Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/372

360 there is nothing in the speculations to which I am now referring which can stamp as unreasonable that particular view of mind and hody which it is the object of this lecture to set forth cursorily.

But what of that view of mind which arises out of the doctrine with which the name of Mr. Darwin is at present especially connected—a name which must always command the highest respect of all naturalists? Is not the view arising out of the doctrine of evolution altogether at variance with that which I have been led to take in this lecture? Unquestionably so. It is simply impossible to reconcile the two views; and it is also certain that, if that which arises out of the doctrine of evolution be right, the other must be abandoned. What, then, are the facts upon which this doctrine of evolution is based? This is the question. Are they to be read only in favor of this doctrine, or is there another reading? I venture to think that there is another reading; but how can I make good this statement with the hands of the clock standing where they do! At most I can only throw out a hint or two of what I might say on the subject if I had the time, and this is all I propose to do.

No one can believe more firmly than I do that there is a common plan in all animals and in all parts of animals, as well as in all plants and in all parts of plants, or that there is a common unity for the whole organic world, plant and animal alike. No one can believe more firmly than I do that there are manifestations of mind, not dissimilar in kind to human mind, in the brute creation, and that the law of mind is one and the same everywhere. But it does not follow from this belief in unity that I should believe that one organ should be developed into another organ, or one animal or plant into another animal or plant. The doctrine of unity is quite consistent with a belief that there are certain fixed differences in organs or organisms; it has nothing to do with the doctrine of evolution, except, perhaps, in making its acceptance a little less difficult, for it is a little more easy to suppose that a higher creature may be evolved from a lower if there be the same archetypal unity of plan underlying the two; more than this it cannot do.

I cannot doubt that in the embryonic life of the higher animals there is a process of development at work by which the embryo before arriving at maturity passes through certain stages which seem to shadow forth certain permanent states of being lower down in the scale of life. I cannot doubt that in this case the more perfect is preceded by the more crude, and that there is a process of evolution at work up to a given point. But what follows? Certainly not this—that these resemblances are realities, that the embryo of a higher animal, in developing to maturity, passed through a succession of different animals each one a little more perfect than its predecessors. Certainly not more than this—that the higher animal in the embryonic period of its history, without ever ceasing to be itself, passes through certain