106 
NATURE 
[ Mov. 25, 1869 
facts render it most probable that “life, like matter and 
energy, had its origin in no secondary cause, but in the 
direct action of creative power.” Chapters X. to XIV. 
treat of organisation and development, and give a sum- 
mary of the most recent views on these subjects, con- 
cluding with the following tabular statement of organic 
functions :— 
Formative or Vegetative Functions, essentially consisting in the 
Transformation of Matter. 
Chemical. . . .. Formation of organic compounds, 
{ Formation of tissue. 
Sts mae ( Formation of organs. 
Animal Functions, consisting essentially in the Transformation 
of Energy. 
Spontaneous, 
Reflex. 
Consensual. 
Voluntary. 
{ Sensation, 
Speer pian, 
WMiotorsras tei 1s 
Sensory. . 
In the fifteenth chapter we first come to one of the 
author's special subjects, —the Laws of Habit. He defines 
habit as follows: “ The definition of habit and its primary 
law, is that all vital actions tend to repeat themselves ; 
or, if they are not such as can repeat themselves, they 
tend to become easier on repetition.” All habits are more 
or less hereditary, are somewhat changeable by circum- 
stances, and are subject to spontaneous variations. ‘The 
prominence of a habit depends upon its having been 
recently exercised; its Zevaczty.on the length of time 
(millions of generations it may be) during which it has 
been exercised. The habits of the species or genus are 
most tenacious, those of the individual often the most 
prominent. The latter may be quickly lost, the former 
may appear to be lost, but are often latent, and are liable 
to reappear, as in cases of reversion. The fact that active 
habits are strengthened, while passive impressions are 
weakened, by repetition, is due in both cases to the law of 
habit; for, in the latter, the organism acquires the habit of 
not responding to the impression. As an example, two 
men hear the same loud bell in the morning ; it calls the 
one to work, as he is accustomed to listen to it, and so 
it always wakes him; the other,has to rise an hour later, 
he is accustomed to disregard it, and so it soon ceases to 
have any effect upon him. Habit has produced in these 
two cases exactly opposite results. Habits are capable of 
any amount of change, but only a slight change is possible 
in a short time; and in close relation with this law are 
the following laws of variation. 
Changes of external circumstances are beneficial to 
organisms if they are slight; but injurious if they are 
great, unless made gradually. 
Changes of external circumstances are agreeable when 
slight, but disagreeable when great. 
Mixture of different races is beneficial to the vigour of 
the offspring if the races mixed are but slightly different ; 
while very different races will produce either weak offspring, 
or infertile offspring, or none at all. Even the great law 
of sexuality, requiring the union of slightly different indi- 
viduals to continue the race, seems to stand in close 
connection with the preceding laws. 
‘The next seven chapters treat of the laws of variation, 
distribution, morphology, embryology, and classification, 
as all pointing to the origin of species by development ; 
and we then come to the causes of development, in which 
the author explains his views as follows :— 
These two causes, self-adaptation and natural selection, are 
the only purely Physical causes that have been assigned, or that 
appear assignable, for the origin of organic structure and form. 
But I believe they will account for only part of the facts, and 
that no solution of the questions of the origin of organization, and 
the origin of organic species, can be adequate, which does not 
recognise an Organising Intelligence, over and above the common 
laws of matter... .. But we must begin the inquiry by con- 
sidering ow much of the facts of organic structure and vital 
function may be accounted for by the two laws of self-adaptation 
and natural selection, before we assert that any of those facts can 
only be accounted for by supposing an Organising Intelligence, 
Again : 
Life does not suspend the action of the ordinary forces of 
matter, but works through them. I believe that wherever there 
is life there is intelligence, and that intelligence is at work in every 
vital process whatever, but most discernibly in the highest. . . . 
Nutrition, circulation, and respiration are in a great degree to be 
explained as results of physical and chemical laws ;—but sensation, 
perception, and thought cannot be so explained. ‘They belong 
exclusively to life; and similarly the organs of those functions— 
the nerves, the brain, the eye, and the ear—can have originated, 
I believe, solely by the action of an Organising Intelligence. 
Admitting Mr.Herbert Spencer's theory of the origin of 
the vascular system, and possibly of the muscular, by 
selfadaptation, he denies that any such merely physical 
theory will account for the origin of the special com- 
plexities of the visual apparatus : 
Neither the action of light on the eye, nor the actions of the 
eye itself, can have the slightest tendency to produce the wondrous 
complex histological structure of the retina; nor to form the 
transparent humours of the eye into lenses; nor to produce the 
deposit of black ‘pigment that absorbs the stray rays that would 
otherwise hinder clear vision; nor to produce the iris, and endow 
it with its power of closing under a strong light, so as to protect 
the retina, and expanding again when the light is withdrawn ; nor 
to give the iris its two nervous connections, one of which has its 
root in the sympathetic ganglia, and'causes expansion, while the 
other has its root in the brain and causes contraction, 
Nor will he allow that Natural Selection (which he 
admits may produce any simple organ, such as a bat’s 
wing) is applicable to this case ; and he makes use of two 
arguments which have considerable weight. One is that 
of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who shows that in all the higher 
animals natural selection must be aided by self-adaptation, 
because an alteration in any part of a complex organ 
necessitates Concomitant alterations in many other parts, 
and these cannot be supposed to occur by spontaneous 
variation. But in the case of the eye he shows that self- 
adaptation cannot occur, whence he conceives it may be 
proved to be almost an infinity of chances to one against 
the simultaneous variations necessary to produce an eye 
ever having occurred. The other argument is, that well- 
developed eyes occur in the higher orders of the three 
great groups, Annulosa, Mollusca, and Vertebrata, while 
the lower orders of each have rudimentary eyes or none ; 
so that the variations requisite to produce this wonderfully 
complicated organ must have occurred three times over 
independently of each other. In the first of these objec- 
tions, he assumes that many variations must occur simul- 
taneously, and on this assumption his whole argument rests. 
He notices Mr. Darwin’s illustration of the greyhound 
having been brought to its present high state of perfection 
by breeders selecting for one point at a time, but does not 
think it possible “ that any apparatus, consisting of lenses, 
