1875.] The Question of Organic Evolution. 195 
a balance between the good and ill deeds of a species, and 
shall very often find the latter preponderate. Even the 
Rev. J. G. Wood confesses himself unable to ‘‘make out 
a case’ in favour of the earwig. If we attempt to prove all 
species beneficial to the universe at large, our difficulties 
become still greater. But the new Natural History solves 
these enigmas. It shows us that an animal exists, not 
because it is beneficial to man, or because it is an integral 
and necessary, though minute, part of some vast mechanism, 
but because it is in harmony with the conditions in which it 
is placed. The house-fly lives and multiplies, neither to 
Scavenge our dwellings, nor to propagate disease by con- 
veying putrescent and morbific matter to our food and our 
persons, but because it so far has come off victorious in the 
struggle for existence. The burying-beetle, which is a far 
better scavenger, and which does not distribute zymotic 
poisons, is rare, and becomes rarer, because the conditions 
under which it can multiply are less easily met with. 
Another doétrine of the old school, now in the course of 
rapid decomposition, is that the fauna and flora of every 
district are perfectly adapted to the climate, soil, and 
other conditions of that district. So far is this view from 
according with facts, that we very often find a foreign plant 
or animal, on introduétion into a country, flourish with such 
luxuriance as to interfere with, and even extirpate, certain 
native species. That such should be the case is perfectly 
conceivable to a Darwinian, and as perfectly inconceivable 
to the opponents of the doctrine of Evolution. 
Professor Schmidt is one of the most consistent and 
thorough-going of his school. Like Messrs. Darwin and 
Haeckel, but unlike Messrs. Wallace, Henslow, Murphy, &c., 
he does not stop short at the anthropoid apes, but embraces 
man also in his deductions. But he differs from Darwin at 
the opposite end of the series—the first beginning of life. 
Here we would wish, without advocating, briefly to expound 
his views. He quotes from Du Bois-Reymond this passage: 
“It is once for all incomprehensible how, to a mass of 
molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, 
and so on, it can be otherwise than indifferent how they lie 
or move ; here, therefore, is the other limit to the knowledge 
of natural science—the former limit being the incompre- 
hensibility of matter and motion. Whether the two limits 
to natural science are not, perchance, identical, it is, 
moreover, impossible to determine.” Professor Schmidt 
then adds: ‘‘ In these last words the possibility is indicated 
that consciousness may be an attribute of matter, or may 
