Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/330

318 to a stimulus as much even as many plants do. Had the egg, instead of being broken by the cook, been left under the hen for a certain time, the yolk would have passed by infinitesimal gradations through a series of forms ending in the chick, and by similarly infinitesimal gradations would have arisen those functions which end in the chick breaking its shell; and which, when it gets out, show themselves in running about, distinguishing and picking up food, and squeaking if hurt. When did the feeling begin, and how did there come into existence that power of perception which the chick's actions show? Should it be objected that the chick's actions are mainly automatic, I will not dwell on the fact that, though they are largely so, the chick manifestly has feeling and therefore consciousness, but I will accept the objection, and propose that instead we take the human being. The course of development before birth is just of the same general kind; and similarly, at a certain stage, begins to be accompanied by reflex movements. At birth there is displayed an amount of mind certainly not greater than that of the chick—there is no power of running from danger, no power of distinguishing and picking up food. If we say the chick is unintelligent, we must certainly say the infant is unintelligent. And yet from the unintelligence of the infant to the intelligence of the adult, there is an advance by steps so small that on no day is the amount of mind shown appreciably different from that shown on preceding and succeeding days. Thus the tacit assumption, that there exists a break, is not simply gratuitous, but one that is negatived [sic] by the most obvious facts.

And now, having dealt with the essential objections raised by Mr. Martineau to the Hypothesis of Evolution as it is presented under that purely scientific form which generalizes the process of things, firstly as observed, and secondly as inferred from certain ultimate principles, let me go on to examine that form of the Hypothesis which he propounds—Evolution as determined by Mind and Will—Evolution as prearranged by a Divine Actor. For Mr. Martineau apparently abandons the primitive theory of creation by "fiat of Almighty Will" and also the theory of creation by manufacture—by "a contriving and adapting power," and seems to believe in Evolution; requiring only that "an originating mind" shall be taken as its antecedent. Let us ask, first, in what relation Mr. Martineau conceives the "originating mind" to stand to the evolving universe. From some passages it is inferable that he considers the "presence of mind" to be everywhere needful. He says: