JuxE 12, 1885.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE • 



511 



schools and music sanctaaries. Music, indeed, is alone worthy to 

 replace the Belief ; but music itself, let alone science, mere know- 

 ledge (facts, facts, facts, or fragments of facts and hypotheses for 

 a spasm of tissue). What is even music (<■.(;., the Mass in D, and 

 9th Symphony) without the soul of music — immortality ? 



Is there, Mr. Kditor — is there not any prospect of the doctrine 

 being scientifically proved H You flout and scout apparitions and 

 the phenomena of the Psychical Society, but may we not look for 

 comfort in that quarter ? 



On the other hand, how is it that our terrific army and apparatus 

 of clergy, and religion continue utterly, stolidly, grossly unmoved 

 bv modern science and denial ; by Schopenhauer and Darwin ? If 

 they are honest they dare not send the Bible to " the heathen " in 

 one hand without sending Darwin in the other. When ^l■^ll they 

 cease their frightfully old-fashioned dead-dog cant and clerical 

 Billingsgate about " infidelity.' The word now is nothing but 

 tinkling brass and a sounding cymbal. It is the insult of spasmodic 

 impotence (like our prodigious Government's "policy"!). I 

 ut'erly scorn and detest it. At the same time, though I (mentally) 

 kick and abominate dogma (she herself, the hideous witch which 

 burnt poor old women and Giordano Bruno; tormented Galileo), 

 I yearn to see the belief in immortality proved. Without it we do 

 indeed feel the melancholy force of the words, "without God in 

 the world." Commentator. 



IS DARWINISM DOUBTFUL? 



[1750] — I am pleased to think that your veteran correspondent, 

 " Hallyards," and myself, if I may say so, would make good and 

 true allies. I, like him and the Darwinians, repudiate " separate 

 creation " (in the crude imagination and vnlgar sense of the 

 "isms" and "anities" — insanities!), but I am by no means so 

 "cock-sure" (gentle ladies, pardon the slang) as the " Selection- 

 arians" that we know all about it. I was looking at a worm the 

 other day, and I could not help reflecting : Now, is it not monstrous 

 to assert that the worm "acquired" (O Shibboleth!) its softness 

 and shape, so admirably fitting it to bnrrow into the soft earth ; 

 that the worm began by being hard, but, by-and-by, lo! one (or 

 many at once ? — Darwin does not tackle this) happened to " vary " 



into a modicum of softness, and you know the rest of the 



Selectionarian formula I 



Has not " Hallyards " hit upon one all-important factor in the 

 problem ? — viz., fecundity ; and has not Darwin himself (as I said 

 before, I love and honour him — so we do all !) strangely lost sight 

 of this, as a Conservative ? He speaks of it as a Malthnsian, but 

 it, just it, may, as " Hallyards" points out, be the very device by 

 which, in the struggle for existence, species are preserved. The 

 lonely philosopher of the Xew World sa7S " flights of painted moths 

 are as old as the Alleghauies." 



Then, again (a most cardinal point!), gradations (Darwin's 

 principle of principles, feature of features) co-esist — the short 

 whale with the long one, the worm with the boa-constrictor, cSsc, 

 ad infinitum. 



May it not be — this is what I feel — thus ? There is a struggle, 

 but not BO much for existence as for superfluous or excessive exist- 

 ence. The excess are cut off, but, on the whole, there is room for 

 aU. (Not a sparrow falleth, &c.) I must say that I, " whene'er 

 I take my walks abroad," am not struck by destruction, but am 

 struck by conservation. The lizard, the butterfly, the worm, and 

 the million other dramatis personm of "all the world a stage," keep 

 on, and have kept on, co-existing (from the speck of jelly upwards), 

 earthly speaking, " from everlasting to everlasting ! " 



Small, timid apes hold their own now, like so many more 

 creatures, simply by escaping (curious in this world how there seems 

 always some hole to escape into !) and multiplying according to law 

 {what that law is not even Darwin has made manifest). 



I agree with " Hallyards " (I am sorry to be discourteous) that 

 yonr accomplished lady contributors seem to confound cause and 

 effect. That is the question I Cohmentatok. 



EVOLUTION. 



[1731] — I fear "Commentator" (letter 1728) is merely tilting 

 at windmills, for certainly no writer in Knowledge has ever repre- 

 sented the development theory as " selectea haphazard variation ! " 

 He also complains that " Miss Ballin, Miss Naden, and others 

 assume development, 'now in one way, now in another* .... 

 begging the question." It is a very convenient method of exposi- 

 tion, first to state (or assume) the thesis, and then to bring forward 

 evidence in support of it. This is what the writers in question do. 



On the other hand, "Commentator" assumes that "nature" is 

 the " predestined development of infinite reason;" and not only 

 does he leave the assumption unsupported hy evidence, but what he 

 propounds is absolutely unthinkable. It obviously involves a con- 



tradiction to assign intellectual qualities to the Unknowable Agency 

 that underlies phenomena. (See Herbert Spencer's admirable 

 article in the yinctecnth Century for .lanuary of last year.) 



Moral : — " First cast out the beam out of thine own eye ; and 

 then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's 

 eye." T. Co.mmon. 



INSTINCT OR REASON. 



[1752] — A near relative of mine has a small fox-torrier, one of 

 the cleverest of her clever kind, known as " Teenic." A few weeks 

 since a little kitten was brought into the house with which two young 

 children used to play. On one occasion this kitten wag at tlio top 

 of a flight of stairs, and the children were at tlio bottom calling to 

 it to come down to them, but it did not understand them. Teonie, 

 coming out of a room into the hall, took in the situation at a glance, 

 and running up the stairs, she picked up the kitten by the nock and 

 trotted down with it to the children and placed it on the ground 

 before them. 



A few days afterwards this kitten was scratching and clawing, in 

 play, at the feet of one of tho children under the table. The child's 

 mother scolded the kitten for doing so ; in an instant Teenie dashed 

 under the table, seized the offending kitten by the nock, ran across 

 the room with it, and threw it into the fender almost under the grate. 



No orders had been given to the dog on either of these occasions, 

 nor had its name been mentioned or any notice been taken of it. 



John Browning. 



DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. 



[1753] — I must again enter my protest against the expression 

 double consciousness. Mr. Proctor in his article on Thought Read- 

 ing, says : — " My wife's second consciousness, the mind and will 

 belonging to the ordinarily inactive half of the cerebrum, may quite 

 actively have directed the planchette's career and quite uncon- 

 sciously to licr.'ielf." The italics are mine. Surely this is a con- 

 tradiction in itself. I am quite willing to admit the double brain 

 theory, but it seems to me as soon as the ordinarily inactive half 

 of the cerebrum is capable of conscious thought, the consciousness, 

 which is the result, is the ordinary consciousness. Why should not 

 the brain reason unconsciously ? What has consciousness to do with 

 accuracy of reasoning, or even vrith the conversion of reasoning into 

 articulate speech? I once stated, in a letter to Knowledge, that I was 

 unconscious for a quarter of an hour, during which time I conversed 

 rationally. One of your correspondents replied that, if I was 

 unconscious I could not have talked rationally, and that if I talked 

 rationally I could not have been unconscious. I maintain I was 

 unconscious. In this matter I am sole judge, and my friends 

 say I made use of articulate speech more or less gram- 

 matically. I imagine the process of articulating sounds is quite 

 as complicated a brain process as forming a syllogism. I am, 

 nevertheless, rather inclined to agree with Mr. Proctor that an 

 unconscious process of reasoning is the explanation of thought 

 reading, but probably many of our conclusions are arrived at in 

 precisely the same way. For instance, there is a clock on the 

 mantelpiece in front of me. I raise my eyes from the paper on 

 which I am writing, and take a hasty glance at it, and note the 

 time as Ih. 45m. My little boy, aged five, comes into the room, 

 and I ask him what time it is. He takes time to consider, notices 

 the small hand at 2 and the large hand at 9, and says a quarter to 

 2. Now, the question is, has my brain worked out quickly and 

 unconscioasly this problem ; or have I a thought in my brain 

 corresponding to every position of tho. hands of the clock, the 

 sight of which spontaneously produces tho thought ? Does not 

 this rather tend to show that unconscious thought is the result of 

 practice, and is more likely to be the product of the active half of the 

 cerebrum than the inactive one ? For instance, take the ordinary case 

 of two people commencing a similar sentence at the same moment, 

 on a subject which was not under discussion. The only possible 

 explanation seems to be that something has unconsciously drawn 

 the attention of each simultaneously to the subject. But in any 

 case does the second consciousness in any way simplify matters ? 

 According to Mr. Proctor's view, the second consciousness imbibes 

 the idea unconsciously, and then communicates the idea to the 

 first consciousness. Surely this is a case of the world supported 

 by an elephant, the elephant standing on a tortoise, and 

 the tortoise on nothing. Supposing two consciousnesses in 

 one person — how do these two communicate with one another 

 any more easily than the two consciousnesses of separate persons ? 

 I cannot see what grounds there are for supposing that in the 

 hypnotic state it is the ordinarily inactive half of the cerebrum 

 working to the exclusion of the other half. How is it, for instance, 

 that persons in the hypnotic state are able to speak ? It is almost 

 an undisputed fact that the faculty of speech resides in tho left 

 half of the brain. To acquire speech is a long and diflacult process. 



