Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/775

Rh I will now attempt to deal with the well-intentioned but very malignant dogma of Malthus, and also with the yet more important and admitted truths presented by Darwin and Wallace, from the point of view of an idealist. I know not bow else to discriminate between one who holds the views which I shall attempt to present and one who regards man and his functions purely as a materialist giving regard to physical influences only.

So far as I comprehend the propositions submitted by either of these great leaders in scientific thought, their theories are all based upon the material conditions which govern man considered as one of the animals. If we deal with the existence of animal life as a stage in the conversion of forces by which the universe exists, we may fully admit that the animal is dominated by the forces of Nature. There may have been a development of species perhaps from a single germ. There has been a survival of one species of animal while others disappear. There has been an adaptation of animal life to the varying conditions of climate and soil in the long geologic ages. There has been a survival of the physically strongest of particular species. There has been a survival of the more intelligent species. Yet there is no evidence of the progressive development of intelligence or of experience in any existing species of animal except mankind. The dams built by the beavers in the far Northwest, of which Professor Agassiz computed the age at nearly two thousand years, as I remember, by the growth of the peat bogs that had gradually filled the lakes which the beavers created, were made in the same way that the beavers build their dams at the present time. There has been no variation, no progress. The beaver of the present generation to all intents and purposes corresponds to the beaver of two thousand years ago. True, the students of natural history have proved slight variations, slight adaptations and slight modifications in specific groups of animals, but as yet the one distinction remains which separates man from all other animals. None but men are endowed with progressive wants and with the mental capacity to secure their supply.

If it is held, as some naturalists may allege, that this statement is too strong, it may be admitted that there has also been a survival of species and of members of species whose brain measurement is to-day larger than in former periods which come within observation, and that there has been an increase of intelligence as distinguished from instinct. There are also members of particular species like beavers, who under certain conditions develop the power to build dams, and who under other conditions have not developed that power. Yet the fact remains that these slight variations, occurring in periods of almost geologic time, have no correspondence with the progress of mankind.