THE problem which of late years has most deeply stirred the philosophic mind of Europe is the problem of creation. No doubt that problem is as old as the world, or at least as old as the first questionings of the human mind; and the solutions which it has received, both from poets and philosophers, are innumerable. Out of many solutions one, which best satisfies the enquiring intellect of the time, generally prevails. In ancient times one or the other solution has even been invested with a kind of sacred authority; and, as the subject is one on which real knowledge is impossible, it is hardly to be wondered at, that, with us too, the prevailing conception of creation should have continued, up to the nineteenth century, very much the same as what it was at the time of Moses. NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVIII., No. 3 Owing to the great development, however, of the study of nature in this century, and the wide diffusion of physical knowledge among all classes of society, the problem of creation has lately risen to the surface again. New facts challenge new thoughts, and the mass of new facts, throwing light on the earliest history of the world, has become so large that we need not wonder if philosophers felt inspired with fresh courage, and by elaborating a new theory of creation, which should not outrage the convictions of men of science and friends of truth, tried to wrest a new province from the land of the Unknowable. The approaches were made from three points. First of all, there were the ancient vestiges of creation discovered in the strata of the earth; secondly, there was 17 the living history of creation to be studied in the minute stages of embryonic development; and thirdly, there was the comparative method of anatomy, laying bare essential coincidences in the structures of living beings, even of such as had never before displayed the slightest traces of relationship. The zealous and successful pursuit of these three branches of physical study, now generally spoken of as Paleontology, Embryology, and Comparative Anatomy, has produced the same effect with regard to the problem of creation which our own linguistic studies have produced with regard to the problem of the origin of language and thought. As long as the question of the origin of language was asked in a general and indefinite way, the answers were mostly as general and as unsatisfactory as the questions themselves. In fact, the crude question, How was human language made, or how did it arise? admitted of no scientific answer, and the best that could be said on the subject was, that, like the beginnings of all things, the beginning of language, too, transcends the powers of the human understanding. But, when what we may call paleontological studies had placed before us the earliest vestiges of human speech in the most ancient inscriptions and literatures of the world; when, secondly, a study of living languages had disclosed to us the minute stages of dialectic growth and phonetic decay, through which all languages are constantly passing in their passage from life to death and from death to life; and when, lastly, the comparative method had disclosed to us the essential coincidences in languages, the relationship of which had never been suspected before, then the question of the origin of language started up again, and called for a new and more definite answer. The analogy between the researches carried on by the students of physical science and by the students of language goes still farther. Whatever difference of opinion there may be between the different schools of physiologists, this one result seems to be permanently established, that * It is impossible to use Ontology in the sense of Embryology, for Ontology has its own technical meaning, and to use it in a new sense would give rise to endless confusion. the primary elements of all living organisms are the simple cells, so that the problem of creation has assumed a new form, and has become the problem of the origin and nature of these cells. The same in the Science of Language. The most important result which has been obtained by a truly scientific study of languages is this, that, after accounting for all that is purely formal as the result of juxtaposition, agglutination, and inflection, there remain in the end certain simple elements of human speech-phonetic cells commonly called roots. In place, therefore, of the old question of the origin of language, we have here, too, to deal with the new question of the origin of roots. Here, however, the analogy between the two sciences, in their solution of the highest problems, comes to an end. There are, indeed, two schools of physiologists, the polygenetic and the monogenetic, the former admitting from the beginning a variety of primitive cells, the latter postulating but one cell, as the source of all being. But it is clear, that the monogenetic school is becoming more and more powerful. Mr. Darwin, as we saw, was satisfied with admitting four or five beginnings for plants, and the same number for animals. But his position has become almost untenable, and his most ardent disciple, Professor Haeckel, treats his master's hesitation on this point with ill-disguised contempt. One little cell is all that he wants to explain the Universe, and he boldly claims for his primordial Moneres, the ancestor of plants and animals and men, a self-generating power, the so-called generatio spontanea or æquivoca. Professor Haeckel is very anxious to convince his readers that the difference between these two schools, the monogenetic and polygenetic, is of small importance. The differences, he says, between the various Moneres, whose bodies consist of simple matter without form or structure, and which are in fact no more than a combination of carbon in the form of white of eggs, are of a chemical nature only; and the differences of mixture in the endless varieties of combination of white of eggs are so fine as to be, for the present, beyond the powers of human perception.* But if this is so, surely the rule of all scien * Haeckel, Vorlesungen, p. 372. |