1 882.] Recent Literature. 



a "Formative Intelligence," and then left that intelligence, 

 tributed among a number of organisms struggling for ( 

 to take care of itself, and to develop into higher life through an 

 ordeal of suffering and in spite of imperfection, disease, and the 

 ; without taking any 

 Still more is it simpler 

 than to conceive of an omnipotent, omnipresent, personal, and 

 good God who, after creating life, watches and sustains it, yet 

 permits an evil spirit to exist, and allows pain and disease to mar 

 the beauty of his creation. To conceive of the matter of the 

 universe as capable of evolving conscientiousness is past our 

 mental power, but is the difficulty removed by having to account 

 also for the origin, existence and habitat of a non-material Creator 

 who beneficently allows a non-material destroyer to play havoc 

 with his creation? On this subject Mr. Murphy does but assert 

 his opinions, his argument really stops with the accumulation of 

 proofs of the coexistence of intelligence with life— a point in 

 which we cordially agree with him, objecting only to his term 

 "unconscious intelligence," as applied to the acts of the lower 

 animals. In this matter we would go further than Mr. Murphy. 

 Proud man, ignorant of the inner life of the lower animals, finds 

 it difficult to stand outside of his individuality sufficiently tojudge 

 fairly of their actions. Our author quotes the building of hex- 

 agonal cells by th© honev-bee as an instance of unconscious in- 

 telligence. We believe, 'in the light of the numerous observations 

 made by Lubbock, McCook, and others on hvmenopterous in- 

 sects, that one or several bees discovered this economical form of 

 cell just as man stumbles, by simply trying, on the greater part of 

 his discoveries. To account for the perpetuation of the dis- 

 covery when made we have no need to call in " natural selection," 

 or any [power more abstruse than that of inter-communication, 

 which is well known to be possessed in a high degree by ants 

 and bees. 



One of the principal points sought to be made out in favor of a 

 "formative impulse" is the development of structure in advance 

 of function, as evidenced in the metamorphoses of the Hydroida, 

 Ascidia. Crustacea, and Batrachia, in all of which the writer con- 

 tends that structures useless to the possessor are laid down in 

 anticipation of a future development, in which such structures 

 are useful. Such structures are the long abdomen of a Zoea, 

 useless (our author asserts) to the Zoea, but coming into use 

 J n the lobster; the notochord of the Ascidian, destined to be 

 aborted, but foreshadowing that of the vertebrate ; the incom- 

 plete medusa buds of some hvdroids, anticipatory of the free 

 medusa of others; and the transition from swimming b idd r 

 to hing, foreshadowed in Ganoids and Dipnoans, and cams d 

 out in the Batrachia. A ideologist might reasonably query by 

 what process of reasoning it is provable that these structures, 



