224 
Biological Controversy and its Laws. 
[April, 
days, and have been swept away. Yet that such must have 
once existed will appear highly probable if we reflect on 
the process of extermination still going on. Is it not likely 
that in more barbarous days before modern philanthropy 
had arisen, and before the Aborigines Protection Society 
had been organised, wars of extirpation, always directed 
against the races least raised above the brute level, would 
be more frequent and more destructive ? The legends of 
all ancient nations point in the same direction, telling us of 
half-human monsters whom their forefathers extirpated or 
drove out. 
But this is not all ; before the presence of a moral sense, 
of a feeling of right and wrong, whether innate or acquired, 
can be brought forward as “ an absolute characteristic 
separating man from all other animals,” it must be shown 
that no other animal possesses such moral sense. And here 
Mr. Mivart has nothing save baseless, wanton assumption 
to array against solid faCts. He may, if it so please him, 
assert that brutes are void of all traces of conscience, but 
unless he could enter into their minds and be aware of their 
feelings, such assertion is unwarrantable. Suppose a 
mineralogist were to hold up before us two minerals, A and 
B, very similar in all their outward properties, and should 
inform us that the distinction between them consisted in the 
faCt that cobalt was always present in A, and was as uni- 
formly absent in B. We should naturally ask if he had 
analysed both and could give a full account of all their con- 
stituents ? What should we think were he to reply : — “ I 
certainly have analysed A, and have found the presence of 
cobalt. B I have not been able to analyse, but on a priori 
grounds I am satisfied that no cobalt can there be present.” 
Should we not feel inclined to send him back to take some 
quite other “ lessons from nature ?” 
As an instance of the very different conclusions which 
other minds have drawn from a close and prolonged observa- 
tion of animal life, we may take the following passage from 
the writings of the late Agassiz. Pronouncing the range of 
passion in animals as extensive as in man, he continues : — 
“ I am at a loss to trace a difference of kind between them. 
The gradation of moral faculties between the higher animals 
and man is so imperceptible that to deny to the first a cer- 
tain sense of consciousness and responsibility would be an 
exaggeration.” These are the words, it must be remembered, 
of an original observer of unquestioned ability and untiring 
industry, who, moreover, devoted his attention far more 
closely and exclusively to biology than Mr. Mivart has 
