1870.] Notices of Scientific Works. 77 



common ancestry of all organisms, by what process is it possible 

 to account for the gradual evolution of a being with so complex 

 an organ as an eye from the primordial homogeneous and amor- 

 phous Amoeba or Gromia? He sees the explanation in the 

 co-existence with the vital principle of an Organizing Intelli- 

 gence, consciously present in the mind of man, unconsciously in 

 all organized structure. He believes that " the wondrous fact of 

 organic adaptation cannot have been produced by any natural 

 selection, or by any unintelligent agency whatever ;" 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." 

 The recognition of this Organizing Intelligence running throughout 

 organic nature, is the keystone of Mr. Murphy's system. The uncon- 

 scious intelligence by which the bee stores up food for the sustenance 

 of the larva?, and builds cells for its reception on mathematical prin- 

 ciples, is the same principle as the unconscious intelligence which 

 has given it the organs necessary to collect the honey ; the conscious 

 intelligence in the mind of man which has manufactured the micro- 

 scope is the same principle as the unconscious intelligence which in 

 his body has manufactured, or, to coin a word, has " mentefactured " 

 the lenses of the eye. The reasoning that the eye cannot have been 

 produced by the action of mere natural selection is strengthened by 

 the forcible argument that this latter view presupposes that the same 

 selection from a long series of spontaneous variations has taken place 

 in three separate lines of descent, in the Annulosa, the Mollusca, and 

 the Yertebrata, the higher forms of which can, on no plausible hypo- 

 thesis, have descended directly from one another, or from a common 

 eye-possessing ancestor. Spencer's theory that all structures have 

 been produced by adaptation to function in the individual aided by 

 natural selection in the generation, is combated by the equally 

 powerful argument that "as we ascend in the scale of nature to 

 higher and higher vital functions, and higher and higher organic 

 forms, we find the relation of cause and effect becoming less traceable 

 by our faculties (though no doubt it exists all through nature) ; 

 while at the same time the relation of means and purpose becomes 

 at once more traceable and more definite. Nowhere in the universe, 

 as known to us, is the relation of means to purpose more clearly 

 traceable and more perfectly definite than in the organs of special 

 sense in the higher animals, especially in the eye and the ear ; and 

 nowhere is it more difficult (I would say, utterly impossible) to assign 

 any physical cause for the facts, than when we inquire by what 

 cause, or by what agency, such wonderful organs have been formed. 

 This truth, that purpose is most clearly discoverable where cause is 

 least so, has not received the attention it deserves." 



In his second volume Mr. Murphy enters upon the recondite 

 subjects of Psychology, and especially of the relation of the mind to 



