178 
essential particular Darwinism differs from them all, — from 
all, at any rate, that admit the distinct creation of man ; for 
they all may be regarded as beginning with man in a state of 
manhood; whereas Darwinism, of necessity, begins with a 
human infant which had not human parents. But long before 
we arrive at that development under this theory, we are forced 
to ask, in our endeavour to realize what it professes to ex- 
plain, “ How possibly the first young mammal was nourished 
in its struggle for existence, if its immediate progenitor was 
not a mammal ? ” No answer has ever been given to that 
inquiry ; not even by Mr. Wallace in the ingenious paper* 
which he read before the Anthropological Society of London 
two years ago, in which he endeavoured to work out in some 
kind of detail the Darwinian hypothesis applied to man. Nor 
does Mr. Darwin make any attempt to explain this, in his 
own elaborate volume. But the question is really a very old 
one, now revived. It differs nothing from that discussed in 
the Symposiacs of Plutarch, namely, “ Which was first, the 
bird or the egg?” And I must say, to the credit of those 
ancient inquirers, that when they started a theory, they did 
not shrink from discussing it in all its bearings. The same 
question — which really involves the theory of creation — has 
been more ably and fully discussed than anywhere else, so far 
as I am aware, in the work called Omphalos, by our Vice- 
President, Mr. Gosse, F.R.S. 
But passing over that, with all other difficulties which lie 
against Darwinism long before we come to its application to 
the origin of man, and contemplating “ the lowly stock 
whence man has sprung,” as Professor Huxley expresses him- 
self, it has also been pointed out that “ to this physiological 
difficulty there is added one that is psychological ; for, even 
if we see no difficulty as to the physical rearing and training 
of the first human baby which some favoured ape brought 
forth, we are forced to ask the transmutationist to favour us 
with some hint of the educational secret by which the monkeys 
trained and elevated their progeny into men, when we our- 
selves are scarcely able, with all our enlightenment and educa- 
tional efforts, to prevent our masses falling back to a state 
rather akin to that of monkeys and brutes.” 
To this, again, no answer has ever been given; and there is 
even a prior difficulty, which I may say has been suggested by 
Mr. Wallace himself. For, in the paper already referred to, 
he laid it down that the intellect of man and his speech would 
be developed together; in fact, he recognized that they are 
Anthropological Review, vol. II. p. elviii, et seq. 
