NOTE VIII.] Prof. Huxley on the Supremacy of Man. 391

NOTE VIII.

FROM MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE,' by PROFESSOR HUXLEY (Williams and Norgate, 1864), pp. 111-2.

I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a psychical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life. At the same time, no one is more strongly convinced than I am of the vastness of the gulf between civilised man and the brutes; or is more certain that, whether from them or not, he is assuredly not of them. No one is less disposed to think lightly of the present dignity, or despairingly of the future hopes, of the only consciously intelligent denizen of this world. Thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities; and will discern in his long progress through the Past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler Future. Due reflection on the teachings of the geologists instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder.

And after passion and prejudice have died away, the same result will attend the teachings of the naturalist respecting that great Alps and Andes of the living world-Man. Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is, in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby in the secular period of his existence he has slowly accumulated and organised the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble

fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

NOTE IX.

THE RELATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION TO THAT OF FREE-WILL.

The doctrine of evolution is often charged with the reproach of fatalism. Yet its fundamental postulate is variation. Each individual animal or plant is different, in a greater or less degree, from the rest: and in this difference lies the origin of species. Darwin endeavours to account for the original variation by causes such as the excess of nutriment in the parents and altered conditions. But the character once impressed, by whatever means, goes on developing, and gains an energy of its own, which is discernible first in vegetables, then more markedly in animals, to whom a certain character and power of choice must be conceded, and lastly in man, in whom it attains the faculties of reflexion, judgment, will. It may be that the tendency of evolutionists is to dwell on the circumstances which determine the tendency. But it is not denied that the main circumstance is the individual character; and when to character is added consciousness and the sense of responsibility, there is no fear of the introduction of an element which Christian faith would count immoral, such as compulsion by physical causes ab extra. Darwin says (Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, i. 252-3): When we reflect on the individual differences between organic beings in a state of nature, as shown by any wild animal knowing its mate; and when we reflect on the infinite diversity of the many varieties of our domesticated productions, we may well be inclined to exclaim, though falsely as I believe, that variability must be looked at as an ultimate fact, necessarily contingent on reproduction.'

Darwin indeed believed that the individual differences here alluded to were all the result of circumstances, which in many cases could be ascertained. But, however originating, it is

certain that these individual differences are the indispensable condition of development. And when we read in 'The Origin of Species' of the sudden appearance of new forms of vegetable life like the teasel (32), of individual difference in plants (43), of prejudices and dislikes among birds (102), of divergence of character among animals (157-8), and of the great varieties of instincts (258), we have the ground laid for all that any sober assertor of Free-will in the human individual would claim.

'I saw,' says Mill (Autobiography) in speaking of his recovery from the dejection caused by the incubus of fatalism, ‘that, though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape these circumstances, and that what is really inspiring and ennobling in the doctrine of Free-will is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing.'

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE

NOTE X.

CONTRAST BETWEEN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN CHURCH-TEACHERS IN THEIR VIEW OF THE VIRTUES OF THE HEATHEN.

Clement of Alexandria, who may be taken as the representative of the Eastern Fathers, in his Λόγος προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἕλληνας, while denouncing the immorality of heathen mythology, appeals to men, as bearing God's image, to rise to a nobler life. He represents Christ as saying (p. 92), Μὴ μόνον τῶν ἀλόγων ζῴων πλεονεκτεῖτε τῷ λόγῳ, ἐκ δὲ τῶν θνητῶν ἁπάντων ὑμῖν ἀθανασίαν μόνοις καρπώσασθαι δίδωμι . . καὶ Λόγον χαρίζομαι ὑμῖν, τὴν γνῶσιν τοῦ Θεοῦ, . . . ὧν πολλαὶ μὲν εἰκόνες, οὐ πᾶσαι δὲ ἐμφερείς διορθώσασθαι ὑμᾶς πρὸς τὸ ἀρχέτυπον βούλομαι, ἵνα μοι καὶ ὅμοιοι γενῆσθε.

..

In Strom. i. 20 (p. 377) he says, Kaítoɩ kaì kaľ čavtǹv èdikalov ποτὲ καὶ ἡ φιλοσοφία τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οὐκ εἰς τὴν καθολοῦ δὲ δικαιοσύνην εἰς ἣν εὑρίσκεται συνεργὸς, καθάπερ καὶ ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ὁ δεύτερος βαθμὸς τῷ εἰς ὑπερῷον ἀνιόντι. The philosophers, he says,

have taken some of the truths of Revelation (he believed that Plato had borrowed from the Old Testament). But they had only perceived them through a mist of conjectural reasoning. When converted they see these same truths clearly.

Contrast this with the estimate of heathenism and the fate of heathens in the passage from Tertullian, de Spectaculis, c. 30, quoted by Gibbon, ch. xv (vol. ii. 91), and with the assertion of Jerome to Marcella that the excellent Vettius Agorius Praetextatus was in Tartarus [Ep. xxiii, Ad Marcellam, De Exitu Leae]. I tell you this,' he says, 'ut designatum Consulem de suis socculis (saeculis) detrahentem esse doceamus in Tartaro.'

NOTE XI.

EXPRESSIONS OF ARISTOTLE CONFESSING THE PRACTICAL
IMPOTENCE OF HIS MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

The last chapter of Aristotle's Ethics describes this impotence (x. 10):

2. Οὐδὲ δὴ περὶ ἀρετῆς ἱκανὸν τὸ εἰδέναι, ἀλλ ̓ ἔχειν καὶ χρῆσθαι πειρατέον, ἢ εἴ πως ἄλλως ἀγαθοὶ γινόμεθα.

3, 4. Νῦν δὲ φαίνονται οἱ λόγοι . . . τοὺς πολλοὺς ἀδυνατεῖν πρὸς καλοκαγαθίαν προτρέψασθαι· οὐ γὰρ πεφύκασιν αἰδοῖ πειθαρχεῖν ἀλλὰ φόβῳ.

22. Παραλιπόντων οὖν τῶν προτέρων ἀνερεύνητον τὸ περὶ τῆς νομοθεσίας.

Compare with this the words put by Thucydides (iii. 45) into the mouth of Diodotus: Τῷ χρόνῳ ἐς τὸν Θάνατον αἱ πολλαὶ (ζημίαι) ἀνήκουσι· καὶ τοῦτο ὁμῶς παραβαίνεται.

NOTE XII.

EXTRACTS FROM LEADERS OF MODERN THOUGHT ON THE RELATION OF KNOWLEDGE TO MORALITY AND RELIGION.

Carlyle on Moral Relations as a condition of knowledge. 'Heroes and Hero Worship,' pp. 167–168.

Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk :

but, consider it, without morality, intellect were impossible for him, he could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first love the thing, sympathize with it, that is, be virtuously related to it. If he have not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature with her truth remains to the bad, the selfish and the pusillanimous, for ever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely.

Sir J. Lubbock on the connexion of Intellectual and Spiritual Progress. Pre-Historic Times,' pp. 488-491.

man.

Thus, then, with the increasing influence of science, we may confidently look to a great improvement in the condition of But it may be said that our present sufferings and sorrows arise principally from sin, and that any moral improvement must be due to religion, not to science. This separation of the two mighty agents of improvement is the great misfortune of humanity, and has done more than anything else to retard the progress of civilisation. But even if for the moment we admit that science will not render us more virtuous, it must certainly make us more innocent. Out of 129,000 persons committed to prison in England and Wales during the year 1863, only 4829 could read and write well. In fact, our criminal population are mere savages, and most of their crimes are but injudicious and desperate attempts to act as savages in the midst, and at the expense, of a civilised community. . . .

Thus, then, the most sanguine hopes for the future are justified by the whole experience of the past. It is surely unreasonable to suppose that a process which has been going on for so many thousand years should have now suddenly ceased; and he must be blind indeed who imagines that our civilisation is unsusceptible of improvement, or that we ourselves are in the highest state attainable by man. If we turn