Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/348

326 natural selection and sexual selection are indeed discussed, and a desperate effort is made to resuscitate the fast-fading notion of a "great gulf" between man and the lower animals. It is a curious fact that in the old natural history man is supposed to hold, in relation to other animals, a place very similar to that assigned by the Lavoisierian chemistry to oxygen in relation to the remaining elements. Unfortunately, in biology, passion, prejudice, and sophistry, play a more important part than they do in chemistry and physics. The discussion is based upon false principles. We all know the passage in which Mr. Wallace specifies the kind of controversy which alone can be recognized: "As his hypothesis is one which claims acceptance solely as explaining and connecting facts which exist in Nature, he expects facts alone to be brought to disprove it." This method of discussion finds here comparatively little favor. Theories are tested by their supposed moral or religious bearings, or by their agreement with the author's a priori views. If we bring facts to prove the existence of reason in animals, we are told that we do not know what reason is; if we find in them evidences of moral life, it is said that we have "not even the faintest conception of what a moral nature is." If we show that they possess language, there follows the ready quirk that we confound emotional language with intellectual. That Mr. Mivart's own views of moral nature and of reason must be correct, no one, of course, is supposed to doubt; nor is the spirit of the argument sounder than its method. The author speaks, not as a judge calmly weighing the arguments on either side, and anxious merely that the truth should be ascertained, but as a passionate and eager prosecuting counsel, or rather as a procureur du roi (king's attorney), skillfully bringing forward every circumstance, every point—actual or inferred, relevant or irrelevant—which may in any wise damage the defendants, and with equal dexterity concealing whatsoever might tell in their favor. Deep personal hatred toward the "Agnostics" and their doctrines—the odium theologicum in its most malignant form—pervades the entire book. Mr. Mivart may doubtless be able to meet Mr. Darwin, Mr. Lewes, Mr. Spencer, or Dr. Huxley, on neutral ground or in private life, on terms of ordinary courtesy; but it is because the man is better and greater than his book. We find here nothing of that fine manly spirit expressed in the old adage, "Plato is my friend, but truth is more my friend." On the contrary, there is one passage in which Mr. Mivart almost seems to apologize for having, on some former occasion, spoken of Mr. Darwin with too much courtesy. For this he has now atoned to an extent almost ludicrous. We should not have felt in the least surprised had we found it proved—of course by strictly metaphysical arguments—that the author of the "Origin of Species" is the veritable transgressor who—