WE have just specified the particular theme of the book; and its own earliest pages will amply suffice to verify as much in the words proper of Mr. Darwin himself. Such words more particularly occur in his references to Gratiolet, towards whom, as an opponent of natural selection, he feels, no doubt, just a little sore. Gratiolet, as he snaps, 66 seems never to have reflected on the principle of evolution, but apparently looks at each species as a separate creation;" but "by this doctrine anything and everything can be equally well explained; and it has proved as pernicious with respect to expression as to every other branch of natural history." He, for his part, knows better: "some expressions can hardly be understood, except on the belief that man once existed. in a much lower and animal-like condition:" the community of such expressions in man and certain animals is only rendered intelligible to us, "if we believe in their descent from a common progenitor." Might he not quite as well have said, the fact that both men and midges drink can only be explained to us by their descent from a common progenitor?

Gratiolet, Mr. Darwin further complains, "appears to overlook inherited habit, and even to some extent habit

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in the individual and therefore he fails, as it seems to me, to give the right explanation, or any explanation at all." That is, there can be no explanation at all, if you go directly to work like Gratiolet, and not indirectly like Mr. Darwin himself. It is not enough just to point to the "traduction," translation of inward sentiment into outward expression-we must turn our eyes from what is immediate, and look away off to habit. The outward expression is not to be considered as a mere natural sign, dependent on the very constitution of the organism concerned. Habit has intervened. The present movement of expression may, as a movement, be useless now; but once on a time in a far back ancestor that movement was itself an action, and an action so useful then that it has become in reflexion hereditary now. Mr. Darwin quotes an illustration of Gratiolet. At billiards a player, after his stroke, especially if in any way unsatisfactory, may be seen to follow his ball not only intently with his eyes, but actually with his head and shoulder, as though bodily to push it into the direction wished. Now this will appear to most people, as it appeared to Gratiolet, mere symbolism. No one, I should say, is apt to think twice when he hears the player mutter over his ball, "go left, you little beggar," or "right, you little beggar," or "quicker, quicker, you little beggar!" All seems so natural, so single,-that he has never a dream of a double. It may actually cause astonishment to hear Mr. Darwin find no explanation for what seems so simple and direct, but habit! "When a man," he says, "sees his ball travelling in a wrong direction, he cannot avoid, from long habit, unconsciously performing movements which in other cases he has found effectual." Is this necessary? What is the use of having recourse to habit in such a simple case at all? When I strop my razor, I may move with it,-is that

habit? I suppose, then, the synchronism of neighbouring clocks is habit too! If a man, for his cigarette, strikes a match on his boot at table-is that habit ?must it even be imitation? Rather, is it not natural for every man who feels the want, and even as he feels the want, just at once to resort to the expedient? Can any one fancy that the suggestion to himself was a matter of habit, or did it even need example? May not a man unnecessarily waste his reason?

Mr. Darwin remarks here further, "Dogs during many generations have, whilst intently looking at any object, pricked their ears, and conversely," etc.; but is it only "long-continued" habit has enabled them to do this? Is it really to be said that the attitude of attention- a strain-is not as natural to an animal as the use of his eyes to see, his ears to hear, or his feet to run? Or if it is really due to habit, where did the first organism that ever assumed it get it? Habit can do much to strengthen and promote; but when did habit in any case prove a first?

It will strikingly illustrate the fallaciousness of all such inferences from mere commonplace-book collection, to remind ourselves of the two interpretations of the dog's throwing itself on its back and turning its belly up. Mr. Darwin sees prostrate submission in the attitude; Mary Cholmondeley, the writer in Temple Bar, saw, on the part of the "amber-eyed dachshund" in the same position only an invitation to "friction where he valued it most." And which interpretation, if indeed either, is to be accepted as the right one, who shall decide?

Mr. Darwin, regarding strain in the dog as, so to speak, thesis, would explain the opposite of strain, submission, by the opposite of thesis, "the principle of antithesis," namely. If contracted muscles express such and such emotional state, then it will be natural for an

opposite emotional state to express itself by muscular relaxation. But there may be a difficulty in deciding which state shall be first, the thetic or the antithetic. Mr. Darwin makes the former first, and the latter only secondary and a consequent. But surely it is as natural for a dog to sleep as to fight, quite as natural for him to lie down as to stand up; and so, consequently, quite as reasonable to make the relaxed muscles thetic to the contracted ones, as these thetic to those. Or in all these cases have we not just such and such action merely natural to just such and such an animal? Surely it is a strange mania that a man, because of natural selection, shall not be able to take a simple fact simply as it is. Must all be secondary and between— nothing at first hand and for itself? Suppose we invent a story about why the dog puts his tail down! It would be quite as easy as why he puts it up.

And suppose we do accept said remote progenitor as the true First, and all as mere habit between, where are we to find him-how far are we to go back for him? To say nothing of the "warm little pond" now, Mr. Darwin certainly goes back himself to "four or five primordial forms" or even a even a "single prototype" (ii. 329); but single prototype, or any one primordial form, he never shows us either. Still, either, be it form, be it prototype, is, by the very term, an organism. But an organism has, even as an organism, a structure proper to it, and a life; and as, whenever it was, it was such, an express entity and not a null, it must originally have had an external manifestation, an expression, en rapport with this structure, en rapport with this life. Such manifestation, such expression, such direct natural attitude, is assumed as at once intelligible then, what has happened that it has lost its right to be at once intelligible now? Mr. Darwin can allow, and does

allow, "direct action of the nervous system." He just postulates, in fact, direct action of the nervous system, direct action of structure, when he postulates any one of his primordial forms, or his single prototype itself. And so, one can see no reason why structure should not have an equally direct action now. If the externalè was en rapport with the internalè then, why should there not be the same rapport in the case of both now? If there is evolution into something, there must have been evolution from something. That, of course, is but the one ever-present Darwinian position. But to say evolution, evolution, is to explain nothing, is only to fire into the air, unless there be assigned the what-the what that was original and first. Any claim of merit for such perpetual removal and removal as an explanation of expression, that is—were simply a fraud.

A beginning is necessary, then, a first, a what; and any mere reference to prototype or form, were, even for expression, no first, no beginning, no what, but only a removal. But what of "the warm little pond"? As this necessary unremoved first, will it stead us? Ah, -all of the physical side will exclaim-this is the goal, the aim, the "unimaginable lodge" of all our thinking at last-could we but get at it! Well, you have not got at it, but suppose you have, will it answer the purpose required? Even for expression, will the material elements at last-oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, lime, soda, potass, iron, sulphur, phosphorus-as an explanation suffice? To you, they ought, for to you they are the ultimate and sole constituents of which you are composed. I fear it will task more than the ingenuity of a Darwin to see the ultimate of a smile in oxygen or of a frown in carbon; and here on the metaphysical side, I, for my part, refuse the attempt. I believe the organic to be, directly, quite as much an