^'ov. 30, lb83.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



335 



fication that natural selection is probably not the only 

 agent in causing variations of species. 



No one can rise from the careful perusal of the first 

 eleven chapters of this book without feeling that the author 

 has succeeded in infusing into the mind of the reader a 

 deeper consciousness of the unity which underlies the most 

 varied phenomena, and in preparing him to accept the 

 doctrines of the evolution of tlie organic from the inorganic 

 " by the regular action of the unchangeable order of 

 Nature," and of the probable ultimate homogeneity or same- 

 ness of the inorganic elements of which the visible universe 

 is built up." 



Thus far all is clear and self-consistent, but when, in his 

 chapter on the " Course of Development on the Earth," Mr. 

 Kirby plunges us into theories of intermediate spirits 

 " guiding the operation of the ordinary laws of Nature,"* of 

 the pre-existence and successive metamorphoses of disem- 

 bodied spirits, to the existence of which all ages, he 

 remarks, have furnished " a vast amount of testimony " ;t 

 of the immortality of brutes and plants ; we are no longer 

 on the solid, but caught up into a sphere where we hear 

 language untranslatable. From the title of the book 

 itself, as from remarks scattered throughout, we gather 

 tliat the complexion of the author's mind is towards the 

 high matters just named ; that, in fact, they are the chief 

 occasion of his work being written, and the importance of 

 deciding on their admission or dismission must justify 

 reference to them in this notice. 



Whilst in the earlier part of his book Mr. Kirby admits 

 that man is no exception to the common structural type, 

 in the chapter under review he contends for an exceptional 

 mode of development. 



Wallace, in his essay on the Limits of Natural Selection, as ap- 

 plied to man, argues that we may trace in Nature, and especially 

 in the origin of man, the action of intelligences controlling the 

 action of natural law for definite ends. . . . Any beings which 

 may be supposed to exist, must necessarily exist only by the will of 

 God, and must exist through, and subject to, the limitations of the 

 laws of Nature, or, to speak more correctly, the will of God, as 

 man himself. . . . Man possesses considerable power over the 

 lower animals and over his fellow men ; and there is, thei'efore, 

 nothing unreasonable in Wallace's view that other beings may 

 have power over the development of man, especially when we 

 consider that it cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by the opera- 

 tion of those ordinary physical ai.'encies whifh are fi-pi|Ueiitly spoken 

 of as the blind forces of Nature.;,; 



We promise Mr. Kirby not thus to speak of them, our 

 feeling of the immanent life in the universe being as deep 

 as his own, although not quickened by such imaginings. 

 But in the above quotation we see the effects of what Mr. 

 Spencer calls the " theological bias," which, whether it be 

 bom of the intuitional philosophy or of the doctrines of 

 Swedenborg or Rome, refuses to apply the theory of 

 evolution to the complete nature of man, speaks of laws 

 of Nature as entities, and of matter as if its ultimate 

 nature was proven to be the opposite of spirit. Either 

 man is a part of nature, or he is not i if he is, 

 then the theory of evolution must embrace the genesis 

 and development of mind with all that it involves ; 

 if he is not, then let us not coquet with an illu- 

 sion, but n^turn to our first love, to belief in 

 Adam, as the father of us all, created of dust, and made a 

 living soul by the breath of a Personal God. Between 

 these two positions there is no room for the hypothesis of 

 intermediate intelligences, and the evolutionist and the 

 believer in special creation will alike resent tlieni as an 

 intrusion and an impertinence. Those who, whilst pro- 

 fessedly following the scientific method, assume their 



• Page 155. t Ibid., p. 155. t Ibid., pp. 140, 142. 



existence, ignore that principle which Sir William Hamil- 

 ton calls the Law of Parsimony, which forbids us to invoke 

 the operation of higher causes when lower causes are found 

 sufficient to explain the effects. Such chimeras remind us 

 of Emerson's remarks on the three heavens and the three 

 orders of angels of Swedenborg. " His spiritual world bears 

 the same relation to the generosities and joys of truth of 

 which human souls have already made us cognisant, as a 

 man's bad dreams bear to his ideal life." 



The causes of that reluctance to follow the theory of 

 Evolution to its obvious and ultimate conclusions which 

 this book illustrates are, as hinted above, twofold. 



1. Presuming on an isolated supremacy in creation 

 fostered by traditional beliefs, man tardily applied to his 

 kind the investigation long e.xtended to every creature 

 beneath him, and the like pride of birth has hindered the 

 admission of lineal connection between the Vjeliefs of 

 cultured races and those of savages. That in savage 

 philosophy is the germ of the highest metaphysic and 

 theology was a thing undreamt of ; and the beliefs which 

 antiquity transmitted were too much wrapped up with 

 man's dearest hopes and desires to allure him into inquiry 

 as to their origin and growth. Whilst the theistic philo- 

 sopher, confronted by theories of automatism, frames his 

 conception of an ego as an entity not depending for its 

 existence on any play of physical or vital forces, the 

 Romanist biologist argues that " whilst man's Vjody was 

 derived from pre-existing material, his soul was created by 

 the direct action of the Almighty." These, with all other 

 kindred theories of man as dual or tripartite, are but the 

 other self of primitive thinking "writ larga" 'Tis a 

 difference of words, not of things. Banish the terms, and 

 in their thought the lower and higher culture have met 

 together, the fetichist and the spiritualist have kissed each 

 other. 



2. In that assumed antagonism between matter and 

 spirit which is a legacy from the past. If when we use 

 these terms — if when we talk of matter, of mind, of 

 motion, of force — we employed them only as the .cs and 

 y's of the mathematician, as convenient symbols of that 

 which cannot be known, this bugbear of materialism which 

 drives men into opposite camps would disappear. Our 

 only escape from it is in accepting that philosophy of 

 idealism which supposes that our " knowledge of matter 

 is restricted to those feelings of which we assume it to be 

 the cause," and that, whatever it may appear to us, it is 

 probably something altogether different. Wc shall not then 

 speak of " laws of Nature " as entities, or, because a con- 

 venient name has lieen given to certain classes of pheno- 

 mena, suppose that the name is the thing, or the cause of 

 the eflect observed. 



To sum up. As a lucid exposition of a theory which 

 nourishes the intellect and enthralls the imagination, this 

 book is to be commended ; as an attempt to engraft the 

 spiritualist hypothesis, for such it really is, upon that 

 theory, the book is to be condemned. Nor would its later 

 chapters have been criticised liere did they not represent a 

 literature which is the outcome of minds profoundly 

 artected by the results of modern research, and prepared to 

 abandon many a cherished belief, but to whom the word.'; 

 addressed to the wealthy ruler apply, " One thing thou 

 lackest." 



NoTK. — In any future edition of his book Mr. Kirby should convii 

 the popular but incorrect meaning of Nirvana to whicli he gives 

 currency. It is, according to Dr. Rhys Davids, neither a pluce of 

 celestial repose, nor annihilation, but '" the extinction of that sinful 

 grasping condition of mind and heart, which would otherwise 

 according to the great mystery of Karma, be the cause of renewt^ 

 individual existence." — Rhys Davids's " Buddhism," pp. Ill, 112. 



