318 DARWINIANISM. 



opposite emotional state to express itself by muscular 

 relaxation. But there may be a difficulty in deciding 

 which state shall be first, the thetic or the antithetic. 

 Mr. Darwin makes the former first, and the latter only 

 secondary and a consequent. But surely it is as natural 

 for a dog to sleep as to fight, quite as natural for him 

 to lie down as to stand up ; and so, consequently, quite 

 as reasonable to make the relaxed muscles thetic to the 

 contracted ones, as these thetic to those. Or in all 

 these cases have we not just such and such action 

 merely natural to just such and such an animal ? 

 Surely it is a strange mania that a man, because of 

 natural selection, shall not be able to take a simple fact 

 simply as it is. Must all be secondary and between 

 nothing at first hand and for itself ? Suppose we invent 

 a story about why the dog puts his tail down ! It would 

 be quite as easy as why he puts it up. 



And suppose we do accept said remote progenitor as 

 the true First, and all as mere habit between, where are 

 we to find him how far are we to go back for him ? 

 To say nothing of the " warm little pond " now, Mr. 

 Darwin certainly goes back himself to " four or .five 

 primordial forms" or even a "single prototype" (ii. 

 329); but single prototype, or any one primordial form, 

 he never shows us either. Still, either, be it form, be 

 it prototype, is, by the very term, an organism. But an 

 organism has, even as an organism, a structure proper 

 to it, and a life ; and as, whenever it was, it was such, 

 an express entity and not a null, it must originally have 

 had an external manifestation, an expression, en rapport 

 with this structure, en rapport with this life. Such 

 manifestation, such expression, such direct natural 

 attitude, is assumed as at once intelligible then, what 

 has happened that it has lost its right to be at once 

 intelligible now? Mr. Darwin can allow, and does 



