90 ZOOLOGY 



behaviour of the higher animals there are elements also which 

 are not explicable on any purely materialistic theory, but if 

 this be so the best way to define them will be to push 

 materialistic explanation as far as ever it will go, so that its 

 limits will be clearly seen. Whether the non-material element 

 in man can survive the body or not is a question of enormous 

 interest, but one to which, naturally, zoology can give no 

 answer ; but if ever a satisfactoiy answer to it be found, it will 

 only be as the result of the same kind of slow, patient, perse- 

 vering research as that by which the natural sciences have 

 been built up such research as, amid much discouragement, 

 is being undertaken by Sir Oliver Lodge and his friends. In 

 the meantime, however, the doctrine of evolution with its con- 

 sequence, the kinship of man and animals, can throw welcome 

 light on some old moral problems. One of these is the nature 

 and origin of evil. Evil in man may be briefly defined as 

 want of self-control and want of subordination to law, i.e. 

 to tribal morality. Now the organ of self-control is the brain, 

 especially the frontal portion of it. This part has been slowly 

 developed through thousands of years by natural selection. 

 Savage tribes who are the last remnants of primitive types 

 of man have less self-control than civilised man. Tribal 

 morality or subordination to law is also a quality which has 

 been slowly and painfully evolved. Now in other types of 

 animals in which an important organ has been the dominating 

 factor in evolution, we find that races are sometimes de- 

 veloped in which this organ is degenerate. At every step 

 of the upward progress some step back. Thus we find 

 wingless insects, toothless quadrupeds, &c. Evil is therefore 

 the reversion to a previous state of evolution, and the so-called 

 original wickedness in children is a repetition of an ancestral 

 stage of the race as truly a larval stage as the tadpole stage 

 of the frog. 



Huxley has compared Life to a game of chess in which all 

 must take part, but in which the Player of the other side is hidden 

 from us. This Player, he says, never forgives offences, but 

 exacts the full penalty for each. The final and deepest object 

 of zoological science is to learn some, at least, of the rules of 

 the game. 



