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Show 474 DARWINISM CHAP. The special faculties we have been discussing clearly point to the existence in man of something which he has not derived from his animal progenitors-something which we may best refer to as being of a spiritual essence or nature, capable of progressive development under favourable conditions. On the hypothesis of this spiritual nature, superadded to the animal nature of man, we are able to understand much that is otherwise mysterious or unintelligible in regard to him, especially the enormous influence of ideas, principles, and beliefs over his whole life and actions. Thus alone we can understand the constancy of the martyr, the unselfishness of the philanthropist, the devotion of the patriot, the enthusiasm of the artist, and the resolute and persevering search of the scientific worker after nature's secrets. Thus we may perceive that the love of truth, the delight in beauty, the passion for justice, and the thrill of exultation with which we hear of any act of courageous self-sacrifice, are the workings within us of a higher nature which has not been developed by means of the struggle for material existence. It will, no doubt, be urged that the admitted continuity o.f man's progress from the brute does not admit of the introduction of new causes, and that we have no evidence of the sudden change of nature which such introduction would bri11g about. The fallacy as to new causes involving any breach of continuity, or any sudden or abrupt change, in the effects, has already been shown; but we will further point out that there are at least three stages in the development of the orga.11ic world when some new cause or power must necessarily have come into action. The first stage is the change from inorganic to organic, when the earliest vegetable cell, or the living protophsm out of which it arose, first appeared. This is often imputed to a mere increase of complexity of chemical compounds ; but increase of complexity, with consequent instability, even if we admit that it may have produced protoplasm as a chemical compound, could certainly not have produced living protoplasm -protoplasm which has the power of growth and of reproduction, and of that continuous process of development which has resulted in the marvellous variety and complex organi ation of the whole vegetable kingdom. There is in all this som 'Lhing • XV DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 475 quite beyond and a art fr . complex . and I.t h pb om chemical changes, however cell was a' new th · as . echn well sm·c 1 t h at the first ve()'etable mer m t e w ·ld . b powers-that of ext t" or '. possessmg altogether new dioxide of the atmrac hmcr and fixmg carbon from the carbon-asp ere th t f · . · and, still more m· , ll ' a 0 mdefimte reproduction reproducing those arve . otu' s ' the. power of vari·a tion and of' vana IOns till dl . . structure and varieties of f en ess comphcatwns of then, we have indication form have been the result. Here may term vitality, since si~ cri~~:ew power _at work, which w~ all those characters and , b , : to c~rtam forms of matter The next sta()'e I·s sti'll piOperties whiCh constitute Life. beyond all possbi bility of morel marv. ell ous, sti' ll more completely forces. It is the introd ext.p anatflon by _matter, its laws and const1· tutm· g the fundamuecn tr on o sensatwn · 1 d' . . or conscwnsne .. , and vegetable kinCYdOms f~ , IS~~ll.CtlOn between the animal of structure prodr~ing the re:~~t a. Idea of mere co~ plication feel it to be altogether re t IS out of the qucstwn. \Ve stage of complexity of ~to~~ erous _to ~ssume that at a certain result of that complexit ~onstrtutwn, and as a nece. sary existence, a thing that f eels \h \ o_ne, a~ ego ~houlcl start into Here we have the certaint~ t~a:s consc~~~s of Its own existence. being whose nascent conscio some mg new. has arisen, a power and definiteness till uist~~ hasl g_one on _mcreasir~g in animals No b 1 1 . s cu mmated m the hio·her · ver a exp anatwn or att t t · b such as the statement that life j h emp a explanation-forces of the protoplasm th t t e result of ~h~ molecular universe from tl b ' or a the whole existmg organic from which tl le ~mre a up to man was latent in the fire-mist m t l . le. soar system was developed-can afford an m;~t:ry~atlsfactwn, or help us in any way to a olution of th~ of aT~e third stag~ is, as we have seen, the existence in man th u~?~r o~ his. most characteristic and noblest facnlties os~ :'. ~c rmse him furthest above the brutes ancl o en u ' possibihtws of almost indefinite advancement Th f p l . p co 11 t "bl ' · esc acu ties 1 u c n~ possi y have beeu developed by mean of the same aws ':hiCh ha~e determined the progressive development of the orgamc world m oac ner'L< l , a nd a1 s o of man ,s phy 1. cal organism. I 1 For an earlier discussion of tl · . L · t · . the author's Contributions to the J.;;s st~ ~~; ~~vith. som.e WJ•:er applications, ~ce teary C!J .Hatuutl &leclw11, chap. x. |