in a passage in that interesting and powerful writer, G. J. Romanes (Darwin and after Darwin,' vol. iii, p. 124). He calls it 'psychological selection,' and he attributes to it importance in the evolution of the higher animals, but there only; in particular, he will not allow that it has any operation at all in the evolution of plants. Now to us this limitation, which to Romanes seemed so necessary, appears to arise from the simple fact that we know something about the operations of mind in animals (especially the higher animals), but hardly anything about the feeling which exists in plants. Is it inconceivable that plants should feel? Surely not; and therefore we hold that the limitation which Romanes thought to exist is a limitation in appearance and not in fact. The great cause which Romanes alleges for the separation of species is what he calls physiological selection, that is, the occurrence of a certain barren strain separating the two divided parts of a species, which divisions are nevertheless separately fertile. His arguments on this head appear to us conclusive; but it may well be that physiological selection on so large a scale, if we knew all, does really in effect imply psychological selection also as its spiritual counterpart.

We come to a wider question. The whole of the tenth chapter of Dr Merz's treatise, entitled the 'Vitalistic View of Nature,' is devoted to the consideration of the varying views of biologists on the question whether there be such a thing as a vital force in the living organism? Our own opinion is what we understand to be that of Lotze, and we state it as follows: that, so long as the physical organism alone is under observation, no such specific entity as a vital force is discoverable, though the processes are not calculable by any combination of physical laws; but that when the emotional element inherent more or less in all life is taken into account, we are in possession of a new kind of cause which illuminates for us many of the leading processes and changes in the physical organism, though there may be a great deal in this spiritual causation which we do not know, and much even which we are incapable of understanding. That is to say, for a full analysis of what happens in the region of life we must take into account sympathy as well as

observation. But biologists, taking the purely physical sciences as their model, have desired to rest upon physical observation alone; there has been a tendency among them to eliminate all idea of 'purpose' from the subject of their inquiry; and it so happened that Darwin's theory appeared to give them great assistance in doing so. How this came to be is thus explained by Dr Merz:

'We are now prepared,' he says, 'to understand the novel position which the Darwinian conception of natural processes introduced so far as the teleology of nature is concerned-how it dealt with final causes, with the apparent existence of a purpose, an end, in the processes of nature, notably of the living organism. . . .

"The possibility of explaining the marks of design as merely apparent depends on the conception of the genetic process acting on a large, a gigantic, scale; individual things put forth ever new developments by which they eventually overtop their neighbours, ultimately advancing to such a degree of excellence and individual perfection that to an outside beholder the few surviving specimens give the impression of having been originally designed. In fact, they only exist because those numberless individuals which could not grow in a sufficient degree perished in the struggle. Only those individual specimens survived in whom, in one or a few directions. something specially excellent was produced at the expense of development in other directions. In the mass, the crowd are sacrificed, i.e. automatically crushed, in favour of the few; in the individual, one special growth is automatically pursued at the expense of a general but less enduring, i.e. selfassertive, development. The end-the seeming purpose-is produced in the process of production, it being merely something more enduring, i.e. something better. It conveys the impression to an outside beholder of having been consciously set at the term of the process of development; in reality, it was produced simultaneously. The mountain peak which towers above its neighbours, and gives a distinctive rounding off and finish to a landscape, may be conceived as having been built up by the selective action of the natural artist who brought together the best materials and placed them in their most enduring positions; in reality, it owes its existence only to one out of the numberless throes of nature which happened to take place with stronger materials and in more stable forms of arrangement and grouping, or it is due to the denudation of the strata surrounding it. The end and purpose of any natural development is that which it can itself

automatically produce and endow with most distinctive and enduring characters, for this only survives at the expense of weaker productions; there is a natural result in development, but there need not be a purpose. The contemplation of the result may permit us to trace backward the process by which it was brought about; but we are not warranted in assuming that it existed independently, like the plan of a building or the purpose of an instrument. In the place of a growth according to a prearranged plan, Darwin put the conception of an automatic adjustment called "natural selection"; in the place of a conscious end or purpose he put the conception of a mere result, a product, the "surviving fittest."'

That is an exceedingly clear statement of the effect which the doctrine of natural selection produced in the minds of many biologists; and the sense of relief and of triumph engendered by the supposed abolition of any 'purpose' underlying the universe was vividly expressed by Du Bois-Reymond (quoted by Dr Merz, vol ii, p. 435).

'Here is the knot, here the great difficulty that tortures the intellect which would understand the world. Whoever does not place all activity wholesale under the sway of Epicurean chance, whoever gives only his little finger to teleology, will inevitably arrive at Paley's discarded "Natural Theology," and so much the more necessarily the more clearly he thinks and the more independent his judgment. . . . The possibility, ever so distant, of banishing from nature its seeming purpose and putting a blind necessity everywhere in the place of final causes, appears therefore as one of the greatest advances in the world of thought, from which a new era will be dated in the treatment of these problems. To have somewhat eased the torture of the intellect which ponders over the world-problem will, as long as philosophical naturalists exist, be Charles Darwin's greatest title to glory.'

An extraordinary passage, surely. Would Darwin have accepted the position assigned to him by the German savant? We hardly think so. For Darwin, while continually refuting allegations of discovered design in creation, yet refused to say, looking at the sum of things, There is no design herein.' This position of his, which is not inconsistent with the Origin of Species' itself, receives some illustration from his recently published letters. In a letter to Professor W. Graham ('Life and Letters,' i, 315), while denying that the existence of the Vol. 200.-No, 399.

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so-called laws of nature implies purpose,' he had said, 'You have expressed my inward convictions ... that the universe is not the result of chance.' Again, in a letter to Lord Farrer (More Letters,' i, 395), after refusing to allow of the 'variations of organic beings having been designed,' he continues, ' On the other hand, if we consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to look at it as the outcome of chance, that is, without design or purpose. The whole question seems to me insoluble.'

We wish to do all justice to that train of merely physical sequences which has been so carefully drawn out by Dr Merz; to the possibility that out of the infinite variations of circumstance a world may arise in which the strongest, from the very fact that they are the strongest, shall appear in the end as the governors and lords of the whole; so that all need of a directing power among the contending forms of life shall be superfluous. But this possibility is not to be treated as a certainty; the room is open for causes other than those of a physical struggle.

It is of course one thing to affirm that the Darwinian theory leaves room for the belief in a creative purpose animating this whole scheme of things in which we find ourselves, and guiding beneficently the world of life in its upward progress; another thing to affirm that such a creative purpose is discernible by us, and positively exists. Only, the field on which such a question must primarily be argued is not the field of biological science, it is the field of personal experience in the ordinary conduct of life. Do we find that the belief in a higher than human power strengthening and directing us tallies with the experience of life? That is the question; and though it does not belong to physical science, it may still have a certain pertinency as regards the results which physical science would suggest when taken by itself. A biologist may not unfittingly remember that he is also a man, and that it is possible for him, as a man, to draw conclusions which could not have been drawn from biology pure and simple, but which intermingle with and modify the conclusions reached by him as a biologist.

Perhaps that is enough to say on the Darwinian question. But let us recur for a moment to the position of the physicists, with Helmholtz at their head. That there

is truth in those great hypotheses in which the physicists entrench themselves-the conservation of energy, the dissipation of energy, and the formation of the solar and stellar fires by the slow contraction of nebula-we do not for a moment doubt. But is it the whole truth? If in such mighty matters there ever was occasion to use the word scandal, the theory of the dissipation of energy, with its consequences, is surely a scandal. That the universe should be destined to eternal death and darkness (even if it be only after infinite time,' as Helmholtz says) is surely an inference that must excite in us the question, 'Is this really a necessary result of the processes which we see?' Let us consider. The crux is the dissipation of energy-the phenomenon which Clausius calls the increase of entropy, that is, the process of the locking up of energy, the rendering it useless, unavailable.

'The entropy of the world is continually on the increase,' Clausius tells us. Is it really so? and if it be so, is there no way of mending it? What does ordinary experience say? Why, every idle vagabond who gets drunk seven days in the week is full of this dissipated energy; every river of Arabia or Persia which has swept together the sands which clog its course and finally bury it is an instance of energy locked up; every forest destroyed by fire is a store of energy lost to human uses. But is there no remedy for these misfortunes? Let us reform our drunkard; let us clear a course for our river; let us replant our forest, and something will have been done to restore lost energies, or to bring new energies into play. These are small matters, it is true, compared with the creation or death of a universe; but from the infinitesimals of the world we have to judge of the infinites of the world; so it always is. If we, in our small sphere, can repair the wastes of earth, may there not be powers which can repair the wastes of heaven? Is it certain that the fires of the sun are doomed to extinction? It is not experience which tells us so; it is theory which tells us so, and theory which deals simply with material causes and leaves wholly out of sight the question whether purpose and forethought have not some field of operation, as in earth, so also in heaven. Are we so certain that purpose and forethought (existing in a manner inconceivable by us, it