7 o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for the chimeras which we had hest not seek to acquire. But Prof. 

 Agassiz does not even suggest any other process for our acceptance. 

 He simply retreats upon his empty phrases, " creative will," the "free 

 workings of an intelligent mind," and so on. Now, in his second 

 course of lectures, I hope he will proceed to tell us, not necessarily how 

 " creative will " actually operated in bringing forth a new species, but 

 how it may conceivably have operated, save through the process of 

 physical generation, which we know. In his " Essay on Classifica- 

 tion," I remember a passage in which he rightly rejects the notion that 

 any species has arisen from a single pair of parents, and propounds the 

 formula : " Pines have originated in forests, heaths in heather, grasses 

 in prairies, bees in hives, herrings in shoals, buffaloes in herds, men in 

 nations." Now, when Prof. Agassiz asserts that men originated in 

 nations, by some other process than that of physical generation, what 

 does he mean ? Does he mean that men dropped down from the sky ? 

 Does he mean that the untold millions of organic particles which make 

 up a man all rushed together from the four quarters of the compass, 

 and proceeded, spontaneously or by virtue of some divine sorcery, to 

 aggregate themselves into the infinitely complex organs and tissues 

 of the human body, with all their wondrous and well-defined apti- 

 tudes ? It is time that this question should be faced, by Prof. Agassiz 

 and those who agree with him, without further shirking. Instead of 

 grandiloquent phrases about the " free action of an intelligent mind," 

 let us have something like a candid suggestion of some process, other 

 than that of physical generation, by which a creature like man can 

 even be imagined to have come into existence. When the time comes 

 for answering this question, we shall find that even Prof. Agassiz 

 is utterly dumb and helpless. The sonorous phrase " special creation," 

 in which he has so long taken refuge, is nothing but a synthesis of 

 vocal sounds which covers and, to some minds, conceals a thoroughly 

 idiotic absence of sense or significance. To say that " Abracadabra 

 is not a genial corkscrew," is to make a statement quite as full of mean- 

 ing as the statement that species have originated by " special crea- 

 tion." 



The purely theological (or theologico-metaphysical and at all 

 events unscientific) character of Prof. Agassiz's objections to the de- 

 velopment theory is sufficiently shown by the fact that, in the fore- 

 going paragraphs, I have considered whatever of any account there is 

 in his lectures which can be regarded as an objection. Arguments 

 against the development theory such objections cannot be called : they 

 are, at their very best, nothing but expressions of fear and dislike. 

 The only remark which I have been able to find, worthy of being 

 dignified as an argument, is the following : " We see that fishes are 

 lowest, that reptiles are higher, that birds have a superior organization 

 to both, and that mammals, with man at their head, are highest. The 

 phases of development which a quadruped undergoes, in his embryonic 



