BG1KNOE 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 asons 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 b;ick into the condition of " the ape 

 and tigiM-," so sedulously excited by certain writers, I 



