6X2 
[October, 
Analyses of Books . 
exists before and independent of them ; it also becomes more 
imperious in its demands as societies become more highly 
organised.” 
In the development of these propositions the author expresses 
occasionally views which are open to discussion. We turn, e.g., 
to his interesting attempt to explain the existence of evil. 
“ Evil,” he writes, “ both physical and moral, is seen to indicate 
nothing more than the development of higher sensibilities and 
more acute powers of discrimination.” In working out this 
supposition he tells us that “ passing from the contemplation of 
vegetable to that of animal life an enormous increase in the 
complexity of the organisations is presented to our view, and a 
new phenomenon appears in the evolution of physical evil or 
pain .” Now Dr. Bithell must be aware that there is no sudden 
enormous increase of complexity observed in passing from the 
vegetable to the animal world. There are animals simpler in 
their structure than are many plants, and that there are beings 
holding a doubtful position, — even some capable of being re- 
garded as morphologically plants, but physiologically animals. 
Surely it is rash to say that all animals are sentient, and all 
plants unconscious, insentient. 
In like manner the author, in accounting for moral evil, seems 
to us to make a far too absolute boundary between the lower 
animals and man. He writes : — “ It does not appear that a 
sense of wrong, or the opposite principle of right, is felt by any 
other part of the animal world.” Again, “ All those aCts which 
when done by human beings we call sins, crimes, and misde- 
meanours, are if done by the lower Mammalia regarded without 
moral disapproval ; and the difference in our estimate of the 
ads in themselves, [incomplete ?] but from the consciousness 
that we have faculties by means of which we discern the moral 
character of these aCts. This we believe the brute creation 
cannot do.” 
Against all this we must put in a most decided protest. We 
have distinCt evidence that amongst social animals there exist 
the rudiments of positive law. Offending ants, rooks, &c., have 
been observed to be punished not by the individual aggrieved, 
but by the community. Correction, and even death, is inflicted 
in cases where there has been transgression not against any 
individual, but against the supposed interests of the community. 
Now law presupposes a recognition of the difference between 
wrong and right, and is in its absence utterly inconceivable. 
Our belief that the brute creation cannot perceive the moral 
character of certain aCts is an unproved assumption. 
Elsewhere the author writes : — “ While primitive man had 
nothing but articulate speech, his individual experience died 
with him.” Does the author mean to convey the notion that 
primitive man had always articulate speech ? Does he hold that 
experience cannot be transmitted without such speech ? We 
