February 1, 188S.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE * 



89 



men, from their forest domain to regions less densely 

 ■wooded, and where they would soon be driven to seek 

 shelter from the weather and from their enemies in caves, or 

 to dig out sheltering homes in such places as they found 

 suitable. To such a race, so circumstanced, three things 

 would be chiefly necessary for safety — (1) the development 

 of such reasoning powers as so advanced a race of apes may 

 be fairly supposed to have possessed, since even the apes 

 which have survived to our time, chiefly through mere 

 brute strength, possess some reasoning power; (2) the 

 development of the habit of using such weapons of defence 

 as stones and sticks, which would involve a tendency not so 

 much to the bipedal as to the bimanous condition ; and 

 (3) the development of such means of communication 

 among themselves as would enable tliem to act in concert 

 against their enemies, to give warning of the foe's approach, 

 to give the signal of attack upon him, and when necessary 

 to give suitable note of preparation for propeily manreuvred 

 retreat. 



These necessities of a race so circumstanced are precisely 

 such as the Darwinian theory regards as essential for the 

 development of the i-equired qualities. Those among the 

 race who were dullest of apprehension, or least ready to 

 make up by the use of sticks and stones for their naturally 

 defenceless condition, or least prepared to make or to under- 

 stand signals, vocal or otherwise, would inevitably fall 

 victims in greater numbers to the attacks of their various 

 enemies than those who were quick to reason, ready with 

 their hands, and apt at signalling. Probably even the 

 influence of weather would tend to destroy more of those 

 who were inferior in the qualities considered than of those 

 who excelled in them. 



The dying out of the inferior in greater numbers would 

 neces-sarily lead to the constant development of these 

 (|ualities in higher and higher degree — natural selection 

 operating as certainly in this respect as artificial selection, 

 though more slow])-.* 



That reasoning powers far in advance of those possessed 

 by the most intelligent apes of to-day might be thus 

 developed by the continual selection of the cleverer members 

 of a family and the dying out (relatively) of the less apt and 

 ingenious, can scarcely be doubted when we consider how 

 under artificial selection the intelligence of many classes of 

 animals has been increased. That readiness in the use of 

 the hands and a gradually increasing aptitude for going on 

 two feet would also be developed, corresponds, of course, 

 with what we know even of those apes which have had 

 comparatively small occasion for handiness in the use of 

 weapons or missiles. 



Professor Midler and others deny the possibility of any 

 sort of language being develo])ed from such systems of 

 signalling and intercommunication as would be necessary 

 among a race of apes circumstanced as we have supposed. 

 Yet when met by the ev-idence that the man of Neanderthal 

 was almost certainly mute. Professor Miiller admits that 

 non-speaking men developed into men with the power of 

 speech ; and no difficulties in the problem of the develop- 

 ment of speech from non-speaking animals on their way to 

 fully speaking men are greater that we recognise when we 

 consider the development of man as he is to-day from the 



* Professor Muller strangely enough speaks of " natural selection " 

 as a mere name, nowhere inquiring whether the sorting out of 

 certain members of a race indicated in the Darwinian theory 

 actually takes place or not, but entering into a preposterous argu- 

 ment about the word " selection " implying reasoning. It would be 

 as reasonable, when a physicist speaks of the selective absorption of 

 the spectroscope, to inquire not into the facts presented for con- 

 sideration, but into the question whether a spectroscope can 

 properly be said to select, which involves reason. 



unspeaking men of La Naulette. Observe, also, that the 

 non-speaking ape did not, it appears, develop into speaking 

 man, but into a mute creature lower than the lowest savage 

 of our own time. The development of speech came after 

 the development of man from the ape. 



Professor Muller 's argument that apes do not now develop 

 speech has, then, no weight whatever, since no race of apes 

 seems ever to have developed into speaking man, but only 

 into a race of mute savages, such as the men of Neanderthal. 

 Besides, the most advanced apes of to-da)' have probably 

 degenerated in intelligence from their ancestry, while even 

 those their more intelligent and less brutal ancestry were 

 less intelligent and more brutal than the contemporary 

 ancestrv of man. 



METEORIC COSMOGONY. 



HE following letter appeared in the Times of 

 December 22 : — 



I am not on my own account apt to be 

 concerned by questions of priority, which 

 indeed seem to me always somewhat puerile; 

 but there is so much in the general theory 

 advanced in the Times of November 18 as 

 Mr. Lockyer's which has been for )-ears the common pro- 

 perty of science, that I must not allow my own accidental 

 connection with a portion of the subject to prevent me from 

 calling attention to the just claims of others. 



The researches of Mayer, Thomson (Sir William), Helm- 

 holtz, and others involve (implicitly, if not, as in some cases, 

 explicitly) the theory of the formation of systems like our 

 solar system by processes of meteoric aggregation. I pointed 

 this out in the preface to the first edition of my " Other 

 Worlds," dated Alay 1870, noticing at the same time, I 

 think fairly, that the line of reasoning followed in the 

 chapter on " Comets and Meteors " in that work is new. (Five 

 years before, in the preface to my " Saturn and its System," 

 I had touched on the processes of aggregation b}' which, as 

 distinguished from the processes of simple condensation 

 imagined by Laplace, the solar system appears to have been 

 formed.) In particular, I there showed that all the 

 peculiarities of arrangement within the solar system find an 

 explanation in the meteoric theory, while they are left 

 absolute!}' unexplained by the nebular hyjiothesis. 



But in reality the meteoric theory can only be accepted as 

 based on multitudinous researches, astronomical, physical, 

 and chemical, such as Mayer, Tliomson (Sir William), 

 Sorby, Graham, Dewar, Daubree, Meunier, Tschermak, 

 Helmholtz, Wright, and Newton (both of Yale College), 

 and others have made, combined witti spectroscopic re- 

 searches like those of Secchi, Miller, lluggins, Viigel, and 

 others. Doubtless in the paper read before the Royal 

 Society Mr. Lockyer must have made some important con- 

 tribution to one or other of these departments of research. 

 In the voluminous report, however, which appears in the 

 Times for November 18 I find only as novel the announce- 

 ment that meteorites already known to contain the same 

 elements as the sun and the stars can by suitable selection 

 be made to give similar spectra. This, of course, was 

 antecedently certain. 



It is, however, satisfactory to find the theory of meteoric 

 aggregation supported as warmly by Mr. Lockyer as the 

 theory of Professor Clarke, of Cincinnati, respecting the 

 compound nature of the so-called elements. Such support 

 aflbrds strong evidence that the theory is growing in public 

 favour, as well as in the approval of men of science. 

 Believe me, faithfully yours, 



IvICHARL) A. PrOCTOB. 



Corona Lodge, Orange Lake, Florida : Dec. 9. 



