SC1KNCE AND MAN. 617 
cries and denunciations which rang discordant through the 
land for some years after the publication of Mr. Darwin's 
" Origin of Species." Well, the world even the clerical 
world has for the most part settled down in the belief 
that Mr. Darwin's book simply reflects the truth of nature: 
that we who are now " foremost in the files of time" have 
come to the front through almost endless stages of pro- 
motion from lower to higher forms of life. 
If to any one of us were given the privilege of looking 
back through the aeons across which life has crept toward 
its present outcome, his vision, according to Darwin, 
would ultimately reach a point when the progenitors of 
this assembly could not be called human. From that 
humble society, through the interaction of its members 
and the storing up of their best qualities, a better one 
emerged; from this again a better still; until at length, by 
the integration of infinitesimals through ages of amelio- 
ration, we came to be what we are to-day. We of this 
generation had no conscious share in the production of 
this grand and beneficent result. Any and every gener- 
ation which preceded us had just as little share. The 
favored organisms whose garnered excellence constitutes 
our present store owed their advantages, first, to what we 
in our ignorance are obliged to call " accidental variation; " 
and, secondly, to a law of heredity in the passing of which 
our suffrages were not collected. With characteristic 
felicity and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts this ques- 
tion into the free air of poetry, but not out of the atmos- 
phere of truth, when he ascribes the process of amel- 
ioration to " a power not ourselves which makes for 
righteousness." If, then, our organisms, with all their 
tendencies and capacities, are given to us without our 
being consulted; and if, while capable of acting within 
certain limits in accordance with our wishes, we are not 
masters of the circumstances in which motives and wishes 
originate; if, finally our motives and wishes determine our 
actions in what sense can these actions be said to be the 
result of free-will? 
Here, again, we are confronted with the question of 
moral responsibility, which, as it has been much talked of 
lately, it is desirable to meet. With the view of removing 
the fear of our falling back into the condition of "the ape 
and tiger," so sedulously excited by certain writers, I 
