148 Contemporary Evolution. 



imperfect intellectual development, often remain behind 

 even the higher brutes. This is the case, not only with 

 the lower, but also with many individuals of the highest 

 order of human beings, and even with men whose wits we 

 might have expected to find sharpened by the mass of 

 their acquired knowledge. Especially interesting, in this 

 relation, are the numerous utterances of anti-evolutionists, 

 which often display in an astounding manner a want of 

 aptitude for the clear and sharp formation and association 

 of ideas ; by which want they come to rank decidedly 

 beneath the more intelligent dogs, horses, and elephants. 

 For these animals, for the most part, are not hemmed in 

 by Alpine summits of dogmas and prejudices, which lead 

 the thought of most men, from youth upwards, into devious 

 bye-paths. Thus we not unfrequently find in such animals 

 more just and natural judgments than we find in many 

 men, especially in men of letters." 



This (temporary and accidental) association of certain 

 metaphysical teaching with physics,* must naturally tend 



* An instructive instance occurred not long ago, on the part of one of 

 our leading thinkers, of the assumption that a protest against such 

 association must necessarily be unscientific. Mr. Gladstone, in an 

 address given at Liverpool, had remarked : " Upon the ground of what 

 is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation ; in 

 the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing 

 the world." Upon this he was taxed by Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 (" Study of Sociology" p. 393) as " conspicuously making himself 

 the exponent of the anti-scientific view," as regarding as "irre- 

 ligious any explanation of nature which dispenses with immediate 





