328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



place suburb, and the manufacturer's chimney, with its grimy 

 surroundings and furnaces which make verdure impossible, are 

 each of them priceless in value compared with all the charms of 

 irrational Nature which the most skillful poet can depict. They 

 are of such value, because each is an arena wherein good thoughts 

 and words and deeds may find a place, and so help on the world to 

 fulfill what is for us its one great end. 



A nature must be wonderful indeed which demands for its 

 existence the reversal of that great cosmic process which, so far as 

 we know, has ever and everywhere prevailed antecedently to its 

 advent. The difference between a being of so transcendent a 

 nature and every other must surely be something altogether dif- 

 ferent from the difference between mercury grass and a field but- 

 tercup, or between a wolf and a badger ! 



But the reader must not imagine I would represent Prof. 

 Huxley as an entirely conscious convert to a view opposed to that 

 he had before advocated. Some of his utterances concord with 

 the latter, and I can not presume to say to which he will ulti- 

 mately adhere. 



Thus, as to the future of evolution, he tells us : * 



Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of 

 the aesthetic faculty. 



He affirms also that those who seek to find "the origin of the 

 moral sentiments " [the right honorable professor's term for ethi- 

 cal perceptions] in evolution " are on the right track." 

 In a note f he declares that 



Strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process, in virtue of which it advances 

 toward perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of evolution, just as 

 the gregarious habit of innumerable plants and animals, which has been of im- 

 mense advantage to them, is so. 



Is this only an inconsistent adherence to old opinions, or is it 

 meant to be seriously maintained as an essential truth ? If the 

 latter, it nullifies all that was said as to the distinctness of the 

 ethical process and the wonderful reversal of the great cosmic 

 process by man ! Every one knew that gregarious creatures, such 

 as wolves, have different habits from solitary animals, such as 

 badgers, and many know that the growth of mercury grass has 

 consequences whereof that of the buttercup is devoid. No prophet 

 need arise in Israel to tell us such things as these. No special 

 university lecture was required to teach them to us, and I, for 

 one, must decline to believe that all those eloquent expressions 

 which have been quoted respecting "righteousness being the 



* [December Monthly, p. 187.] 



f [December Monthly.] Note, p. 188. The Italics are mine. 



