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536 of what had seemed inexplicable or untrue. Our several results check one another. For, in conclusion, we may note how full of significance it is that the outcomes of such various investigation should fit into one another to an articulated whole. Their dove-tailing at times is indeed surprising, so diverse the character of the converging lines of research. Thus that the planet's albedo should have anything to say about the length of its day, should actually come forward in corroboration of the markings' own forthright showing, would hardly have been supposed. Or that the ashen light of the dark side should find interpretation in the same axial rotation through a long chain of concatenated circumstance was not to be anticipated. Still less would one have divined that the cycle would stand complete and that the very markings which enable us to determine the duration of the Venusian day should have had their peculiar features determined by it.

The force that such agreement to a common end imparts to the chain of argument needs no comment. It speaks for itself.

The picture of Venus thus presented to our gaze may seem forbidding—one hemisphere a torrid desert, the other deserted ice. Which side strikes us as the worse is matter of personal predilection. But the portrait has its grand features for all that; features which give us a new conception of what exists in the universe and lure our thought afield in space with all the greater insistence for being drawn not from fancy but from fact.

Not less of interest is the way in which our knowledge has been obtained; for it has been acquired by research along very different lines, and then by reasoning upon the results of that research to their necessary conclusions. That these conclusions lead to a consistent conception assures us of their truth. Two things are suggested to us by such procedure: first, the pregnancy of considering a subject from many points of view, and secondly, the importance of reasoning upon facts after they have been acquired.

The fact-gatherer has his uses, but they are not those of the highest class. It is not enough to have a thing on our plates, we must know that we have it there and interrogate it for meaning if we would extract from it the knowledge it is capable of yielding and so most truly add to the advance of our day.

In the case before us the result is of special interact because it exemplifies the eventual effects of a force in astronomical mechanics, the importance of which is only beginning to be appreciated: tidal friction. It has brought Venus as a world to the deathly pass we have contemplated together. Starting merely as a brake upon her rotation, it has ended by destroying all those physical conditions which enable our own world to be what it is. Night and day, summer and winter, heat and cold, are vital vicissitudes unknown now upon our sister orb. There nothing changes while the centuries pass. An eternity of deadly deathlessness is Venus's statuesque lot.


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N the former part of this historical inquiry, it was shown that four of the arguments which rapidly made converts to the theory of evolution after 1859 rested upon principles of scientific method and facts of anatomy and physiology which were entirely familiar much more than fifteen years before that date. A similar examination must now be made of four more of the most important "evidences of evolution." Here again it will appear that the facts were known at least as early as 1844, and that their evolutionary implications were pointed out by Robert Chambers, Herbert Spencer or other pre-Darwinian writers. It will also appear that the flaws and gaps in the evidence which could be plausibly exhibited by the opponents of the theory during those fifteen years were, for the most part, not removed by the "Origin of Species," nor for a number of years subsequent to its publication. Substantially, whatever force the arguments for the transformist conception of the origin of the specific characters of organisms had after 1859, they had before; and whatever weaknesses they had before that memorable year, they still had after it. In presenting proof of this I shall, as before, indicate by direct citations the manner in which the arguments were used by the early Darwinians, and then point out the parallel reasonings in the evolutionists of the earlier period.

5. The Argument from the Sequence of Types in Paleontology.—The nature of this argument is, of course, too familiar to need exposition. The value which Huxley attached to it in 1863 is shown by a passage in his "Lectures on the Phenomena of Organic Nature ":

If you regard the whole series of stratified rocks. . . constituting the only record we have of a most prodigious lapse of time;—if you observe in these successive strata of rocks successive groups of animals arising and dying out, a constant succession giving you the same kind of impression, as you travel from one group of strata to another as you would have in travelling from one country to another;. . . when you look at this wonderful history and ask what it means, it is only a paltering with words if you are offered the reply, "They were so created." But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of organized beings as the results of the gradual modification of a primitive type, the facts receive a meaning and you see that these older conditions are the necessary predecessors of the present. Viewed in this light the facts of

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receive a meaning—upon any other hypothesis I am unable to see, in the slightest degree, what knowledge or signification we are to draw from them. Again, note. . . the singular likeness which obtains between the successive faunæ and floræ, whose remains are preserved in the rocks; you never find any great and enormous difference between them, unless you have reason to believe that there has also been a great lapse of time or a great change of conditions.

Just so did Chambers argue in his "Explanations," 1846:

Thus the general fact of the gradual appearance of higher types in the course of geological time, and the existence of a broad parallelism between antiquity of strata and relative simplicity of the contained organic forms, was by this time thoroughly established and universally familiar. True it is, however, that the evidence from paleontology, when more minutely scrutinized, proved to be by no means so favorable to the development hypothesis. This was so far the case that the orthodox geologists were able, with some real plausibility, to turn this weapon against the evolutionists. One of the only two really serious reasons that could be advanced after 1840 for rejecting the hypothesis lay in the observation that the facts of stratigraphic geology, as then known, failed to exhibit, with any consistency, fulnessfullness [sic] or precision, the sequences that the hypothesis required. The principal fighting, between the time of the "Vestiges" and that of the "Origin," took place around this issue; and the battle-ground was well chosen for the conservatives. For the weakest side of the theory of development then was its paleontological side. But this continued to be its weakest side in the 1860's; and it is a side not wholly without weak points even at the present day, especially when to the theory of development is added the theory of natural selection.

The chief objections raised by the paleontologists were five in number. There was, first, the general difficulty about the "missing links" in the chain of past organisms. Secondly, there was the fact of the


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Rh apparently sudden appearance of groups of allied, and by no means absolutely primordial, species in the lowest fossiliferous strata then known. Thirdly, there was the sudden disappearance of whole groups of species at the end of certain geological periods, and their sudden replacement in the next period by species different in type from the former, and closely allied to one another. These two points—the second and third—were the especial contribution of the Cuvierian school to the controversy. Out of Cuvier's doctrine of the abrupt extinction of faunas at the successive "revolutions of the globe," his disciples had elaborated the theory of the radical and world-wide discontinuity of the faunas and floras of the successive great periods, and had hence inferred the actual necessity of assuming a definite number of special creations of fresh organic worlds en bloc. D'Orbigny knew exactly how many such creations there had been:

Fourthly—to continue the enumeration of the paleontological difficulties—it was objected that, especially within the limits of single great geological formations, the arrangement of fossils in the strata did not exhibit the required order of progression from lower to higher types, but sometimes even reversed that order. This was Sedgwick's principal point in his Edinburgh Review article, as it was that of Hugh Miller in his "Footprints of the Creator," 1849, the most widely circulated of the replies to the "Vestiges." Miller's argument may be summarized in his own words. The latest discoveries in the Silurian and Cambrian series, he declared, do not show the

sort of arrangement demanded by the exigencies of the development hypotheses. A true wood at the base of the old red sandstone, or a true Placoid in the limestones of Bala, very considerably beneath the base of the Lower Silurian system, are untoward misplacements for the purposes of the Lamarckian; and who that has watched the progress of discovery for the last twenty years and seen the place of the earliest ichthyolite transferred from the Carboniferous to the Cambrian system, and that of the earliest exogenous lignite from the Lias to the Lower Devonian, will now venture to say that fossil wood may not yet be detected as low in the scale as any vegetable organism whatever, or fossil fish as low as the remains of any animal? But though the response of the earlier geologic systems be thus unfavorable to the development hypothesis, may not


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men such as the author of the "Vestiges" urge that the geologic evidence, taken as a whole, and in its bearing upon groups and periods, establishes the general fact that the lower plants and animals preceded the higher,. . . that the fish preceded the reptile, that the reptile preceded the bird, that the bird preceded the mammiferous quadruped and that the mammiferous quadruped and the quadrumand preceded man? Assuredly yes! They may and do urge that geology furnishes evidence of such a succession of existences; and the arrangement seems at once a very wonderful and very beautiful one. Of that great and imposing procession of which this world has been the scene, the programme has been admirably marshalled. But the order of the arrangement by no means justifies the inference based upon it by the Lamarckian.

The reason why, according to Miller, it does not, constitutes the fifth objection urged against evolutionism from the side of paleontology; "superposition," as Miller put it, "does not mean parental relation," any more than the presence of gradually accumulated vegetable and animal refuse in a farmer's ditch means that the creatures whose remains lie at the bottom of the ditch begot those whose remains are found higher up.

The last argument does not call, and never did call, for serious consideration; it is a begging of the precise question at issue, concealed by a specious but lame analogy. The other four arguments depended, with respect to their logical weight, upon the way in which they were applied. If it were assumed that the burden of offering specific proofs rested upon the transformationist, and that the paleontological evidence was put forward by him as a proof, the objections of the orthodox geologists were perfectly sound: the paleontological evidence was not clear nor complete—though it assuredly pointed toward the probability of the hypothesis. If, again, transformism were regarded as an hypothesis which implied the existence of certain geologic facts, then, also, the objections enumerated were pertinent—with one all-important and extremely obvious qualification: the implied facts in stratigraphic geology had not been verified—so far as inquiry into a record that will always and necessarily remain fragmentary had then extended. If, lastly, the objections were advanced as a positive disproof of the transformation of species, they were entirely incompetent, by reason of the necessity of adding the qualification last mentioned. The record being notoriously incomplete, it was impossible to infer from mere breaches of continuity, and from an occasional failure in the general parallelism of geological antiquity with simplicity of organic type, that the order of appearance of species had not in fact been progressive, and the result of gradual modification through natural descent. The difficulties raised by the conservative paleontologists logically justified, at the utmost, only a Scotch verdict of "not proven"—so far as this part of the testimony is concerned.

This continued to be the logical situation in 1859 and for a number of years thereafter. Darwin wrote to Quatrefages:


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That the objection from the general absence of intermediate links between species was a pertinent one he acknowledged with characteristic candor.

He recognized that, so far as geological knowledge then went, whole groups of species sometimes seemed to make their appearance abruptly; though he argued that the increase of such knowledge had steadily tended to diminish this semblance of abruptness. Wholly eliminated these sharp transitions have never been, to this day; the latest authoritative expositor of the general results of paleontology says of d'Orbigny that, though "his ideas" were "too absolute, his observations remain none the less exact in their broad lines, and the sudden replacing of marine faunas, when passing from one stage to another, or even from zone to zone, must be considered almost a general rule." The same writer, who is, of course, a convinced evolutionist, observes:

The second argument of the paleontological opponents of the theory Darwin regarded as still more deserving of serious consideration.

To all these objections, as to that drawn from the absence of a uniformly progressive sequence in the superposition of species of certain classes, Darwin opposed a single reply: "the imperfection of the geological record"—an imperfection due not only to the inadequacy of geological exploration but to the inevitable absence of many chapters from the rock-history itself. Paleontology thus offered to neither side materials for a decisive proof of its case. Darwin's ninth chapter


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542 these considerations in a masterly manner. But there was no time in the history of paleontology when they were not extremely obvious and familiar considerations. Chambers, in replying to his critics, had fallen back upon the argument from the inconclusiveness of negative evidence. Even Hugh Miller, without greatly profiting by his own precept, had pointed out "how unsafe it is for the geologist to base positive conclusions on merely negative data." And Spencer, in a brilliant article written in 1858, and published in the Universal Review in July, 1859, had urged that "along with continuity of life on the earth's surface, there not only may be, but must be, great gaps in the series of fossils;" and that "hence these gaps are no evidence against the doctrine of evolution." He concluded:

It must be admitted that the facts of Palaeontology can never suffice either to prove or disprove the Development Hypothesis; but that the most they can do is, to show whether the last few pages of the Earth's biologic history are or are not in harmony with this hypothesis.

In its later development, it is true, paleontology has been able to produce some striking supplementary evidences of evolution. In a limited number of cases, approximately complete and closely graduated series of forms of single orders or families can be exhibited in due stratigraphic superposition. But all the elaborate and impressive "form-series" have been worked out since 1859. Darwin himself made no original discoveries in this field; and as late as the sixth edition of the "Origin" the best evidence of the sort he presented from other writers is, I believe, summed up in these two sentences:

Several cases are on record of the same species presenting varieties in the upper and lower parts of the same formation. Thus Trautschold gives a number of instances with Ammonites, and Hilgendorf has described a most curious case of ten graduated forms of Planorbis multiformis in the successive beds of a fresh-water formation in Switzerland.

Of the two instances cited the first is vague—the great studies of Waagen (1869) and of Neumayr (1871-5) in the Ammonites were still to come; and the observations of Hilgendorf seem already, by the time the sixth edition of the "Origin" was prepared for the press, to have been shown to be erroneous. The best known example, to English readers, of a form-series is that of the Equidæ. But Rütimeyer's "Beiträge zur Kenntnis der fossilen Pferde" appeared only in 1863; and Huxley's researches in this field, which were the consequence, not the cause, of his acceptance of the theory of descent, were first presented to the public in his presidential address before the Geological Society in 1870.

6. The Argument from Persistent Types.—If good cases of


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Rh form-series were not available at the time of the "Origin" or before, the evolutionist of the period could still find in paleontology one sort of evidence decidedly unfavorable to the chief hypothesis then opposed to his own—that of extensive "revolutions of the globe," wholesale obliterations of faunas, and thorough-going new creations of the entire organic world. This evidence lay in the persistence of many orders and certain species through more than one geological epoch. The classic of the special creation doctrine was the introduction to the third edition of Cuvier's "Récherches sur les ossements fossiles"; and the principal argument of that work was, in the words of one of Cuvier's disciples, to the effect that "no fossil species, at least among the two classes of mammalia and reptilia, has any analogue among living species, or, in other words, that every fossil species is extinct," If this could be shown by positive evidence not to be the case, one of the principal supports of the special creation hypothesis was taken away from it. Huxley made much of this line of attack in a paper of 1859 and in his address before the Geological Society in 1862. He pointed out, for example, that lingula and certain mollusca "have persisted from the Silurian epoch to the present day, with so little change that competent malacologists are sometimes puzzled to distinguish the ancient from the modern species." He noted that the "group of crocodilia was represented at the beginning of the Mesozoic age, if not earlier, by species identical in the character of their organization with those now living"; and that, probably, even certain types of the ancient mammalian fauna, such as that of the marsupialia, have persisted with no greater change throughout as vast a lapse of time."

But the argument Huxley here used had not newly become available. Cuvier's generalization had gone far beyond any evidence which he had offered, or which could, in the nature of the case, be offered. The proposition was, indeed, insusceptible of proof, save by a sort of reasoning in a circle. For when the special creationists denied the survival of species from one epoch to another, they were using the word "species" in a sense different from that in which they, at least, usually employed it. In their zoology, the final test of specific difference between two forms was the sterility of the hybrid. But extinct forms can not be subjected to this test. In paleontology, therefore, differences of species had to be determined solely on grounds of morphological dissimilarity; while it was, at the same time, recognized that in living animals an immense range of such dissimilarity might be consistent with identity of physiological species. If the pug dog and the greyhound had been extinct, it is at least questionable whether paleontologists would have assigned them to the same species—especially if their remains had been found at different geological horizons. Under such


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544 circumstances, it was open to the paleontologist to multiply species almost ad libitum; if he had adopted a theory which required that no species found in one stratum should be found in another, it was easy to make the most of slight variations of form. Differentiations of species thus made, however, were essentially subjective; all that could conceivably have been proven objectively was that no form remained the same through successive geological periods. Yet even of this no proof was forthcoming; the geologic record was not the sort of document that could furnish proof for a universal negative. It furnished, in fact, evidence on the other side. Even Cuvier's eulogist had been obliged (1841) to limit the generalization by adding "at least among mammals and reptiles"—and then to make further exception of two orders of mammals. And Hitchcock in his "The Religion of Geology" (1852), while exaggerating the discontinuity of then known types, could say no more than that, "of the thirty thousand species of animals and plants found in the rocks, very few living species can be detected." But a few were as good as a multitude as witnesses to the fact that there had been no such complete, simultaneous extinctions of faunas, and radical alterations of terrestrial conditions, as the Cuvierian theory supposed. And we find Chambers, in 1844, citing specific examples of persistency, as Huxley was to do fifteen years later.

There is a badger of the Miocene which can not be distinguished from the badger of the present day. Our existing Meles taxus is therefore acknowledged by Mr. Owen to be "the oldest known species of mammal on the face of the earth." It is in like manner impossible to discover any difference between the existing wild cat and that which lived in the bone caves with the hyæna, rhinoceros and tiger of the ante-drift era, all of which are said to be extinct species. . . . There is a persistency of certain shells since the beginning of the tertiaries. . . . Several shells of the secondary formation straggling into the tertiaries are not less conclusive, in rigid reasoning, that all the tertiary species were descended from the secondary, though the wide unrepresented interval at that point allowed a greater transition of forms. In short, the whole of the divisions constructed by geologists upon the supposition of extensive introductions of totally new vehicles of life must give way before the application of this rule, and it must be seen that what they call new species are but variations of the old.

7. The Argument from the Recapitulation Theory.—In charging Chambers with prematurity in his acceptance of evolutionism, Professor Le Conte urged that "the foundation, the only solid foundation, of a true theory of evolution" is to be had solely in "the method of


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Rh comparison of the phylogenic and the embryonic succession" and in the resultant principle that "the laws of embryonic development (ontogeny) are also the laws of geologic succession." This method and this principle Le Conte represented as "added" to biology by Agassiz. Holding such views of the importance and the date of origin of the recapitulation theory, Le Conte concluded that no one was reasonably entitled to believe in the transformation of species prior to the publication of the work of Agassiz; and hence that Chambers's evolutionism was a "baseless speculation." Le Conte's popular book has done much to form current ideas on this subject. But its author was misled by piety towards the memory of his greatest teacher into a serious neglect of chronology, in a matter where chronology is of the essence of the question at issue. Even if Agassiz be regarded as the originator of the doctrine of recapitulation, it must be remembered that he announced his evidences for that doctrine in his "Poissons du vieux grès rouge," 1842-44, and repeated them in popular form in his Lowell Lectures of 1848. And in point of fact, the doctrine and an important mass of evidence for it had then long been familiar; so that one finds Lyell, before 1835, arguing against the use of it as a proof of evolution. In the "Principles of Geology," he wrote:

Lyell's reply to this argument was brief and dogmatic: he fully admitted the facts, but denied the inference.

To the mind of Darwin the same sort of data presented a very different import.


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Yet poor Chambers is reproached for "baseless speculation" because, looking upon facts accepted by all the competent embryologists of his time, he saw in them the meaning that Darwin afterwards saw, and that so great a mind as LyelPs had been unable to see. In the third edition of the "Vestiges," 1845, he wrote:

And in this Chambers found one of his chief evidences of transformation of species. Elsewhere in this edition he devotes several pages to the elaboration of the argument from recapitulation in the case of the brain. "Taking as a basis the scale of animated nature as presented in Dr. Fletcher's 'Rudiments of Physiology,'" he points out "the wonderful parity observed in the progress of creation, as presented to our observation in the succession of fossils, and also in the fœtal progress of one of the principal human organs."

8. The Argument from Rudimentary Organs.—In his "Lectures on the Phenomena of Organic Nature," 1863, Huxley mentions as illustrations of this type of evidence the fœtal teeth of the whalebone whale, the rudimentary toes in the horse's leg, the rudimentary teeth in the upper jaw of the calf. He concludes:

But from the same facts Chambers had argued to the same conclusion nearly a score of years earlier.


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Rh He mentions also the existence of rudimentary toes in the horse, the rudimentary feet of serpents, the undeveloped wings of the ostrich, the teats of male mammals, the os coccygis in man. "The single fact of the existence of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns" the "idea of a separate creation for each organic form; . . . for these, on such a supposition could be regarded in no other light than as blemishes or blunders." Such a thing was "most irreconcilable with that idea of Almighty Perfection" which the special creationists were at least as anxious as the author of the "Vestiges" to maintain. Chambers gave the argument, here, a pious turn which did not increase its logical force. But he made the main point plain enough. The special creation theory could make nothing of rudimentary organs; viewed in the light of the theory of development, as incidental to natural descent with gradual modification, they appeared normal, intelligible and instructive.

It is worth while, perhaps, before concluding, to bring the last six arguments together, in a single general view of their logical bearings. No one of them, nor all of them collectively, ever amounted to more than "circumstantial evidence" of the transformation of species; none of them actually exhibits any species in flagrante delicto of transmutation. These arguments got their force from the fact that, when taken together, they fitted with striking nicety into the requirements of one of the two possible hypotheses about the origin of species—a hypothesis already recommended on general grounds of scientific method; while they reduced the rival hypothesis to a grotesque absurdity. "Conceivable" that other hypothesis still remained, as Huxley contended. It was, and is, possible, by making a sufficient number of supplementary suppositions, to give to the special creation doctrine a form in which it is neither explicitly self-contradictory nor explicitly in conflict with any fact established by pure induction. But when thus fitted out with the epicycles required by the facts already known to the science of 1840, the doctrine certainly presented a singularly odd and whimsical appearance. It implied that the Creator had produced the different types of organisms by fits and starts, strewing them at irregular intervals along the vast reaches of geologic time. Precisely what happened on one of these interesting occasions, the hypothesis left in a baffling obscurity; after a somewhat extensive reading in the literature of the period, I can not recall that any special creationist replied to Spencer's request for particulars on this point. Spencer wrote in 1852:

Let them tell us how a new species is constructed and how it makes its appearance. Is it thrown down from the clouds? or must we hold to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do its limbs and viscera rush together


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from all points of the compass? Or must we receive the old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and molds a new creature?

On these matters the theory remained judiciously non-committal. But it maintained, at all events, that the vast majority of species, however created, were destined to be in turn destroyed—and destroyed by the operation of natural forces. The Great Artificer could fashion, but he was either unable or unwilling to protect, the creatures his imagination had devised. When ordinary physical processes were too much for them, sweeping them off by groups, or even, according to the favorite variant of the theory, obliterating them altogether, he was obliged to start afresh; whether this happened four or twelve or twenty-seven or thirty thousand times was a detail about which the partisans of the doctrine could not agree. The forms thus later produced did not always differ markedly for the better from their unfortunate precursors; many primitive and rather unsuccessful models continued to be repeated. But in general, as time went on, the Creator brought both more diverse and more complicated beings into existence. In doing so, he behaved after the manner of a lazy and incompetent architect, who, instead of "studying" each problem afresh, with reference to the special uses and situation of the edifice to be erected, is content to make a few minor alterations in a single conventionalized plan. The "unity of type" of organisms destined to the most dissimilar modes of existence was generally dilated upon with devout enthusiasm by the special creationists. They seem to have regarded it as an agreeable mannerism of the Creator's personal style. But it is the kind of mannerism which, in a human designer, is commonly ascribed to indolence or limited intelligence. Indeed, the parallel of the lazy architect was inadequate to represent the whole singularity of the Creator's mode of construction. He not only used as few general models as possible, but he also—when, with a cleared field, he created a fresh group of organisms—reproduced in them organs and members which had been functional and useful in their predecessors, but were with the new species useless, meaningless, and even disadvantageous—like the proverbial Chinese tailor, who laboriously imitates all the rents and stains in the discarded European garment given him as a model. Finally, the Creator was supposed to have implanted in all organisms the senseless habit of mimicking, in the embryonic stages of the individual's development, the forms of other and extinct organisms to which that individual bore no relation of kinship.

Such—with the details absolutely required by the accepted scientific knowledge of the time—was the hypothesis tenaciously held by most men of science for at least twenty years before 1859. With the greater number of them the motives for holding it were primarily theological; yet the thing that now impresses us in the theory is its extraordinarily irreligious, not to say blasphemous, character. Science


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Rh might conceivably, after some fashion, have made shift with a hypothesis of this kind; but it is hard to see how any one could suppose it in any degree advantageous to religion. It had not even the poor merit of being anthropomorphic. For no man out of a madhouse ever behaved in such a manner as that in which, by this hypothesis, the Creator of the universe was supposed to have behaved. Ascribing to him both the ability and the disposition to intervene with absolute freedom in natural—or, at least, in organic—phenomena, the theory also represented him as incapable of intervening intelligently or effectually.

That men of great abilities were unable to see the true character of the hypothesis which great numbers of them so long embraced, is certainly an interesting, if not an encouraging, fact in the history of the human intellect. But the capacity of theological prepossessions and religious feeling to retard and confuse intellectual processes is an old story. More remarkable, perhaps, is the failure, for an equally long period, of a number of men not impeded by theological prepossessions—men who were capable of seeing the absurdities of the special creation hypothesis—to recognize the methodological superiority and the promise of scientific fruitfulness inhering in the other hypothesis, or even to recognize the logical obligation to choose between the only two hypotheses available. Men of science of the present generation have perhaps little to learn from a consideration of the reasons which prevented a Cuvier, a Miller, a Sedgwick or an Agassiz from accepting the theory of evolution. But there may still be for us profitable matter for reflection in a consideration of the reasons which prevented a Huxley from finding, in 1846, anything of value in facts and reasonings which thirteen years later he was, with unequalled vigor and skill, proclaiming from the housetops.

The only historian of English thought known to me who has quite truly stated what I believe to be the fact about this episode in the history of scientific opinion, is Mr. A. W. Benn. In his "Modern England " he observes concerning the "Vestiges":

The truth of this is, I think, by no means sufficiently recognized by biologists or by historians of science. I hope that the present study may somewhat contribute to the more general acknowledgment of the correctness of Mr. Benn's statement.


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N the last few years, naturalists have received from outside their ranks, the first scientific analysis of the use of animal's colors that has ever been made.

They have been shown the effacing power of the universal counter-shading in animals' costumes, and later, they have seen with their own eyes the equally perfect effacing power of the patterns which up to that moment they had believed to be factors of conspicuousness. They have thus been forced to perceive that all their own theories prove to have been built in ignorance. These were made before the world had perceived the universal importance of employing specialists, and even Darwin and Wallace failed to realize that in view of nature's infinity, one study like their own was all that they could hope to be faithful to. The laws of visibility reach, like all others, into infinity, and could not constitute part of the zoologist's field, while in the science of the painter, these laws are the very pith of his study.

The following demonstration of the fallacy of the badge and warning-color theories is not, in the same sense, an attack upon mimicry, although it inevitably calls attention to the fact that the latter can not survive the demise of these other theories. It does not imply that there is no case possible of protective resemblance of one animal by another, but contents itself with bringing forward conclusive evidence that the great mass of what is now called mimicry is nothing of the kind, but is, in every respect, the same common concealing coloration everywhere to be found where there are common habits and environment. This fact escaped naturalists, simply because it lay out of their special field, i. e., in optics rather than in zoology, and once off the track, they have been driven step by step into the erection of a wholly fictitious fabric, where no fabric at all was required.


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Rh The one thing which all these sting and stink bearers have constantly and in common, with perhaps no exception, even including the dogs and hyenas which have also anal glands (cats lack such glands and also lack the habit of digging) is this: In pursuit of food, or in storing it, they all either go bodily into holes, as bees and wasps into flowers and fruit cavities, or ants into their galleries, and as do the weasel family after burrowing mammals, or like the grubbing species above mentioned, and foxes, stick their heads into holes for similar purposes. In all these cases these rear-armed species have a common need to be so armed, being totally helpless to defend themselves while thus immersed. Of all animal adaptations this stink apparatus was the thing most to be expected in a part of the animal so entirely defenseless.

Picture a bee deep in a flower, or a badger with his head jammed deep in a mouse hole—what a chance for his enemy! But these hind ends have taken care of themselves. Now notice the thing that seems to bring final ridicule on the "badge" theory. Take, for instance, the grison, Patagonian weasel, bridled weasel, the badgers and the skunk, species whose white pattern is worn upon the head (the skunk's tail is normally a mixture of black and white hairs—like a gray cloud); the moment when these animals most need to advertise the offensiveness of their armament would be when they were most defenseless, and this is, of course, when their heads are in holes, and at such a moment their "badges," being on their heads, are concealed! The apparent reason for the white patterns' extending so often along the back nearly to the tail is very simple. The act of digging or of stepping down into a hole tends to bring the fore part of an animal lower than his rear, and this, to eyes upon the turf, brings the whole of his back against the sky, and an erect white tail (like the upturned plumes of the egret) additionally blends the wearer into the sky.

To realize how inevitable was the development of special rear protectors a man has only to conceive what an anxious sensation he himself would experience if in a jungle he had to spend much time with his head down a hole, and the rest of his body a tempting bait for tigers.

In fine, we find upon certain species of carnivora that we know to be more or less scavengers and catchers of small fry such as require rather to be picked up than stalked or chased, and on others that we suspect of having the same habit, the same sky-picturing patterns that, from the eye-level of their prey, efface the top contours of most other slow walking feeders-on-small-life, in all branches of the animal kingdom. We find, on the other hand, a large number of Mustelidæ, as well as a number of other carnivora, well armed with stink-glands, but, as if because of not feeding in the same manner, entirely without top-white patterns.


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Rh or arboreal beast, and lost it in the trees, the eye searches every mass of foliage silhouetted against the sky, scarcely counting on discerning the creature's outline, so much as on noting some mass of unbroken dark—dark without any sky-hole through it—sufficiently extensive to contain the animal itself. Into this mass, if one wish to kill the animal, one shoots, at a venture, and very often with success. In such cases, a single white mark on the concealed animal has a great chance of showing through the foliage, and saving the creature's life by passing for sky, making the hunter think he can see through the clump as if there were no opaque animal in it.

This wonderful universal function of top-white will only begin to have vitality in the minds of students of natural history, when they begin to take the trouble to spend hours, lying flat on the ground, studying terrestrial life from the true point of view. They will at last realize that the terms "cryptic" and "conspicuous" can refer only to the relation of objects to their background, and that a hare is as conspicuous, dark outlined against the sky, to the little mouse at his side, as the white heron looked at on the ground by man; while to the mouse, this same heron, now seen against the sky, is the perfection of procryptic coloration, just as is the hare seen from the level of a man's or hawk's eyes.

There is one more point that particularly bears on the skunk matter. There is not, through all his range, any mammal, unless one counts the porcupine (an animal to resemble which would be a protection) with which any other creature could possibly confuse him, except when he is very dimly seen, either by virtue of darkness or of interposed forms, and in either of these situations, as this article has shown, the light pattern only diminishes his recognizability. Do we not, in fact, forget the evidence that the wild animals know each other by far more subtile means than we might suppose? The dog, even after all these centuries of domestication, still keeps the power to recognize his master, not merely by his scent, but by his foot-fall, when he can not see him. And the kind of faculty implied by this is even strong in the wild races of man.

Many naturalists think that such circumstances in the life of a race as are of only occasional occurrence have no part in its evolution. History seems to demonstrate the opposite. It is the stresses that are formative, and are the weeders-out of weak elements. The men of a village, regardless, for instance, of whether all of them could swim, might go yearly all summer to their meadows, and all come home at night, till once when some sudden deluge swept their valley, only the strong swimmers would escape, and thenceforth that village would comprise only strong swimmers. How often do we hear some one tell of a small and half forgotten faculty having saved his life. This seems equally to


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564 apply to the evolution of all animals. Their races are, in the long run, subject to great fluctuation of prosperity, many of them coming, occasionally, near to extermination in some part of their range. This, according to universal belief, is oftenest through famine, and in that case, plainly, those individuals best able to accommodate themselves to new food, and to new methods of procuring it, would be most apt to survive. For this reason it does not signify whether badgers, etc., eat a larger or a smaller proportion of seeing food, since those individuals best fitted to catch it will ultimately constitute the race, because, while a white-topped animal would be no worse than a plain one at eating turnips, he would excel him at catching mice and crickets when turnips chanced to fail; and, as this article shows, his white does not in any way increase his conspicuousness.

Patterns of animals are like scars of ordeals, recording what their wearers have been through. Those hares and antelopes and deer which, by virtue of a white sky-imitation on their rears, were not too fatally good a target against the night sky for the stalking feline that flushed them, have survived to propagate their race. The same record of how they escaped the eyes of prey or enemy is found on the costumes of most of the animal kingdom.

Let us try to get a vivid view of the whole field of the world's animals; over the whole earth, all species, of all orders (that ever prey or are preyed on), wear, regardless of all possible needs of badge or mimicry, such colors, and nothing but such colors, as are to be found in certain of their backgrounds. Nothing but failure to perceive this broad fact has made it possible for all these rootless theories to gain a foothold. The two most recent theories, Professor Gadow's, and that of several experimenters, that humidity is the cause of patterns, both these are invalidated by the same general arguments. Dr. Gadow, who believes that it is shadows flickering over a lizard's back that cause his patterns, ignores the unmistakable fact that lizards, like all other terrestrial species, are colored and patterned to match the ground on which they live, no matter whether there be vegetation over head to cast shadows, or, as on sea-beaches and bare rocks, nothing but air and sunlight. The humidity theory has the same defect. It believes that the increased richness in the colors of a species as one traces it from the arid part of its habitat to such a region as the moist-aired gulf-state forests, arises from the increased humidity, not noticing that with the increase of


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Rh humidity goes always a corresponding enriching of the vegetation which forms the species' background. Let these investigators push through the mangroves that border this sultry aired forest against the bare sands of the gulf, and they will find, two steps out upon the beach, in a saturated ocean atmosphere, a beach and ocean fauna of the purest beach and ocean colors, palest gray and pearl.

Black-and-gold is as truly the background color of the flower haunting black-and-gold wasp, as is stone-weed-and-sand color of the stone-and-weed-and-sand colored sandpiper. Scarlet and yellow fruit colors, sky-blue and green leaf colors, on the macaw, are as absolutely the picture of this bird's background while he is dangerously absorbed in feeding in a tropical fruit tree, as is the little terrestrial mammal's brown the picture of the universal earth-brown on which he lives. The thousands of species of open ocean fish, the bare sand-dwellers and the ocean-air-fliers, all wear only the colors that characterize their backgrounds, often adding for the breeding season bits of the scenery of their nesting place, as in the case of puffins, whose gaudy breeding-season-bill on guard at the mouth of the burrow, obliterates the dark hole itself, and at the same time substitutes a semblance of flowers to complete the deception. The moment these domestic duties are over, and the puffin back in the open sea, we behold him dressed again in the universal ocean-and-rock colors of his habitat. (To show that no physiological difficulty prohibits fish, for instance, from wearing gaudy colors, we find such colors upon them wherever they live amidst brilliant corals and brilliant water-plants.)

To complete the above argument, notice that, as my illustrations show, it is in the midst of vegetation, or other confusing and more or less eclipsing surroundings, that monochrome is far the best costume for identification, while out in the open spaces, the air, the beach, and the sea, there, where no twigs or other forest details threaten to confuse the identity of pattern, striking devices of all kinds would have their fullest chance to effect the identification for which they have been supposed to exist. And what do we find? We find nature foregoing, from end to end of the world, every chance to make use of this obvious opportunity.

Furthermore, to show that it is not a matter of regions, notice, as I have pointed out, the gilded wasps living within a few feet of earth-colored ants, and little earth-colored rodents swarming on the brown forest floor, two feet below bright dressed inhabitants of the bright dressed overhanging foliage. Why do not these rodents, forever preyed upon, in fact the stand-by diet of carnivora in every order, why do they not develop unpalatability and badges? All attainable unpalatability they must possess, after their immeasurable period of being picked from, but why not the badges? The truth appears to be that all advantageous attributes have, in every animal, grown side by side, and that the


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566, for instance, of concealing coloration, such as the transparency of a group of the supposed mimetics, have gone on, in this group, hand-in-hand with that of unpalatability. Now that we see that all procryptic coloration (except, of course, the facsimile kind, such as that of geometers) produces its effect by making the observer seem to see through the place where the colors are, it follows that actual transparency, as in these "mimetics," must, in ever so many situations, be wonderfully potent for obliteration. It is, of course, the only scheme for succeeding equally against both the light and the shadow, tending both to escape showing light against dark backgrounds and dark against light ones. Here are Bates's own remarks about the degree of conspicuonsness of a transparent butterfly. In "A Naturalist on the Amazons," on page 39, he writes:

Some have wings transparent as glass; one of these clear-wings is especially beautiful, namely, the Hetaera Esmeralda; it has one spot only of opaque coloring on its wings, which is of a violet and rose hue; this is the only part visible when the insect is flying low over dead leaves, in the gloomy shades where alone it is found, and it there looks like the wandering petal of a flower.

As a few hours' experimenting in obliteration by juxtaposition of patterns will prove to any student, the optical laws which govern it are so absolute that one is not surprised to find that the whole world's butterflies have scarcely three different schemes of pattern. The principle of pattern arrangement in these famous "mimetic" groups (shown in Fig. 6) is out and away the predominant one over the whole globe. If this is the case, is it strange that in each most swarmingly populated seat of butterfly life there prove to be a number of species which, living in the very same station, and with seemingly identical habits, have, in obedience to this great pattern-law, practically identical patterns and form? We see in the ocean, for instance, even mammals wearing the shape and color of fishes?

The question, now, is, at most, merely why they have the same station and habits.

Let us dwell a moment upon the significance of this finding of the greatest cryptic coloration in the very midst of the so-called mimetics. First we must remember that all men agree that it is only persecution that can have engendered any form at all of protection. It is, as I have said, inconceivable that any forever preyed-on and picked-from race should not have acquired all possible unpalatability. And it is equally inconceivable that any race that either preys or is preyed on should not during the same periods have become, also, as nearly as possible either invisible, or at least unrecognizable as any form of animal life. Such a boon incomparably surpasses any advantage from passing for some other at the best not wholly inedible animal. Therefore one would


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568 able family of born naturalists, the Carrs, told me that he had never seen a bird catch a butterfly, and this has almost or quite been my experience too. In Trinidad, for instance, one may see flycatchers catching slow fliers like beetles, by the hour, any day, but never see them pay the slightest attention to any butterfly whatever. I reiterate this here, merely for what it is worth, and am nowise averse to believing that Heliconius is more than ordinarily unpalatable. If it be true that feeding among red or orange flowers has now or formerly so predominated in the life of the red and yellow spotted species, as to make this dress do them more good than harm, it is equally logical that, as in the case of the digging and burrowing animals that I have referred to, with their corresponding rear armaments, butterflies particularly subject to dangerous absorption while feeding, should have been in the whole period of their existence bred to an excessive degree of inedibility. As to the flight of such butterflies as on the one hand, papilios and morphos, and on the other, the "mimetic" groups proper, the former two families comprise between them, the strongest and swiftest of American butterfly flight, and an unsurpassed brilliancy of costume, bright colors not proving, in their case, to be accompanied either by slow flight, or by equally notable unpalatability. On the other hand, the American so-called mimetic groups proper have a middle-class flight apparently well suited to the by no means open under-brush of the forest, where they go about much in the manner of the genus Hipparchia in the north.

Now to glance for a moment at the significance ascribed by entomologists to the injuries which are found along the borders of butterflies' wings.

Perhaps the most highly artificial and strained hypothesis that has been released from duty by the discovery of the use of patterns is the conception that after a million years' experience birds would not inevitably know what part of a butterfly is edible and instinctively seek it, rather than try to eat the tissue-paper pictures of background painted along its wing-borders. This is entirely contrary to the stern rectitude of nature. One might as well hope to fool a ship about her center of gravity, and induce her to float at an angle that did not defer to it, as induce a million-year-long race of eaters of butterflies' bodies to waste energy over these patterns.

A butterfly has, of course, a fairly tough body, and wings that begin tough next to the body, but become mere tissue-paper at the lateral borders. Now, every slightest contact is perilous to the entirety of these borders, and, at the same time every circumstance of the butterfly's life threatens contact to them. Even the wind may blow things against them, and when the butterfly is pursued by an aerial enemy, his own efforts to escape must often bring them into collision with vegetation. Again, if the pursuer be a bird, his swoops bring him into


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Rh almost inevitable collision with these outstretched wing-borders. To lunge at a thing and miss it is inevitably to be carried on, the next instant, close past it. To put it from the insect's point of view, barely to dodge an onrushing foe, is, as we all know, to have him almost inevitably brush against us, to say the least, as his impetus carries him forward. It would be absurd to doubt the very great likelihood of mutilation to the butterfly's wing-borders at such a moment. Again; a bird struggling, against difficulties, to seize such a thing as a zigzagging butterfly, inevitably tries for the mass of the target, the most visible part. Now, although the wings do, certainly, more or less wag the body up and down, nevertheless the body is the axis of the mill-wheel of which the wing-borders are the floats, so that even if the bird tried for the body, unless the attack came exactly from behind, the flapping wings would tend to protect it by constantly getting in the way of the bird's beak, but this would be at the expense of these delicate fabrics, which would smash themselves against it. So much for the immensely greater risk of every sort to this delicate border than to the body itself.

Now as to the supposition that birds prefer to seize this border region, rather than the body. One simple fact suffices to show us that we have not the slightest evidence that they do so. It is this. A butterfly seized by his body can not escape (unless, of course, he chance to be cut nearly through by the beak that seized him) while one seized by the wing-border is no more detained by being thus seized than by receiving at this point any of the merely accidental injuries above referred to. Now if a butterfly seized by the body, is generally eaten, while on the other hand every butterfly injured as to its border, escapes, what possible significance has our finding, as we do, mainly border injuries?

Now, although it seems scarcely necessary to finish the argument, to consider for a moment the supposed selection by the bird, of special points along these borders, the reader has been sufficiently reminded how very far the bird is, in one of these chases, from being in a position to select a point of attack.

We find that the whole subject of animals' coloration has been handled with very loose thinking, as if the old time disrespect of natural history still haunted men's minds and dissuaded them from real study. This cloud that enveloped natural history in former centuries has been steadily thinning, but it is certainly accountable for many loosenesses even up to the present time.

For instance, it is perfectly plain to-day that nature would not ask a coral snake to get along with a costume which, while it often served to warn off his enemies, proved, at other times, a disadvantage to him by identifying him to the animals which he wished to eat. The writings upon these subjects, down to the present day, teem with just this kind


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570 of weakness. Also, being falsely based, they have needed props and dikes at one point after another, and these have naturally proved to be out of harmony with each other. Here it has been assumed that animals need badges for mutual recognition, and there, as in the "mimetic" groups, a theory has obtained which assumed that they need nothing of the kind. Individuals of each species of these groups have been expected to know each other amidst a crowd of close imitations (and doubtless they could do so).

The much insisted upon significance of the superficiality of the resemblances among the "mimetic" groups vanishes upon our discovery of a full blown use, of the most direct and primitive character, for all these colorations. From that moment, these resemblant costumes are seen to be, as I have pointed out, on one basis with the many other resemblances among species of widely different origin that have long enough had the same habits and environment. All these, and they are to be found in many orders of the animal kingdom, are only superficial resemblances, yet it is perfectly plain that they have been acquired for a use. The proof that they are only superficial is that the anatomist can discover the real pedigree of the disguised species by an examination of the elements of its structure. Good examples of this fact are the whales and seals, with their hind legs more or less arranged into a fishtail, yet perfectly recognizable by the zoologist. (I assume the truth of natural selection.)

In fine to imagine that the forest population, living side by side, in perpetual need of knowing each other, would be in any way helped by badges, is as if some person, newly arrived in a long-established community, supposed, because he could only distinguish its members by prominent superficial marks, the red hair of one, the pock marks of another, etc., that this was how the members themselves knew each other, after lifelong familiarity.

The truth, however, is, that were he to cite these distinguishing marks, in speaking of one member to another, he would find that the mutual familiarity of these members had become so subtile, had, so to speak, sunk in so deep, that they had almost forgotten the existence of such marks at all, except where men's names commemorated these.

Lifelong members of a community, all reacting upon each other in a hundred ways, know each other by innumerable means, all communicating with their subliminal consciousness. To this consciousness, the movements, for instance, of a mink in the bushes, probably announce his identity to all his neighbors, who hear him, just as plainly as if they saw him, and the least glimpse of him would, upon the same principle, be as good as a full view. Habitual woodsmen generally tend to believe this, because of finding that they themselves tend to this intuitive method of identifying their wild neighbors in the forest.


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NE who undertakes to tell what pragmatism is has a hard task to perform. Before he gets through with it, he may find himself in a like plight with old Kaspar in' trying to tell his grandchildren of the battle of Blenheim. You will remember that in response to little Peterkin's request, "Now tell us what 'twas all about," and to his question, "And what good came of it at last?" Kaspar could only declare "That 'twas a famous victory."

To begin with, not only has no history of the origin, rise and spread of pragmatism yet been written, but no full, complete, systematic statement of what it really is, what it does and what it may be expected to do is to be found anywhere. A systematic exposition of this "new philosophy" remains an unfulfilled want. We can not be said to have anything like an adequate treatise. Dr. Schiller's "Humanism" and "Studies in Humanism" consist of a number of detached essays, largely controversial in character, written at different times between the years 1892 and 1907, on various occasions and for special purposes. Professor Dewey's "Studies in Logical Theory" also consists of detached essays from himself and seven of his co-workers, and Professor James's "Pragmatism" is made up of eight popular lectures, published in the same form in which they were delivered, without notes and without revision. All of these are most excellent books, well written, entertaining and bearing directly upon the new philosophical movement, only they are not, and do not pretend to be, what most of the critics seem to have rather hastily assumed—full or complete expositions or treatises. Much other literature upon the subject may be found scattered through the various philosophical periodicals. In fact, so voluminous has this literature grown of late years and the movement has evoked so much hostile criticism, that the uninformed reader would be justifiable in thinking "pragmatism a complete system set forth for centuries in hundreds of ponderous volumes."

However, for all practical purposes, it still remains as true as in 1905, when Professor James wrote concerning the movement:

So, a few months later, an able and somewhat sympathetic reviewer complained:


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There is undoubtedly some truth in this accusation, but the reason why such a condition exists is not far to seek.

It is well known to all who have ever attempted to make them that definitions and rules in any science or branch of study are always exceedingly difficult to frame. Though studied first by the student, they are necessarily formulated last. Dr. Schiller says:

Only a moment's reflection will convince us that this is true. Definitions must necessarily delimit and restrict, consequently with the growth of knowledge they become insufficient and obsolete. The discovery of one new fact may invalidate and completely overthrow a definition that may have passed current and remained unchallenged for years. In other words, "new facts burst old rules" and definitions, both are man-made products, so it should never be forgotten that definitions and "rules are made for man, not man for rules" and definitions. No science is finished, none can be called exact, all are in the process of formation. To illustrate. Who can define matter, or ether, or electricity? Of how much value now are many of the definitions in physics or chemistry of ten, or even five, years ago? All definitions, then, at least along scientific lines or in any living, growing branch of study, should be regarded as provisional only, true only up to date, and, like railroad schedules, subject to change without notice to the public. They should be treated as useful working tools, but liable any day to be superseded by better instruments. All this applies with especial force to a "new philosophy," still in the embryonic or chrysalis state. Since "the pragmatic movement,—so-called," according to Professor James, "seems to have rather suddenly precipitated itself out of the air," it ought not to be a matter of surprise that there is not entire agreement even among the pragmatists themselves. It would be an easy task to set forth various points of difference, as well as apparent, if not real, contradictions, among those who have grasped their pens, even if they can not be said to have drawn their swords, and hastened to do battle in its defense. In doing this, however, we should only be following in the wake of the


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Rh hostile critics who have emphasized these points to the exclusion of any real merits which the movement may possess.

We all remember what Emerson said long ago about ideas announcing truth being in the air, seeking to gain entrance to different minds in different parts of the world at the same time, and "the most impressionable brain will announce it first, but all will announce it a few minutes later." But it is not to be expected that all minds will be impressed in the same way or to a like degree, or that all would have equal power of utterance. So we are further told by Professor James:

Before the movement was fairly launched, or an opportunity had been afforded its leaders of getting together and comparing notes as to their common message and unifying it, if possible, the critics had attacked it on all sides and from every quarter. This caused a rush of both friends and foes, professionals and tender feet, to this newly discovered philosophical Klondike, which has been productive of much confusion and misunderstanding. Reconciling these conflicting statements is simply out of the question, and I shall not attempt the impossible.

Disclaiming right at the outset all intention of speaking as one clothed with authority, fully realizing that what I may say is binding upon no one, my mission is simply to set forth what pragmatism is, as I understand it. Even this I venture upon with diffidence. As an excuse for my seeming rashness, if such be needed, I would repeat what the protagonist of pragmatism himself has said:

My purpose, however, is not to add another to the many existing definitions, but rather to weigh and compare some of those already current. In other words, I merely propose to examine the history of the movement with the intention of ascertaining, if possible, what pragmatism is, and I shall throw this layman's contribution into

It is easy enough to tell of the origin of the word and that it is "derived from the same Greek word πράγμα meaning action, from which our words 'practise' and 'practical' come." Now this not only does not tell us much, but has actually proved misleading and is


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574 responsible for some of the current misunderstandings. But it is too late now to rectify this most unfortunate selection of a name. It has been married to the movement for so many years that they must be taken together "for better for worse." As Dr. Schiller has well said:

Elsewhere he has said:

In the end we never find out "what a thing really is" by asking "what it was in the beginning.". . . The true nature of a thing is to be found in its validity, which, however, must be connected rather than contrasted with its origin. "What a thing really is" appears from what it does, and so we must study its whole career. We study its past to foretell its future, and to find out what it is really "driving at."

The first person to use the word pragmatism in print was Professor James, in his California address in 1898, wherein he sets forth the principle as follows, with the prefatory statement that

He goes on to say:

This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. I think myself that it should be expressed more broadly than Mr. Peirce expresses it. The ultimate test for us of what a truth means is indeed the conduct it dictates or inspires. But it inspires that conduct because it first foretells some particular turn to our experience which shall call for just that conduct from us. And I should prefer for our purposes this evening to express Peirce's principle by saying that the effective meaning of any philosophic proposition can always be brought down to some particular consequence, in our future practical experience, whether


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active or passive; the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must be particular, than in the fact that it must be active.

All this seems to be perfectly plain and simple, but, in view of the misunderstandings that are still current concerning the principle, due largely to flagrant, if not wilful misrepresentations, and as this is the beginning point of the "new philosophy," I trust that you will pardon still further extracts. The gifted lecturer tells us that "to take in the importance of this principle, one must get accustomed to applying it to concrete cases," and the entire address is devoted to such applications along religious and philosophical lines. He says:

After stating that "it is the English-speaking philosophers who first introduced the custom of interpreting the meaning of conceptions by asking what difference they make for life," he adds:

Finally, he says:

Expressed in these different ways but all meaning the same thing, it would seem that Dr. Schiller was right in saying that the principle

After all that has been written on the subject, a writer has quite recently said:


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576 Even if this contains only a half-truth, it behooves us to try to get our bearings, although philosophical orientation be fraught with all the difficulties that have been claimed. In any event, it is of the utmost importance to get the right point of beginning, so I have thought it advisable to set forth Professor James's exact words when he first announced the principle.

So far as I have been able to discover, the next time he announced it was in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," where he condensed it. I quote only one sentence:

I should like you to note especially the added words, "immediate or remote." I would also call attention to the fact that none but a pragmatist could have written this truly delightful book. The eighteenth chapter, bearing the title "Philosophy," is simply a clearly wrought-out application of the principle in the philosophy of religion.

In Baldwin's "Dictionary of Philosophy," Professor James defines the principle as follows:

In an article entitled "Humanism and Truth," published in Mind for October, 1904, he says:

First, as to the word "pragmatism." I myself have only used the term to indicate a method of carrying on an abstract discussion. The serious meaning of a concept, says Mr. Peirce, lies in the concrete difference to some one which its being true will make. Strive to bring all debated conceptions to that "pragmatic" test, and you will escape vain wrangling: if it can make no practical difference which of two statements be true, then they are really one statement in two verbal forms; if it can make no practical difference whether a statement be true or false, then the statement has no real meaning. In neither case is there anything fit to quarrel about: we may save our breadth, and pass to more important things.

All that the pragmatic method implies, then, is that truths should have practical consequences. In England the word has been used more broadly to cover the notion that the truth of any statement consists in the consequences, and particularly in their being good consequences. Here we get beyond affairs of method altogether; and since my pragmatism and this wider pragmatism are so different, and both are important enough to have different names, I think that Mr. Schiller's proposal to call the wider pragmatism by the name


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of "Humanism" is excellent and ought to be adopted. The narrower pragmatism may still be spoken of as the "pragmatic method."

Before proceeding further or attempting to set forth what the movement has seemed to mean to others who have written upon the subject, whether favorably or otherwise, it may be advisable for us to pause and ask ourselves if we are certain that we understand what its brilliant protagonist means. Is the language in which he has couched it so vague, obscure, ambiguous, uncertain or contradictory as to warrant the different constructions that have been placed thereon? I ask this question advisedly, since Professor James himself, in his Pragmatism, has said:

It would seem that it ought to be well worth our while to try to get at the reason for this.

It may be that in so doing we can derive some assistance from the rules applied by the courts in the interpretation and construction of constitutions, statutes, contracts, deeds, wills and other written instruments. Some of these rules are so well settled that they are regarded as almost axiomatic and pass unquestioned. They are even applied to the construction of charges and instructions given by trial judges to juries to aid them in reaching correct verdicts in the trial of contested cases, whether human life, liberty or property is involved. If it be practicable and safe to apply them in the settlement of such vital questions, surely they may be used profitably and safely, even pragmatically, if you will, in abstract discussions along philosophical or religious lines. Of course, there are some points of difference in the application of these rules by the courts to the different kinds or classes of instruments, but such points are of minor importance and may be treated as negligible for our present purposes. In setting forth some of these cardinal rules, I shall divest them of all legal technicalities, as far as may be, and clothe them in plain, simple language.

1. When the language of a writing is plain and unequivocal, there is neither occasion nor opportunity for interpretation. When the words used admit of but one meaning, to put another upon them is not to construe or interpret a writing, but to alter it.

2. Words are presumed to be used in their plain, ordinary sense; technical terms are to be understood in their technical sense; all words are to be understood according to their meaning at the time and place of writing them.

3. The grammatical and ordinary sense of words is to be adhered to, unless that would lead to some absurdity, or some repugnance or inconsistency with the rest of the instrument, in which case the


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578 and ordinary sense of the words must be modified, so as to avoid that absurdity or inconsistency, but no further.

4. In construing any part of a writing, regard should be had to the entire instrument. Other portions may throw much light upon the one under special investigation or consideration, and greatly modify the meaning which it would bear as an independent clause. Every part of a writing should be brought into action in order to collect from the whole one uniform and consistent purpose, if that is possible. Accordingly, if one construction will give reasonable effect to every part of an instrument, while another would require the rejection of a part, the former will be preferred.

These rules will probably prove sufficient for our present purposes. In order, however, to make it plain to you, perhaps, it may be well for me to give a concrete instance of their application by the courts. I shall select the giving of charges or instructions to juries. In passing upon a single instruction or charge it should be considered in connection with all the other instructions and charges bearing on the same subject, and if, when thus considered, the law appears to have been fairly and impartially presented to the jury, an assignment of error predicated upon the giving of such instruction or charge must fail, unless, under all the peculiar circumstances of the case, the appellate court is of the opinion that such instruction or charge was calculated to confuse, mislead or prejudice the jury. In determining the correctness of charges and instructions, they should be considered as a whole, and, if as a whole they are free from error, an assignment predicated on isolated paragraphs or portions, which, standing alone, might be misleading, must fail. Again, where an instruction, as far as it goes, states a correct proposition of law, but is defective because it fails to qualify or explain the proposition it lays down in consonance with the facts of the case, such defect is cured if subsequent instructions are given containing the required qualifications or exceptions. It is not required that a single instruction should contain all the law relating to the particular subject treated therein.

I believe that these are all the legal propositions to which I wish to call your attention. I might add that the object of judicial interpretation of instruments is not to discover the intention of the maker or writer by the use of any and every legitimate means, but rather to take the instrument itself and determine such intention from the words used therein.

It would really seem that the rules of grammar and the laws of language would be all that we should need in order to determine what Professor James meant in the quoted passages, but even if we should apply these legal rules in all their strictness I do not believe that we should be left in any state of doubt or uncertainty. But we are not


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Rh called upon to so narrow and restrict our investigation. It is well known that every writer of marked individuality or originality acquires a style peculiarly his own and easily recognizable. Their writings come to have a certain hall-mark, so to speak, which there is no mistaking. It is further true that a writer, especially along philosophical or theological lines, either forms a school or system of his own, which he is likely to do if he is a genius, or else joins or connects himself with one of the already existing schools. In either case he becomes identified with certain doctrines. He presents those aspects of the truth, as he has conceived it to be, which have most strongly appealed to him and which he considers of supreme importance. Upon these he will dwell and lay special emphasis, reiterating them, presenting them from different points of view, until his readers grow to expect his utterances to be along those chosen lines and in his own individual way. In this way schools and systems are founded and followers and adherents gained. Such a writer is entitled in all fairness to have whatever he writes taken and judged in connection with his other utterance along similar lines; otherwise, in order to avoid misunderstandings, he would be forced to continually repeat himself, which would be intolerable.

Professor James has written much along both psychological and philosophical lines, and the particular doctrines which he holds are well known. His style has long been noted for its lucidity and has become both the marvel and despair of other writers. Hitherto be seems to have experienced no difficulty in making himself understood. Is it conceivable, then, that, all at once, when he began expounding the principle of pragmatism, he should have lapsed or fallen into vague and obscure expressions? In all candor, I ask you to turn back to the quoted passages, and taking them just as they are, torn from their contexts and settings, apply to them any or all of the rules and tests that I have mentioned, and then ask yourself whether or not you have any difficulty in grasping their meaning. If not, why have the critics found it so hard to understand them?

And yet, the most diverse and contradictory constructions have been placed thereon as well as upon his "Pragmatism," which entire book is devoted to elucidating what the principle is and wherein it may be applied. In fact, to such an extent has this prevailed that he felt impelled to write "a final brief reply" to his critics, which he entitled "The Pragmatist Account of Truth and Its Misunderstanders" and published in The Philosophical Review for January, 1908. It should further be borne in mind that the critics also had access to all of his other writings and were presumably familiar with them. Again I ask the pertinent question, how such a condition of affairs could exist? Making all due allowances for the imperfections and


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580 uncertainties of language and the limitations of human thought and understanding will not serve to explain it. It could not really have been asked or expected that the entire essence of the principle should have been compressed into one concise definition or even into one formal or rigid statement. As its protagonist himself has said in an article entitled "Humanism and Truth Once More," published in Mind for April, 1905:

In the same article he says:

It would seem that this was expecting entirely too much. He had also said in The Journal of Philosophy for March 2, 1905:

I am inclined to think that its very simplicity has been the chief barrier in the way of its acceptance. "Unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." Has it not ever been so in both the philosophical and religious worlds? Would it not find more ready acceptance if it required "some great things "? Perhaps, one barrier in the way of those who have "seriously tried to comprehend what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean" is mental myopia, which prevents them from assuming the proper attitude in order to gain the right point of view. They are too wedded to their idols of dogma and authority to experience that change of heart which would enable them to break the shackles which bind them to "absolutists hopes" and acquire the freedom which would permit them to enter into such "conditions of belief." Dr. Schiller has said:

Whether this be true or not, many have failed to understand it simply for the reason that they have not really tried to do so. They "have boggled at every word they could boggle at, and refused to


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Rh take the spirit rather than the letter "of what was said. In violation of every rule of interpretation, common-sense or legal, they have ignored the context and pounced upon single words and isolated sentences. Truly, in philosophy as elsewhere, "none are so blind as those who will not see." We are all familiar with "the proof-text method" of argument, much in vogue among theological disputants some years ago, but now happily fallen into a state of "innocuous desuetude." Surely it is not being revived in philosophy. The reasons for the attitude of this class of critics are plain. If the pragmatic method should prove to be true or valid, it would necessarily require "much restatement of traditional notions." If it should prevail, the existing systems of philosophy would be unsettled, if not overthrown, and many of the past, not to mention current, philosophical treatises would thereby become obsolete and subject to relegation to "that 'Museum of Curios' which Professor James has so delightfully instituted for the clumsy devices of an antiquated philosophy." Did not Demetrius, a silversmith, and his followers raise a great uproar at Ephesus against St. Paul for like reasons?

Our Harvard pragmatist has further said:

Yet once more:

All this affords some explanation of the flutter and consternation which pragmatism has caused in the philosophic dove-cotes and why it has even been productive of ruffled feelings and bad temper. Doubtless some felt deeply incensed that "proud Philosophy," that celestial goddess, long acclaimed "Scientia Scientiarum," should be dragged down from her emyprean heights into this work-a-day world, reduced to the menial position, so to speak, of a hewer of wood and drawer of water. Surely this was desecration, if not rank sacrilege. Perhaps,


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588 a still further explanation may be found in the fact that pragmatism undertook to act as a mediator and reconciler between the contending systems and, in consequence thereof, has suffered the proverbial fate of the peacemaker.

Whether or not I have been successful in pointing out the true causes which have induced the fierce onslaughts which have been made against the movement, it must be admitted that they have signally failed to check it, and that it is growing, in spite of all the hostile criticisms and gross misrepresentations. It would seem that it has come into the world to stay. It might well be that its critics would have fared better from the beginning if they had remembered that "good humor is a philosophic state of mind," even if it be not true "that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile." It undoubtedly would have been more in unison with the true philosophic spirit, and, perhaps, attended with better results, if they had set to work in good earnest to refute the arguments advanced by Professor James and the other leaders, instead of contenting themselves with giving pragmatism a bad name and bestowing upon it abuse and opprobrious epithets. If they were simply following the old maxim, "give a dog a bad name and it will hang him," they were on a false trail.

As I have said, entire harmony has not existed in pragmatist ranks, of which fact the critics have made the most. Even so, such differences furnish no justification for the failure of the professional philosophers to understand the lucid statements of Professor James, or of the other two leaders, Dr. Schiller and Professor Dewey, as some of them seem to have done. The points of divergence among them are easily discernible by those who really try to see and understand the movement.

However, pragmatism, being what its protagonist says it is, ought not to be expected to mean the same thing or to make a like appeal to different minds. Evidently, it was with deep design that Professor James began the first lecture in his "Pragmatism" with that paradoxical quotation from Mr. Chesterton's "Heretics," as to the most important thing about a man being his philosophy. It contains a greater modicum of truth than most paradoxes, for as a man's philosophy is, so will be "his view of the universe," and, as that view is, so will be his life. From this paradox our pragmatist proceeds to develop the thesis that "the history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments," and to show us how temperament "loads the evidence" not only for philosophers, but for all of us. In this he follows Fichte, who has said somewhere, "what system of philosophy you hold depends wholly upon what manner of man you are." So Dr. Schiller has said, "the fit of a man's philosophy is (and ought to be) as individual as the fit of his clothes." All this


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Rh must naturally follow if we agree with Mr. E. B. Marett, who has said:

Our "great student of the human soul" has said, this particular difference in temperament "has counted in literature, art, government and manners as well as in philosophy." He should have added religion, for in no other department of life has temperament played a most important rôle, as he himself has superbly exemplified in his "Varieties." This furnishes the key to the explanation of why "God has two families of children on this earth, the once-born and the twice-born," to use Francis W. Newman's significant phrase. There is no escaping it. By shaping our faith for us it largely "divides us into possibility men and anti-possibility men" and explains why "each of us dichotomizes the Kosmos in a different place," thereby each making for himself the world in which he lives. We have certain rules by which we can calculate with approximate correctness the variation of the magnetic needle from the true North and South line, but, most unfortunately, we have no rule for computing temperamental variation.

Pragmatism, therefore, being primarily a method of thought, "an attitude of orientation," neither designates nor leads to any "specific philosophic creed"; and is not a system or a metaphysic. Dr. Schiller has cogently said that it is "an epistemological method which really describes the facts of actual knowing." That it should somewhat definitely point to a metaphysic and also prove to be "a genetic theory of what is meant by truth" should prove no surprise to us, but, as important as all this is, it must be considered as secondary. One of its chief beauties and attractions is that it leaves each one of us perfectly free to develop his own particular "ideals and over-beliefs, the most interesting and valuable things about a man." Thus it has led Professor James to "radical empiricism," Mr. Peirce to "pragmaticism," Professor Dewey to "instrumentalism" or "immediate empiricism," Dr. Schiller to "humanism," and others to "the thirteen pragmatisms," of which we have been hearing so much of late. All this is as it should be and is greatly to its credit. But these different terms should not be confounded with each other, used interchangeably as though they were synonymous, or identified with pragmatism, as has been done by some friends and many foes of the movement. At all hazards, the pragmatic method must not be permitted to become identified with any one of them. That would be only the first step towards its crystallization into a creed or petrifaction into a dogma. That would be but to follow blindly in the footsteps of those teachers who


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584 have be treated the Christian religion, thereby creating schisms, sectarianism, and that intolerant party spirit "which blights and cankers the truth itself." Whatever Christianity may be now, primarily it was a method of living, a principle of life—not a creed or dogma.

For us, in this day and time, to repeat this blunder would simply be indefensible and unpardonable. However desirable unity may be, it should never be purchased at the expense of truth and freedom. Dr. Schiller says:

Consequently, the pragmatic method will not prevent the formation of different systems of philosophy, which may be expected to "abound as before, and be as various as ever." They will still "have their day and cease to be," in the future as in the past, being necessarily only "broken lights," but pragmatism will not fall with them, for the reason that it will be "more than they" and, therefore, not identified with any of them.

That pragmatism should have encountered bitter opposition was what might have been expected. Has it not been so with every great movement in human thought from the time of Protagoras, with his famous dictum, "man is the measure of all things," down to the present time? It seems inevitable that all must run the gauntlet of criticism. Perhaps, this helps to determine "the survival of the fittest." Professor James E. Angell has recently said:

This would seem to be true, since even Mr. Bradley has said of Professor James's last book:

However, the distinguished author of "Appearance and Reality" may have made this statement in a Pickwickian sense. If it be true, as has been somewhat sneeringly said, that pragmatism has made comparatively few converts among the professional philosophers, but has made its strongest appeal to the men in the street, it may be fittingly replied that this has been likewise true of the greatest movements in the world's history. That the common people have heard its teachers gladly may prove to be, not its reproach, but its honor and its glory. Again and again it has happened that "not many wise men after the


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Rh flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called," but rather those who have become as little children, single-minded and simple-hearted.

We are still passing through one of those great transitional eras of human thought which recur at somewhat irregular intervals. It may be said to have begun some fifty years ago with the launching of the evolutionary hypothesis, but when or what the end may be no one can say. Whatever the result may be, whether for good or ill, things will never be just the same again.

 But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.

There is a spirit of unrest in the air which has invaded and seriously affected, not only philosophy and science, but religion and government. In fact, it would seem that all things are being called in question, and that "there is a general reaction against uncritical acceptance of the authority of tradition along all lines of thought." What may ultimately survive or what may perish we cannot tell. Some of us believe that the pragmatic movement is one of the contributing causes, perhaps the most important, toward bringing about this condition of affairs. We think that it has already accomplished a most salutary work in philosophy and religion, which is far from being finished, and we look for it to make its presence strongly felt along educational and governmental lines. We believe that it is destined to invade our law-making bodies and courts of justice, where it must be admitted that it is sorely needed. In fine, we believe that the days of blind authority and antiquated precedents are numbered, and that the principle of pragmatism will perform a like mission in the world to that of the woman's leaven in the three measures of meal. It has been ironically spoken of as "a new gospel in philosophy." To some of us it has proved to be a veritable gospel indeed—a gospel of freedom, an evangel of hope.


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586

HE people of the thirteen colonies, the builders of the American Union, were almost exclusively of the Anglo-Saxon race. The immigration which set in after the war of independence and continued during the greater part of the nineteenth century, was composed of people not dissimilar from those early colonists. They came from the British Isles, Scandinavia, Germany and the smaller Teutonic countries. But during the last twenty-five years the number of immigrants from those regions has steadily decreased and has now sunk to very small numbers, while the immigration from Italy, Hungary, Greece and Russia has increased from year to year during the same period of time, and, of late years, has assumed truly enormous proportions. Thus while the earlier immigrants were of a reasonably homogeneous race, almost entirely of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic origin, just enough leavened with Celtic elements to quicken the phlegmatic pulse of that cold northern race, the majority of the immigrants that landed on our shores during the last quarter of a century, are quite dissimilar in their origin, language, customs and religion from the original settlers of the American Union.

It is claimed by some writers that all these various races, which are now forming the population of the United States, will, in the course of time, fuse together and produce a new and superior type of people. Other writers go still farther; they assert that the immense numbers of this later immigration will overwhelm this country and, in the course of a few generations, supplant the original stock of Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic settlers. Both these views are erroneous. It is impossible, as we shall see, that a general intermixture throughout this mighty empire can take place, much less will the later immigrants be able to supplant the descendants of those sturdy pioneers who first settled the vast prairies and fertile valleys of this great republic.

There are so many and so varied types among these later immigrants, and they are generally so much inferior to the native American


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Rh population, that such a mixture would not be desirable. Herbert Spencer, Gobineau and others have pointed out that a mixture of races, very dissimilar, produces an inferior type of people. History bears out this view. The modern peoples that dwell in the Mediterranean basin present to-day a greater mixture of dissimilar races than any country on the globe, yet these regions, once the center of civilization, have certainly not produced a superior type of humanity. If the mixture of two races of equal vigor, energy and civilization, but very dissimilar in their racial make-up, produces an inferior people, much less can the fusion of several races, some of which are of a very inferior civilization, produce a fair type of humanity. It is the purpose of this article to show that no general mixture of the original Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic stock with the various heterogeneous elements of the later immigration will take place. We shall see that these later arrivals settle almost entirely in the large cities, and that they will there, in the course of a few generations, be eliminated in the great struggle of modern industrial and commercial life. But first we must get acquainted with the history and character of the various races which form the present population of the United States.

Broadly speaking, we have two great classes of immigrants, those that came before about the year 1885 and those that came after that year. The native home of the former was northwestern Europe and the bulk of them belongs to the so-called Teutonic, or Scandinavian, or northern blond race; the latter came from the Mediterranean basin and eastern Europe, and present a number of racial types.

The Scandinavian or Teutonic race was divided into a number of barbarian tribes when the Romans first made their acquaintance. These tribes lived in Scandinavia, northern Germany and on the islands of the Baltic Sea. Full of vigor and countless in numbers, they began to make invasions into the territories of the Roman Empire, and though frequently defeated by Roman science and discipline, they never gave up until, during the fifth century, they overran all the western provinces of the great empire and founded new states and new nations in the regions they conquered. All the modern nations of western Europe are more or less a mixture of the original Celto-Roman inhabitants with these northern conquerors; but as the latter were far in the minority, the Teutonic blood has, in the course of many centuries, been more or less eliminated; only the aristocracies of these countries, avoiding intermarriage with the subject races, preserve to this day the characteristics of their northern forefathers. This race exists