, whether man can 

 perfectly be described as " derived from the lower animals." The 

 expression is Mr. Wallace's. He speaks of "man in his bodily 

 structure " as having been " derived from the lower animals, of 

 which he is the culminating development." * I venture to ques- 

 tion whether this is a correct statement of the facts of the case. I 

 am not venturing to throw doubt upon Mr. Wallace's scientific 

 deductions ; on the other hand, their correctness shall for the sake 

 of argument, if on no other ground, be fully granted ; all the 

 more readily in consideration of the important limitations of the 

 principle of natural selection made in the case of man, as already 

 noticed and discussed. What I venture to doubt is, whether the 

 process of human evolution, as accepted by Mr. Wallace, can be 

 rightly described by the terms which he applies to it. Certainly 

 there is something in the conception of such derivation from 

 which the feelings of most of us not unnaturally shrink, and from 

 which they would gladly be free, if freedom can be had consist- 

 ently with scientific truth. There is something in it of that " let- 

 ting the house of a brute to the soul of a man," of which Lord 

 Tennyson sings in his most recent volume. It may be worth 



* Page 454. 



