Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/700

680 high intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant. Thus it happens that the European inhabits from twenty to thirty cubic inches more of brain than the Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist in some inferior races, become congenital in superior ones. Thus it happens that out of savages unable to count up to the number of their fingers, and speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and Shakespeares."

At the outset of this address it was stated that physical theories which lie beyond experience are divided by a process of abstraction from experience. It is instructive to note from this point of view the successive introduction of new conceptions. The idea of the attraction of gravitation was preceded by the observation of the attraction of iron by a magnet, and of light bodies by rubbed amber. The polarity of magnetism and electricity appealed to the senses; and thus became the substratum of the conception that atoms and molecules are endowed with definite, attractive, and repellent poles, by the play of which definite forms of crystalline architecture are produced. Thus molecular force becomes structural. It required no great boldness of thought to extend its play into organic Nature, and to recognize in molecular force the agency by which both plants and animals are built up. In this way, out of experience arise conceptions which are wholly ultra-experiential.

The origination of life is a point lightly touched upon, if at all, by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Spencer. Diminishing gradually the number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin comes at length to one "primordial form;" but he does not say, as far as I remember, how he supposes this form to have been introduced. He quotes with satisfaction the words of a celebrated author and divine who had "gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe He created a few original forms, capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his laws." What Mr. Darwin thinks of this view of the introduction of life I do not know. Whether he does or does not introduce his "primordial form" by a creative act, I do not know. But the question will inevitably be asked, "How came the form there?" With regard to the diminution of the number of created forms, one does not see that much advantage is gained by it. The anthropomorphism, which it seemed the object of Mr. Darwin to set aside, is as firmly associated with the creation of a few forms as with the creation of a multitude. We need clearness and thoroughness here. Two courses, and two only, are possible. Either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change our notions of matter. If we look at matter as pictured by Democritus, and as defined for generations in our scientific text-books, the absolute impossibility of any form of life coming out of it would be sufficient to render any other