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bodies, but also the minds of man constructed

on the same pattern as those of the lower animals. To procure

food; to obtain a mate; and to rear offspring; such is the real

business of life with us as it is with them. If we look into

ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our

intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be

made visible we should find them tailed. And if we examine the

minds of the lower animals, we find in them the rudiments of

our talents and our virtues. As the beautiful yet imperfect

human body has been slowly developed from the base and hideous

creatures of the water and the earth, so the beautiful yet

imperfect human mind has been slowly developed from the

instincts of the lower animals. All that is elevated, all that

is lovely in human nature has its origin in the lower kingdom.

The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute

curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in

search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey

imitativeness. Loyalty and piety, the reverential virtues, are

developed from filial love. Benevolence and magnanimity, the

generous virtues, from parental love. The sense of decorum

proceeds from the sense of cleanliness; and that from the

instinct of sexual display. The delicate and ardent love which

can become a religion of the heart, which can sanctify and

soften a man’s whole life; the affection which is so noble, and

so pure, and so free from all sensual stain, is yet derived

from that desire which impels the male animal to seek a mate;

and the sexual timidity which makes the female flee from the

male is finally transformed into that maiden modesty which not

only preserves from vice, but which conceals beneath a chaste

and honourable reticence the fiery love that burns within;

which compels the true woman to pine in sorrow, and perhaps to

languish into death, rather than betray a passion that is not

returned.

 

There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their

fathers came down in the world through their own follies rather than

to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry

and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same

vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are

degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes. In scientific

investigations such whims and fancies must be set aside. It is

the duty of the inquirer to ascertain the truth, and then to

state it as decisively and as clearly as he can. People’s

prejudices must not be respected but destroyed. It may,

however, be worth while to observe, for the comfort of weak

souls, that in these new revelations of science human nature is

not in any way degraded. A woman’s body is not less lovely

because it was once a hideous mass of flesh. A woman’s modesty

is not less noble because we discover that it was once a mere

propensity, dictated, perhaps, by the fear of pain. The beauty

of the mind is not less real than the beauty of the body, and

we need not be discouraged because we ascertain that it has

also passed through its embryonic stage. It is Nature’s method

to take something which is in itself paltry, repulsive, and

grotesque, and thence to construct a masterpiece by means of

general and gradual laws; those laws themselves being often

vile and cruel. This method is applied not only to single

individuals, but also to the whole animated world; not only to

physical but also to mental forms. And when it is fully

realised and understood that the genius of man has been

developed along a line of unbroken descent from the simple

tendencies which inhabited the primeval cell, and that in its

later stages this development has been assisted by the efforts

of man himself, what a glorious futurity will open to the human

race! It may well be that our minds have not done growing, and

that we may rise as high above our present state as that state is

removed from the condition of the insect and the worm. For when

we examine the human mind we do not find it perfect and mature;

but in a transitional and amphibious condition. We live between

two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil;

we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of

quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We

are passing from the animal into a higher form; and the drama

of this planet is in its second act. We shall now endeavour to

place the first upon the stage, and, then passing through the

second, shall proceed to speculate upon the third. The scene

opens with the Solar System. Time uncertain; say, a thousand

million years ago.

CHAPTER IV

INTELLECT

 

THAT region of the universe which is visible to mortal eyes has

been named the solar system: it is composed of innumerable

stars, and each star is a white hot sun, the centre and

sovereign of a world. Our own sun is attended by a company of

cold, dark globes, revolving round it in accordance with the

law of gravitation; they also rotate like joints before the

fire, turning first one side, and then the other, to the

central light. The path that is traced by the outermost planet

is the limit of the sun’s domain, which is too extensive to be

measured into miles. If a jockey mounted on a winner of the

Derby had started when Moses was born, and had galloped ever

since at full speed, he would be by this time about half the

way across, Yet this world seems large to us, only because we

are so small. It is merely a drop in the ocean of space. The

stars which we see on a fine night are also suns as important

as our own; and so vast is the distance which separates their

worlds from ours, that a flash of lightning would be years upon

the road. These various solar systems are not independent of

one another they are members of the same community. They are

sailing in order round a point to us unknown. Our own sun,

drawing with it the planets in its course, is spinning

furiously upon its axis, and dashing through space at four

miles a second. And not only is the solar system an organ of

one gigantic form; it has also grown to what it is, and may

still be considered in its youth. As the body of a plant or

animal arises from a fluid alike in all its parts, so this

world of ours was once a floating fiery cloud, a nebula or

mist, the molecules of which were kept asunder by excessive

heat. But the universe is pervaded by movement and by change;

there came a period when the heat declined, and when the atoms

obeying their innate desires rushed to one another, and,

concentrating, formed the sun, which at first almost filled the

solar world. But as it cooled, and as it contracted, and as it

rotated, and as it revolved, it became a sphere in the centre

of the world; and it cast off pieces which became planets,

satellites, attendant stars, and they also cast off pieces

which became satellites to them. Thus the earth is the child,

and the moon the grandchild of the sun. When our planet first

came out into the world it was merely a solar fragment, a chip

of the old star, and the other planets were in a similar

condition. But these sunballs were separated from one another,

and from their parent form, by oceans of ether, a kind of

attenuated air, so cold that frost itself is fire in

comparison. The sun burning always in this icy air is gradually

cooling down; but it parts slowly with its heat on account of

its enormous size. Our little earth cooled quickly, shrank in

size — it had once extended to the moon — and finally went

out. From a globe of glowing gas it became a ball of liquid

fire, enveloped in a smoky cloud. When first we are able to

restore its image and examine its construction, we find it

composed of zones or layers in a molten state, arranged

according to their weight; and above it we find an atmosphere

also divided into layers. Close over the surface vapour of salt

was suspended in the air; next, a layer of dark, smoky, carbonic

acid gas; next, oxygen and nitrogen, and vapour of water or

common steam. Within the sphere, as it cooled and changed,

chemical bodies sprang from one another, rushed to and fro,

combined with terrible explosions; while in the variegated

atmosphere above, gas-hurricanes arose and flung the elements

into disorder. So sped the earth, roaring and flaming through

the sky, leaving behind it a fiery track, sweeping round the

sun in its oval course.

 

Year followed year, century followed century, epoch

followed epoch. Then the globe began to cool

upon its surface. Flakes of solid matter floated on the molten

sea, which rose and fell in flaming tides towards a hidden and

benighted moon. The flakes caked together, and covered the ball

with a solid sheet, which was upraised and cracked by the tidal

waves beneath, like thin ice upon the Arctic seas. In time it

thickened and became firm, but subterranean storms often ripped

it open in vast chasms, from which masses of liquid lava

spouted in the air, and fell back upon the hissing crust.

Everywhere heaps of ashes were thus formed, and the earth was

seamed with scars and gaping wounds. When the burning heat of

the air had abated, the salt was condensed, and fell like snow

upon the earth, and covered it ten feet thick. The Atlantic and

Pacific Oceans, lying overhead in the form of steam, descended

in one great shower, and so the primeval sea was formed. It was

dark, warm, and intensely salt; at first it overspread the

surface of the globe; then volcanic islands were cast up; and

as the earth cooled downwards to its core, it shrivelled into

folds as an apple in the winter when its pulp dries up. These

folds and wrinkles were mountain ranges, and continents

appearing above the level of the sea. Our planet was then

divided into land and water in the same proportions as exist at

the present time. For though land is always changing into

water, and water is always changing into land, their relative

quantities remain the same. The air was black, night was

eternal, illumined only by lightning and volcanoes; the earth

was unconscious of the sun’s existence; its heat was derived

from the fire within, and was uniform from pole to pole. But

the crust thickened; the inner heat could no longer be felt

upon the surface; the atmosphere brightened a little, and the

sun’s rays penetrated to the earth. From the shape, the

altitude, and the revolutions of our planet, resulted an

unequal distribution of solar heat, and to this inequality the

earth is indebted for the varied nature of its aspects and

productions. Climate was created: winds arose in the air;

currents in the deep; the sun sucked up the waters of the sea,

leaving the salt behind; rain-clouds were formed, and fresh

water bestowed upon the land. The underground fires assisted

the planet’s growth by transforming the soils into crystalline

structures, and by raising the rocks thus altered to the

surface; by producing volcanic eruptions, hot springs, and

other fiery phenomena. But the chief architect and decorator of

this planet was the sun. When the black veil of the earth was

lifted, when the sunlight entered the turbid waters of the

primeval sea, “an interesting event” took

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