CHAP. VI.] MAN. 187 



render geometry and arithmetic possible,&quot; as also respecting 

 the non-bestial origin of moral perception.* 



Yet more, he considers man as not only placed &quot; apart, 

 as the head and culminating point of the grand series of 

 organic nature, but as in some degree a new and distinct 

 order of being.&quot; . . . &quot; When the first rude spear was formed 

 to assist in the chase ; when fire was first used to cook his 

 food ; when the first seed was sown or shoot planted, a grand 

 revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all 

 the previous ages of the earth s history has had no parallel, 

 for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject 

 to change with the changing universe, a being who was in 

 some degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to 

 control and regulate her action, and could keep himself in 

 harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance 

 in mind.&quot; 



It remains to say a few words respecting the results of our 

 perception of our own moral freedom on the Free-wm. 

 question of our origin. 



Mr. Darwin naturally makes no attempt to account for the 

 origin of man s free-will (perhaps the most wonderful quality 

 he possesses) ; and I am confident that it is fundamentally 

 impossible to explain this power of ours without granting 

 what is fatal to his hypothesis of man s essential bestiality. 

 On this subject I may, with advantage, quote some remarks 

 by Mr. Eichard Holt Hutton : f 



&quot; Here seems the right point to note, that neither the scientific prin 

 ciple of what is called the correlation of forces/ nor the Darwinian 

 law of selection, seems to throw the smallest glimpse of light on the 

 origin of human free-will, and that sense of responsibility of which 

 free-will is the absolute condition. As for the Darwinian law, it is 

 simply inconceivable, supposing you deny free-will to the lower types 

 of organic beings, out of which, on his conception, the higher species 

 are gradually elaborated by natural selection, that an accidental varia 

 tion should introduce free-will It is inconceivable that any 



law of transmission should introduce an element of freedom which was 



* Natural Selection, pp. 351, 352. 

 t Essays, vol. i. pp. 64-67. 



