40 



SCIENCE. 



only within certain limits ; and it is not possible to de- 

 scribe the- facts concerning it without employing the 

 language which is expressive of mental purpose. 



Accordingly, Mr. Darwin himself does use this lan- 

 guage perpetually, and to an extent far exceeding that in 

 which it is used by almost any other natural philosopher. 

 He does not use it with any theological purpose nor in 

 connection with any metaphysical speculation. He uses 

 it simply and naturally for no other reason than that he 

 cannot help it. The correlation of natural forces, so ad- 

 justed as to work together for the production of use in 

 the functions — for the enjoyments and for the beauty — 

 of life, this is the central idea of his system ; and it is an 

 idea which cannot be worked out in detail without hab- 

 itual use of the language which is molded on our own 

 consciousness of the mental powers by which all our own 

 adjustments are achieved. This is what, oerhaps, the 

 greatest observer that has ever lived cannot help observ- 

 ing in Nature ; and so his language is thoroughly an- 

 thropomorphic. Seeing in the methods pursued in Na- 

 ture a constant embodiment of his own intellectual con- 

 ceptions, and a close analogy with the methods which 

 his own mind recognizes as " contrivance," he rightly 

 uses the forms of expression which convey the work of 

 Mind. " Rightly," I say, provided the full scope and 

 meaning of this language be not repudiated. I do not 

 mean that naturalists should be always following up their 

 language to theological conclusions, or that any fault 

 should be found with them when they stop where the 

 sphere of mere physical observation terminates. But 

 those who seek to remodel philosoohy upon the results 

 of that observation cannot consistently borrow all the 

 advantage of anthropomorphic language, and then de- 

 nounce it when it carries them beyond the point at which 

 they desire to stop. If in the words which we recognize 

 as best describing the facts of Nature there be elements 

 of meaning to which their whole force and descriptive 

 power is due, then these elements of meaning must be 

 admitted as essential to a just conception and to a true 

 interpretation of what we see. The analogies which 

 help us to understand the works of Nature are not, as it 

 were, foreign material imported into the facts, but are 

 part of these facts, and constitute the light which shines 

 from them upon the intellect of Man. In exact prooor- 

 tion as we believe that intellect to be a product of Nature, 

 and to be united to it by indissoluble ties of birth, of 

 structure, and of function, in the same proDortion may 

 we be sure that its organs of vision are adjusted to the 

 realities of the world, and that its innate perceptions of 

 analogy and resemblance have a close relation to the 

 truth. The theory of Development is not only consistent 

 with teleological explanation, but it is founded on teleol- 

 ogy, and on nothing else. It sees in everything the re- 

 sults of a system which is ever acting for the best, always 

 producing something more perfect or more beautiful than 

 before, and incessantly eliminating whatever is faulty or 

 less perfectly adapted to every new condition. Professor 

 Tyndall himself cannot describe this system without 

 using the _ most intensely anthropomorphic language, 

 " The continued effort of animated nature is to improve 

 its conditions and raise itself to a loftier level." 



Again I say, it is quite right to use this language, pro- 

 vided its ultimate reference to Mind be admitted and not 

 repudiated. But if this language be persistently applied 

 and philosophically defended as applicable to material 

 force, otherwise than as the instrument and tool of Mind, 

 then it is language involving far more than the absurdity 

 of the old mediaeval ph rase that " Nature abhors a 

 vacuum." It ceases to be a mere picturesque expres- 

 sion, and becomes a definite ascriotion to Matter of the 

 highest attributes of Mind. If Nature cannot feel ab- 

 horrence, neither can it cherish aspirations. If it cannot 

 hate, neither can it love, nor contrive, nor adjust, nor 

 look to the future, nor think about " loftier levels/' 

 there. 



Professor Tyndall in the same address has given us an 

 interesting anecdote of a very celebrated man whom the 

 world has lately lost. He tells us that he heard the great 

 Swiss naturalist, Agassiz, express an almost sad surprise 

 that the Darwinian theory should have been so exten- 

 sively accepted by the best intellects of our time. And 

 this surorise seems again in some measure to have sur- 

 prised Professor Tyndall. Now it so happens that I have 

 perhaps the means of explaining the real difficulty felt by 

 Agassiz in accepting the modern theory of evolution. I 

 had not seen that distinguished man for nearly five-and- 

 thirty years. But he was one of those gifted beings who 

 stamp an indelible impression on the memory ; and in 

 1842 he had left an enthusiastic letter on my father's table 

 at Inverary on finding it largely occupied by scientific 

 works. Across that long interval of time I ventured lately 

 to seek a renewal of acquaintance, and during the year 

 which proved to be the last of his life, I asked him some 

 questions on his own views on the history and origin of 

 organic forms. In his reply Agassiz sums up in the fol- 

 lowing words his objection to the theory of Natural Selec- 

 tion as affording any satisfying explanation of the facts 

 for which it professes to account : — " The truth is that 

 Life has all the wealth of endowment of the most com- 

 prehensive mental manifestations, and none of the sim- 

 plicity of physical phenomena." 



Here we have the testimony of another among the very 

 greatest of modern observers that wealth — immense and 

 immeasurable wealth — of Mind is the one fact above all 

 others observable in Nature, and especially in the adapta- 

 tions of organic life. It was because he could see no ade- 

 quate place or room reserved for this fact in the theory of 

 develooment that Agassiz rejected it as not satisfying the 

 conditions of the problem to be solved. Possibly this 

 may be the fault of the forms in which it has been pro- 

 pounded, and of the strenuous endeavors of many of its 

 supporters to shut out all interpretations of a higher kind. 

 But of this we may be sure, that if men should indeed ul- 

 timately become convinced that species have been all born 

 just as individuals are now all born, and that such has 

 been the universal method of creation, this conviction will 

 not only be found to be soluble, so to speak, in the old 

 beliefs respecting a creative Mind, but it will be unintellig- 

 ible and inconceivable without them, so that men in de- 

 scribing the history and aim and direction of evolution, 

 will be compelled to use substantially the same language 

 in which they have hitherto spoken of the history of crea- 

 tion. 



Mr. Mivart has indeed remarked in a very able work, 1 

 that the teleological language used so freely by Mr. 

 Darwin and others is Durely metaphorical. But for what 

 purpose are metaphors used? Is it not as a means of 

 making plain to our own understandings the princi- 

 ples of things, and of tracing amid the varieties of phe- 

 nomena the essen'ial unities of Nature ? In this sense 

 all language is full of metaphor, being indeed composed 

 of little else. That is to say, the whole structure and 

 architecture of language consists of words which trans- 

 fer and apply to one sphere of investigation ideas which 

 have been derived from another, because there also the 

 same ideas are seen to be expressed, only under some 

 difference of form. Accordingly when naturalists, de- 

 scribing plants or animals, use metaphorically the lan- 

 guage of contrivance to describe the adaptations of func- 

 tion, they must use it because thev feel it to be a help in 

 the understanding of the facts. When, for example, we 

 are told that flowers are constructed in a peculiar man- 

 ner " in order that" they may catch the probosces of 

 moths or the beaks of bees, and that this adaptation again 

 is necessary " in order that " these insects should carry 

 the fertilizing pollen from flower to flower, nothing more 

 may be immediately intended by the writer than that all 

 this elaborate mechanism does as a matter of fact attain 



IJ* Genesis of Species." 



