true that Nature, having learned her art, now does her work far more easily and expeditiously. She constructs a hand, an eye, a whole body, and multitudes of them, in a very short space of time comparatively, because when she has once gained any advantage, or learned an art in the organic sphere, she holds to it by a blind conservative instinct, and faithfully reproduces it in the next generation, through the fact of inheritance. Though even in these cases of rapid reproduction, embryology teaches that the embryo goes through the same successive stages in the womb that the long line of its phylogenetic ancestors passed through, only that the steps of the process which it cost Nature millions of years to learn in the case of the species, are now, in the case of the individual, abridged into a few weeks or months.

This is the whole story. And here the design argument, as formerly understood, loses its point and force, apparent design being explained by and resolved into natural process and the fact of inheritance. What we mistook for a preconception in an infinite mind, realized by an almighty and skilful hand, is a most excellent result that chance has spared and that natural selection has brought to the front. And suppose an objector were to maintain that this conservative faculty of Nature's; this obstinate holding on to an advantage once gained, and passing it on from parent to offspring; this marvellous faculty of repeating in a few weeks or months all the creative skill which it took millions of years to acquire; this facility of reproducing at a few sittings the choicest masterpieces of her work, elaborating the human eye in a dark region, carving the human hand, and laying up the tender cells and coils of the future brain; -that all this is to the full as extraordinary and transcen

dent workmanship as was ever the supposed sudden creations of species with all their organs and adaptations. Yes, the materialistic biologist tells us, it is quite as wonderful; but it is a fact, however astonishing, and as a fact it is conceivable, while the other account of supernatural creation is a fiction, and of the worst kind, because it never could be made conceivable to us under our existing mental conditions. Moreover, extraordinary as is the evolution before birth of any living being, human or other, there is no appearance of the action of a mind at work unfolding each stage of the process; on the contrary, science, which has lately been deeply engaged on the subject, tells us only of the action of matter, the evolution one after another, and according to regular ascertainable laws, of the wonderful properties stored up implicitly in all-powerful and mysterious matter. A mysterious, universal, immanent power is here manifested, if you will; the materialist affirms that it is a power inherent in and belonging to matter, and most certainly it is not mind in any sense of that term to which we can attach a meaning. Even if we grant a universal power at every point and pulse of the organic, as of the inorganic world, existing everywhere and at all times, still this would not be a universal mind, but a universal power or agency; and if we are to use our words with any definite meaning, we cannot affirm that there is a supreme mind at work, shaping the individual organs by supernatural power before birth, when science assures us that it is all done by natural processes. There is no more trace of mind in the short process of evolution which the science of embryology surveys, than in the long processes of evolution of which Darwin tells us this is but a very brief epitome. The evolution of the individual, with all its exquisite adaptations,

is as wonderful truly as the evolution of a planet, as the evolution of the human species; but it is no more brought about, than were those others, by the action of a supernatural mind planning it or of a supernatural hand achieving it; which are clearly mere words that convey no meaning. It is done by regular, natural steps and processes which science is learning to trace and exhibit to us as invariable laws, mysterious and marvellous in the last result, indeed, but only, as all ultimate facts and laws are and must be, from the laws of embryonic development and natural selection to the law of gravitation, although they, in the long run, relate only to matter and its various manifestations.

§ 2. Thus, the new materialism seeks to draw renewed life and nutriment from Darwinism. Can it be said to this materialism, which bases itself upon doctrine of evolution, that, whether there be or be not marks of infinite wisdom and goodness discoverable in the entire cosmic process, yet a God, intelligent and moral, must be postulated as the Author of conscience and the moral law in man; a God who, moreover, still exists as a moral Legislator and Ruler, and who will finally make virtue and happiness coincident hereafter, as we feel they should be, though they never actually are, upon the earth? This is Kant's argument for the existence and moral government of God, reproduced in Mr. Matthew Arnold's "something not ourselves that makes for righteousness."

But in answer to this we are assured, not merely by the materialists, but by scientific moralists like Darwin and Spencer, that from the circumstances and necessities of the case, men themselves must have invented morality, slowly but surely-a conclusion which is confirmed by

Tylor's and Lubbock's researches into the primitive history of mankind. The germs of all morality, we are told, are contained in two primitive instincts-the instinct of self-preservation and the reproductive instinct; in particular social morality, or morality proper, implied in our obligation to our fellows, is to be traced to the former. Morality is a necessary corollary from the instinct to live, so much so that, being given three, or even two, social, not to say human, beings agreeing to live together in any kind of union, however loose, morality of some degree and amount, however slight, must result. Three men, three ants, could not live and labour together without manifesting the essential elements of morality. Union, besides allaying mutual fear and distrust, secures certain evident advantages: two can obtain by their united labours more than double the amount of food and raiment that each working separately could procure. Here the self-preserving instinct comes into play. But they could not have the advantages of union unless there was mutual trust, a fair division of labour and of its acquisitions; and here we have the essential germs of truth and justice. Further, if in a primitive tribe of men, as in a colony of ants, there was not some zeal in individuals for the common good, the society, as a whole, would not flourish, and the individuals themselves would be the losers. So surely, in fact, as the primitive units in a state of isolation, under the instinct of self-preservation, must act in ways that we could generally predict in pursuit of food, so surely when they come together, though still at first under the guidance of this instinct of self-preservation, or selfadvancement, they will observe, in their mutual intercourse, a rudimentary moral behaviour, which will in time become

customs and then recognized laws, with a power lodged somewhere to enforce them.

All else follows in the natural course of evolution: the gradual improvement of morality will be accomplished by natural selection favouring those tribes or groups in which the social as well as other virtues, as courage, and sacrifice, were most observed and practised. All the virtues necessary for society will be thus developed if men live together— sociability, sympathy, pity, as well as regard for veracity, justice, and the general weal. True, the vices may also be developed in individuals, because at the bottom man remains. a being with an obstinate instinct to seek his own advantage, which urges him to violate his duty to others; but the united interest of the society is always a force antagonistic to these selfish impulses, and exerts itself to repress them. Of course, the looser the cohesion of the primitive societies, the less scope there is for the development of the virtues, which, in a state of savage isolation, may be, as we still see, almost non-existent, or may exist only in so far as the mere primitive unit, the family group, implies some small recognition of them.

Morality is thus no special fact in human nature necessarily requiring a supernatural being to produce it. The moral law was not specially handed down from heaven to guide men's actions. Given only the self-conserving instinct inseparable from all living beings, given further the germs of the principle of sociability so widely spread in the animal kingdom, and all social animals, man included, must of necessity invent some system of morals. Morality in this respect stands on the same level with art, science, mechanical invention, that they are all equally of man's creation and device. Morality, indeed, presupposes some rudimentary