to operate until the modification of structure which is to be selected as dominant in the future has already come into existence. How, then, are we to arrive at a knowledge of the primary causes of modification? To this difficult question biologists have naturally been slow to give an answer. No one can find fault with their caution; but unfortunately they have too often treated the question as a negligible one, which is quite a different matter. An especial importance belongs to the question of the primary cause of any modification of structure" (I quote Darwin's phrase); and for this reason, that it is a question which brings before us the whole being of any living creature, not merely the visible organism, but that which underlies the visible organism, the motives and needs of the creature. It will scarcely be denied that the most primitive creatures have needs, and have motives. Mr Headley, in his interesting work Life and Evolution (p. 175), tells us how an amoeba (an animalcule consisting of only a single cell) rejected a morsel of flint and ate a diatom (a very small single-cell plant), thereby showing clearly a perceptive preference. The amoeba had a need, and had a motive; and if we go higher in the scale of creatures we shall find more complex needs, and higher motives. If we are to inquire into the primary causes of modification of structure, we can hardly make a greater mistake than by neglecting the finest and subtlest elements of that being which is so intimately connected with the structure, which expresses itself through the structure. It may be difficult to apprehend motives, still more to apprehend the workings of the animal mind through a long continuance of time; but just as we should make a great mistake, in contemplating the works of man, if we ignored the labour and the pain, the thoughts and the hopes, by means of which these works came into existence, so we shall make a great mistake, in contemplating the visible structures in which life has enshrined itself, if we try to solve the question of the original formation of those structures without paying regard to the deepest characteristic of life, those feelings and purposes which collectively we name the soul.

It will not be expected that, in the few pages which are at my command, I shall do more than touch on the way in which the mind and purpose of any creature may be conceived to have operated towards a change of its external structure; but a few instances may be given. The first shall be from a quarter where perhaps it would not be expected that any instance would

be found from the history of plants. It will of course be understood that, in using the word history, I have no thought of direct evidence in my mind; we have to be guided by inferences; and it may be useful to remark how often, in everyday experience, we are accustomed to say that we see something when we are really inferring something. For instance, in reading a friend's hastily written letter, we shall often be compelled to infer that a certain set of strokes means a word to which it has no natural resemblance.

To come to my instance in plant-history; it is generally conceded that in order of time, water-plants preceded land-plants; this is probable both from the shape of the earth, which must have been an originally liquid mass before it was solidified, and also the structural signs point to this order of development. It was when land first emerged from the waters of the primeval ocean that land-plants began to be; and how? By the invention (if I may so call it) of a root. That plant was indeed a great inventor which first struck a root into the ground! In the remote ages of which I am speaking, some sea-plant (which had previously derived its nurture only from waves and air and sunlight) was left by the tide just below the highest high-water mark; the water it received in this way was not adequate to its needs; it thrust out a fine filament into the ground, just as heretofore it had thrust out filaments into the sea; and behold, there was water underneath! That fine filament was the first root; it was evoked by the need of the sea-plant; the sea-plant had a motive in sending it out. The habit of root-making spread among plants; the moist ground near the estuaries was soon covered with vegetation, and presently the drier land remote from the ocean was also covered, as plants learned to thrust in their roots deeper and deeper. What an accession of strength came therefrom! The solid earth in its depths proved to have treasures of nourishment far beyond what the waves could bring; for though the first land-plants, mosses and ferns, were not greatly superior to the seaweed, yet presently the great forest trees began to grow, sending their tons of timber high up into the air (hundreds of feet in the case of the American sequoia); and what comparison can the limp seaweed hold with such a display of strength as this?

Land-animals were in the end fully as much superior to the denizens of the sea as land-plants are to water-plants; but it is not so easy to trace their development. The first land-animals,

the reptiles, do not appear to be greatly superior to the fishes. But when warm-blooded creatures came to the front in their two main divisions, birds with their power of flight, and mammalia bringing forth their young alive and fostering them with a new affection, then the power and range of animal life rose very greatly; but by what steps the reptile won development into these two higher forms it is not easy for us to imagine. More simple were two great advances made by animal life while yet under the waters of the ocean; the winning of special senses, of which sight was the most remarkable; and the sheltering of the most delicate part of the nervous system by the formation of a spine. These were not aggressive advances; they injured none; and they are of a kind peculiarly marked by receptivity. Not action, but patience, must have been the most prominent necessity while the changes were being matured; and the patience must have been deliberate. The first beginnings of sight lay in the greater sensitiveness of a certain portion of the skin to the waves of the heavenly ether; this feeling must have been pleasurable in itself, before it was known to be the method by which a world can be revealed to us. Receptivity is the quality indicated by the sense of sight, as by the other senses; and though it would be an error to suppose that this receptivity was not mingled with action, there must have been occasions when receptivity alone was in play, while the creature was winning the faculty of sight. We call sight a faculty; but evidently seeing was at first (like speech) an art, won with labour, inspired by hope. Purpose there must have been in it, though purpose of a much more gentle and limited character than what we generally call by that name; no creature ever thought, "I will learn to see," any more than any man ever said to himself, "I will learn to speak." These primitive powers are learned, but not consciously learned; the purpose of the learner is confined to very small elements indeed, which only become great by accumulation, and only after a lapse of time far exceeding the life of a single individual.

So, likewise, the processes by which vertebrate creatures arose out of the invertebrate must have been very gentle and slow; very small, scarcely perceptible, purposes must have been the animating cause of the change.

Of developments in structure of more doubtful value, such as the retractile claw of the feline genus, I need not perhaps speak here.

Purpose we must conclude there is in development, in the sense explained above; but are we to acknowledge a divine purpose in the whole series of growing life? It will be pertinent, in relation to this question, to quote some expressions of Charles Darwin himself, who, though not feeling himself able to acknowledge distinctly the being of God, yet was incapable of refusing to express what he felt to be a genuine instinct. He wrote to Professor W. Graham :

You have expressed my inward conviction... that the universe is not the result of chance. Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1. p. 316. Again, he wrote to Lord Farrer :

If we consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to look at it as the outcome of chance, that is, without design and purpose. The whole question seems to me insoluble, for I cannot put much or any faith in the so-called intuitions of the human mind. More Letters, vol. I. p. 395.

No one ought to call that question easy, which Darwin called insoluble. Nor have intuitions, unconfirmed by experience, any value. Still, there are two purposes which we may fairly attribute to the Divine Will, and which will indicate in some measure how the Divine Will may have operated in bringing life on the earth to its present state of growth; first, the purpose of strengthening all faculties which may promote living energy in the whole of creation; secondly, the purpose of uniting the children of life, so that they may mutually help one another, and if possible have conscious affection for one another. Religious experience does, I think, confirm the reality of these divine purposes.

CHAPTER II

ANCIENT RELIGION: BABYLONIA, EGYPT, INDIA

In the foregoing chapter, I spoke of the relation of man to the universe, and of the belief, which we are at liberty to entertain, that divine and spiritual action have place in other parts of the universe, besides the earth on which we live; and of the reasons why we are at liberty to entertain this belief. Moreover I said that the same philosophy, which teaches us that man has kinship with all other terrestrial life, leads us to believe that the divine action has place in terrestrial life other than human life; and I endeavoured faintly to indicate of what nature this divine action must be, in beings outside man. But it is of course man in whom our religious inquiries centre; and the beginning of man dates from the time when articulate speech was first fashioned into a real art, a successful faculty. Along with speech, the flexible human hand and the upright human posture came into being, and were causes of advance. We know that during all these early periods, advance was being made, but how it was made we do not know. The particulars of the advance we do however to some extent know. Man discovered how to kindle fire; he learnt to make flint hatchets; he built houses and villages; he tamed horses, and subjugated other animals, partly to help him in his labours, partly to be used for food. Metals were discovered and wrought into tools and weapons. He snared and hunted animals, and used their skins as clothes. The art of agriculture slowly began. Men formed communities; and ranks, offices, and specific duties were assigned to different individuals. How greatly did man soar above the animals now!

But of these ancient days we have no record. We may conjecture the historical causes through which progress was made; but conjecture it is, not evidence. Doubtless there were heroes then, wise thinkers, keen observers, tender self-sacrificing women, as millennium after millennium passed by, and human