arise if we regard it as "evolved")--then whence come these increments? If they come direct from a Creator, then surely no special favor towards man in the bestowment of soul can be alleged; and if they arise by natural causes, out of nature, then why may not their first beginning, their first infinitesimal appearance, also be supposed to be due to such causes? The proof of an increase, a growth, of what have been called distinctively the mental faculties, throughout the animal kingdom, is every day stronger. No one believes, at the present date, with Descartes, that the animals are automata. Differences of mental power would seem to be but differences of degree; the facts all point to such a theory. The more scientific theologians have, indeed, abandoned this with the other minor points of contest above discussed, and devoted their efforts to argument from the moral nature of man. Philology, Anthropology, and Geology testify to mental progress, even in the human species; and if such a progress is a fact, it cannot have been without influence upon the moral nature of man, even supposing the latter to be God-given. Indeed, a merely physical progress or change cannot have been without such influence; for the most conservative theologians admit the strong action of the body upon the mind. It would seem, then, for all reasons, that an investigation of the process of mental evolution, or of evolution in general, ought not to be without results significant for any system of morality. If it is true that we learn wisdom and morality from human history, this can be so only because history gives us increased knowledge of the constancy of nature in those of its manifestations which specially concern the human, and thus enables us better to judge the present and predict the future. We should suppose that a still wider knowledge of our mental and physical evolution must be of yet greater worth to us in the same manner,--that the disclosure of more extended fields of nature to our vision must afford us new and valuable lessons with regard to ourselves; just as the telescope makes no discovery in the most distant regions of space that does not prove to have, in the end, its peculiar significance for our own planet. If our investigations should prove fruitless, as all such investigations have been said by some to be, the fact, established _a posteriori_, could not be disputed. But, considering all the points above noticed, such a result could not but astonish us; and we should even be inclined, after all that has been said, to suspect that the fault lay rather in the particular method than in the direction of our research. FOOTNOTES: [87] "Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte," 8th ed., p. 109. [88] "Origin of Civilization," p. 391. [89] "Origin of Civilization." [90] Ibid. [91] Ibid. [92] Ibid. [93] Ibid. [94] Du Prel: "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls." [95] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls." CHAPTER I THE CONCEPTS OF EVOLUTION