14 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Nov. 1, 1885. 



embracing cosmic pliilosophy. For whatever lies -witbin 

 the phenomenal, the seen or felt, and therefore within the 

 sphere of observation, experiment, and comparison, 

 whether galaxy which only the telescope makes known, or 

 monad whose existence only the microscope reveals, is 

 subject-matter of enquiry, both as to its becoming and 

 its relation to the totality of things. It is this more general 

 consjiectus of the theory of Evolution which it will be 

 the endeavour of the present series of papers to give 

 in clear and, as far as possible, simple words. 



Before passing to a detailed exposition, of that theory, 

 it is necessary to state as briefly, yet as completely as 

 maj' be, the problem which, in the judgment of evei-y 

 scientist of repute, it has solved. This involves setting 

 down certain general facts which every school-boy is, 

 theoretically, supposed to know, but which people whose 

 schooldays are long past have, practically, forgotten. 

 That is to say, such matters as the stuff of which all 

 things are made, its combinations and affinities : the 

 relation, likeness, and unlikeness between the stellar and 

 solar systems ; between the earth nnd its fellow planet.s, 

 large and small ; the varied forms and conditions of past 

 and present life, and the relation between these and the 

 inorganic or non-living ; the causes vi changes now 

 occurring, and which interpret changes that have 

 occurred ; these must, one and all, be described as 

 constituting the question to which the answer longed-for, 

 here and there well-nigh grasped, by many kings and 

 prophets of science " who died withotit the sight," has 

 been given to this generation. 



Such statement may not be useless in itself, if it helps 

 to create or to awaken in the mind that feeling of an 

 underlying and indivisible unity between the remote and 

 near, the past and present, the living and non-living, 

 which is apt to lie dormant when things in chemical or 

 vital relation are treated as separate, or as difEering in 

 kind. Astronomer or chemist, geologist or paloeontolo- 

 gist, psychologist or physiologist, botanist or zoologist, 

 we are all members one of another, and none can say to 

 his fellow, "I have no need of thee." The astronomer 

 captures the truant light from the stars, and the chemist, 

 decomposing it, compels from it the secret of their 

 structure, even the direction in which they travel. The 

 geologist rives the strata asunder, and discloses their 

 succession and contents ; the palaeontologist, disengaging 

 the fossils imbedded in them, or altogether composing 

 them, finds the ancestral forms of living species and the 

 missing links in the unbroken chain of life. The psy- 

 chologist may analyse and catalogue the operations of 

 the mind, but the key to understanding them lies in the 

 study of brain-structure and function, of which the 

 physiologist is master ; while the botanist and zoologist 

 alike miss the significance of the phenomena of plant and 

 animal life, if these are treated as separate departments 

 of biology. Truly, as Emerson says, "the day of daj'S, 

 the great day of the feast of life, is that in which the 

 inward eye opens to the unity in things.' 



Yet must we exclaim with the chorus in the "Antig(jne,'' 

 and in these days with a deeper meaning, "Who can 

 survey the whole field of knowledge ? Who can grasp 

 the clues, and then thread the labyrinth ? " For the 

 material is so wide-ranging and varied that in these 

 papers only the barest outline is possible, and in dealing 

 whether with star or species, the one must represent the 

 whole ; the individual the class. Our knowledge will, 

 however, thereby advance from the particttlar to the 

 general, and be enlarged from a mere storage of facts to 

 an all-inclusive philosophy of things ; so that although 

 we may not escape errors of detail, we shall be saved by 



true ajjpreheusion of the itniversal. In illustration of 

 this, we know that all mammals breathe through lungs, 

 have four-chambered hearts, and not less than three 

 bones supporting the tympanum or dnmt of the ear. 

 Withottt burdening our memories with the long list of 

 mammalia, we include in the concepti(m "mammal " all 

 that is common to man, ajje, whale, lic, never doubting 

 that if a new species of mammal were f(mnd it would 

 have the foregoing features. 



The matter to be described must not be confused by 

 the intrusion ef either the historical or the hypothetical. 

 As far as lies within the writers power, only the "things 

 commonly believed among us," concerning which the 

 doubting Thomases can have sight or touch, will be set 

 down. But there can be no detour, no ttxrning to the 

 right hand or to the left, to tell what theories this or 

 that philosopher of olden or newer time held about the 

 heavens and the earth and the elements ; neither what 

 this or that ancient manuscript or tablet records in 

 explanation of their origin ; for to refer to such here 

 would be to obscure their value and interest as records of 

 theories which are now discredited, and to invest them 

 with a false importance. Such references to obsolete 

 speculations would be still more confusing when the 

 mechanical explanation to be given of the general and 

 simpler phenomena of the lifeless is extended to the 

 special and complex phenomena of the living, and more 

 particularly to those of the faculties and operations of 

 mind in the lower animals and in man, the highest 

 animal. From the moneron, a minute structureless 

 mass of slime, to shapely man with the complex appa- 

 ratus of his mental operations — without pause wherein 

 caprice or chance could enter to disturb the seqttenee. 

 But caprice and chance are not : the nebulous stuff of 

 which the universe is the product held latent within its 

 diffused vapours, not only the chemical elements of which 

 the dry land and the waters are built, not only the 

 life-germs from which the boundless varieties of ]ilan<s 

 and animals have descended, or ascended, but aught else 

 that, through work of man for good or ill, has composed 

 the warp and woof of this world's strange, eventful story. 



Although mitch is, however, explained by evolution, 

 and although no limitations can be recognised within the 

 sphere of the phenomenal, there remains much more than 

 is dreamt of in our jjhilosophy unexplained, arotmd the 

 impenetrable marge of which imagination, and the sense 

 of mystery that feeds it, can play. " Positive knowledge 

 does not, and never can, fill the whole region of jjossible 

 thought. At the uttermost reach of discovery there 

 arises, and must ever arise, the question — What lies 

 beyond ? " * The whence of the nebula and its potential 

 life remains a mystery to overawe and baffle us. The 

 beginnings of the crj^stal are no less unknown and un- 

 discoverable than the beginnings of the cell ; the ultimate 

 causes which lock the atoms of the one in angtilar em- 

 brace, and which quicken with pulsating life the globules 

 of the other, He beyond our ken, beyond the field ('f 

 scientific inquiry. And if of the beginnings nothing can 

 be known, so is it with the things themselves, and which 

 affect us by their colotir, their weight, and movement. 

 They remain the unknown cause of sensations which are 

 themselves, as Helmholtz says, and as Descartes said two 

 centuries before him, only sijmboh of the objects of the 

 external world, corresponding to them only in some sitch 

 way as written characters or articulate words to the 

 things which they denote. There is no greenness in the 

 grass ; there is no redness in the rose ; there is no 



* I^rst Princijtles, p. 16 (3rd Ed.). 



