taminating aims. For it is not easy in sculpture to be sanguinary, obscene, or sensational. Verily, the amount of the statuary's power in France is astonishing. I am not sure but that it is the one living art in Europe. I quite admit that a walk round the sculpture galleries shows a life, a mastery, a truth in the art which place France without a rival." "We believe ourselves in the fine arts to be first," said the deputy, with the delightful assurance of the patriotic Frenchman to whom the opinion of other nations is a matter of indifference; the fine arts we are obviously first and are not second in the inferior arts of skill. But what is now for the first time exhibited to Europe is this. In the great steel industries and in the engineering triumphs of modern mechanics we have proved that neither England nor America are our superiors, for we have made that which England or America might possibly make, but what they have never yet made, the vastest single building and the loftiest tower ever raised on earth by human hands.' 66 ingenious M. Eiffel," sang out the doctor, a grand haul for the contractors, ten per cent. for the speculators, and fifty centimes an hour for the brave men who built it at the risk of their lives." "Such is modern society," replied the deputy. "These are the conditions in which we live, and we cannot sit still and do nothing until you and your friends have established a social millennium." But here I turned round to a young man who had much interested me, though he had said but little during the discusin sion. He was a printer by trade, and an influential member of more than one association of workmen. He was dark, with fine features, keen eyes, and a somewhat reserved air. In manner, in speech, and even in dress, he was much more like the English standard of good taste than were his professional companions at the table, so that any one who did not know the superior order of workmen in Paris, would hardly suppose him to be one of their class. Though a man of great influence in his trade, he was neither a socialist, an anarchist, nor a member of any political faction; he cared more for social progress than for political agitation, and for popular education more than for either. "Yes," I said, "the Hall of Machinery is certainly a stupendous work; and I am quite a convert to the Eiffel Tower. When we saw it half-finished, we all thought it hideous. But I confess that the beauty of its constructive lines, the simplicity and symmetry of its design, and the fantastic completeness of the idea, do make it a legitimate feat of engineering invention." "You will quite understand," said the deputy, "what is the interest of the Eiffel Tower from a national point of view. A Pharaoh can raise a pyramid, and Louis the Fourteenth sank two hundred millions of francs in Versailles. But the problem But the problem here was to raise the loftiest tower in the world, nearly double the height of any tower in Europe, absolutely secure, capable of easy removal and transport, and at a cost so small that it should repay the outlay in a few years. Now the weight of the Eiffel Tower is not so great as that of a big factory chimney; its cost is little more; and its adaptability infinitely greater. Our age is the age of steel edifices, of engineering feats, and of the organization of numbers. Here you have the problem solved in ideal perfection in the sight of mankind !" Turning to my silent but observant neighbor, I asked him what were the prevalent views in his class on the questions we had been so warmly debating. "Monsieur," he said in a quiet and measured tone, "I think it impossible to reduce the opinions of workmen to a single definite expression. It is too much the habit of politicians, and of social reformers generally, to assume that there is such a thing as a workman's opinion en masse. The working men of Paris are as much divided by parties and factions as the Chamber or the bourgeoisie, and perhaps into even more numerous parties, and are prepared to go into even greater extremes in order to beat their rivals. There is a general-indeed, we may say, a universal-feeling among the workmen in the cities that their present condition is one of monstrous hardship, though as to how it is to be righted they radically differ. As to the Exhibition, they look upon it as part of the ordinary action of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist class-no worse and no better. Nothing will persuade them that it had any other origin than the craving of the rich to increase their wealth, "So that the political situation," said I, remains much as it was before. But what do your fellow-workmen say now on the burning question of the hour?'' 66 "You mean," he replied with a smile, ce petit monsieur, whom you are fêting in London-the dictator, that is to be, of the new Republican Empire to come? Well, he has not gained way in the last three months. But Boulanger was never the hero of the mass of the workmen of Paris. They are divided on this, as on most other questions: but Boulangisme is rather an idea of the bourgeoisie, of the capitalist classes, and of the great Conservative masses of France." 66 'You think it a very formidable rival to the Republic ?" I asked. "To the Government and the Chamber," he replied, a most formidable rival. We should all be Boulangists to-morrow, if we could trust Boulanger in the least, or even make out what his policy will be. The election for the Seine, which astonished the world so much, was mainly a protest against the Government in power, and the whole Parliamentary system. France is weary of both; and if she has not got rid of them before, it is for want of a substitute of even decent pretensions. The set of things in France is increasingly strong toward a Republican Dictatorship. And if it does not come to the front, it is simply for want of any possible Dictator." "And Boulanger is impossible?" I asked. "I do not say that," he replied; "with the mass of the Conservative voters earnestly longing for a one-man Government, and the mass of the Republican workmen furiously aiming at the overthrow of the present Parliamentary Government, more unlikely things than Boulangisme are possible, and more unsatisfactory pretenders than Boulanger may be welcomed, I do not vote for him myself, because I cannot trust the man; and I am not willing to hand France over to a syndicate of adventurers. But the mass of my fellow-workmen of Paris will accept almost any change at almost any price. any price. Still, except among anarchists, communards, and the party of the barricade, the General has no real following among the Paris workmen." But here I perceived that my tête-à-tête conversation with my friend the printer was destined to end. The rest of the company were eager to impart to me their views, and all at the same moment. For to drop the name "Boulanger" in the midst of a political gathering, is like throwing a dynamite cartridge among them. The first to break in was a young journalist of "extremist" opinions, who writes paragraphs for M. Rochefort's paper. "What does the man signify," said he, with a vehement exclamation, 66 SO long as he helps us to get rid of the crew who are now exploiting the people and plundering the Republic for themselves and their friends? We are quite strong enough to dictate our own terms when the victory is won, and to give to the movement a Republican shape. France is perishing, and the people are being flayed, for want of a Republican concentration and a Government of initiative and courage. This is what Boulangisme means. I am not about to defend the General, for I do not care a straw whether Boulanger is a humbug or a hero. He does for the democratic and social Republic what the Tour Eiffel does for your precious Exhibition he draws the masses to the spot, and is every where en évidence by day and by night. And, if he becomes dangerous, we will pull him down and ship him off to the States, as we mean to do some day to the Eiffel Tower." 66 On the contrary," " cried out a professor from the Ecole Normale, who had been decorated by Napoleon the third, and had a sneaking kindness for the Empire, Boulanger means an Imperial system based on universal suffrage and the encouragement of merit, trade, and art." Say rather a Conservative and Catholic Monarchy," struck in a young student of theology, for the General is merely the Monk who is to restore King Philippe the Seventh." 66 "And in the meantime France is to be handed over to a man who is only fit to play croupier at Monte Carlo !" cried the deputy. "A Napoleon without the glory, a pretender without a claim, and a dictator without a policy!" shouted the vehement doctor. But here the conversation became too rapid as well as too confused to be reported at all. Gredin, coquin, roi des larrons, miscreants of bourgeois, le Tonquinois, parliamentary corruption, were the only distinct phrases which I could catch in the hubbub. We finished our coffee hastily, took an MR. WALLACE ON DARWINISM. BY GEORGE J. ROMANES, F. R.S. To all who have read the life and letters of the late Mr. Darwin it must appear that, over and above the personal and scientific interest which attaches in so high a degree to that admirable biography, there is what may be termed a dramatic interest. The antecedents of Charles Darwin, the Sir Isaac Newton of biology, in Charles Darwin, the undergraduate at Cambridge -hitherto unconscious of his own powers, and waking up to a love of science under the guiding influence of a beautiful friendship; the delight and the diffidence which attended his nomination by Professor Henslow as a suitable naturalist for the Beagle expedition; the uncertainty which afterward marked the course of negotiations between his family on the one hand, and the Admiralty on the other, wherein issues of incalculable importance were turning and re-turning in the balance of chance, determined this way and that by the merest featherweights of circumstance; the eventual suddenness of a decision which was destined to end not only, as his father anticipated, in an "unsettling" of his own views, but also, and to a never paralleled degree, in the unsettling of the views of all mankind; the subsequent dawning upon his mind of the truth of evolution in the light of his theory of natural selection, and the working out of that theory during twenty years of patient devotion in the quiet retirement of an English country life; the bursting of the storm in 1859, and all the history of the great transformations which have followed ;-these in their broadest outlines are some of what I have ventured to call the dramatic elements in the records of Mr. Darwin's life. Now, not least among these dramatic elements is the relation in which Mr. Darwin's work stood to that of Mr. Wallace. For assuredly it was in the highest degree dramatic, that the great idea of natural selection should have occurred independently and in precisely the same form to two working naturalists; that these naturalists should have been countrymen; that they should have agreed to publish their theory on the same day; and last, but not least, that, through the many years of strife and turmoil which followed, these two English naturalists consistently maintained toward each other such feelings of magnanimous recognition, that it is hard to say whether we should most admire the intellectual or the moral qualities which, in relation to their common labors, they have displayed. Now, I have sought to lay emphasis on this the dramatic side of "Darwinism," because in the work which under this title I am about to review, it appears to me that Mr. Wallace has added yet another scene, or episode, which, in the respects we are considering, is quite worthy of all that has gone before. I do not allude merely to the fact that in this work we have the matured conclusions of the jointoriginator of Darwinian doctrine, published most opportunely at a time when biological science is especially anxious to learn his views upon certain questions of the highest importance which have been raised since the death of Darwin; nor do I allude merely to the further fact that in now speaking out, after nearly a decade of virtual silence on scientific topics, the veteran naturalist has displayed an energy of investigation as well as a force of thought which is every where equal to, and in many places surpasses, anything that is to be met with in all the solid array of his previous works. That these facts present what I call a dramatic side I fully allow; but the point which in this connection I desire to bring into special prominence is the following. It is notorious that, from the time when they published their joint theory of evolution by natural selection, Darwin and Wallace failed to agree upon certain points of doctrine, which, although of comparatively small importance in relation to any question of evolution considered as a fact, were, and still continue to be, of the high est possible importance in relation to the question of evolution considered as a method-i.e., in relation to the causes or factors which have been concerned in the process. It was the opinion of Mr. Darwin that natural selection has been the chief, but not the only, cause of organic evolution; while, in the opinion of Mr. Wallace, natural selection has been the all and in all of such evolution-virtually the sole and only principle which has been concerned in the development both of life and of mind from the amoeba to the ape -although he further and curiously differs from Darwin in an opposite direction, by holding that natural selection can have had absolutely no part at all in the development of faculties distinctively human. Disregarding the latter and subordinate point of difference (a re-presentation of which in the concluding chapters of his present work I may however remark appears to me sadly like the feet of clay in a figure of iron, marring by its manifest weakness what would otherwise have been a completed and self consistent monument of strength), let us first clearly understand to what it is that the major point of difference amounts. This may best be done by quoting from each of the authors in question parallel passages, which occur in the concluding paragraphs of their latest works. Mr. Darwin writes : "I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which have thoroughly convinced me that species have been modified during a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural selec. tion of numerous successive, slight, favorable variations, aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is in relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I formerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms of variation, as leading to permanent modifications of structure independently of natural selection. But as my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of most conspicuous position-namely, at the this work, and subsequently, I placed in a close of the Introduction the following words: I am convinced that natural selec tion has been the main, but not the exclusive, avail. Great is the power of steady misrepremeans of modification.' This has been of no sentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure." Mr. Wallace writes: "While admitting, as Darwin always admitted, the co-operation of the fundamental laws of growth and variation, of correlation and heredity, in determining the direction of lines of variation or in the initiation of peculiar organs, we find that variation and natural selection are ever-present agencies, which take possession, as it were, of every minute change originated by these fundamental causes, check or favor their further development, or modify them in countless varied ways according to the varying needs of the organism. Whatever other causes have been at work, natural selecwin himself hesitated to claim for it. The tion is supreme, to an extent which even Dar. more we study it the more we are convinced of its overpowering importance, and the more confidently we claim, in Darwin's own words, that it has been the most important, but not the exclusive, means of modification.' Now, in the latter quotation it is manifest that the "co operation" which is spoken of takes cognizance only of factors which are themselves either necessary conditions to, or integral parts of, the process of natural selection; and, therefore, the approval which Mr. Wallace bestows upon Mr. Darwin's emphatic reservation (“but not exclusive means of modification") can only be understood to have reference to the development of those distinctively hu man faculties which he immediately pro ceeds to consider, and touching which, as already indicated, Mr. Darwin's reservation was certainly not intended to apply. Thus, in brief, at the time of Mr. Darwin's death the state of matters was this while Mr. Wallace held persistently to his original belief in natural selection as virtually the sole and only cause of organic evolution, the whole body of scientific opinion, both in this country and abroad, had followed Mr. Darwin in holding that, while natural selection was the main" factor of such evolution, nevertheless it was largely supplemented in its work by certain other subordinate factors, of which the most important were taken to be the inherited effects of use and disuse, together with the influence of the environment in directly producing alterations both of structure and of instinct. Shortly after Mr. Darwin's death, however, this state of matters underwent a very serious change. For it was shortly after Mr. Darwin's death that Professor Weismann began to publish a remarkable series of papers, the effect of which has been to create a new literature of such large and rapidly increasing proportions that, with the single exception of Mr. Darwin's own works, it does not appear that any publications in modern times have given so great a stimulus to speculative science, or succeeded in gaining so influential a following. The primary object of these papers is to establish a new theory of heredity, which has for one of its consequences a denial of the inherited effects of use and disuse, or, indeed, of any other characters which are acquired during the lifetime of individuals; according to this theory, the only kind of variations that can be transmitted to progeny are those which are called congenital. For instance, there is no doubt that in his individual lifetime the arms of a blacksmith have their muscular power increased by constant exercise (or use) of the muscles in hammering; and therefore, if there were a thousand generations of blacksmiths, it seems reasonable to suppose that the children of the last of them would inherit somewhat stronger arms than those of average children-or, à fortiori, than those of children born of a similarly long line, say, of watchmakers. This was the supposition that constituted the basis of Lamarck's theory of evolution, and, as we have seen, it was sanctioned by Darwinalthough, of course, he differed from Lamarck in not regarding this supposed transmission of the effects of use and disuse as the sole factor of evolution, but merely as a factor greatly subordinate to that which he had himself discovered in survival of the fittest. Nevertheless, he unquestionably did regard this subordinate factor as one of high importance in cooperation with survival of the fittest, and, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has shown in detail, he apparently attributed more and more importance to it the longer that he considered its relation to the greater principle. But, as we have just seen, according to the school of Weismann it is only variations of a congenital kind that can be inherited : no matter what adaptive changes may be induced in the individual by suitable use and disuse of its several parts, and no matter what adaptive changes may be directly caused by environing agencies, these all count for nothing in the process of evolution: the only adaptive changes that can count for anything in this process are those which can be transmitted to progeny-i.e., according to this school, those which arise fortuitously as congenital variations, for the accidental occurrence of which natural selection is always, so to speak, waiting and watching. The human hand, for example, considered as a mechanism, owes nothing to its continued use through numberless generations as an instrument for the performance of functions which it is now so admirably adapted to discharge; on the contrary, its evolution has throughout been exclusively dependent on the occurrence of fortuitous variations, which, whenever they happen to occur in a profitable direction, were preserved by natural selection, and passed on to the next generation. Now, it is evident that, according to this theory, natural selection is constituted the one and only cause of organic evolution; and for this reason the followers of Weismann are in the habit of calling his doctrine " pure Darwinism," inasmuch as without invoking any aid from the Lamarckian principles above described, it constitutes the Darwinian principle of natural selection the sole, and not merely as he said the "main, means of modification." Obviously, without going further than this quotation (which I have already made |