full powers for the control and management of the post-office, the telegraph, the government interest in railroads, and such other matters as might properly come under its direction. Such commissioners should not be appointed by the President nor by Congress, nor should they be elected by popular vote. They should be created by the organic law, something after the manner proposed by Mr. Mill for the creation of Life Peers; not because of present popularity, nor for influence with the existing Administration; but because of long service in responsible positions, to which they had been repeatedly elected by the people of their respective States.

In our State governments the office regarded as most honorable, and for the attainment of which personal integrity and high character count for most, is that of Governor. It is a position desired more for the honor than for the power or emoluments. The duties may be onerous, but the salaries are generally small. Now let us suppose the United States to be parceled out into seven divisions; more might be better, but for the present we will say seven. Let the New England States constitute one of these; the great Middle States another; the Western States the third; the North-western the fourth; the Pacific States the fifth; the South-western and South-eastern the sixth and seventh. Having provided for the creation of a commission to which the entire control and management of the post-office, the telegraph, and government's interest in those railroads built wholly, or in part, at the public cost, should be entrusted, let the members of this board of commissioners be created by the organic act. Let each division of the States, as before arranged, be entitled to one member of the board, and this member not to be appointed by either Congress or President, but to be the ex-governor who had served as governor of his State for the longest period. Then as vacancies occurred afterwards the man who for the most continuous years had been chosen and rechosen chief magistrate of his State, should, in virtue of these endorsements, succeed to this high and responsible post; the most coveted and important, with one or two exceptions, in the whole government service. The president of this board might or might not be a member of the Cabinet. If not he might with great propriety and advantage be allowed a seat, though not a vote, in the Senate, to explain the acts and needs of his department.

. A board thus constituted could not possibly be of a partisan

character, and it would certainly be composed of men of experience, of practical sense, of approved integrity and general ability. It would probably command more respect than any other branch of the government, as with this high honor in prospect the people of the different States would select their very first man for governor, and not be changing every two or three years, as has grown to be the almost universal custom. By fixing the age at which the members of the board should retire, it would be certain to be composed at all times of men in the full vigor of their powers.

The efficiency of a board thus constituted would, of course, depend very much on the powers conferred upon it, and the restrictions by which it was surrounded in the organic act. To carry out the reforms expected of it, it must have clearly defined powers that could not be interfered with either by the President or Congress. The money to carry it on must of course be voted by Congress, but beyond that the board should be as independent as the executive now is in the control of the diplomatic and consular service. Being made up as the board would be of the leading men of both parties, it is unlikely that it would ever provoke sufficient opposition to endanger the necessary appropriations. To preserve harmony in its counsels, it must be governed by rules in recommending appointments, which would rigidly prohibit all party considerations.

This would be civil service reform of the best kind. It would take the appointing power from the President in that branch of the government in which, if there are not more abuses, there are more complaints of them, than of any, if not all others. At the start it could make clean new work and, which is more important, thorough reform could be enforced. Under the present system anything like general reform is impossible. Let the most pronounced civil service reformer in the country be made Secretary of any of the departments, or president of them all, and the opposition of his own. party in Congress to the loss of their patronage and perquisites would be sufficient to render him powerless as the head of an Administration. As long as he has the power to appoint postmasters and mail agents, Senators and Representatives will demand the naming of them; and were he to refuse to listen to them there is danger that he would find himself very soon, like Tyler or Johnson, a President without a party. A change of Administration must inevitably be followed by a change of office-holders. The vicious spoils doctrine has so grown into a rule that only a change of system

can cure the evil. But by the adoption of a plan like that here suggested the very idea of spoils following victory would effectually be set at rest.

To expect anything like reform from a mere change of administration is absurd and preposterous. All admit that the spoils system is an evil; but as long as it exists, the name of the claimants will be legion. Therefore there must be a change in the laws; in the system; and if the one here proposed be impracticable or defective, let those who think it easier to create than to destroy, suggest a better. It is easy to complain of things as they are; it is the delight of demagogues; but who of our public men will incur the obloquy of innovation by proposing a remedy?

X.

HAECKEL'S GENESIS OF MAN, OR HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE. 11

IT

[FIRST PAPER.]

GENERAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT.

T is no derogation from the epoch-making labors of Charles Darwin to say that the arguments he has presented in support of his celebrated theory constitute, as it were, but the half of the vast array which the present state of biological science is capable of marshaling in its defence.

The sources from which all the evidences of descent and natural selection must be derived, may be divided into two general classes: First. Paleontology, Comparative Anatomy and Osteology, and Geographical Distribution (Chorology), i. e., a comparison of the adult forms of animals both living and fossil (Phylogeny); and Second, the study of embryonic changes and post-natal metamorphoses, or acomparison of undeveloped animal forms (Ontogeny). Of these two classes it may be said that the first have been furnished by Darwin, the second by Haeckel. Not that Darwin, either in his Origin of Species or in his Descent of Man, has wholly ignored the bearing of embryological considerations upon his

1 Anthropogenie, oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen, von Ernst Haeckel, Professor an der Universität Jena. Leipsic, 1874.

theory. In the former work he has devoted seventeen pages of one of his concluding chapters to "Development and Embryology;" the greater part of which, however, is occupied in pointing out the importance of the various kinds of metamorphosis, chiefly as it is observed in insects, amphibians, etc., after birth; only incidentally referring to those more obscure metamorphoses which take place within the egg or the uterus.

He does allude, however, more directly to Von Baer's law, but without designating it as such; and contents himself with quoting the passage, cited also by Haeckel in the preface to the third edition of his History of Creation (1870), in which the great Russian embryologist remarks upon the striking similarity of many embryos, so much so that he was quite unable to say to what animals two specimens which he had preserved in alcohol but had neglected to label, really belonged. Still less attention has Darwin paid to this source of argument in his Descent of Man. A few lines quoted from Von Baer and from Huxley on page 14 of Vol. 1, a figure of the embryo of a human being and one of a dog, from Ecker, on page 15, with brief comments, disposes of this branch of his great argument. Almost as much had been said by the author of the Vestiges of Creation in 1842. It may be safe therefore to say that at the time of the appearance of the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin had no conception of the real part that the arguments from embryology were destined to play in establishing his great doctrine of the development of organic forms. And although in subsequent editions he was able to notice the Generelle Morphologie, it is still improbable that even then he had any adequate idea of the powerful ally he was to have in Germany, as the Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, and not less the work under review, have proved the professor of Jena to be. It is of the former of these works that Darwin says that if it had appeared before the Descent of Man had been written, he would probably never have completed the latter.

Professor Haeckel is no mere disciple of Darwin, profound as is his admiration of him, and unreserved as is his expression of that admiration. His own countrymen have accused him of being "more Darwinistic than Darwin himself," but it is clear that a large part of this difference is in kind rather than in degree, and that he has infused into the developmental philosophy a true

New York, 1845, p 150.

Haeckelian element. It is true that he drew the logical conclusion from the premises furnished by the Origin of Species five years before the announcement of its recognition by Darwin himself in his Descent of Man. This conclusion he boldly and forcibly enunciated in the introduction to his Generelle Morphologie, published in 1866, and reiterated with still greater emphasis in his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte in 1868. Between this period and that of the appearance of the Descent of Man, Haeckel was exposed to the bitterest attacks, not only from the adherents of the Church and the opponents of Darwin generally, but from those adherents of Darwinism in Germany-and they were many-whose conception of it was limited to the body of principles contained in the Origin of Species. As in that work all reference to the position of the human race in the animal kingdom was carefully excluded, thus ingeniously avoiding the shock of prejudice which any such connection would have occasioned, the simplicity, the naïveté, and at the same time the force of reasoning contained in that work not only won the immediate assent of all fully emancipated minds, but took a strong hold upon great numbers of liberally educated persons whose independent reflections had not yet carried them wholly out from under the influence of theological conceptions. Among these were many thoroughly scientific men and naturalists, specialists in the various departments of science, whose analytical labors had not left them time for a synthesis of the facts even within their own special branch of research. These accepted the conclusions drawn in the Origin of Species without perceiving that other and important ones might and must follow from the same premises. And because Haeckel drew these logical and necessary conclusions, these persons attacked him from all sides, and heaped upon him every form of accusation. Besides the charge above referred to of out-Darwining Darwin, and of going further than Darwin himself would ever sanction, there was added the stronger one that Haeckel knew nothing about true Darwinism. The appearance in 1871 of Darwin's Descent of Man placed these anti-Haeckel Darwinians in a most embarrassing situation, silencing many, converting numbers, and driving not a few into the theological camp. But Haeckel emerged majestically from the battle, unscathed and undaunted. To charges of "radicalism" he had simply replied: "Radical thinking is consistent thinking, which allows itself to be checked by no barriers of tradition or of enforced dogma." To