consciously with a sense of their meaning | nourished, not by its own acts, but by its parent's acts. Often before it is bornnay, in the case of birds and insects before it is even enclosed in a shell-provision is made to secure a deposit for the egg when it is laid. That the bird's or insect's provident preparation for its coming eggs is simply a fortunate casual impulse seems to me absolutely incredible. Look at the vari and purpose: but though the unconscious stage precedes the conscious one in each generation, yet those things which the young do unconsciously and mechanically their ancestors first learnt to do purposely." They might add, "just as an individual comes through long practice to perform unconsciously movements that at first it could only achieve by great effort and attention; so it is with a race." Un-ous kinds of bots or gadflies, at the dordoubtedly this tendency of effort to become unconscious is the very warp of progress, or the basis on which it rests. Undoubtedly in a progressive race, or in a growing child, much conscious effort is continually passing into unconscious instinct; but consciousness on the other hand presupposes an unconscious state; acts done with the conscious purpose of attaining certain results implies experience. We must have seen the result follow the act. And how is a creature to be made and sustained while it is getting its experience? We are reminded of the old proverb, "While the grass grows the horse starves." From the earliest dawn of living creation there must have existed the same necessity that exists now: every fresh creature would need to be provided for while it was learning its experience, or else it would starve before it had learnt how to live. And then again the first creature that was capable of learning from experience how to maintain itself, would be unable actually to learn because it would have no such materials at hand as those from which living creatures draw all their experience. For each creature's experience comes by observing the results of those acts to which it finds itself impelled, and those acts which it sees done by its fellows. beetle, or at the Egpytian Scarabæus sacer. Take these as casually mentioned representatives of a whole host of insects. Witness the adroitness, the fertility of device, or in some cases the elaborate preparation, with which these and other insects provide places of deposit for eggs which when once deposited they will never see again. Notice how they make arrangements, not only for their protection and the temperature for hatching, but often also for the sustenance of grubs which they will never know. Here is providence; but on the other hand, can it be said that they act in anticipation of results, or know the providential meaning of their own acts? How can they anticipate results which not only they have never seen, but which their ancestors have never seen? That ancestral associations recur in new generations in a way that when noticed throws quite a new significance on the theory of reminiscence, is indeed a fact that I cannot but recognize with the deepest interest. What is it in the structureless albumen of a duck's egg hatched in an oven or under a hen, which impels it to move after the ancestral habit of its kind, and so make organs after the ancestral type? What gives it its connate discerning power, and its connate practical power, so that it at once recognizes in the water a friendly element, and the day after it is born may be seen swimming and springing up from the water to snap at flies in the evening sunshine? Taking these considerations into account, I do not see how we can possibly find supports to enable us to rise above this view; namely, that the creature is first moved by impulses of which it does not understand the providential meaning, to do these things which are needed for the preservation of itself and its race. I find providence to be the leader, and the living creature the thing led. I think the only report which the present aspects of nature justify us in making is this: namely, that each young creature which comes into the world is first provided for, and is subsequently taught, chiefly by the provisions which it finds made for it, how to provide for itself. First it is engendered. Next, while in the parent's substance it is baæus. What makes the lamb, within five minutes of its birth, rise on its legs and stagger tremblingly up to the first grown sheep it sees, seeking a mother in it; trying to suck it? The thing that draws it is not any animal magnetism that attracts it to its own mother. It does not know its mother for two or three days sometimes. It is attracted by a physical impulse, but an ideal one. It has inherited an innate idea of the mother: its state of helpless See Wood, "Strange Dwellings." Index, Scara ness and isolation perhaps awakens the idea, and at the sight of grown creatures of its own kind it recognizes the friends it needs. It is not magnetically drawn to its own parent, but it has an idea of the parent and recognizes the parental form. most careful and fussy about the temperature of its eggs is a creature that cannot sit on them at all: I mean the ant. Many phenomena show that the bird does not sit, as a rule, out of any passion for sitting. She does not continue, as a rule, to sit after her eggs are What is it again that makes the new- taken. That the impulse works occasionborn creature at first sight anticipate dan- ally through inherited habit, when the ger from those things or persons that reason for it is absent, and that a broody have proved hostile to its race? It may hen or turkey will sit hard on the bare be said, if creatures recognize at first ground does not invalidate what I say. sight things familiar to their ancestors, Only take a seat of eggs to a broody bird why may not the first step of some old sitting on the bare ground: notice how æonian sequence suggest, by association, she rushes at them and hastens to extend the second, and the second the third, and herself over them. She recognizes them so on? Why may not the bird's pairing at once as the things she craved. As a bring to its mind the nest building, and rule we may say the bird's impulse to sit that the incubation, and that the hatch-adjusts itself to the needs of the embryo ing? Wonderful as such reminiscence it is an impulse to supply to them the would be, it seems to some, at first sight, shelter or warmth which they need. Witless wonderful than the supposition that ness the way birds relieve one another birds as well as insects provide for the in the task of sitting, and the energy with wants of the coming generation without which they avail themselves of the reliefs. knowing the purpose for which they Here the sitting is not a pleasure but a work. The bird builds, or finds, or cap-task, the pleasure is being relieved from tures, or repairs some nest or hole, or nook, not for herself, but for her eggs. She does not build at a season when she requires personal warmth or repose, or when she is shy and retiring. She builds when she enjoys the coming spring, and when she is least shy, least timid, least retiring. That broodiness does not prompt her hardly needs asserting, for the desire of sitting does not come on till some time later. She builds her nest first clearly as a deposit for her eggs. If we are asked what is the impulse that moves her we can really only answer, she is impelled by the needs of the coming generation. When the embryo needs warmth for its development she sits on them to give them the warmth they need. Audubon notices that in many cases the same bird sits laxly or assiduously according as little or much heat is needed to supplement the natural temperature. The Telegalla, or brush turkey, does not sit at all because the bottom heat of the great grass mound she makes for her eggs suffices for the hatching. For the same reason the ostrich does not sit by day, and the African Leipoa does not sit at all, but leaves its eggs to be hatched by the heat of the sand mound in which it deposits them. The creature that of all others is the Audubon. That animals in seeking their own comfort accidentally provide a place of shelter for their young may be plausibly affirmed of some nest-building or hole-boring mammals, but not of birds or insects. it. The need of the embryo compels the service of the parent bird. As the embryos need a more equable temperature, a more equable temperature is supplied; the bird leaves its nest seldomer and returns to it sooner. Considering the elastic adjustment of the parent's acts to the embryo's needs, I cannot wonder at the theory that the bird anticipates, by some innate tradition, the coming of its eggs and its offspring. Only I maintain that this theory is not needed to account for her acts, because there are a set of acts similar to hers that cannot be attributed to anticipation of results. Of those insects that make such careful provision for their eggs, some die as soon as they have deposited their eggs, and in general, as we believe, they see and know and care nothing about their eggs after they have been deposited. Anticipation of an offspring that not only they but their ancestors have never known or seen, instead of explaining anything would only be itself an inexplicable marvel. There are birds that know or care nothing for their eggs after it is deposited as the cuckoo-who is nevertheless careful where she deposits her eggs. Some birds behave in a way inconsistent with the idea that anticipation of offspring is the inspiring motive of their care of their eggs. I remember a hen corncrake at Newton Valence which sat on its seat of twelve eggs in a grass field all through the mowing and haymaking that went on all around it with no protection from gazers except a few boughs which the mowers had stuck round its nest. It sat with a courage marvellously foreign to the usual nature of the bird, and grew bolder and bolder as the time of hatching drew nigh. Was this courage due to the anticipation of offspring? It did not seem so; for the moment her young were hatched and needed her less, her natural fears returned, and she left them. The power that seems to rule the bird as well as the insect is the need of the unborn offspring. What they need, that the parent is led to provide for them, without apparently any conscious motive beyond the gratification of an impulse; and it seems as if this impulse was obeyed oftentimes, not as a pleasure but as a duty which could not be gainsayed. That animals perform provident constructive acts without having learnt by experience how to do them, or without inheriting the experience or skill which their parents have acquired, is generally supported by reference to the instincts of the sexless working bee, and other sexless working insects. Darwin most assuredly does not overlook this, but perhaps there is a danger that his disciples should overlook its bearings. The bee cannot have got his connate working powers from its ancestors, because its ancestors have not been working bees at all from time immemorial; they cannot transmit their powers to their descendants, for they have no descendants. Natural selection ought to destroy the bee's working powers, for all the workers die and leave no seed, and only the nonworkers transmit their kind. The only thing I complain of in Darwin is that he dwells so strongly on the wonder of this instinct. There are other instincts which, with the knowledge we have of brute animal nature, it is impossible to suppose were ever connected with anticipations of results in brute creatures; I speak of the instinct to which the perpetuation of every sexual race of animals is due. What do dumb beasts know or think of the providential meaning of their act when they propagate their race? Again, let me ask, what man, however wise and scientific, is not compelled to obey impulse or appetite to some extent in order to know what to eat or what to refuse, when to eat and when to cease from eating, when to work and when to rest from working. As often as he does so, he acknowledges a providence and trusts to a guidance, the rationale of which he cannot fathom. His feeling, not his science, informs him of the extent of his powers. We acknowledge the authority of undefinable instincts also when we allow the unaccountable attraction of two for each other to determine the important question of marriage. But we all of us acknowledge it in more ways than can be enumerated, and no one consistently denies it. When we hear it asserted that certain things are not to be done - however advantageous the result may be - because they are of themselves hateful, unlovely, unclean; we must either assert that these reasons for avoiding them are all nonsense, or else we must admit the authority of unreassoning impulse; of an authority within that will not be disobeyed when, for reasons we cannot fathom, it bids us do certain things and avoid others. I have given you my reasons, reader, for thinking that before we knew anything or could provide for ourselves, a providence that was the property of our life wrought for us and brought us what was needed for our development. We were first provided for, then made to do the things our needs required, and then by degrees came to learn providence by seeing it in actual operation, noticing not only the things which it was impelling others to do but the things which it was impelling us to do, and so the same power that first made and sustained us, from being our Maker, passed on to become our Inspirer and Teacher. I find, as I shall show, our goodness and religion unfolding themselves out of our natural affection, and our natural affections again are but an extension of that impulse which makes each creature maintain itself and its kind; and this impulse again presents itself as that which moves and thus makes the structureless protista into organized forms. have other offspring secretly substituted for her own. She is a mother to them. I have not space to add my little contribution to the interesting facts with which Darwin illustrates this. The impulse which makes the mother delight in shielding and sustaining and educating the little unformed creatures committed to her charge is precisely on a limited scale that love which the Christian man attributes to his Saviour and his God. And it contains in it that expansive potential The hydra, though it has a certain organization, may be turned inside out without destruction to its working power, and may be cut into as many pieces as you like and not be destroyed, but only multiplied by the process, and yet when its internal cavity is empty its tentacula spread themselves out on the chance of catching any passing food, if one of these touches a fly or water-flea it immediately clasps it, the other tentacula come to its aid and coil round their prey and draw it into the digestive cavity. This sym-ity which needs only sufficient breadth of pathy also, as Hunter and others following him have noticed, exists between the parts of plants, which are associations and not individuals. So that we may say co-operation aud sympathy manifests itself almost as soon as life manifests itself. In the earliest stage of life this co-operation and sympathy does not extend beyond the united portions of one isolated mass. The detached bits, or buds, or globules float away and draw to themselves the nourishment they need. As we rise in the scale of beings, the sympathy and help of the parent is extended to the offspring after the offspring has become isolated from it. And it is curious to observe that in proportion as the egg or young one needs the care and help of the parent it gets it. The higher the grown-creature is advanced in the scale of intelligence, the more it is left to provide for itself and to learn by experience and the more this is the case the more helpless is the young creature that has not yet got its experience. Thus, as intelligence increases, the need of parental help increases, and though the parental impulse to help does not in all cases keep pace with the increased demand, yet it does so in some cases, and only those races continue and save their children in whom the parental impulse is strong; others die out. The instinct of self-preservation in the case of oviparous creatures seems first to extend into a love of possession. It loves its eggs as its own property. This instinct, on the hatching of the eggs, finds itself transformed into motherly love, which ever remains to man the very purest type under which he can conceive of the highest goodness. And this instinct cannot be said to be properly understood if we overlook the fact that it contains within it the seed of universal compassion. The mother may • Carpenter's "Comparative Physiology." sympathy or intelligence to transform it into that very same love which is spoken of by St. John as the simply convertible attribute of the supreme God.* Of filial love I must give the results of my thoughts briefly. It is at first simply the natural craving for food, warmth, comfort, safety. If it was merely this it would offer no aspects of sentimental beauty; but the creature inherits motherly love from its parents. A person must be unobservant who has not noticed the strength of motherly love that there is in girls, or even in quite little children. Thus the well-formed child not only forms pleasant associations with its mother as the supplier of its wants, but also sympathizes with her in her motherly love. Filial attachment wins the name of goodness, because it involves parental love. Motherly love is the purest type of what men prize and praise in their fellow men. It is the most disinterested and self-sacrificing, the most careful and considerate love that is ever seen in the mere animal or in the mere animal man. The mother is emphatically the supplier of the creature's wants, and so she is emphatically the creature's good. For what does goodness mean? It is important that the word should not be used at all in an essay like this unless it is used in a strict, unmistakable, scientific sense. The word is a perfectly plain one, if people would not saddle it with fanciful ideal meanings. It is simply a term of praise. It is what men praise, or prize, or count dear. Men want help and sympathy, and praise those who freely yield it. And this being the meaning of the word goodness, the maternal instinct at once takes its place as at once the earliest and purest incarnation of it. The idea of the parent dwelling in the mind becomes by degrees refined and purified from all those earthly limitations that obscure it, especially after "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, for Gud is love.' the parent's death. And so the soil of man's nature, even among the rudest and most uncultivated races, is prepared to receive the doctrine of an all good, all provident parent, unchangingly the same. The love of the parent is the purest type of all goodness. It is a mercy that contains in it the seeds of justice and every other social virtue. When we talk of a mother labouring to do justice to her children, we are not using the word justice in its secondary sense, but in its primary sense. For justice in its primary Thus I find human goodness and human religion existing as a latent property of the living substance. THE FUNCTION OF ADVERSITY. meaningless. Prayer would vanish, for instinct, worn deep by æonian habits into prayer is the child's cry. It is the filial the creature's being, which makes man capable of receiving the idea of a divine parent, and capable of prayer. Now, how is this parental love, the parent of all that we subsequently call goodness in the creature, evoked? By those outward accidents that press on life, and that make life, and that make life impossible for the young without the parent's aid. If the outward pressure on vital development was so feeble that form is simply motherly in its character, distributing to each what they need, what young creatures could at once maintain themselves without parental aid, and they can hold, and what they can profit floated away like Medusa buds from the by. The fierce, passionate corrective or vindictive form of justice is secondary. then parental love and compassion, which parent substance in perfect independence, That motherhood renders a woman un- is really the mother of all virtue, or, at just to those who are not her children is least, the nurse of all virtue, would vanno negation of what I say. It merely ish. The meaning of the word "mother" means that all those affections out of would vanish. Our worship of the Fawhich justice springs, instead of being ther would vanish, the word becoming diffused among her neighbours, are concentrated on her children. Parental love then is the purest type of all goodness; and, on the other hand, filial piety, which proceeds from the indwelling of the spirit of the parent in the child, is the purest type of all religion. The antiseptic influence of the mother's home that may be seen banishing impurity, not only from the Christian man's family circle, but from the Iroquois,* or modern Red Indian cabin, and the passionate valour of the mother defending her child, show that the domestic sphere is the cradle not only of providence in outward accident, even the social but of the self-asserting virtues. though such accidents should be not only I must ask my reader not to misunder-apparently but really undesigned? Well, at least outward accident is needed to stand me here. If I was to assert that manifest it. the thing men emphatically praised or prized in their fellows was parental love, I should not be asserting a fact. Good motherhood by no means makes a woman loved or praised by her neighbours. All I assert is that parental love manifests in a contracted sphere that affection which is called goodness when a man feels it not exclusively to his own children but to his neighbours and fellowcitizens also. So far as man has this allembracing benevolence and sympathy, so far he shows men the Father. As parental love contains the germ of all goodness, so Filial Piety contains the germ of all religion. Our Saviour made His followers religious men by showing them what a Father really meant. They learned to know and love and trust the Father in Him. That was their religion. That pressure of outward adversity which some modern men say excludes the idea of a God, actually generated the idea and kept it alive in the hearts of men. We see in vital action a providence. Shall we say that we see no THE CHRISTIAN'S PRESENTIMENT. It will still, after all, be said by a Christian man who would otherwise approve of my argument: "You say that Providence is manifested in life but not in life's environment. I grant that I cannot see it manifested in the accidents of life, but I believe that it acts through them, though I cannot see it." And so do I. All I argue for is that we should first confine our attention to the place where it is unmistakably visible. That is in life. Life is provident in its action. And what do we mean by life? We mean a certain activity resembling in its character that activity to which we feel our will impelling us. Men have probably learnt to call trees and plants alive even in unscientific times, because in attributing to other things certain charac |