Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/603

Rh finding it uncommonly cloudy. We remember, of course, that our author is not bound to furnish us with brains as well as with arguments; but, using such brains as we have, we venture to suggest that the substantial meaning-of the sentence might better have been expressed in the following words: "Perhaps, if he knew how to put his case in the strongest form, he would urge," etc. We might then with less distraction have admired the modesty which offers to assist the Huxleys and Spencers, the Morses and Fiskes, to state their case in the strongest form, and also the curious felicity of the adjective "peculiar" as applied to the "indications" which the evolutionist, duly instructed by the ex-president, would say are to be looked for. A sentence or two further on we come across what may fairly be styled a "peculiar indication," namely, the word "protean," used in the sense of "most primitive," in the phrase "from the protean forms up to the human." Haeckel and other naturalists talk of the protista; and Dr. Porter apparently thinks that "protean" is the proper cognate adjective.

The biologist, we are told, "makes much of the existence of rudimentary organs in the higher species of animals, and which [sic], he contends, give positive evidence of a great number of intermediate members or links in the great chain of progressive development, which have left no remnants or traces behind." Does the biologist really talk in this fashion? We very much doubt it. How can these "intermediate members" have left no remnants or traces behind, if they have left rudimentary organs as memorials of their existence? Then what is the force of the word "intermediate"? Intermediate between what? A rudimentary organ simply points to some anterior form, in which the organ was better developed. The word "intermediate" has here absolutely no application. Our author is able, however, to give us the philosophy of the rudiments. It "can not be denied," he says, "that they prove a unity of plan or of thought, of beauty and order, in the production of the wondrous cosmos of animal life, including a dramatic order in the introduction of its families and groups." When people say that a thing "can not be denied," they generally mean that it must be admitted. If Dr. Porter uses the words in this sense, he simply closes the whole case without further argument. The same method applied to the question of evolution at large would have saved him the trouble of writing his lecture; though possibly a brief oracular announcement might not have wrought instant conviction in the minds of the Nineteenth Century Club. We are going to be very bold, for our own part, and insist on treating the question as still open. We say then that, in our opinion, Dr. Porter's theory of "a unity of plan or of thought, of beauty and order," is not tenable, and that the evolution theory alone meets the case satisfactorily. There is no use in talking of beauty or order, unless we mean such beauty and order as human faculties can recognize. Now,