474 DARWINISM chap. 



The special faculties we have been discussing clearly point 

 to the existence in man of something which he has not derived 

 from his animal progenitors — something which we may best 

 refer to as being of a spiritual essence or nature, capable of 

 progressive development under favourable conditions. On 

 the hypothesis of this spiritual nature, superadded to the 

 animal nature of man, we are able to understand much that 

 is otherwise mysterious or unintelligible in regard to him, 

 especially the enormous influence of ideas, principles, and 

 beliefs over his whole life and actions. Thus alone we can 

 understand the constancy of the martyr, the unselfishness of 

 the philanthropist, the devotion of the patriot, the enthusiasm 

 of the artist, and the resolute and persevering search of 

 the scientific worker after nature's secrets. Thus we may 

 perceive that the love of truth, the delight in beauty, the 

 passion for justice, and the thrill of exultation with which we 

 hear of any act of courageous self-sacrifice, are the workings 

 within us of a higher nature which has not been developed 

 by means of the struggle for material existence. 



It will, no doubt, be urged that the admitted continuity of 

 man's progress from the brute does not admit of the introduc- 

 tion of new causes, and that we have no evidence of the 

 sudden change of nature which such introduction would bring 

 about. The fallacy as to new causes involving any breach of 

 continuity, or any sudden or abrupt, change, in the effects, has 

 already been shown ; but we will further point out that there 

 are at least three stages in the development of the organic 

 world when some new cause or power must necessarily have 

 come into action. 



The first stage is the change from inorganic to organic, 

 when the earliest vegetable cell, or the living protoplasm out 

 of which it arose, first appeared. This is often imputed to 

 a mere increase of complexity of chemical compounds ; but 

 increase of complexity, with consequent instability, even if we 

 admit that it may have produced protoplasm as a chemical 

 compound, could certainly not have produced living protoplasm 

 — protoplasm which has the power of growth and of reproduc- 

 tion, and of that continuous process of development which has 

 resulted in the marvellous variety and complex organisation of 

 the whole vegetable kingdom. There is in all this something 



