Act 1851 made parties to legal proceedings admissible witnesses subject

to a proviso that "nothing herein contained shall render any person who in any criminal proceeding is charged with the commission of any indictable offence, or any offence punishable on summary conviction, competent or compellable to give evidence for or against himself or herself, or shall render any person compellable to answer any question tending to criminate himself or herself, or shall in any criminal proceeding render any husband competent or compellable to give evidence for or against his wife, or any wife competent or compellable to give evidence for or against her husband." The Evidence (Scotland) Act 1853 made a similar provision for Scotland. The Evidence Amendment Act 1853 made the husbands and wives of parties admissible witnesses, except that husbands and wives could not give evidence for or against each other in criminal proceedings or in proceedings for adultery, and could not be compelled to disclose communications made to each other during marriage. Under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 the petitioner can be examined and cross-examined on oath at the hearing, but is not bound to answer any question tending to show that he or she has been guilty of adultery. Under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1859, on a wife's petition for dissolution of marriage on the ground of adultery coupled with cruelty or desertion, husband and wife are competent and compellable to give evidence as to the cruelty or desertion. The Crown Suits &c. Act 1865 declared that revenue proceedings were not to be treated as criminal proceedings for the purposes of the acts of 1851 and 1853. The Evidence Further Amendment Act 1869 declared that parties to actions for breach of promise of marriage were competent to give evidence in the action, subject to a proviso that the plaintiff should not recover unless his or her testimony was corroborated by some other material evidence. It also made the parties to proceedings instituted in consequence of adultery, and their husbands and wives, competent to give evidence, but a witness in any such proceeding, whether a party or not, is not to be liable to be asked or bound to answer any question tending to show that he or she has been guilty of adultery, unless the witness has already given evidence in the same proceeding in disproof of the alleged adultery. There are similar provisions applying to Scotland in the Conjugal Rights (Scotland) Amendment Act 1861, and the Evidence Further Amendment (Scotland) Act 1874. The Evidence Act 1877 enacts that "on the trial of any indictment or other proceeding for the non-repair of any public highway or bridge, or for a nuisance to any public highway, river, or bridge, and of any other indictment or proceeding instituted for the purpose of trying or enforcing a civil right only, every defendant to such indictment or proceeding, and the wife or husband of any such defendant shall be admissible witnesses and compellable to give evidence." From 1872 onwards numerous enactments were passed making persons charged with particular offences, and their husbands and wives, competent witnesses. The language and effect of these enactments were not always the same, but the insertion of some provision to this effect in an act creating a new offence, especially if it was punishable by summary proceedings, gradually became almost a common form in legislation. In the year 1874 a bill to generalize these particular provisions, and to make the evidence of persons charged with criminal offences admissible in all cases was introduced by Mr Gladstone's government, and was passed by the standing committee of the House of Commons. During the next fourteen years bills for the same purpose were repeatedly introduced, either by the government of the day, or by Lord Bramwell as an independent member of the House of Lords. Finally the Criminal Evidence Act 1898, introduced by Lord Halsbury, has enacted in general terms that "every person charged with an offence, and the wife or husband, as the case may be, of the person so charged, shall be a competent witness for the defence at every stage of the proceedings, whether the person so charged is charged solely or jointly with any other person." But this general enactment is qualified by some special restrictions, the nature of which will be noticed below. The act applies to Scotland but not to Ireland. It was not to apply to proceedings in courts-martial unless so applied by general orders or rules made under statutory authority. The provisions of the act have been applied by rules to military courts-martial, but have not yet been applied to naval courts-martial. The removal of disqualifications for want of religious belief is referred to below under the head of "Witnesses."

Literature.

The act of 1898 finishes for the present the history of English legislation on evidence. For a view of the legal literature on the subject it is necessary to take a step backwards. Early in the 19th century Chief Baron Gilbert was superseded as an authority on the English law of evidence by the books of Phillips (1814) and Starkie (1824), who were followed by Roscoe (_Nisi Prius_, 1827; Criminal Cases, 1835), Greenleaf (American, 1842), Taylor (based on Greenleaf, 1848), and Best (1849). In 1876 Sir James FitzJames Stephen brought out his _Digest of the Law of Evidence_, based upon the Indian Evidence Act 1872, which he had prepared and passed as law member of the council of the governor-general of India. This Digest obtained a rapid and well-deserved success, and has materially influenced the form of subsequent writings on the English law of evidence. It sifted out what Stephen conceived to be the main rules of evidence from the mass of extraneous matter in which they had been embedded. Roscoe's Digests told the lawyer what things must be proved in order to sustain particular actions or criminal charges, and related as much to pleadings and to substantive law as to evidence proper. Taylor's two large volumes were a vast storehouse of useful information, but his book was one to consult, not to master. Stephen eliminated much of this extraneous matter, and summed up his rules in a series of succinct propositions, supplemented by apt illustrations, and couched in such a form that they could be easily read and remembered. Hence the English Digest, like the Indian Act, has been of much educational value. Its most original feature, but unfortunately also its weakest point, is its theory of relevancy. Pondering the multitude of "exclusionary" rules which had been laid down by the English courts, Stephen thought that he had discovered the general principle on which those rules reposed, and could devise a formula by which the principle could be expressed. "My study of the subject," he says, "both practically and in books has convinced me that the doctrine that all facts in issue and relevant to the issue, and no others, may be proved, is the unexpressed principle which forms the centre of and gives unity to all the express negative rules which form the great mass of the law." The result was the chapter on the relevancy of facts in the Indian Evidence Act, and the definition of relevancy in s. 7 of that act. This definition was based on the view that a distinction could be drawn between things which were and things which were not causally connected with each other, and that relevancy depended on causal connexion. Subsequent criticism convinced Stephen that his definition was in some respects too narrow and in others too wide, and eventually he adopted a definition out of which all reference to causality was dropped. But even in their amended form the provisions about relevancy are open to serious criticism. The doctrine of relevancy, i.e. of the probative effect of facts, is a branch of logic, not of law, and is out of place both in an enactment of the legislature and in a compendium of legal rules. The necessity under which Stephen found himself of extending the range of relevant facts by making it include facts "deemed to be relevant," and then narrowing it by enabling the judge to exclude evidence of facts which are relevant, illustrates the difference between the rules of logic and the rules of law. Relevancy is one thing; admissibility is another; and the confusion between them, which is much older than Stephen, is to be regretted. Rightly or wrongly English judges have, on practical grounds, declared inadmissible evidence of facts, which are relevant in the ordinary sense of the term, and which are so treated in non-judicial inquiries. Under these circumstances the attempt so to define relevancy as to make it conterminous with admissibility is misleading, and most readers of Stephen's Act and Digest would find them more intelligible and more useful if "admissible" were substituted for "relevant" throughout. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that Stephen's doctrine of relevancy is theoretically unsound and practically useless. The other parts of the work contain terse and vigorous statements of the law, but a Procrustean attempt to make legal rules square with a preconceived theory has often made the language and arrangement artificial, and the work, in spite of its compression, still contains rules which, under a more scientific treatment, would find their appropriate place in other branches of the law. These defects are characteristic of a strong and able man, who saw clearly, and expressed forcibly what he did see, but was apt to ignore or to deny the existence of what he did not see, whose mind was vigorous rather than subtle or accurate, and who, in spite of his learning, was somewhat deficient in the historical sense. But notwithstanding these defects, the conspicuous ability of the author, his learning, and his practical experience, especially in criminal cases, attach greater weight to FitzJames Stephen's statements than to those of any other English writer on the law of evidence.

Rules.

The object of every trial is, or may be, to determine two classes of questions or issues, which are usually distinguished as questions of law, and questions of fact, although the distinction between them is not so clear as might appear on a superficial view. In a trial by jury these two classes of questions are answered by different persons. The judge lays down the law. The jury, under the guidance of the judge, find the facts. It was with reference to trial by jury that the English rules of evidence were originally framed; it is by the peculiarities of this form of trial that many of them are to be explained; it is to this form of trial alone that some of the most important of them are exclusively applicable. The negative, exclusive, or exclusionary rules which form the characteristic features of the English law of evidence, are the rules in accordance with which the judge guides the jury. There is no difference of principle between the method of inquiry in judicial and in non-judicial proceedings. In either case a person who wishes to find out whether a particular event did or did not happen, tries, in the first place, to obtain information from persons who were present and saw what happened (direct evidence), and, failing this, to obtain information from persons who can tell him about facts from which he can draw an inference as to whether the event did or did not happen (indirect evidence). But in judicial inquiries the information given must be given on oath, and be liable to be tested by cross-examination. And there are rules of law which exclude from the consideration of the jury certain classes of facts which, in an ordinary inquiry, would, or might, be taken into consideration. Facts so excluded are said to be "not admissible as evidence," or "not evidence," according as the word is used in the wider or in the narrower sense. And the easiest way of determining whether a fact is or is not evidence in the narrower sense, is first to consider whether it has any bearing on the question to be tried, and, if it has, to consider whether it falls within any one or more of the rules of exclusion laid down by English law. These rules of exclusion are peculiar to English law and to systems derived from English law. They have been much criticized, and some of them have been repealed or materially modified by legislation. Most of them may be traced to directions given by a judge in the course of trying a particular case, given with special reference to the circumstances of that case, but expressed in general language, and, partly through the influence of text-writers, eventually hardened into general rules. In some cases their origin is only intelligible by reference to obsolete forms of pleading or practice. But in most cases they were originally rules of convenience laid down by the judge for the assistance of the jury. The judge is a man of trained experience, who has to arrive at a conclusion with the help of twelve untrained men, and who is naturally anxious to keep them straight, and give them every assistance in his power. The exclusion of certain forms of evidence assists the jury by concentrating their attention on the questions immediately before them, and by preventing them from being distracted or bewildered by facts which either have no bearing on the question before them, or have so remote a bearing on those questions as to be practically useless as guides to the truth. It also prevents a jury from being misled by statements the effect of which, through the prejudice they excite, is out of all proportion to their true weight. In this respect the rules of exclusion may be compared to blinkers, which keep a horse's eyes on the road before him. In criminal cases the rules of exclusion secure fair play to the accused, because he comes to the trial prepared to meet a specific charge, and ought not to be suddenly confronted by statements which he had no reason to expect would be made against him. They protect absent persons against statements affecting their character. And lastly they prevent the infinite waste of time which would ensue in the discussion of a question of fact if an inquiry were allowed to branch out into all the subjects with which that fact is more or less connected. The purely practical grounds on which the rules are based, according to the view of a great judge, may be illustrated by some remarks of Mr Justice Willes (1814-1872). In discussing the question whether evidence of the plaintiff's conduct on other occasions ought to be admitted, he said:--

"It is not easy in all cases to draw the line and to define with accuracy where probability ceases and speculation begins; but we are bound to lay down the rule to the best of our ability. No doubt the rule as to confining the evidence to that which is relevant and pertinent to the issue is one of great importance, not only as regards the particular case, but also with reference to saving the time of the court, and preventing the minds of the jury from being drawn away from the real point they have to decide.... Now it appears to me that the evidence proposed to be given in this case, if admitted, would not have shown that it was more probable that the contract was subject to the condition insisted upon by the defendant. The question may be put thus, Does the fact of a person having once or many times in his life done a particular act in a particular way make it more probable that he has done the same thing in the same way upon another and different occasion? To admit such speculative evidence would, I think, be fraught with great danger.... If such evidence were held admissible it would be difficult to say that the defendant might not in any case, where the question was whether or not there had been a sale of goods on credit, call witnesses to prove that the plaintiff had dealt with other persons upon a certain credit; or, in an action for an assault, that the plaintiff might not give evidence of former assaults committed by the defendant upon other persons, or upon other persons of a particular class, for the purpose of showing that he was a quarrelsome individual, and therefore that it was highly probable that the particular charge of assault was well founded. The extent to which this sort of thing might be carried is inconceivable.... To obviate the prejudices, the injustice, and the waste of time to which the admission of such evidence would lead, and bearing in mind the extent to which it might be carried, and that litigants are mortal, it is necessary not only to adhere to the rule, but to lay it down strictly. I think, therefore, the fact that the plaintiff had entered into contracts of a particular kind with other persons on other occasions could not be properly admitted in evidence where no custom of trade to make such contracts, and no connexion between such and the one in question, was shown to exist" (_Hollingham v. Head_, 1858, 4 C.B. N.S. 388).

There is no difference between the principles of evidence in civil and in criminal cases, although there are a few special rules, such as those relating to confessions and to dying declarations, which are only applicable to criminal proceedings. But in civil proceedings the issues are narrowed by mutual admissions of the parties, more use is made of evidence taken out of court, such as affidavits, and, generally, the rules of evidence are less strictly applied. It is often impolitic to object to the admission of evidence, even when the objection may be sustained by previous rulings. The general tendency of modern procedure is to place a more liberal and less technical construction on rules of evidence, especially in civil cases. In recent volumes of law reports cases turning on the admissibility of evidence are conspicuous by their rarity. Various causes have operated in this direction. One of them has been the change in the system of pleading, under which each party now knows before the actual trial the main facts on which his opponent relies. Another is the interaction of chancery and common-law practice and traditions since the Judicature Acts. In the chancery courts the rules of evidence were always less carefully observed, or, as Westminster would have said, less understood, than in the courts of common law. A judge trying questions of fact alone might naturally think that blinkers, though useful for a jury, are unnecessary for a judge. And the chancery judge was apt to read his affidavits first, and to determine their admissibility afterwards. In the meantime they had affected his mind.

The tendency of modern text-writers, among whom Professor J.B. Thayer (1831-1902), of Harvard, was perhaps the most independent, instructive and suggestive, is to restrict materially the field occupied by the law of evidence, and to relegate to other branches of the law topics traditionally treated under the head of evidence. Thus in every way the law of evidence, though still embodying some principles of great importance, is of less comparative importance as a branch of English law than it was half a century ago. Legal rules, like dogmas, have their growth and decay. First comes the judge who gives a ruling in a particular case. Then comes the text-writer who collects the scattered rulings, throws them into the form of general propositions, connects them together by some theory, sound or unsound, and often ignores or obscures their historical origin. After him comes the legislator who crystallizes the propositions into enactments, not always to the advantage of mankind. So also with decay. Legal rules fall into the background, are explained away, are ignored, are denied, are overruled. Much of the English law of evidence is in a stage of decay.

The subject-matter of the law of evidence may be arranged differently according to the taste or point of view of the writer. It will be arranged here under the following heads:--I. Preliminary Matter; II. Classes of Evidence; III. Rules of Exclusion; IV. Documentary Evidence; V. Witnesses.

I. PRELIMINARY MATTER

Under this head may be grouped certain principles and considerations which limit the range of matters to which evidence relates.

1. _Law and Fact._--Evidence relates only to facts. It is therefore necessary to touch on the distinction between law and facts. _Ad quaestionem facti non respondent judices; ad quaestionem juris non respondent juratores._ Thus Coke, attributing, after his wont, to Bracton a maxim which may have been invented by himself. The maxim became the subject of political controversy, and the two rival views are represented by Pulteney's lines--

"For twelve honest men have decided the cause Who are judges alike of the facts and the laws,"

and by Lord Mansfield's variant--

"Who are judges of facts, but not judges of laws."

The particular question raised with respect to the law of libel was settled by Fox's Libel Act 1792. Coke's maxim describes in a broad general way the distinction between the functions of the judge and of the jury, but is only true subject to important qualifications. Judges in jury cases constantly decide what may be properly called questions of fact, though their action is often disguised by the language applied or the procedure employed. Juries, in giving a general verdict, often practically take the law into their own hands. The border-line between the two classes of questions is indicated by the "mixed questions of law and fact," to use a common phrase, which arise in such cases as those relating to "necessaries," "due diligence," "negligence," "reasonableness," "reasonable and probable cause." In the treatment of these cases the line has been drawn differently at different times, and two conflicting tendencies are discernible. On the one hand, there is the natural tendency to generalize common inferences into legal rules, and to fix legal standards of duty. On the other hand, there is the sound instinct that it is a mistake to define and refine too much in these cases, and that the better course is to leave broadly to the jury, under the general guidance of the judge, the question what would be done by the "reasonable" or "prudent" man in particular cases. The latter tendency predominates in modern English law, and is reflected by the enactments in the recent acts codifying the law on bills of exchange and sale of goods, that certain questions of reasonableness are to be treated as questions of fact. On the same ground rests the dislike to limit the right of a jury to give a general verdict in criminal cases. Questions of custom begin by being questions of fact, but as the custom obtains general recognition it becomes law. Many of the rules of the English mercantile law were "found" as customs by Lord Mansfield's special juries. Generally, it must be remembered that the jury act in subordinate co-operation with the judge, and that the extent to which the judge limits or encroaches on the province of the jury is apt to depend on the personal idiosyncrasy of the judge.

2. _Judicial Notice._--It may be doubted whether the subject of judicial notice belongs properly to the law of evidence, and whether it does not belong rather to the general topic of legal or judicial reasoning. Matters which are the subject of judicial notice are part of the equipment of the judicial mind. It would be absurd to require evidence of every fact; many facts must be assumed to be known. The judge, like the juryman, is supposed to bring with him to the consideration of the question which he has to try common sense, a general knowledge of human nature and the ways of the world, and also knowledge of things that "everybody is supposed to know." Of such matters judicial notice is said to be taken. But the range of general knowledge is indefinite, and the range of judicial notice has, for reasons of convenience, been fixed or extended, both by rulings of the judges and by numerous enactments of the legislature. It would be impossible to enumerate here the matters of which judicial notice must or may be taken. These are to be found in the text-books. For present purposes it must suffice to say that they include not only matters of fact of common and certain knowledge, but the law and practice of the courts, and many matters connected with the government of the country.

3. _Presumptions._--A presumption in the ordinary sense is an inference. It is an argument, based on observation, that what has happened in some cases will probably happen in others of the like nature. The subject of presumptions, so far as they are mere inferences or arguments, belongs, not to the law of evidence, or to law at all, but to rules of reasoning. But a legal presumption, or, as it is sometimes called, a presumption of law, as distinguished from a presumption of fact, is something more. It may be described, in Stephen's language, as "a rule of law that courts and judges shall draw a particular inference from a particular fact, or from particular evidence, unless and until the truth" (perhaps it would be better to say 'soundness') "of the inference is disproved." Courts and legislatures have laid down such rules on grounds of public policy or general convenience, and the rules have then to be observed as rules of positive law, not merely used as part of the ordinary process of reasoning or argument. Some so-called presumptions are rules of substantive law under a disguise. To this class appear to belong "conclusive presumptions of law," such as the common-law presumption that a child under seven years of age cannot commit a felony. So again the presumption that every one knows the law is merely an awkward way of saying that ignorance of the law is not a legal excuse for breaking it. Of true legal presumptions, the majority may be dealt with most appropriately under different branches of the substantive law, such as the law of crime, of property, or of contract, and accordingly Stephen has included in his _Digest of the Law of Evidence_ only some which are common to more than one branch of the law. The effect of a presumption is to impute to certain facts or groups of facts a prima facie significance or operation, and thus, in legal proceedings, to throw upon the party against whom it works the duty of bringing forward evidence to meet it. Accordingly the subject of presumptions is intimately connected with the subject of the burden of proof, and the same legal rule may be expressed in different forms, either as throwing the advantage of a presumption on one side, or as throwing the burden of proof on the other. Thus the rule in Stephen's Digest, which says that the burden of proving that any person has been guilty of a crime or wrongful act is on the person who asserts it, appears in the article entitled "Presumption of Innocence." Among the more ordinary and more important legal presumptions are the presumption of regularity in proceedings, described generally as a presumption _omnia esse rite acta_, and including the presumption that the holder of a public office has been duly appointed, and has duly performed his official duties, the presumption of the legitimacy of a child born during the mother's marriage, or within the period of gestation after her husband's death, and the presumptions as to life and death. "A person shown not to have been heard of for seven years by those (if any) who, if he had been alive, would naturally have heard of him, is presumed to be dead unless the circumstances of the case are such as to account for his not being heard of without assuming his death; but there is no presumption as to the time when he died, and the burden of proving his death at any particular time is upon the person who asserts it. There is no presumption" (i.e. legal presumption) "as to the age at which a person died who is shown to have been alive at a given time, or as to the order in which two or more persons died who are shown to have died in the same accident, shipwreck or battle" (Stephen, _Dig._, art. 99). A document proved or purporting to be thirty years old is presumed to be genuine, and to have been properly executed and (if necessary) attested if produced from the proper custody. And the legal presumption of a "lost grant," i.e. the presumption that a right or alleged right which has been long enjoyed without interruption had a legal origin, still survives in addition to the common law and statutory rules of prescription.

4. _Burden of Proof._--The expression _onus probandi_ has come down from the classical Roman law, and both it and the Roman maxims, _Agenti incumbit probatio_, _Necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui dicit non ei qui negat_, and _Reus excipiendo fit actor_, must be read with reference to the Roman system of actions, under which nothing was admitted, but the plaintiff's case was tried first; then, unless that failed, the defendant's on his _exceptio_; then, unless that failed, the plaintiff's on his _replicatio_, and so on. Under such a system the burden was always on the "actor." In modern law the phrase "burden of proof" may mean one of two things, which are often confused--the burden of establishing the proposition or issue on which the case depends, and the burden of producing evidence on any particular point either at the beginning or at a later stage of the case. The burden in the former sense ordinarily rests on the plaintiff or prosecutor. The burden in the latter sense, that of going forward with evidence on a particular point, may shift from side to side as the case proceeds. The general rule is that he who alleges a fact must prove it, whether the allegation is couched in affirmative or negative terms. But this rule is subject to the effect of presumptions in particular cases, to the principle that in considering the amount of evidence necessary to shift the burden of proof regard must be had to the opportunities of knowledge possessed by the parties respectively, and to the express provisions of statutes directing where the burden of proof is to lie in particular cases. Thus many statutes expressly direct that the proof of lawful excuse or authority, or the absence of fraudulent intent, is to lie on the person charged with an offence. And the Summary Jurisdiction Act 1848 provides that if the information or complaint in summary proceedings negatives any exemption, exception, proviso, or condition in the statute on which it is founded, the prosecutor or complainant need not prove the negative, but the defendant may prove the affirmative in his defence.

II. CLASSES OF EVIDENCE

Evidence is often described as being either oral or documentary. To these two classes should be added a third, called by Bentham real evidence, and consisting of things presented immediately to the senses of the judge or the jury. Thus the judge or jury may go to view any place the sight of which may help to an understanding of the evidence, and may inspect anything sufficiently identified and produced in court as material to the decision. Weapons, clothes and things alleged to have been stolen or damaged are often brought into court for this purpose. Oral evidence consists of the statements of witnesses. Documentary evidence consists of documents submitted to the judge or jury by way of proof. The distinction between primary and secondary evidence relates only to documentary evidence, and will be noticed in the section under that head. A division of evidence from another point of view is that into direct and indirect, or, as it is sometimes called, circumstantial evidence. By direct evidence is meant the statement of a person who saw, or otherwise observed with his senses, the fact in question. By indirect or circumstantial evidence is meant evidence of facts from which the fact in question may be inferred. The difference between direct and indirect evidence is a difference of kind, not of degree, and therefore the rule or maxim as to "best evidence" has no application to it. Juries naturally attach more weight to direct evidence, and in some legal systems it is only this class of evidence which is allowed to have full probative force. In some respects indirect evidence is superior to direct evidence, because, as Paley puts it, "facts cannot lie," whilst witnesses can and do. On the other hand facts often deceive; that is to say, the inferences drawn from them are often erroneous. The circumstances in which crimes are ordinarily committed are such that direct evidence of their commission is usually not obtainable, and when criminality depends on a state of mind, such as intention, that state must necessarily be inferred by means of indirect evidence.

III. RULES OF EXCLUSION

It seems desirable to state the leading rules of exclusion in their crude form instead of obscuring their historical origin by attempting to force them into the shape of precise technical propositions forming parts of a logically connected system. The judges who laid the foundations of our modern law of evidence, like those who first discoursed on the duties of trustees, little dreamt of the elaborate and artificial system which was to be based upon their remarks. The rules will be found, as might be expected, to be vague, to overlap each other, to require much explanation, and to be subject to many exceptions. They may be stated as follows:--(1) Facts not relevant to the issue cannot be admitted as evidence. (2) The evidence produced must be the best obtainable under the circumstances. (3) Hearsay is not evidence. (4) Opinion is not evidence.

1. _Rule of Relevancy._--The so-called rule of relevancy is sometimes stated by text-writers in the form in which it was laid down by Baron Parke in 1837 (_Wright_ v. _Doe and Tatham_, 7 A. and E. 384), when he described "one great principle" in the law of evidence as being that "all facts which are relevant to the issue may be proved." Stated in different forms, the rule has been made by FitzJames Stephen the central point of his theory of evidence. But relevancy, in the proper and natural sense, as we have said, is a matter not of law, but of logic. If Baron Parke's dictum relates to relevancy in its natural sense it is not true; if it relates to relevancy in a narrow and artificial sense, as equivalent to admissible, it is tautological. Such practical importance as the rule of relevancy possesses consists, not in what it includes, but in what it excludes, and for that reason it seems better to state the rule in a negative or exclusive form. But whether the rule is stated in a positive or in a negative form its vagueness is apparent. No precise line can be drawn between "relevant" and "irrelevant" facts. The two classes shade into each other by imperceptible degrees. The broad truth is that the courts have excluded from consideration certain matters which have some bearing on the question to be decided, and which, in that sense, are relevant, and that they have done so on grounds of policy and convenience. Among the matters so excluded are matters which are likely to mislead the jury, or to complicate the case unnecessarily, or which are of slight, remote, or merely conjectural importance. Instances of the classes of matters so excluded can be given, but it seems difficult to refer their exclusion to any more general principle than this. Rules as to evidence of character and conduct appear to fall under this principle. Evidence is not admissible to show that the person who is alleged to have done a thing was of a disposition or character which makes it probable that he would or would not have done it. This rule excludes the biographical accounts of the prisoner which are so familiar in French trials, and is an important principle in English trials. It is subject to three exceptions: first, that evidence of good character is admissible in favour of the prisoner in all criminal cases; secondly, that a prisoner indicted for rape is entitled to call evidence as to the immoral character of the prosecutrix; and thirdly, that a witness may be called to say that he would not believe a previous witness on his oath. The exception allowing the good character of a prisoner to influence the verdict, as distinguished from the sentence, is more humane than logical, and seems to have been at first admitted in capital cases only. The exception in rape cases does not allow evidence to be given of specific acts of immorality with persons other than the prisoner, doubtless on the ground that such evidence would affect the reputations of third parties. Where the character of a person is expressly in issue, as in actions of libel and slander, the rule of exclusion, as stated above, does not apply. Nor does it prevent evidence of bad character from being given in mitigation of damages, where the amount of damages virtually depends on character, as in cases of defamation and seduction. As to conduct there is a similar general rule, that evidence of the conduct of a person on other occasions is not to be used merely for the purpose of showing the likelihood of his having acted in a similar way on a particular occasion. Thus, on a charge of murder, the prosecutor cannot give evidence of the prisoner's conduct to other persons for the purpose of proving a bloodthirsty and murderous disposition. And in a civil case a defendant was not allowed to show that the plaintiff had sold goods on particular terms to other persons for the purpose of proving that he had sold similar goods on the same terms to the defendant. But this general rule must be carefully construed. Where several offences are so connected with each other as to form parts of an entire transaction, evidence of one is admissible as proof of another. Thus, where a prisoner is charged with stealing particular goods from a particular place, evidence may be given that other goods, taken from the same place at the same time, were found in his possession. And where it is proved or admitted that a person did a particular act, and the question is as to his state of mind, that is to say, whether he did the act knowingly, intentionally, fraudulently, or the like, evidence may be given of the commission by him of similar acts on other occasions for the purpose of proving his state of mind on the occasion. This principle is most commonly applied in charges for uttering false documents or base coin, and not uncommonly in charges for false pretences, embezzlement or murder. In proceedings for the receipt or possession of stolen property, the legislature has expressly authorized evidence to be given of the possession by the prisoner of other stolen property, or of his previous conviction of an offence involving fraud or dishonesty (Prevention of Crimes Act 1871). Again, where there is a question whether a person committed an offence, evidence may be given of any fact supplying a motive or constituting preparation for the offence, of any subsequent conduct of the person accused, which is apparently influenced by the commission of the offence, and of any act done by him, or by his authority, in consequence of the offence. Thus, evidence may be given that, after the commission of the alleged offence, the prisoner absconded, or was in possession of the property, or the proceeds of the property, acquired by the offence, or that he attempted to conceal things which were or might have been used in committing the offence, or as to the manner in which he conducted himself when statements were made in his presence and hearing. Statements made to or in the presence of a person charged with an offence are admitted as evidence, not of the facts stated, but of the conduct or demeanour of the person to whom or in whose presence they are made, or of the general character of the transaction of which they form part (under the _res gestae_ rule mentioned below).

2. _Best Evidence Rule._--Statements to the effect of the best evidence rule were often made by Chief Justice Holt about the beginning of the 18th century, and became familiar in the courts. Chief Baron Gilbert, in his book on evidence, which must have been written before 1726, says that "the first and most signal rule in relation to evidence is this, that a man must have the utmost evidence the nature of the fact is capable of." And in the great case of _Omichund_ v. _Barker_ (1744), Lord Hardwicke went so far as to say, "The judges and sages of the law have laid down that there is but one general rule of evidence, the best that the nature of the case will admit" (1 Atkyns 49). It is no wonder that a rule thus solemnly stated should have found a prominent place in text-books on the law of evidence. But, apart from its application to documentary evidence, it does not seem to be more than a useful guiding principle which underlies, or may be used in support of, several rules.

It is to documentary evidence that the principle is usually applied, in the form of the narrower rule excluding, subject to exceptions, secondary evidence of the contents of a document where primary evidence is obtainable. In this form the rule is a rule of exclusion, but may be most conveniently dealt with in connexion with the special subject of documentary evidence. As noticed above, the general rule does not apply to the difference between direct and indirect evidence. And, doubtless on account of its vague character, it finds no place in Stephen's Digest.

3. _Hearsay._--The term "hearsay" primarily applies to what a witness has heard another person say in respect to a fact in dispute. But it is extended to any statement, whether reduced to writing or not, which is brought before the court, not by the author of the statement, but by a person to whose knowledge the statement has been brought. Thus the hearsay rule excludes statements, oral or written, made in the first instance by a person who is not called as a witness in the case. Historically this rule may be traced to the time when the functions of the witnesses were first distinguished from the functions of the jury, and when the witnesses were required by their formula to testify _de visu suo et auditu_, to state what they knew about facts from the direct evidence of their senses, not from the information of others. The rule excludes statements the effect of which is liable to be altered by the narrator, and which purport to have been made by persons who did not necessarily speak under the sanction of an oath, and whose accuracy or veracity is not tested by cross-examination. It is therefore of practical utility in shutting out many loose statements and much irresponsible gossip. On the other hand, it excludes statements which are of some value as evidence, and may indeed be the only available evidence. Thus, a statement has been excluded as hearsay, even though it can be proved that the author of the statement made it on oath, or that it was against his interest when he made it, or that he is prevented by insanity or other illness from giving evidence himself, or that he has left the country and disappeared, or that he is dead.

Owing to the inconveniences which would be caused by a strict application of the rule, it has been so much eaten into by exceptions that some persons doubt whether the rule and the exceptions ought not to change places. Among the exceptions the following may be noticed: (a) _Certain sworn statements_.--In many cases statements made by a person whose evidence is material, but who cannot come before the court, or could not come before it without serious difficulty, delay or expense, may be admitted as evidence under proper safeguards. Under the Indictable Offences Act 1848, where a person has made a deposition before a justice at a preliminary inquiry into an offence, his deposition may be read in evidence on proof that the deponent is dead, or too ill to travel, that the deposition was taken in the presence of the accused person, and that the accused then had a full opportunity of cross-examining the deponent. The deposition must appear to be signed by the justice before whom it purports to have been taken. Depositions taken before a coroner are admissible under the same principle. And the principle probably extends to cases where the deponent is insane, or kept away by the person accused. There are other statutory provisions for the admission of depositions, as in the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1867; the Foreign Jurisdiction Act 1890; and the Children Act 1908, incorporating an act of 1894. In civil cases the rule excluding statements not made in court at the trial is much less strictly applied. Frequent use is made of evidence taken before an examiner, or under a commission. Affidavits are freely used for subordinate issues or under an arrangement between the parties, and leave may be given to use evidence taken in other proceedings. The old chancery practice, under which evidence, both at the trial and at other stages of a proceeding, was normally taken by affidavit, irrespectively of consent, was altered by the Judicature Acts. Under the existing rules of the supreme court evidence may be given by affidavit upon any motion, petition or summons, but the court or a judge may, on the application of either party, order the attendance for cross-examination of the person making the affidavit. (b) _Dying declarations._--In a trial for murder or manslaughter a declaration by the person killed as to the cause of his death, or as to any of the circumstances of the transaction which resulted in his death, is admissible as evidence. But this exception is very strictly construed. It must be proved that the declarant, at the time of making the declaration, was in actual danger of death, and had given up all hope of recovery. (c) _Statements in pedigree cases._--On a question of pedigree the statement of a deceased person, whether based on his own personal knowledge or on family tradition, is admissible as evidence, if it is proved that the person who made the statement was related to the person about whose family relations the statement was made, and that the statement was made before the question with respect to which the evidence is required had arisen. (d) _Statements as to matters of public or general interest._--Statements by deceased persons are admissible as evidence of reputation or general belief in questions relating to the existence of any public or general right or custom, or matter of public and general interest. Statements of this kind are constantly admitted in questions relating to right of way, or rights of common, or manorial or other local customs. Maps, copies of court rolls, leases and other deeds, and verdicts, judgments, and orders of court fall within the exception in cases of this kind. (e) _Statements in course of duty or business._--A statement with respect to a particular fact made by a deceased person in pursuance of his duty in connexion with any office, employment or business, whether public or private, is admissible as evidence of that fact, if the statement appears to have been made from personal knowledge, and at or about the time when the fact occurred. This exception covers entries by clerks and other employees. (f) _Statements against interest._--A statement made by a deceased person against his pecuniary or proprietary interest is admissible as evidence, without reference to the time at which it was made. Where such a statement is admissible the whole of it becomes admissible, though it may contain matters not against the interest of the person who made it, and though the total effect may be in his favour. Thus, where there was a question whether a particular sum was a gift or a loan, entries in an account book of receipt of interest on the sum were admitted, and a statement in the book that the alleged debtor had on a particular date acknowledged the loan was also admitted. (g) _Public documents._--Under this head may be placed recitals in public acts of parliament, notices in the _London_, _Edinburgh_, or _Dublin Gazette_ (which are made evidence by statute in a large number of cases), and entries made in the performance of duty in official registers or records, such as registers of births, deaths or marriages, registers of companies, records in judicial proceedings, and the like. An entry in a public document may be treated as a statement made in the course of duty, but it is admissible whether the person who made the statement is alive or dead, and without any evidence as to personal knowledge, or the time at which the statement is made. (h) _Admissions._--By the term "admission," as here used, is meant a statement made out of the witness-box by a party to the proceedings, whether civil or criminal, or by some person whose statements are binding on that party, against the interest of that party. The term includes admissions made in answer to interrogatories, or to a notice to admit facts, but not admissions made on the pleadings. Admissions, in this sense of the term, are admissible as evidence against the person by whom they are made, or on whom they are binding, without reference to the life or death of the person who made them. A person is bound by the statements of his agent, acting within the scope of his authority, and barristers and solicitors are agents for their clients in the conduct of legal proceedings. Conversely, a person suing or defending on behalf of another, e.g. as agent or trustee, is bound by the statements of the person whom he represents. Statements respecting property made by a predecessor in title bind the successor. Where a statement is put in evidence as an admission by, or binding on, any person, that person is entitled to have the whole statement given in evidence. The principle of this rule is obviously sound, because it would be unfair to pick out from a man's statement what tells against him, and to suppress what is in his favour. But the application of the rule is sometimes attended with difficulty. An admission will not be allowed to be used as evidence if it was made under a stipulation, express or implied, that it should not be so used. Such admissions are said to be made "without prejudice." (i) _Confessions._--A confession is an admission by a person accused of an offence that he has committed the offence of which he is accused. But the rules about admitting as evidence confessions in criminal proceedings are much more strict than the rules about admissions in civil proceedings. The general rule is, that a confession is not admissible as evidence against any person except the person who makes it. But a confession made by one accomplice in the presence of another is admissible against the latter to this extent, that, if it implicates him, his silence under the charge may be used against him, whilst on the other hand his prompt repudiation of the charge might tell in his favour. In other words, the confession may be used as evidence of the conduct of the person in whose presence it was made. A confession cannot be admitted as evidence unless proved to be voluntary. A confession is not treated as being voluntary if it appears to the court to have been caused by any inducement, threat or promise which proceeded from a magistrate or other person in authority concerned in the charge, and which, in the opinion of the court, gave the accused person reasonable ground for supposing that by making a confession he would gain some advantage or avoid some evil in reference to the proceedings against him. This applies to any inducement, threat or promise having reference to the charge, whether it is addressed directly to the accused person or is brought to his knowledge indirectly. But a confession is not involuntary merely because it appears to have been caused by the exhortations of a person in authority to make it as a matter of religious duty, or by an inducement collateral to the proceedings, or by an inducement held out by a person having nothing to do with the apprehension, prosecution or examination of the prisoner. Thus, a confession made to a gaol chaplain in consequence of religious exhortation has been admitted as evidence. So also has a confession made by a prisoner to a gaoler in consequence of a promise by the gaoler, that if the prisoner confessed he should be allowed to see his wife. To make a confession involuntary, the inducement must have reference to the prisoner's escape from the charge against him, and must be made by some person having power to relieve him, wholly or partially, from the consequences of the charge. A confession is treated as voluntary if, in the opinion of the court, it was made after the complete removal of the impression produced by any inducement, threat or promise which would have made it involuntary. Where a confession was made under an inducement which makes the confession involuntary, evidence may be given of facts discovered in consequence of the confession, and of so much of the confession as distinctly relates to those facts. Thus, A. under circumstances which make the confession involuntary, tells a policeman that he, A., had thrown a lantern into the pond. Evidence may be given that the lantern was found in the pond, and that A. said he had thrown it there. It is of course improper to try to extort a confession by fraud or under the promise of secrecy. But if a confession is otherwise admissible as evidence, it does not become inadmissible _merely_ because it was made under a promise of secrecy, or in consequence of a deception practised on the accused person for the purpose of obtaining it, or when he was drunk, or because it was made in answer to questions, whether put by a magistrate or by a private person, or because he was not warned that he was not bound to make the confession, and that it might be used against him. If a confession is given in evidence, the whole of it must be given, and not merely the parts disadvantageous to the accused person. Evidence amounting to a confession may be used as such against the person who gave it, though it was given on oath, and though the proceeding in which it was given had reference to the same subject-matter as the proceeding in which it is to be used, and though the witness might have refused to answer the questions put to him. But if, after refusing to answer such questions, the witness is improperly compelled to answer, his answers are not a voluntary confession. The grave jealousy and suspicion with which the English law regards confessions offer a marked contrast to the importance attached to this form of evidence in other systems of procedure, such as the inquisitorial system which long prevailed, and still to some extent prevails, on the continent. (j) _Res gestae._--Statements are often admitted as evidence on the ground that they form part of what is called the "transaction," or _res gestae_, the occurrence or nature of which is in question. For instance, where an act may be proved, statements accompanying and explaining the act made by or to the person doing it, may be given in evidence. There is no difficulty in understanding the principle on which this exception from the hearsay rule rests, but there is often practical difficulty in applying it, and the practice has varied. How long is the "transaction" to be treated as lasting? What ought to be treated as "the immediate and natural effect of continuing action," and, for that reason, as part of the _res gestae_? When an act of violence is committed, to what extent are the terms of the complaint made by the sufferer, as distinguished from the fact of a complaint having been made, admissible as evidence? These are some of the questions raised. The cases in which statements by a person as to his bodily or mental condition may be put in evidence may perhaps be treated as falling under the same principle. In the Rugeley poisoning case, statements by the deceased person before his illness as to his state of health, and as to his symptoms during illness, were admitted as evidence for the prosecution. Under the same principle may also be brought the rule as to statements in conspiracy cases. In charges of conspiracy, after evidence has been given of the existence of the plot, and of the connexion of the accused with it, the charge against one conspirator may be supported by evidence of anything done, written, or said, not only by him, but by any other of the conspirators, in furtherance of the common purpose. On the other hand, a statement made by one conspirator, not in execution of the common purpose, but in narration of some event forming part of the conspiracy, would be treated, not as part of the "transaction," but as a statement excluded by the hearsay rule. Thus the admissibility of writings in conspiracy cases may depend on the time when they can be shown to have been in the possession of a fellow-conspirator, whether before or after the prisoner's apprehension. (k) _Complaints in rape cases, &c._--In trials for rape and similar offences, the fact that shortly after the commission of the alleged offence a complaint was made by the person against whom the offence was committed, and also the terms of the complaint, have been admitted as evidence, not of the facts complained of, but of the consistency of the complainant's conduct with the story told by her in the witness-box, and as negativing consent on her part.

4. _Opinion._--The rule excluding expressions of opinion also dates from the first distinction between the functions of witnesses and jury. It was for the witnesses to state facts, for the jury to form conclusions. Of course every statement of fact involves inference, and implies a judgment on phenomena observed by the senses. And the inference is often erroneous, as in the answer to the question, "Was he drunk?" A prudent witness will often guard himself, and is allowed to guard himself, by answering to the best of his belief. But, for practical purposes, it is possible to draw a distinction between a statement of facts observed and an expression of opinion as to the inference to be drawn from these facts, and the rule telling witnesses to state facts and not express opinions is of great value in keeping their statements out of the region of argument and conjecture. The evidence of "experts," that is to say, of persons having a special knowledge of some particular subject, is generally described as constituting the chief exception to the rule. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that experts are allowed a much wider range than ordinary witnesses in the expression of their opinions, and in the statement of facts on which their opinions are based. Thus, in a poisoning case, a doctor may be asked as an expert whether, in his opinion, a particular poison produces particular symptoms. And, where lunacy is set up as a defence, an expert may be asked whether, in his opinion, the symptoms exhibited by the alleged lunatic commonly show unsoundness of mind, and whether such unsoundness of mind usually renders persons incapable of knowing the nature of their acts, or of knowing that what they do is either wrong or contrary to the law. Similar principles are applied to the evidence of engineers, and in numerous other cases. In cases of disputed handwriting the evidence of experts in handwriting is expressly recognized by statute (Evidence and Practice on Criminal Trials 1865).

IV. DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

Charters and other writings were exhibited to the jury at a very early date, and it is to writings so exhibited that the term "evidence" or "evidences" seems to have been originally applied _par excellence_. The oral evidence of witnesses came later. Where a document is to be used as evidence the first question is how its contents are to be proved. To this question the principle of "best evidence" applies, in the form of the rule that primary evidence must be given except in the cases where secondary evidence is allowed. By primary evidence is meant the document itself produced for inspection. By secondary evidence is meant a copy of the document, or verbal accounts of its contents.

The rule as to the inadmissibility of a copy of a document is applied much more strictly to private than to public or official documents. Secondary evidence may be given of the contents of a private document in the following cases:

(a) Where the original is shown or appears to be in the possession of the adverse party, and he, after having been served with reasonable notice to produce it, does not do so.

(b) Where the original is shown or appears to be in the possession or power of a stranger not legally bound to produce it, and he, after having been served with a writ of _subpoena duces tecum_, or after having been sworn as a witness and asked for the document, and having admitted that it is in court, refuses to produce it.

(c) Where it is shown that proper search has been made for the original, and there is reason for believing that it is destroyed or lost.

(d) Where the original is of such a nature as not to be easily movable, as in the case of a placard posted on a wall, or of a tombstone, or is in a country from which it is not permitted to be removed.

(e) Where the original is a document for the proof of which special provision is made by any act of parliament, or any law in force for the time being. Documents of that kind are practically treated on the same footing as private documents.

(f) Where the document is an entry in a banker's book, provable according to the special provisions of the Bankers' Books Evidence Act 1879.

Secondary evidence of a private document is usually given either by producing a copy and calling a witness who can prove the copy to be correct, or, when there is no copy obtainable, by calling a witness who has seen the document, and can give an account of its contents. No general definition of public document is possible, but the rules of evidence applicable to public documents are expressly applied by statute to many classes of documents. Primary evidence of any public document may be given by producing the document from proper custody, and by a witness identifying it as being what it professes to be. Public documents may always be proved by secondary evidence, but the particular kind of secondary evidence required is in many cases defined by statute. Where a document is of such a public nature as to be admissible in evidence on its mere production from the proper custody, and no statute exists which renders its contents provable by means of a copy, any copy thereof or extract therefrom is admissible as proof of its contents, if it is proved to be an examined copy or extract, or purports to be signed or certified as a true copy or extract by the officer to whose custody the original is entrusted. Many statutes provide that various certificates, official and public documents, documents and proceedings of corporations and of joint stock and other companies, and certified copies of documents, by-laws, entries in registers and other books, shall be receivable as evidence of certain particulars in courts of justice, if they are authenticated in the manner prescribed by the statutes. Whenever, by virtue of any such provision, any such certificate or certified copy is receivable as proof of any particular in any court of justice, it is admissible as evidence, if it purports to be authenticated in the manner prescribed by law, without calling any witness to prove any stamp, seal, or signature required for its authentication, or the official character of the person who appears to have signed it. The Documentary Evidence Acts 1868, 1882 and 1895, provide modes of proving the contents of several classes of proclamations, orders and regulations.

If a document is of a kind which is required by law to be attested, but not otherwise, an attesting witness must be called to prove its due execution. But this rule is subject to the following exceptions:

(a) If it is proved that there is no attesting witness alive, and capable of giving evidence, then it is sufficient to prove that the attestation of at least one attesting witness is in his handwriting, and that the signature of the person executing the document is in the handwriting of that person.

(b) If the document is proved, or purports to be, more than thirty years old, and is produced from what the court considers to be its proper custody, an attesting witness need not be called, and it will be presumed without evidence that the instrument was duly executed and attested.

Where a document embodies a judgment, a contract, a grant, or disposition of property, or any other legal transaction or "act in the law," on which rights depend, the validity of the transaction may be impugned on the ground of fraud, incapacity, want of consideration, or other legal ground. But this seems outside the law of evidence. In this class of cases a question often arises whether extrinsic evidence can be produced to vary the nature of the transaction embodied in the document. The answer to this question seems to depend on whether the document was or was not intended to be a complete and final statement of the transaction which it embodies. If it was, you cannot go outside the document for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the transaction. If it was not, you may. But the mere statement of this test shows the difficulty of formulating precise rules, and of applying them when formulated. FitzJames Stephen mentions, among the facts which may be proved in these cases, the existence of separate and consistent oral agreements as to matters on which the document is silent, if there is reason to believe that the document is not a complete and final statement of the transaction, and the existence of any usage or custom with reference to which a contract may be presumed to have been made. But he admits that the rules on the subject are "by no means easy to apply, inasmuch as from the nature of the case an enormous number of transactions fall close on one side or the other of most of them." The underlying principle appears to be a rule of substantive law rather than of evidence. When parties to an arrangement have reduced the terms of the arrangement to a definite, complete, and final written form, they should be bound exclusively by the terms embodied in that form. The question in each case is under what circumstances they ought to be treated as having done so.

The expression "parol evidence," which includes written as well as verbal evidence, has often been applied to the extrinsic evidence produced for the purpose of varying the nature of the transaction embodied in a document. It is also applied to extrinsic evidence used for another purpose, namely, that of explaining the meaning of the terms used in a document. The two questions, What is the real nature of the transaction referred to in a document? and, What is the meaning of a document? are often confused, but are really distinct from each other. The rules bearing on the latter question are rules of construction or interpretation rather than of evidence, but are ordinarily treated as part of the law of evidence, and are for that reason included by FitzJames Stephen in his Digest. In stating these rules he adopts, with verbal modifications, the six propositions laid down by Vice-Chancellor Wigram in his _Examinations of the Rules of Law respecting the admission of Extrinsic Evidence in Aid of the Interpretation of Wills_. The substance of these propositions appears to be this, that wherever the meaning of a document cannot be satisfactorily ascertained from the document itself, use may be made of any other evidence for the purpose of elucidating the meaning, subject to one restriction, that, except in cases of equivocation, i.e. where a person or thing is described in terms applicable equally to more than one, resort cannot be had to extrinsic expressions of the author's intention.

V. WITNESSES

1. _Attendance._--If a witness does not attend voluntarily he can be required to attend by a writ of _subpoena_.

2. _Competency._--As a general rule every person is a competent witness. Formerly persons were disqualified by crime or interest, or by being parties to the proceedings, but these disqualifications have now been removed by statute, and the circumstances which formerly created them do not affect the competency, though they may often affect the credibility, of a witness.

Under the general law as it stood before the Criminal Evidence Act 1898 came into force, a person charged with an offence was not competent to give evidence on his own behalf. But many exceptions had been made to this rule by legislation, and the rule itself was finally abolished by the act of 1898. Under that law a person charged is a competent witness, but he can only give evidence for the defence, and can only give evidence if he himself applies to do so. Under the law as it stood before 1898, persons jointly charged and being tried together were not competent to give evidence either for or against each other. Under the act of 1898 a person charged jointly with another is a competent witness, but only for the defence, and not for the prosecution. If, therefore, one of the persons charged applies to give evidence his cross-examination must not be conducted with a view to establish the guilt of the other. Consequently, if it is thought desirable to use against one prisoner the evidence of another who is being tried with him, the latter should be released, or a separate verdict of not guilty taken against him. A prisoner so giving evidence is popularly said to turn king's evidence. It follows that, subject to what has been said above as to persons tried together, the evidence of an accomplice is admissible against his principal, and _vice versa_. The evidence of an accomplice is, however, always received with great jealousy and caution. A conviction on the unsupported testimony of an accomplice may, in some cases, be strictly legal, but the practice is to require it to be confirmed by unimpeachable testimony in some material part, and more especially as to his identification of the person or persons against whom his evidence may be received. The wife of a person charged is now a competent witness, but, except in certain special cases, she can only give evidence for the defence, and can only give evidence if her husband applies that she should do so. The special cases in which a wife can be called as a witness either for the prosecution or for the defence, and without the consent of the person charged, are cases arising under particular enactments scheduled to the act of 1898, and relating mainly to offences against wives and children, and cases in which the wife is by common law a competent witness against her husband, i.e. where the proceeding is against the husband for bodily injury or violence inflicted on his wife. The rule of exclusion extends only to a lawful wife. There is no ground for supposing that the wife of a prosecutor is an incompetent witness. A witness is incompetent if, in the opinion of the court, he is prevented by extreme youth, disease affecting his mind, or any other cause of the same kind, from recollecting the matter on which he is to testify, from understanding the questions put to him, from giving rational answers to those questions, or from knowing that he ought to speak the truth. A witness unable to speak or hear is not incompetent, but may give his evidence by writing or by signs, or in any other manner in which he can make it intelligible. The particular form of the religious belief of a witness, or his want of religious belief, does not affect his competency. This ground of incompetency has now been finally removed by the Oaths Act 1888. It will be seen that the effect of the successive enactments which have gradually removed the disqualifications attaching to various classes of witnesses has been to draw a distinction between the _competency_ of a witness and his _credibility_. No person is disqualified on moral or religious grounds, but his character may be such as to throw grave doubts on the value of his evidence. No relationship, except to a limited extent that of husband and wife, excludes from giving evidence. The parent may be examined on the trial of the child, the child on that of the parent, master for or against servant, and servant for or against master. The relationship of the witness to the prosecutor or the prisoner in such cases may affect the credibility of the witness, but does not exclude his evidence.

3. _Privilege._--It does not follow that, because a person is _competent_ to give evidence, he can therefore be compelled to do so.

No one, except a person charged with an offence when giving evidence on his own application, and as to the offence wherewith he is charged, is bound to answer a question if the answer would, in the opinion of the court, have a tendency to expose the witness, or the wife or husband of the witness, to any criminal charge, penalty, or forfeiture, which the court regards as reasonably likely to be preferred or sued for. Accordingly, an accomplice cannot be examined without his consent, but if an accomplice who has come forward to give evidence on a promise of pardon, or favourable consideration, refuses to give full and fair information, he renders himself liable to be convicted on his own confession. However, even accomplices in such circumstances are not required to answer on their cross-examination as to other offences. Where, under the new law, a person charged with an offence offers himself as a witness, he may be asked any question in cross-examination, notwithstanding that it would tend to criminate him as to the offence charged. But he may not be asked, and if he is asked must not be required to answer, any question tending to show that he has committed, or been convicted of, or been charged with, any other offence, or is of bad character, unless:--

(i.) The proof that he has committed, or been convicted of, the other offence is admissible evidence to show that he is guilty of the offence with which he is then charged; or,

(ii.) He has personally, or by his advocate, asked questions of the witnesses for the prosecution, with a view to establish his own good character, or has given evidence of his good character, or the nature or conduct of the defence is such as to involve imputations on the character of the prosecutor or the witnesses for the prosecution; or,

(iii.) He has given evidence against any other person charged with the same offence.

He may not be asked questions tending to criminate his wife.

The privilege as to criminating answers does not cover answers merely tending to establish a civil liability. No one is excused from answering a question or producing a document only because the answer or document may establish or tend to establish that he owes a debt, or is otherwise liable to any civil proceeding. It is a privilege for the protection of the witness, and therefore may be waived by him. But there are other privileges which cannot be so waived. Thus, on grounds of public policy, no one can be compelled, or is allowed, to give evidence relating to any affairs of state, or as to official communications between public officers upon public affairs, except with the consent of the head of the department concerned, and this consent is refused if the production of the information asked for is considered detrimental to the public service.

Again, in cases in which the government is immediately concerned, no witness can be compelled to answer any question the answer to which would tend to discover the names of persons by or to whom information was given as to the commission of offences. It is, as a rule, for the court to decide whether the permission of any such question would or would not, under the circumstances of the particular case, be injurious to the administration of justice.

A husband is not compellable to disclose any communication made to him by his wife during the marriage; and a wife is not compellable to disclose any communication made to her by her husband during the marriage.

A legal adviser is not permitted, whether during or after the termination of his employment as such, unless with his client's express consent, to disclose any communication, oral or documentary, made to him _as such legal adviser_, by or on behalf of his client, during, in the course of, and for the purpose of his employment, or to disclose any advice given by him to his client during, in the course of, and for the purpose of such employment. But this protection does not extend to--

(a) Any such communication if made in furtherance of any criminal purpose; nor

(b) Any fact observed by a legal adviser in the course of his employment as such, showing that any crime or fraud has been committed since the commencement of his employment, whether his attention was directed to such fact by or on behalf of his client or not; nor

(c) Any fact with which the legal adviser became acquainted otherwise than in his character as such.

Medical men and clergymen are not privileged from the disclosure of communications made to them in professional confidence, but it is not usual to press for the disclosures of communications made to clergymen.

4. _Oaths._--A witness must give his evidence under the sanction of an oath, or of what is equivalent to an oath, that is to say, of a solemn promise to speak the truth. The ordinary form of oath is adapted to Christians, but a person belonging to a non-Christian religion may be sworn in any form prescribed or recognized by the custom of his religion. (See the article OATH.)

5. _Publicity._--The evidence of a witness at a trial must, as a general rule, be given in open court in the course of the trial. The secrecy which was such a characteristic feature of the "inquisition" procedure is abhorrent to English law, and, even where publicity conflicts with decency, English courts are very reluctant to dispense with or relax the safeguards for justice which publicity involves.

6. _Examination._--The normal course of procedure is this. The party who begins, i.e. ordinarily the plaintiff or prosecutor, calls his witnesses in order. Each witness is first examined on behalf of the party for whom he is called. This is called the examination in chief. Then he is liable to be cross-examined on behalf of the other side. And, finally, he may be re-examined on behalf of his own side. After the case for the other side has been opened, the same procedure is adopted with the witnesses for that side. In some cases the party who began is allowed to adduce further evidence in reply to his opponent's evidence. The examination is conducted, not by the court, but by or on behalf of the contending parties. It will be seen that the principle underlying this procedure is that of the duel, or conflict between two contending parties, each relying on and using his own evidence, and trying to break down the evidence of his opponent. It differs from the principle of the "inquisition" procedure, in which the court takes a more active part, and in which the cases for the two sides are not so sharply distinguished. In a continental trial it is often difficult to determine whether the case for the prosecution or the case for the defence is proceeding. Conflicting witnesses stand up together and are "confronted" with each other. In the examination in chief questions must be confined to matters bearing on the main question at issue, and a witness must not be asked leading questions, i.e. questions suggesting the answer which the person putting the question wishes or expects to receive, or suggesting disputed facts about which the witness is to testify. But the rule about leading questions is not applied where the questions asked are simply introductory, and form no part of the real substance of the inquiry, or where they relate to matters which, though material, are not disputed. And if the witness called by a person appears to be directly hostile to him, or interested on the other side, or unwilling to reply, the reason for the rules applying to examination in chief breaks down, and the witness may be asked leading questions and cross-examined, and treated in every respect as though he was a witness called on the other side, except that a party producing a witness must not impeach his credit by general evidence of bad character (Evidence and Practice on Criminal Trials Act 1865). In cross-examination questions not bearing on the main issue and leading questions may be put and (subject to the rules as to privilege) must be answered, as the cross-examiner is entitled to test the examination in chief by every means in his power. Questions not bearing on the main issue are often asked in cross-examination merely for the purpose of putting off his guard a witness who is supposed to have learnt up his story. In cross-examination questions may also be asked which tend either to test the accuracy or credibility of the witness, or to shake his credit by impeaching his motives or injuring his character. The licence allowed in cross-examination has often been seriously abused, and the power of the court to check it is recognized by one of the rules of the supreme court (R.S.C. xxxvi. 39, added in 1883). It is considered wrong to put questions which assume that facts have been proved which have not been proved, or that answers have been given contrary to the fact. A witness ought not to be pressed in cross-examination as to any facts which, if admitted, would not affect the question at issue or the credibility of the witness. If the cross-examiner intends to adduce evidence contrary to the evidence given by the witness, he ought to put to the witness in cross-examination the substance of the evidence which he proposes to adduce, in order to give the witness an opportunity of retracting or explaining. Where a witness has answered a question which only tends to affect his credibility by injuring his character, it is only in a limited number of cases that evidence can be given to contradict his answer. Where he is asked whether he has ever been convicted of any felony or misdemeanour, and denies or refuses to answer, proof may be given of the truth of the facts suggested (28 & 29 Vict. c. 15, s. 6). The same rule is observed where he is asked a question tending to show that he is not impartial. Where a witness has previously made a statement inconsistent with his evidence, proof may be given that he did in fact make it. But before such proof is given the circumstances of the alleged statement, sufficient to designate the particular occasion, must be mentioned to the witness, and he must be asked whether he did or did not make the statement. And if the statement was made in, or has been reduced to, writing, the attention of the witness must, before the writing is used against him, be called to those parts of the writing which are to be used for the purpose of contradicting him (Evidence and Practice on Criminal Trials Act 1865, ss. 4, 5). The credibility of a witness may be impeached by the evidence of persons who swear that they, from their knowledge of the witness, believe him to be unworthy of credit on his oath. These persons may not on their examination in chief give reasons for their belief, but they may be asked their reasons in cross-examination, and their answers cannot be contradicted. When the credit of a witness is so impeached, the party who called the witness may give evidence in reply to show that the witness is worthy of credit. Re-examination must be directed exclusively to the explanation of matters referred to in cross-examination, and if new matter is, by the permission of the court, introduced in re-examination, the other side may further cross-examine upon it. A witness under examination may refresh his memory by referring to any writing made by himself at or about the time of the occurrence to which the writing relates, or made by any other person, and read and found accurate by the witness at or about the time. An expert may refresh his memory by reference to professional treatises.

For the history of the English law of evidence, see Brunner, _Entstehung der Schwurgerichte_; Bigelow, _History of Procedure in England_; Stephen (Sir J.F.), _History of the Criminal Law of England_; Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_, bk. ii. ch. ix.; Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law. The principal text-books now in use are--Roscoe, _Digest of the Law of Evidence on the Trial of Actions at Nisi Prius_ (18th ed., 1907); Roscoe, _Digest of the Law of Evidence in Criminal Cases_ (13th ed., 1908); Taylor, _Treatise on the Law of Evidence_ (10th ed., 1906); Best, _Principles of the Law of Evidence_ (10th ed., 1906); Powell, _Principles and Practice of the Law of Evidence_ (8th ed., 1904); Stephen, _Digest of the Law of Evidence_ (8th ed., 1907); Wills, _Theory and Practice of the Law of Evidence_ (1907). For the history of the law of criminal evidence in France, see Esmein, _Hist. de la procedure criminelle en France_. For Germany, see Holtzendorff, _Encyclopadie der Rechtswissenschaft_ (passages indexed under head "Beweis"); Holtzendorff, _Rechtslexikon_ ("Beweis"). (C. P. I.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Reference may be made to a well-known passage in the _Essay concerning Human Understanding_ (Book iv. ch. xv.): "The grounds of probability are--First, the conformity of anything with our own knowledge, observation and experience. Second, the testimony of others touching their observation and experience. In the testimony of others is to be considered (1) the number, (2) the integrity, (3) the skill of the witnesses. (4) The design of the author, where it is a testimony out of a book cited. (5) The consistency of the parts and circumstances of the relation. (6) Contrary testimonies."

EVIL EYE. The terror of the arts of "fascination," i.e. that certain persons can bewitch, injure and even kill with a glance, has been and is still very widely spread. The power was not thought to be always maliciously cultivated. It was as often supposed to be involuntary (cf. Deuteronomy xxviii. 54); and a story is told of a Slav who, afflicted with the evil eye, at last blinded himself in order that he might not be the means of injuring his children (Woyciki, _Polish Folklore_, trans. by Lewenstein, p. 25). Few of the old classic writers fail to refer to the dread power. In Rome the "evil eye" was so well recognized that Pliny states that special laws were enacted against injury to crops by incantation, excantation or fascination. The power was styled [Greek: baskania] by the Greeks and _fascinatio_ by the Latins. Children and young animals of all kinds were thought to be specially susceptible. Charms were worn against the evil eye both by man and beast, and in Judges viii. 21 it is thought there is a reference to this custom in the allusion to the "ornaments" on the necks of camels. In classic times the wearing of amulets was universal. They were of three classes: (1) those the intention of which was to attract on to themselves, as the lightning-rod the lightning, the malignant glance; (2) charms hidden in the bosom of the dress; (3) written words from sacred writings. Of these three types the first was most numerous. They were oftenest of a grotesque and generally grossly obscene nature. They were also made in the form of frogs, beetles and so on. But the ancients did not wholly rely on amulets. Spitting was among the Greeks and Romans a most common antidote to the poison of the evil eye. According to Theocritus it is necessary to spit three times into the breast of the person who fears fascination. Gestures, too, often intentionally obscene, were regarded as prophylactics on meeting the dreaded individual. The evil eye was believed to have its impulse in envy, and thus it came to be regarded as unlucky to have any of your possessions praised. Among the Romans, therefore, it was customary when praising anything to add _Praefiscini dixerim_ (Fain Evil! I should say). This custom survives in modern Italy, where in like circumstances is said _Si mal occhio non ci fosse_ (May the evil eye not strike it). The object of these conventional phrases was to prove that the speaker was sincere and had no evil designs in his praise. Though there is no set formula, traces of the custom are found in English rural sayings, e.g. the Somersetshire "I don't wish ee no harm, so I on't zay no more." This is what the Scots call "fore-speaking," when praise beyond measure is likely to be followed by disease or accident. A Manxman will never say he is very well: he usually admits that he is "middling," or qualifies his admission of good health by adding "now" or "just now." The belief led in many countries to the saying, when one heard anybody or anything praised superabundantly, "God preserve him or it." So in Ireland, to avoid being suspected of having the evil eye, it is advisable when looking at a child to say "God bless it"; and when passing a farm-yard where cows are collected at milking time it is usual for the peasant to say, "The blessing of God be on you and all your labour." Bacon writes: "It seems some have been so curious as to note that the times when the stroke ... of an envious eye does most hurt are particularly when the party envied is beheld in glory and triumph."

The powers of the evil eye seem indeed to have been most feared by the prosperous. Its powers are often quoted as almost limitless. Thus one record solemnly declares that in a town of Africa a fascinator called Elzanar killed by his evil art no less than 80 people in two years (W.W. Story, _Castle St Angelo_, 1877, p. 149). The belief as affecting cattle was universal in the Scottish Highlands as late as the 18th century and still lingers. Thus if a stranger looks admiringly on a cow the peasants still think she will waste away, and they offer the visitor some of her milk to drink in the belief that in this manner the spell is broken. The modern Turks and Arabs also think that their horses and camels are subject to the evil eye. But the people of Italy, especially the Neapolitans, are the best modern instances of implicit believers. The _jettatore_, as the owner of the evil eye is called, is so feared that at his approach it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that a street will clear: everybody will rush into doorways or up alleys to avoid the dreaded glance. The _jettatore di bambini_ (fascinator of children) is the most dreaded of all. The evil eye is still much feared for horses in India, China, Turkey, Greece and almost everywhere where horses are found. In rural England the pig is of all animals oftenest "overlooked." While the Italians are perhaps the greatest believers in the evil eye as affecting persons, the superstition is rife in the East. In India the belief is universal. In Bombay the blast of the evil eye is supposed to be a form of spirit-possession. In western India all witches and wizards are said to be evil-eyed. Modern Egyptian mothers thus account for the sickly appearance of their babies. In Turkey passages from the Koran are painted on the outside of houses to save the inmates, and texts as amulets are worn upon the person, or hung upon camels and horses by Arabs, Abyssinians and other peoples. The superstition is universal among savage races.

For a full discussion see _Evil Eye_ by F.T. Elworthy (London, 1895); also W.W. Story, _Castle St Angelo and the Evil Eye_ (1877); E.N. Rolfe and H. Ingleby, _Naples in 1888_ (1888); Johannes Christian Frommann, _Tractatus de fascinatione novus et singularis_, &c., &c. (Nuremburg, 1675); R.C. Maclagan, _Evil Eye in the Western Highlands_ (1902).

EVOLUTION. The modern doctrine of evolution or "evolving," as opposed to that of simple creation, has been defined by Prof. James Sully in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia as a "natural history of the cosmos including organic beings, expressed in physical terms as a mechanical process." The following exposition of the historical development of the doctrine is taken from Sully's article, and for the most part is in his own words.

In the modern doctrine of evolution the cosmic system appears as a natural product of elementary matter and its laws. The various grades of life on our planet are the natural consequences of certain physical processes involved in the gradual transformations of the earth. Conscious life is viewed as conditioned by physical (organic and more especially nervous) processes, and as evolving itself in close correlation with organic evolution. Finally, human development, as exhibited in historical and prehistorical records, is regarded as the highest and most complex result of organic and physical evolution. This modern doctrine of evolution is but an expansion and completion of those physical theories (see below) which opened the history of speculation. It differs from them in being grounded on exact and verified research. As such, moreover, it is a much more limited theory of evolution than the ancient. It does not necessarily concern itself about the question of the infinitude of worlds in space and in time. It is content to explain the origin and course of development of the world, the solar or, at most, the sidereal system which falls under our own observation. It would be difficult to say what branches of science had done most towards the establishment of this doctrine. We must content ourselves by referring to the progress of physical (including chemical) theory, which has led to the great generalization of the conservation of energy; to the discovery of the fundamental chemical identity of the matter of our planet and of other celestial bodies, and of the chemical relations of organic and inorganic bodies; to the advance of astronomical speculation respecting the origin of the solar system, &c.; to the growth of the science of geology which has necessitated the conception of vast and unimaginable periods of time in the past history of our globe, and to the rapid march of the biological sciences which has made us familiar with the simplest types and elements of organism; finally, to the development of the science of anthropology (including comparative psychology, philology, &c.), and to the vast extension and improvement of all branches of historical study.

_History of the Idea of Evolution._--The doctrine of evolution in its finished and definite form is a modern product. It required for its formation an amount of scientific knowledge which could only be very gradually acquired. It is vain, therefore, to look for clearly defined and systematic presentations of the idea among ancient writers. On the other hand, nearly all systems of philosophy have discussed the underlying problems. Such questions as the origin of the cosmos as a whole, the production of organic beings and of conscious minds, and the meaning of the observable grades of creation, have from the dawn of speculation occupied men's minds; and the answers to these questions often imply a vague recognition of the idea of a gradual evolution of things. Accordingly, in tracing the antecedents of the modern philosophic doctrine we shall have to glance at most of the principal systems of cosmology, ancient and modern. Yet since in these systems inquiries into the _esse_ and _fieri_ of the world are rarely distinguished with any precision, it will be necessary to indicate very briefly the general outlines of the system so far as they are necessary for understanding their bearing on the problems of evolution.

_Mythological Interpretation._--The problem of the origin of the world was the first to engage man's speculative activity. Nor was this line of inquiry pursued simply as a step in the more practical problem of man's final destiny. The order of ideas observable in children suggests the reflection that man began to discuss the "whence" of existence before the "whither." At first, as in the case of the child, the problem of the genesis of things was conceived anthropomorphically: the question "How did the world arise?" first shaped itself to the human mind under the form "Who made the world?" As long as the problem was conceived in this simple manner there was, of course, no room for the idea of a necessary self-conditioned evolution. Yet the first indistinct germ of such an idea appears to emerge in combination with that of creation in some of the ancient systems of theogony. Thus, for example, in the myth of the ancient Parsees, the gods Ormuzd and Ahriman are said to evolve themselves out of a primordial matter. It may be supposed that these crude fancies embody a dim recognition of the physical forces and objects personified under the forms of deities, and a rude attempt to account for their genesis as a natural process. These first unscientific ideas of a genesis of the permanent objects of nature took as their pattern the process of organic reproduction and development, and this, not only because these objects were regarded as personalities, but also because this particular mode of becoming would most impress these early observers. This same way of looking at the origin of the material world is illustrated in the Egyptian notion of a cosmic egg out of which issues the god (Phta) who creates the world.

_Indian Philosophy._--Passing from mythology to speculation properly so called, we find in the early systems of philosophy of India theories of emanation which approach in some respects the idea of evolution. Brahma is conceived as the eternal self-existent being, which on its material side unfolds itself to the world by gradually condensing itself to material objects through the gradations of ether, fire, water, earth and the elements. At the same time this eternal being is conceived as the all-embracing world-soul from which emanates the hierarchy of individual souls. In the later system of emanation of Sankhya there is a more marked approach to a materialistic doctrine of evolution. If, we are told, we follow the chain of causes far enough back we reach unlimited eternal creative nature or matter. Out of this "principal thing" or "original nature" all material and spiritual existence issues, and into it will return. Yet this primordial creative nature is endowed with volition with regard to its own development. Its first emanation as plastic nature contains the original soul or deity out of which all individual souls issue.

_Early Greek Physicists._--Passing by Buddhism, which, though teaching the periodic destruction of our world by fire, &c., does not seek to determine the ultimate origin of the cosmos, we come to those early Greek physical philosophers who distinctly set themselves to eliminate the idea of divine interference with the world by representing its origin and changes as a natural process. The early Ionian physicists, including Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, seek to explain the world as generated out of a primordial matter (Gr. [Greek: hyle]; hence the name "Hylozoists"), which is at the same time the universal support of things. This substance is endowed with a generative or transmutative force by virtue of which it passes into a succession of forms. They thus resemble modern evolutionists, since they regard the world with its infinite variety of forms as issuing from a simple mode of matter. More especially the cosmology of Anaximander resembles the modern doctrine of evolution in its conception of the indeterminate ([Greek: to apeiron]) out of which the particular forms of the cosmos are differentiated. Again, Anaximander may be said to prepare the way for more modern conceptions of material evolution by regarding his primordial substance as eternal, and by looking on all generation as alternating with destruction, each step of the process being of course simply a transformation of the indestructible substance. Once more, the notion that this indeterminate body contains potentially in itself the fundamental contraries--hot, cold, &c.--by the excretion or evolution of which definite substances were generated, is clearly a forecasting of that antithesis of potentiality and actuality which from Aristotle downwards has been made the basis of so many theories of development. In conclusion, it is noteworthy that though resorting to utterly fanciful hypotheses respecting the order of the development of the world, Anaximander agrees with modern evolutionists in conceiving the heavenly bodies as arising out of an aggregation of diffused matter, and in assigning to organic life an origin in the inorganic materials of the primitive earth (pristine mud). The doctrine of Anaximenes, who unites the conceptions of a determinate and indeterminate original substance adopted by Thales and Anaximander in the hypothesis of a primordial and all-generating air, is a clear advance on these theories, inasmuch as it introduces the scientific idea of condensation and rarefaction as the great generating or transforming agencies. For the rest, his theory is chiefly important as emphasizing the vital character of the original substance. The primordial air is conceived as animated. Anaximenes seems to have inclined to a view of cosmic evolution as throughout involving a quasi-spiritual factor. This idea of the air as the original principle and source of life and intelligence is much more clearly expressed by a later writer, Diogenes of Apollonia. Diogenes made this conception of a vital and intelligent air the ground of a teleological view of climatic and atmospheric phenomena. It is noteworthy that he sought to establish the identity of organic and inorganic matter by help of the facts of vegetal and animal nutrition. Diogenes distinctly taught that the world is of finite duration, and will be renewed out of the primitive substance.

Heraclitus again deserves a prominent place in a history of the idea of evolution. Heraclitus conceives of the incessant process of flux in which all things are involved as consisting of two sides or moments--generation and decay--which are regarded as a confluence of opposite streams. In thus making transition or change, viewed as the identity of existence and non-existence, the leading idea of his system, Heraclitus anticipated in some measure Hegel's peculiar doctrine of evolution as a dialectic process.[1] At the same time we may find expressed in figurative language the germs of thoughts which enter into still newer doctrines of evolution. For example, the notion of conflict ([Greek: polemos]) as the father of all things and of harmony as arising out of a union of discords, and again of an endeavour by individual things to maintain themselves in permanence against the universal process of destruction and renovation, cannot but remind one of certain fundamental ideas in Darwin's theory of evolution.

_Empedocles._--Empedocles took an important step in the direction of modern conceptions of physical evolution by teaching that all things arise, not by transformations of some primitive form of matter, but by various combinations of a number of permanent elements. Further, by maintaining that the elements are continually being combined and separated by the two forces love and hatred, which appear to represent in a figurative way the physical forces of attraction and repulsion, Empedocles may be said to have made a considerable advance in the construction of the idea of evolution as a strictly mechanical process. It may be observed, too, that the hypothesis of a primitive compact mass (_sphaerus_), in which love (attraction) is supreme, has some curious points of similarity to, and contrast with, that notion of a primitive nebulous matter with which the modern doctrine of cosmic evolution usually sets out. Empedocles tries to explain the genesis of organic beings, and, according to Lange, anticipates the idea of Darwin that adaptations abound, because it is their nature to perpetuate themselves. He further recognizes a progress in the production of vegetable and animal forms, though this part of his theory is essentially crude and unscientific. More important in relation to the modern problems of evolution is his thoroughly materialistic way of explaining the origin of sensation and knowledge by help of his peculiar hypothesis of effluvia and pores. The supposition that sensation thus rests on a material process of absorption from external bodies naturally led up to the idea that plants and even inorganic substances are precipient, and so to an indistinct recognition of organic life as a scale of intelligence.

_Atomists._--In the theory of Atomism taught by Leucippus and Democritus we have the basis of the modern mechanical conceptions of cosmic evolution. Here the endless harmonious diversity of our cosmos, as well as of other worlds supposed to coexist with our own, is said to arise through the various combination of indivisible material elements differing in figure and magnitude only. The force which brings the atoms together in the forms of objects is inherent in the elements, and all their motions are necessary. The origin of things, which is also their substance, is thus laid in the simplest and most homogeneous elements or principles. The real world thus arising consists only of diverse combinations of atoms, having the properties of magnitude, figure, weight and hardness, all other qualities being relative only to the sentient organism. The problem of the genesis of mind is practically solved by identifying the soul, or vital principle, with heat or fire which pervades in unequal proportions, not only man and animals, but plants and nature as a whole, and through the agitation of which by incoming effluvia all sensation arises.

_Aristotle._--Aristotle is much nearer a conception of evolution than his master Plato. It is true he sets out with a transcendent Deity, and follows Plato in viewing the creation of the cosmos as a process of descent from the more to the less perfect according to the distance from the original self-moving agency. Yet on the whole Aristotle leans to a teleological theory of evolution, which he interprets dualistually by means of certain metaphysical distinctions. Thus even his idea of the relation of the divine activity to the world shows a tendency to a pantheistic notion of a divine thought which gradually realizes itself in the process of becoming. Aristotle's distinction of form and matter, and his conception of becoming as a transition from actuality to potentiality, provides a new ontological way of conceiving the process of material and organic evolution.[2] To Aristotle the whole of nature is instinct with a vital impulse towards some higher manifestation. Organic life presents itself to him as a progressive scale of complexity determined by its final end, namely, man.[3] In some respects Aristotle approaches the modern view of evolution. Thus, though he looked on species as fixed, being the realization of an unchanging formative principle ([Greek: physis]), he seems, as Ueberweg observes, to have inclined to entertain the possibility of a spontaneous generation in the case of the lowest organisms. Aristotle's teleological conception of organic evolution often approaches modern mechanical conceptions. Thus he says that nature fashions organs in the order of their necessity, the first being those essential to life. So, too, in his psychology he speaks of the several degrees of mind as arising according to a progressive necessity.[4] In his view of touch and taste, as the two fundamental and essential senses, he may remind one of Herbert Spencer's doctrine. At the same time Aristotle precludes the idea of a natural development of the mental series by the supposition that man contains, over and above a natural finite soul inseparable from the body, a substantial and eternal principle ([Greek: nous]) which enters into the individual from without. Aristotle's brief suggestions respecting the origin of society and governments in the _Politics_ show a leaning to a naturalistic interpretation of human history as a development conditioned by growing necessities.

_Strato._--Of Aristotle's immediate successors one deserves to be noticed here, namely, Strato of Lampsacus, who developed his master's cosmology into a system of naturalism. Strato appears to reject Aristotle's idea of an original source of movement and life extraneous to the world in favour of an immanent principle. All parts of matter have an inward plastic life whereby they can fashion themselves to the best advantage, according to their capability, though not with consciousness.

_The Stoics._--In the cosmology of the Stoics we have the germ of a monistic and pantheistic conception of evolution. All things are said to be developed out of an original being, which is at once material (fire) and spiritual (the Deity), and in turn they will dissolve back into this primordial source. At the same time the world as a developed whole is regarded as an organism which is permeated with the divine Spirit, and so we may say that the world-process is a self-realization of the divine Being. The formative principle or force of the world is said to contain the several rational germinal forms of things. Individual things are supposed to arise out of the original being, as animals and plants out of seeds. Individual souls are an efflux from the all-compassing world-soul. The necessity in the world's order is regarded by the Stoics as identical with the divine reason, and this idea is used as the basis of a teleological and optimistic view of nature. Very curious, in relation to modern evolutional ideas, is the Stoical doctrine that our world is but one of a series of exactly identical ones, all of which are destined to be burnt up and destroyed.

_The Epicureans--Lucretius._--The Epicureans differed from the Stoics by adopting a purely mechanical view of the world-process. Their fundamental conception is that of Democritus; they seek to account for the formation of the cosmos, with its order and regularity, by setting out with the idea of an original (vertical) motion of the atoms, which somehow or other results in movements towards and from one another. Our world is but one of an infinite number of others, and all the harmonies and adaptations of the universe are regarded as a special case of the infinite possibilities of mechanical events. Lucretius regards the primitive atoms (first beginnings or first bodies) as seeds out of which individual things are developed. All living and sentient things are formed out of insentient atoms (e.g. worms spring out of dung). The peculiarity of organic and sentient bodies is due to the minuteness and shape of their particles, and to their special motions and combinations. So, too, mind consists but of extremely fine particles of matter, and dissolves into air when the body dies. Lucretius traces, in the fifth book of his poem, the progressive genesis of vegetal and animal forms out of the mother-earth. He vaguely anticipates the modern idea of the world as a survival of the fittest when he says that many races may have lived and died out, and that those which still exist have been protected either by craft, courage or speed. Lucretius touches on the development of man out of a primitive, hardy, beast-like condition. Pregnant hints are given respecting a natural development of language which has its germs in sounds of quadrupeds and birds, of religious ideas out of dreams and waking hallucinations, and of the art of music by help of the suggestion of natural sounds. Lucretius thus recognizes the whole range of existence to which the doctrine of evolution may be applied.

_Neoplatonists._--In the doctrines of the Neoplatonists, of whom Plotinus is the most important, we have the world-process represented after the example of Plato as a series of descending steps, each being less perfect than its predecessors, since it is further removed from the first cause.[5] The system of Plotinus, Zellar remarks, is not strictly speaking one of emanation, since there is no communication of the divine essence to the created world; yet it resembles emanation inasmuch as the genesis of the world is conceived as a necessary physical effect, and not as the result of volition. In Proclus we find this conception of an emanation of the world out of the Deity, or the absolute, made more exact, the process being regarded as threefold--(1) persistence of cause in effect, (2) the departure of effect from cause, and (3) the tendency of effect to revert to its cause.

_The Fathers._--The speculations of the fathers respecting the origin and course of the world seek to combine Christian ideas of the Deity with doctrines of Greek philosophy. The common idea of the origin of things is that of an absolute creation of matter and mind alike. The course of human history is regarded by those writers who are most concerned to refute Judaism as a progressive divine education. Among the Gnostics we meet with the hypothesis of emanation, as, for example, in the curious cosmic theory of Valentinus.

_Middle Ages--Early Schoolmen._--In the speculative writings of the middle ages, including those of the schoolmen, we find no progress towards a more accurate and scientific view of nature. The cosmology of this period consists for the most part of the Aristotelian teleological view of nature combined with the Christian idea of the Deity and His relation to the world. In certain writers, however, there appears a more elaborate transformation of the doctrine of creation into a system of emanation. According to John Scotus Erigena, the nothing out of which the world is created is the divine essence. Creation is the act by which God passes through the primordial causes, or universal ideas, into the region of particular things (_processio_), in order finally to return to himself (_reversio_). The transition from the universal to the particular is of course conceived as a descent or degradation. A similar doctrine of emanation is to be found in the writings of Bernhard of Chartres, who conceives the process of the unfolding of the world as a movement in a circle from the most general to the individual, and from this back to the most general. This movement is said to go forth from God to the animated heaven, stars, visible world and man, which represent decreasing degrees of cognition.

_Arab Philosophers._--Elaborate doctrines of emanation, largely based on Neoplatonic ideas, are also propounded by some of the Arabic philosophers, as by Farabi and Avicenna. The leading thought is that of a descending series of intelligences, each emanating from its predecessor, and having its appropriate region in the universe.

_Jewish Philosophy._--In the Jewish speculations of the middle ages may be found curious forms of the doctrine of emanations uniting the Biblical idea of creation with elements drawn from the Persians and the Greeks. In the later and developed form of the Kabbala, the origin of the world is represented as a gradually descending emanation of the lower out of the higher. Among the philosophic Jews, the Spanish Avicebron, in his _Fons Vitae_, expounds a curious doctrine of emanation. Here the divine will is viewed as an efflux from the divine wisdom, as the intermediate link between God, the first substance, and all things, and as the fountain out of which all forms emanate. At the same time all forms, including the higher intelligible ones, are said to have their existence only in matter. Matter is the one universal substance, body and mind being merely specifications of this. Thus Avicebron approaches, as Salomon Munk observes,[6] a pantheistic conception of the world, though he distinctly denies both matter and form to God.

_Later Scholastics._--Passing now to the later schoolmen, a bare mention must be made of Thomas Aquinas, who elaborately argues for the absolute creation of the world out of nothing, and of Albertus Magnus, who reasons against the Aristotelian idea of the past eternity of the world. More importance attaches to Duns Scotus, who brings prominently forward the idea of a progressive development in nature by means of a process of determination. The original substance of the world is the _materia primo-prima_, which is the immediate creation of the Deity. This serves Duns Scotus as the most universal basis of existence, all angels having material bodies. This matter is differentiated into particular things (which are not privations but perfections) through the addition of an individualizing principle (_haecceitas_) to the universal (_quidditas_). The whole world is represented by the figure of a tree, of which the seeds and roots are the first indeterminate matter, the leaves the accidents, the twigs and branches corruptible creatures, the blossoms the rational soul, and the fruit pure spirits or angels. It is also described as a bifurcation of two twigs, mental and bodily creation out of a common root. One might almost say that Duns Scotus recognizes the principle of a gradual physical evolution, only that he chooses to represent the mechanism by which the process is brought about by means of quaint scholastic fictions.

_Revival of Learning._--The period of the revival of learning, which was also that of a renewed study of nature, is marked by a considerable amount of speculation respecting the origin of the universe. In some of these we see a return to Greek theories, though the influence of physical discoveries, more especially those of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, is distinctly traceable.

_Telesio._--An example of a return to early Greek speculation is to be met with in Bernardino Telesio. By this writer the world is explained as a product of three principles--dead matter, and two active forces, heat and cold. Terrestrial things arise through a confluence of heat, which issues from the heavens, and cold, which comes from the earth. Both principles have sensibility, and thus all products of their collision are sentient, that is, feel pleasure and pain. The superiority of animals to plants and metals in the possession of special organs of sense is connected with the greater complexity and heterogeneity of their structure.

_Giordano Bruno._--In the system of Giordano Bruno, who sought to construct a philosophy of nature on the basis of new scientific ideas, more particularly the doctrine of Copernicus, we find the outlines of a theory of cosmic evolution conceived as an essentially vital process. Matter and form are here identified, and the evolution of the world is presented as the unfolding of the world-spirit to its perfect forms according to the plastic substratum (matter) which is but one of its sides. This process of change is conceived as a transformation, in appearance only, of the real unchanging substance (matter and form). All parts of matter are capable of developing into all forms; thus the materials of the table and chair may under proper circumstances be developed to the life of the plant or of the animal. The elementary parts of existence are the _minima_, or monads, which are at once material and mental. On their material side they are not absolutely unextended, but spherical. Bruno looked on our solar system as but one out of an infinite number of worlds. His theory of evolution is essentially pantheistic, and he does not employ his hypothesis of monads in order to work out a more mechanical conception.

_Campanella._--A word must be given to one of Bruno's contemporary compatriots, namely Campanella, who gave poetic expression to that system of universal vitalism which Bruno developed. He argues, from the principle _quicquid est in effectibus esse et in causis_, that the elements and the whole world have sensation, and thus he appears to derive the organic part of nature out of the so-called "inorganic."

_Boehme._--Another writer of this transition period deserves a passing reference here, namely, Jacob Boehme the mystic, who by his conception of a process of inner diremption as the essential character of all mind, and so of God, prepared the way for later German theories of the origin of the world as the self-differentiation and self-externalization of the absolute spirit.

_Hobbes and Gassendi._--The influence of an advancing study of nature, which was stimulated if not guided by Bacon's writings, is seen in the more careful doctrines of materialism worked out almost simultaneously by Hobbes and Gassendi. These theories, however, contain little that bears directly on the hypothesis of a natural evolution of things. In the view of Hobbes, the difficulty of the genesis of conscious minds is solved by saying that sensation and thought are part of the reaction of the organism on external movement. Yet Hobbes appears (as Clarke points out) to have vaguely felt the difficulty; and in a passage of his _Physics_ (chap. 25, sect. 5) he says that the universal existence of sensation in matter cannot be disproved, though he shows that when there are no organic arrangements the mental side of the movement (_phantasma_) is evanescent. The theory of the origin of society put forth by Hobbes, though directly opposed in most respects to modern ideas of social evolution, deserves mention here by reason of its enforcing that principle of struggle (_bellum omnium contra omnes_) which has played so conspicuous a part in the modern doctrine of evolution. Gassendi, with some deviations, follows Epicurus in his theory of the formation of the world. The world consists of a finite number of atoms, which have in their own nature a self-moving force or principle. These atoms, which are the seeds of all things, are, however, not eternal but created by God. Gassendi distinctly argues against the existence of a world-soul or a principle of life in nature.

_Descartes._--In the philosophy of Descartes we meet with a dualism of mind and matter which does not easily lend itself to the conception of evolution. His doctrine that consciousness is confined to man, the lower animals being unconscious machines (_automata_), excludes all idea of a progressive development of mind. Yet Descartes, in his _Principia Philosophiae_, laid the foundation of the modern mechanical conception of nature and of physical evolution. In the third part of this work he inclines to a thoroughly natural hypothesis respecting the genesis of the physical world, and adds in the fourth part that the same kind of explanation might be applied to the nature and formation of plants and animals. He is indeed careful to keep right with the orthodox doctrine of creation by saying that he does not believe the world actually arose in this mechanical way out of the three kinds of elements which he here supposes, but that he simply puts out his hypothesis as a mode of conceiving how it might have arisen. Descartes's account of the mind and its passions is thoroughly materialistic, and to this extent he works in the direction of a materialistic explanation of the origin of mental life.

_Spinoza._--In Spinoza's pantheistic theory of the world, which regards thought and extension as but two sides of one substance, the problem of becoming is submerged in that of being. Although Spinoza's theory attributes a mental side to all physical events, he rejects all teleological conceptions and explains the order of things as the result of an inherent necessity. He recognizes gradations of things according to the degree of complexity of their movements and that of their conceptions. To Spinoza (as Kuno Fischer observes) man differs from the rest of nature in the degree only and not in the kind of his powers. So far Spinoza approaches the conception of evolution. He may be said to furnish a further contribution to a metaphysical conception of evolution in his view of all finite individual things as the infinite variety to which the unlimited productive power of the universal substance gives birth. Sir F. Pollock has taken pains to show how nearly Spinoza approaches certain ideas contained in the modern doctrine of evolution, as for example that of self-preservation as the determining force in things.

_Locke._--In Locke we find, with a retention of certain anti-evolutionist ideas, a marked tendency to this mode of viewing the world. To Locke the universe is the result of a direct act of creation, even matter being limited in duration and created. Even if matter were eternal it would, he thinks, be incapable of producing motion; and if motion is itself conceived as eternal, thought can never begin to be. The first eternal being is thus spiritual or "cogitative," and contains in itself all the perfections that can ever after exist. He repeatedly insists on the impossibility of senseless matter putting on sense.[7] Yet while thus placing himself at a point of view opposed to that of a gradual evolution of the organic world, Locke prepared the way for this doctrine in more ways than one. First of all, his genetic method as applied to the mind's ideas--which laid the foundations of English analytical psychology--was a step in the direction of a conception of mental life as a gradual evolution. Again he works towards the same end in his celebrated refutation of the scholastic theory of real specific essences. In this argument he emphasizes the vagueness of the boundaries which mark off organic species with a view to show that these do not correspond to absolutely fixed divisions in the objective world, that they are made by the mind, not by nature.[8] This idea of the continuity of species is developed more fully in a remarkable passage (_Essay_, bk. iii. ch. vi. S 12), where he is arguing in favour of the hypothesis, afterwards elaborated by Leibnitz, of a graduated series of minds (species of spirits) from the Deity down to the lowest animal intelligence. He here observes that "all quite down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that in each remove differ very little from one another." Thus man approaches the beasts, and the animal kingdom is nearly joined with the vegetable, and so on down to the lowest and "most inorganical parts of matter." Finally, it is to be observed that Locke had a singularly clear view of organic arrangements (which of course he explained according to a theistic teleology) as an adaptation to the circumstances of the environment or to "the neighbourhood of the bodies that surround us." Thus he suggests that man has not eyes of a microscopic delicacy, because he would receive no great advantage from such acute organs, since though adding indefinitely to his speculative knowledge of the physical world they would not practically benefit their possessor (e.g. by enabling him to avoid things at a convenient distance).[9]

_Idea of Progress in History._--Before leaving the 17th century we must just refer to the writers who laid the foundations of the essentially modern conception of human history as a gradual upward progress. According to Flint,[10] there were four men who in this and the preceding century seized and made prominent this idea, namely, Bodin, Bacon, Descartes and Pascal. The former distinctly argues against the idea of a deterioration of man in the past. In this way we see that just as advancing natural science was preparing the way for a doctrine of physical evolution, so advancing historical research was leading to the application of a similar idea to the collective human life.

_English Writers of the 18th Century--Hume._--The theological discussions which make up so large a part of the English speculation of the 18th century cannot detain us here. There is, however, one writer who sets forth so clearly the alternative suppositions respecting the origin of the world that he claims a brief notice. We refer to David Hume. In his _Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_ he puts forward tentatively, in the person of one of his interlocutors, the ancient hypothesis that since the world resembles an animal or vegetal organism rather than a machine, it might more easily be accounted for by a process of generation than by an act of creation. Later on he develops the materialistic view of Epicurus, only modifying it so far as to conceive of matter as finite. Since a finite number of particles is only susceptible of finite transpositions, it must happen (he says), in an eternal duration that every possible order or position will be tried an infinite number of times, and hence this world is to be regarded (as the Stoics maintained) as an exact reproduction of previous worlds. The speaker seeks to make intelligible the appearance of art and contrivance in the world as a result of a natural settlement of the universe (which passes through a succession of chaotic conditions) into a stable condition, having a constancy in its forms, yet without its several parts losing their motion and fluctuation.

_French Writers of the 18th Century._--Let us now pass to the French writers of the 18th century. Here we are first struck by the results of advancing physical speculation in their bearing on the conception of the world. Careful attempts, based on new scientific truths, are made to explain the genesis of the world as a natural process. Maupertuis, who, together with Voltaire, introduced the new idea of the universe as based on Newton's discoveries, sought to account for the origin of organic things by the hypothesis of sentient atoms. Buffon the naturalist speculated, not only on the structure and genesis of organic beings, but also on the course of formation of the earth and solar system, which he conceived after the analogy of the development of organic beings out of seed. Diderot, too, in his varied intellectual activity, found time to speculate on the genesis of sensation and thought out of a combination of matter endowed with an elementary kind of sentience. De la Mettrie worked out a materialistic doctrine of the origin of things, according to which sensation and consciousness are nothing but a development out of matter. He sought (_L'Homme-machine_) to connect man in his original condition with the lower animals, and emphasized (_L'Homme-plante_) the essential unity of plan of all living things. Helvetius, in his work on man, referred all differences between our species and the lower animals to certain peculiarities of organization, and so prepared the way for a conception of human development out of lower forms as a process of physical evolution. Charles Bonnet met the difficulty of the origin of conscious beings much in the same way as Leibnitz, by the supposition of eternal minute organic bodies to which are attached immortal souls. Yet though in this way opposing himself to the method of the modern doctrine of evolution, he aided the development of this doctrine by his view of the organic world as an ascending scale from the simple to the complex. Robinet, in his treatise _De la nature_, worked out the same conception of a gradation in organic existence, connecting this with a general view of nature as a progress from the lowest inorganic forms of matter up to man. The process is conceived as an infinite series of variations or specifications of one primitive and common type. Man is the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of nature, which the gradual progression of beings was to have as its last term, and all lower creations are regarded as pre-conditions of man's existence, since nature "could only realize the human form by combining in all imaginable ways each of the traits which was to enter into it." The formative force in this process of evolution (or "metamorphosis") is conceived as an intellectual principle (_idee generatrice_). Robinet thus laid the foundation of that view of the world as wholly vital, and as a progressive unfolding of a spiritual formative principle, which was afterwards worked out by Schelling. It is to be added that Robinet adopted a thorough-going materialistic view of the dependence of mind on body, going even to the length of assigning special nerve-fibres to the moral sense. The system of Holbach seeks to provide a consistent materialistic view of the world and its processes. Mental operations are identified with physical movements, the three conditions of physical movement, inertia, attraction and repulsion, being in the moral world self-love, love and hate. He left open the question whether the capability of sensation belongs to all matter, or is confined to the combinations of certain materials. He looked on the actions of the individual organism and of society as determined by the needs of self-preservation. He conceived of man as a product of nature that had gradually developed itself from a low condition, though he relinquished the problem of the exact mode of his first genesis and advance as not soluble by data of experience. Holbach thus worked out the basis of a rigorously materialistic conception of evolution.

The question of human development which Holbach touched on was one which occupied many minds both in and out of France during the 18th century, and more especially towards its close. The foundations of this theory of history as an upward progress of man out of a barbaric and animal condition were laid by Vico in his celebrated work _Principii di scienza nuova_. In France the doctrine was represented by Turgot and Condorcet.

_German Writers of the 18th Century--Leibnitz._--In Leibnitz we find, if not a doctrine of evolution in the strict sense, a theory of the world which is curiously related to the modern doctrine. The chief aim of Leibnitz is no doubt to account for the world in its static aspect as a co-existent whole, to conceive the ultimate reality of things in such a way as to solve the mystery of mind and matter. Yet by his very mode of solving the problem he is led on to consider the nature of the world-process. By placing substantial reality in an infinite number of monads whose essential nature is force or activity, which is conceived as mental (representation), Leibnitz was carried on to the explanation of the successive order of the world. He prepares the way, too, for a doctrine of evolution by his monistic idea of the substantial similarity of all things, inorganic and organic, bodily and spiritual, and still more by his conception of a perfect gradation of existence from the lowest "inanimate" objects, whose essential activity is confused representation, up to the highest organized being--man--with his clear intelligence.[11] Turning now to Leibnitz's conception of the world as a process, we see first that he supplies, in his notion of the underlying reality as force which is represented as spiritual (_quelque chose d'analogique au sentiment et a l'appetit_), both a mechanical and a teleological explanation of its order. More than this, Leibnitz supposes that the activity of the monads takes the form of a self-evolution. It is the following out of an inherent tendency or impulse to a series of changes, all of which were virtually pre-existent, and this process cannot be interfered with from without. As the individual monad, so the whole system which makes up the world is a gradual development. In this case, however, we cannot say that each step goes out of the other as in that of individual development. Each monad is an original independent being, and is determined to take this particular point in the universe, this place in the scale of beings. We see how different this metaphysical conception is from that scientific notion of cosmic evolution in which the lower stages are the antecedents and conditions of the higher. It is probable that Leibnitz's notion of time and space, which approaches Kant's theory, led him to attach but little importance to the successive order of the world. Leibnitz, in fact, presents to us an infinite system of perfectly distinct though parallel developments, which on their mental side assume the aspect of a scale, not through any mutual action, but solely through the determination of the Deity. Even this idea, however, is incomplete, for Leibnitz fails to explain the physical aspect of development. Thus he does not account for the fact that organic beings--which have always existed as preformations (in the case of animals as _animaux spermatiques_)--come to be developed under given conditions. Yet Leibnitz prepared the way for a new conception of organic evolution. The modern monistic doctrine, that all material things consist of sentient elements, and that consciousness arises through a combination of these, was a natural transformation of Leibnitz's theory.[12]

_Lessing._--Of Leibnitz's immediate followers we may mention Lessing, who in his _Education of the Human Race_ brought out the truth of the process of gradual development underlying human history, even though he expressed this in a form inconsistent with the idea of a spontaneous evolution.

_Herder._--Herder, on the other hand, Lessing's contemporary, treated the subject of man's development in a thoroughly naturalistic spirit. In his I_deen zur Philosophie der Geschichte_, Herder adopts Leibnitz's idea of a graduated scale of beings, at the same time conceiving of the lower stages as the conditions of the higher. Thus man is said to be the highest product of nature, and as such to be dependent on all lower products. All material things are assimilated to one another as organic, the vitalizing principle being inherent in all matter. The development of man is explained in connexion with that of the earth, and in relation to climatic variations, &c. Man's mental faculties are viewed as related to his organization, and as developed under the pressure of the necessities of life.[13]

_Kant._--Kant's relation to the doctrine of evolution is a many-sided one. In the first place, his peculiar system of subjective idealism, involving the idea that time is but a mental form to which there corresponds nothing in the sphere of noumenal reality, serves to give a peculiar philosophical interpretation to every doctrine of cosmic evolution. Kant, like Leibnitz, seeks to reconcile the mechanical and teleological views of nature, only he assigns to these different spheres. The order of the inorganic world is explained by properly physical causes. In his _Naturgeschichte des Himmels_, in which he anticipated the nebular theory afterwards more fully developed by Laplace, Kant sought to explain the genesis of the cosmos as a product of physical forces and laws. The worlds, or systems of worlds, which fill infinite space are continually being formed and destroyed. Chaos passes by a process of evolution into a cosmos, and this again into chaos. So far as the evolution of the solar system is concerned, Kant held these mechanical causes as adequate. For the world as a whole, however, he postulated a beginning in time (whence his use of the word creation), and further supposed that the impulse of organization which was conveyed to chaotic matter by the Creator issued from a central point in the infinite space spreading gradually outwards.[14] While in his cosmology Kant thus relies on mechanical conceptions, in his treatment of organic life his mind is, on the contrary, dominated by teleological ideas. An organism was to him something controlled by a formative organizing principle. It was natural, therefore, that he rejected the idea of a spontaneous generation of organisms (which was just then being advocated by his friend Forster), not only as unsupported by experience but as an inadequate hypothesis. Experience forbids our excluding organic activity from natural causes, also our excluding intelligence from purposeful (_zwecktatigen_) causes; hence experience forbids our defining the fundamental force or first cause out of which living creatures arose.[15] Just as Kant thus sharply marks off the regions of the inorganic and the organic, so he sets man in strong opposition to the lower animals. His ascription to man of a unique faculty, free-will, forbade his conceiving our species as a link in a graduated series of organic developments. In his doctrine of human development he does indeed recognize an early stage of existence in which our species was dominated by sensuous enjoyment and instinct. He further conceives of this stage as itself a process of (natural) development, namely, of the natural disposition of the species to vary in the greatest possible manner so as to preserve its unity through a process of self-adaptation (_Anarten_) to climate. This, he says, must not be conceived as resulting from the action of external causes, but is due to a natural disposition (_Anlage_). From this capability of natural development (which already involves a teleological idea) Kant distinguishes the power of moral self-development or self-liberation from the dominion of nature, the gradual realization of which constitutes human history or progress. This moral development is regarded as a gradual approach to that rational, social and political state in which will be realized the greatest possible quantity of liberty. Thus Kant, though he appropriated and gave new form to the idea of human progress, conceived of this as wholly distinct from a natural (mechanical) process. In this particular, as in his view of organic actions, Kant distinctly opposed the idea of evolution as one universal process swaying alike the physical and the moral world.

_Schelling._--In the earlier writings of Schelling, containing the philosophy of identity, existence is represented as a becoming, or process of evolution. Nature and mind (which are the two sides, or polar directions, of the one absolute) are each viewed as an activity advancing by an uninterrupted succession of stages. The side of this process which Schelling worked out most completely is the negative side, that is, nature. Nature is essentially a process of organic self-evolution. It can only be understood by subordinating the mechanical conception to the vital, by conceiving the world as one organism animated by a spiritual principle or intelligence (_Weltseele_). From this point of view the processes of nature from the inorganic up to the most complex of the organic become stages in the self-realization of nature. All organic forms are at bottom but one organization, and the inorganic world shows the same formative activity in various degrees or potences. Schelling conceives of the gradual self-evolution of nature in a succession of higher and higher forms as brought about by a limitation of her infinite productivity, showing itself in a series of points of arrest. The detailed exhibition of the organizing activity of nature in the several processes of the organic and inorganic world rests on a number of fanciful and unscientific ideas. Schelling's theory is a bold attempt to revitalize nature in the light of growing physical and physiological science, and by so doing to comprehend the unity of the world under the idea of one principle of organic development. His highly figurative language might leave us in doubt how far he conceived the higher stages of this evolution of nature as following the lower in time. In the introduction to his work _Von der Weltseele_, however, he argues in favour of the possibility of a transmutation of species in periods incommensurable with ours. The evolution of mind (the positive pole) proceeds by way of three stages--theoretic, practical and aesthetical activity. Schelling's later theosophic speculations do not specially concern us here.

_Followers of Schelling._--Of the followers of Schelling a word or two must be said. Heinrich Steffens, in his _Anthropologie_, seeks to trace out the origin and history of man in connexion with a general theory of the development of the earth, and this again as related to the formation of the solar system. All these processes are regarded as a series of manifestations of a vital principle in higher and higher forms. Oken, again, who carries Schelling's ideas into the region of biological science, seeks to reconstruct the gradual evolution of the material world out of original matter, which is the first immediate appearance of God, or the absolute. This process is an upward one, through the formation of the solar system and of our earth with its inorganic bodies, up to the production of man. The process is essentially a polar linear action, or differentiation from a common centre. By means of this process the bodies of the solar system separate themselves, and the order of cosmic evolution is repeated in that of terrestrial evolution. The organic world (like the world as a whole) arises out of a primitive chaos, namely, the infusorial slime. A somewhat similar working out of Schelling's idea is to be found in H.C. Oersted's work entitled _The Soul in Nature_ (Eng. trans.). Of later works based on Schelling's doctrine of evolution mention may be made of the volume entitled _Natur und Idee_, by G.F. Carus. According to this writer, existence is nothing but a becoming, and matter is simply the momentary product of the process of becoming, while force is this process constantly revealing itself in these products.

_Hegel._--Like Schelling, Hegel conceives the problem of existence as one of becoming. He differs from him with respect to the ultimate motive of that process of gradual evolution which reveals itself alike in nature and in mind. With Hegel the absolute is itself a dialectic process which contains within itself a principle of progress from difference to difference and from unity to unity. "This process (W. Wallace remarks) knows nothing of the distinctions between past and future, because it implies an eternal present." This conception of an immanent spontaneous evolution is applied alike both to nature and to mind and history. Nature to Hegel is the idea in the form of hetereity; and finding itself here it has to remove this exteriority in a progressive evolution towards an existence for itself in life and mind. Nature (says Zeller) is to Hegel a system of gradations, of which one arises necessarily out of the other, and is the proximate truth of that out of which it results. There are three stadia, or moments, in this process of nature--(1) the mechanical moment, or matter devoid of individuality; (2) the physical moment, or matter which has particularized itself in bodies--the solar system; and (3) the organic moment, or organic beings, beginning with the geological organism--or the mineral kingdom, plants and animals. Yet this process of development is not to be conceived as if one stage is naturally produced out of the other, and not even as if the one followed the other in time. Only spirit has a history; in nature all forms are contemporaneous.[16] Hegel's interpretation of mind and history as a process of evolution has more scientific interest than his conception of nature. His theory of the development of free-will (the objective spirit), which takes its start from Kant's conception of history, with its three stages of legal right, morality as determined by motive and instinctive goodness (_Sittlichkeit_), might almost as well be expressed in terms of a thoroughly naturalistic doctrine of human development. So, too, some of his conceptions respecting the development of art and religion (the absolute spirit) lend themselves to a similar interpretation. Yet while, in its application to history, Hegel's theory of evolution has points of resemblance with those doctrines which seek to explain the world-process as one unbroken progress occurring in time, it constitutes on the whole a theory apart and _sui generis_. It does not conceive of the organic as succeeding on the inorganic, or of conscious life as conditioned in time by lower forms. In this respect it resembles Leibnitz's idea of the world as a development; the idea of evolution is in each case a metaphysical as distinguished from a scientific one. Hegel gives a place in his metaphysical system to the mechanical and the teleological views; yet in his treatment of the world as an evolution the idea of end or purpose is the predominant one.

Of the followers of Hegel who have worked out his peculiar idea of evolution it is hardly necessary to speak. A bare reference may be made to J.K. F. Rosenkranz, who in his work _Hegel's Naturphilosophie_ seeks to develop Hegel's idea of an earth-organism in the light of modern science, recognizing in crystallization the morphological element.

_Schopenhauer._--Of the other German philosophers immediately following Kant, there is only one who calls for notice here, namely, Arthur Schopenhauer. This writer, by his conception of the world as will which objectifies itself in a series of gradations from the lowest manifestations of matter up to conscious man, gives a slightly new shape to the evolutional view of Schelling, though he deprives this view of its optimistic character by denying any co-operation of intelligence in the world-process. In truth, Schopenhauer's conception of the world as the activity of a blind force is at bottom a materialistic and mechanical rather than a spiritualistic and teleological theory. Moreover, Schopenhauer's subjective idealism, and his view of time as something illusory, hindered him from viewing this process as a sequence of events in time. Thus he ascribes eternity of existence to species under the form of the "Platonic ideas." As Ludwig Noire observes, Schopenhauer has no feeling for the problem of the origin of organic beings. He says Lamarck's original animal is something metaphysical, not physical, namely, the will to live. "Every species (according to Schopenhauer) has of its own will, and according to the circumstances under which it would live, determined its form and organization,--yet not as something physical in time, but as something metaphysical out of time."

_Von Baer._--Before leaving the German speculation of the first half of the century, a word must be said of von Baer, to whose biological contributions we shall refer later in this article, who recognized in the law of development the law of the universe as a whole. In his _Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere_ (p. 264) he distinctly tells us that the law of growing individuality is "the fundamental thought which goes through all forms and degrees of animal development and all single relations. It is the same thought which collected in the cosmic space the divided masses into spheres, and combined these to solar systems; the same which caused the weather-beaten dust on the surface of our metallic planet to spring forth into living forms." Von Baer thus prepared the way for Herbert Spencer's generalization of the law of organic evolution as the law of all evolution.

_Comte._--As we arrive at the 19th century, though yet before the days of Darwin, biology is already beginning to affect the general aspect of thought. It might suffice to single out the influence of Auguste Comte, as the last great thinker who wrote before Darwinism began to permeate philosophic speculation. Though Comte did not actually contribute to a theory of cosmic organic evolution, he helped to lay the foundations of a scientific conception of human history as a natural process of development determined by general laws of human nature together with the accumulating influences of the past. Comte does not recognize that this process is aided by any increase of innate capacity; on the contrary, progress is to him the unfolding of fundamental faculties of human nature which always pre-existed in a latent condition; yet he may perhaps be said to have prepared the way for the new conception of human progress by his inclusion of mental laws under biology.

_Development of the Biological Doctrine._--In the 19th century the doctrine of evolution received new biological contents and became transformed from a vague, partly metaphysical theory to the dominant modern conception. At this point it is convenient to leave the guidance of Professor J. Sully and to follow closely T.H. Huxley, who in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia traced the history of the growth of the biological idea of evolution from its philosophical beginnings to its efflorescence in Charles Darwin.

In the earlier half of the 18th century the term "evolution" was introduced into biological writings in order to denote the mode in which some of the most eminent physiologists of that time conceived that the generation of living things took place; in opposition to the hypothesis advocated, in the preceding century, by W. Harvey in that remarkable work[17] which would give him a claim to rank among the founders of biological science, even had he not been the discoverer of the circulation of the blood.

One of Harvey's prime objects is to defend and establish, on the basis of direct observation, the opinion already held by Aristotle, that, in the higher animals at any rate, the formation of the new organism by the process of generation takes place, not suddenly, by simultaneous accretion of rudiments of all or the most important of the organs of the adult, nor by sudden metamorphosis of a formative substance into a miniature of the whole, which subsequently grows, but by _epigenesis_, or successive differentiation of a relatively homogeneous rudiment into the parts and structures which are characteristic of the adult.

"Et primo, quidem, quoniam per _epigenesin_ sive partium superexorientium additamentum pullum fabricari certum est: quaenam pars ante alias omnes exstruatur, et quid de illa ejusque generandi modo observandum veniat, dispiciemus. Ratum sane est et in ovo manifeste apparet quod _Aristoteles_ de perfectorum animalium generatione enuntiat: nimirum, non omnes partes simul fieri, sed ordine aliam post aliam; primumque existere particulam genitalem, cujus virtute postea (tanquam ex principio quodam) reliquae omnes partes prosiliant. Qualem in plantarum seminibus (fabis, puta, aut glandibus) gemmam sive apicem protuberantem cernimus, totius futurae arboris principium. _Estque haec particula velut filius emancipatus seorsumque collocatus, et principium per se vivens; unde postea membrorum ordo describitur; et quaecunque ad absolvendum animal pertinent, disponuntur._[18] Quoniam enim _nulla pars se ipsam generat; sed postquam generata est, se ipsam jam auget; ideo eam primum oriri necesse est, quae principium augendi contineat_ (_sive enim planta, sive animal est, aeque omnibus inest quod vim habeat vegetandi, sive nutriendi_),[19] simulque reliquas omnes partes suo quamque ordine distinguat et formet; proindeque in eadem primogenita particula anima primario inest, sensus, motusque, et totius vitae auctor et principium." (_Exercitatio_ 51.)

Harvey proceeds to contrast this view with that of the "Medici," or followers of Hippocrates and Galen, who, "badly philosophizing," imagined that the brain, the heart, and the liver were simultaneously first generated in the form of vesicles; and, at the same time, while expressing his agreement with Aristotle in the principle of epigenesis, he maintains that it is the blood which is the primal generative part, and not, as Aristotle thought, the heart.

In the latter part of the 17th century the doctrine of epigenesis thus advocated by Harvey was controverted on the ground of direct observation by M. Malpighi, who affirmed that the body of the chick is to be seen in the egg before the _punctum sanguineum_ makes it appearance. But from this perfectly correct observation a conclusion which is by no means warranted was drawn, namely, that the chick as a whole really exists in the egg antecedently to incubation; and that what happens in the course of the latter process is no addition of new parts, "alias post alias natas," as Harvey puts it, but a simple expansion or unfolding of the organs which already exist, though they are too small and inconspicuous to be discovered. The weight of Malpighi's observations therefore fell into the scale of that doctrine which Harvey terms metamorphosis, in contradistinction to epigenesis.

The views of Malpighi were warmly welcomed on philosophical grounds by Leibnitz,[20] who found in them a support to his hypothesis of monads, and by Nicholas Malebranche;[21] while, in the middle of the 18th century, not only speculative considerations, but a great number of new and interesting observations on the phenomena of generation, led the ingenious Charles Bonnet and A. von Haller, the first physiologist of the age, to adopt, advocate and extend them.

Bonnet affirms that, before fecundation, the hen's egg contains an excessively minute but complete chick; and that fecundation and incubation simply cause this germ to absorb nutritious matters, which are deposited in the interstices of the elementary structures of which the miniature chick, or germ, is made up. The consequence of this intussusceptive growth is the "development" or "evolution" of the germ into the visible bird. Thus an organized individual (_tout organise_) "is a composite body consisting of the original, or _elementary_, parts and of the matters which have been associated with them by the aid of nutrition"; so that, if these matters could be extracted from the individual (_tout_), it would, so to speak, become concentrated in a point, and would thus be restored to its primitive condition of a _germ_; "just as, by extracting from a bone the calcareous substance which is the source of its hardness, it is reduced to its primitive state of gristle or membrane."[22]

"Evolution" and "development" are, for Bonnet, synonymous terms; and since by "evolution" he means simply the expansion of that which was invisible into visibility, he was naturally led to the conclusion, at which Leibnitz had arrived by a different line of reasoning, that no such thing as generation, in the proper sense of the word exists in nature. The growth of an organic being is simply a process of enlargement, as a particle of dry gelatine may be swelled up by the intussusception of water; its death is a shrinkage, such as the swelled jelly might undergo on desiccation. Nothing really new is produced in the living world, but the germs which develop have existed since the beginning of things; and nothing really dies, but, when what we call death takes place, the living thing shrinks back into its germ state.[23]

The two parts of Bonnet's hypothesis, namely, the doctrine that all living things proceed from pre-existing germs, and that these contain, one enclosed within the other, the germs of all future living things, which is the hypothesis of "emboitement," and the doctrine that every germ contains in miniature all the organs of the adult, which is the hypothesis of evolution or development, in the primary senses of these words, must be carefully distinguished. In fact, while holding firmly by the former, Bonnet more or less modified the latter in his later writings, and, at length, he admits that a "germ" need not be an actual miniature of the organism, but that it may be merely an "original preformation" capable of producing the latter.[24]

But, thus defined, the germ is neither more nor less than the "particula genitalis" of Aristotle, or the "primordium vegetale" or "ovum" of Harvey; and the "evolution" of such a germ would not be distinguishable from "epigenesis."

Supported by the great authority of Haller, the doctrine of evolution, or development, prevailed throughout the whole of the 18th century, and Cuvier appears to have substantially adopted Bonnet's later views, though probably he would not have gone all lengths in the direction of "emboitement." In a well-known note to Charles Leopold Laurillard's _Eloge_, prefixed to the last edition of the _Ossemens fossiles_, the "radical de l'etre" is much the same thing as Aristotle's "particula genitalis" and Harvey's "ovum."[25]

Bonnet's eminent contemporary, Buffon, held nearly the same views with respect to the nature of the germ, and expresses them even more confidently.

"Ceux qui ont cru que le coeur etoit le premier forme, se sont trompes; ceux qui disent que c'est le sang se trompent aussi: tout est forme en meme temps. Si l'on ne consulte que l'observation, le poulet se voit dans l'oeuf avant qu'il ait ete couve."[26]

"J'ai ouvert une grande quantite d'oeufs a differens temps avant et apres l'incubation, et je me suis convaincu par mes yeux que le poulet existe en entier dans le milieu de la cicatrule au moment qu'il sort du corps de la poule."[27]

The "moule interieur" of Buffon is the aggregate of elementary parts which constitute the individual, and is thus the equivalent of Bonnet's germ,[28] as defined in the passage cited above. But Buffon further imagined that innumerable "molecules organiques" are dispersed throughout the world, and that alimentation consists in the appropriation by the parts of an organism of those molecules which are analogous to them. Growth, therefore, was, on this hypothesis, partly a process of simple evolution, and partly of what has been termed syngenesis. Buffon's opinion is, in fact, a sort of combination of views, essentially similar to those of Bonnet, with others, somewhat similar to those of the "Medici" whom Harvey condemns. The "molecules organiques" are physical equivalents of Leibnitz's "monads."

It is a striking example of the difficulty of getting people to use their own powers of investigation accurately, that this form of the doctrine of evolution should have held its ground so long; for it was thoroughly and completely exploded, not long after its enunciation, by Caspar Frederick Wolff, who in his _Theoria generationis_, published in 1759, placed the opposite theory of epigenesis upon the secure foundation of fact, from which it has never been displaced. But Wolff had no immediate successors. The school of Cuvier was lamentably deficient in embryologists; and it was only in the course of the first thirty years of the 19th century that Prevost and Dumas in France, and, later on, Dollinger, Pander, von Bar, Rathke, and Remak in Germany, founded modern embryology; and, at the same time, proved the utter incompatibility of the hypothesis of evolution as formulated by Bonnet and Haller with easily demonstrable facts.

Nevertheless, though the conceptions originally denoted by "evolution" and "development" were shown to be untenable, the words retained their application to the process by which the embryos of living beings gradually make their appearance; and the terms "development," "Entwickelung," and "evolutio" are now indiscriminately used for the series of genetic changes exhibited by living beings, by writers who would emphatically deny that "development" or "Entwickelung" or "evolutio," in the sense in which these words were usually employed by Bonnet or Haller, ever occurs.

Evolution, or development, is, in fact, at present employed in biology as a general name for the history of the steps by which any living being has acquired the morphological and the physiological characters which distinguish it. As civil history may be divided into biography, which is the history of individuals, and universal history, which is the history of the human race, so evolution falls naturally into two categories--the evolution of the individual (see EMBRYOLOGY) and the evolution of the sum of living beings.

_The Evolution of the Sum of Living Beings._--The notion that all the kinds of animals and plants may have come into existence by the growth and modification of primordial germs is as old as speculative thought; but the modern scientific form of the doctrine can be traced historically to the influence of several converging lines of philosophical speculation and of physical observation, none of which go further back than the 17th century. These are:--

1. The enunciation by Descartes of the conception that the physical universe, whether living or not living, is a mechanism, and that, as such, it is explicable on physical principles.

2. The observation of the gradations of structure, from extreme simplicity to very great complexity, presented by living things, and of the relation of these graduated forms to one another.

3. The observation of the existence of an analogy between the series of gradations presented by the species which compose any great group of animals or plants, and the series of embryonic conditions of the highest members of that group.

4. The observation that large groups of species of widely different habits present the same fundamental plan of structure; and that parts of the same animal or plant, the functions of which are very different, likewise exhibit modifications of a common plan.

5. The observation of the existence of structures, in a rudimentary and apparently useless condition, in one species of a group, which are fully developed and have definite functions in other species of the same group.

6. The observation of the effects of varying conditions in modifying living organisms.

7. The observation of the facts of geographical distribution.

8. The observation of the facts of the geological succession of the forms of life.

1. Notwithstanding the elaborate disguise which fear of the powers that were led Descartes to throw over his real opinions, it is impossible to read the _Principes de la philosophie_ without acquiring the conviction that this great philosopher held that the physical world and all things in it, whether living or not living, have originated by a process of evolution, due to the continuous operation of purely physical causes, out of a primitive relatively formless matter.[29]

The following passage is especially instructive:--

"Et tant s'en faut que je veuille que l'on croie toutes les choses que j'ecrirai, que meme je pretends en proposer ici quelques-unes que je crois absolument etre fausses; a savoir, je ne doute point que le monde n'ait ete cree au commencement avec autant de perfection qu'il en a; en sorte que le soleil, la terre, la lune, et les etoiles ont ete des lors; et que la terre n'a pas eu seulement en soi les semences des plantes, mais que les plantes meme en ont couvert une partie; et qu'Adam et Eve n'ont pas ete crees enfans mais en age d'hommes parfaits. La religion chretienne veut que nous le croyons ainsi, et la raison naturelle nous persuade entierement cette verite; car si nous considerons la toute puissance de Dieu, nous devons juger que tout ce qu'il a fait a eu des le commencement toute la perfection qu'il devoit avoir. Mais neanmoins, comme on connoitroit beaucoup mieux quelle a ete la nature d'Adam et celle des arbres de Paradis si on avoit examine comment les enfants se forment peu a peu dans le ventre de leurs meres et comment les plantes sortent de leurs semences, que si on avoit seulement considere quels ils ont ete quand Dieu les a crees: tout de meme, nous ferons mieux entendre quelle est generalement la nature de toutes les choses qui sont au monde si nous pouvons imaginer quelques principes qui soient fort intelligibles et fort simples, desquels nous puissions voir clairement que les astres et la terre et enfin tout ce monde visible auroit pu etre produit ainsi que de quelques semences (bien que nous sachions qu'il n'a pas ete produit en cette facon) que si nous la decrivions seulement comme il est, ou bien comme nous croyons qu'il a ete cree. Et parceque je pense avoir trouve des principes qui sont tels, je tacherai ici de les expliquer."[30]

If we read between the lines of this singular exhibition of force of one kind and weakness of another, it is clear that Descartes believed that he had divined the mode in which the physical universe had been evolved; and the _Traite de l'homme_ and the essay _Sur les passions_ afford abundant additional evidence that he sought for, and thought he had found, an explanation of the phenomena of physical life by deduction from purely physical laws.

Spinoza abounds in the same sense, and is as usual perfectly candid--

"Naturae leges et regulae, secundum quas omnia fiunt et ex unis formis in alias mutantur, sunt ubique et semper eadem."[31]

Leibnitz's doctrine of continuity necessarily led him in the same direction; and, of the infinite multitude of monads with which he peopled the world, each is supposed to be the focus of an endless process of evolution and involution. In the _Protogaea_, xxvi., Leibnitz distinctly suggests the mutability of species--

"Alii mirantur in saxis passim species videri quas vel in orbe cognito, vel saltem in vicinis locis frustra quaeras. Ita _Cornua Ammonis_, quae ex nautilorum numero habeantur, passim et forma et magnitudine (nam et pedali diametro aliquando reperiuntur) ab omnibus illis naturis discrepare dicunt, quas praebet mare. Sed quis absconditos ejus recessus aut subterraneas abyssos pervestigavit? quam multa nobis animalia antea ignota offert novus orbis? Et credibile est per magnas illas conversiones etiam animalium species plurimum immutatas."

Thus in the end of the 17th century the seed was sown which has at intervals brought forth recurrent crops of evolutional hypotheses, based, more or less completely, on general reasonings.

Among the earliest of these speculations is that put forward by Benoit de Maillet in his _Telliamed_, which, though printed in 1735, was not published until twenty-three years later. Considering that this book was written before the time of Haller, or Bonnet, or Linnaeus, or Hutton, it surely deserves more respectful consideration than it usually receives. For De Maillet not only has a definite conception of the plasticity of living things, and of the production of existing species by the modification of their predecessors, but he clearly apprehends the cardinal maxim of modern geological science, that the explanation of the structure of the globe is to be sought in the deductive application to geological phenomena of the principles established inductively by the study of the present course of nature. Somewhat later, P.L.M. de Maupertuis[32] suggested a curious hypothesis as to the causes of variation, which he thinks may be sufficient to account for the origin of all animals from a single pair. Jean Baptiste Rene Robinet[33] followed out much the same line of thought as De Maillet, but less soberly; and Bonnet's speculations in the _Palingenesie_, which appeared in 1769, have already been mentioned. Buffon (1753-1778), at first a partisan of the absolute immutability of species, subsequently appears to have believed that larger or smaller groups of species have been produced by the modification of a primitive stock; but he contributed nothing to the general doctrine of evolution.

Erasmus Darwin (_Zoonomia_, 1794), though a zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors; and, notwithstanding the fact that Goethe had the advantage of a wide knowledge of morphological facts, and a true insight into their signification, while he threw all the power of a great poet into the expression of his conceptions, it may be questioned whether he supplied the doctrine of evolution with a firmer scientific basis than it already possessed. Moreover, whatever the value of Goethe's labours in that field, they were not published before 1820, long after evolutionism had taken a new departure from the works of Treviranus and Lamarck--the first of its advocates who were equipped for their task with the needful large and accurate knowledge of the phenomena of life as a whole. It is remarkable that each of these writers seems to have been led, independently and contemporaneously, to invent the same name of "biology" for the science of the phenomena of life; and thus, following Buffon, to have recognized the essential unity of these phenomena, and their contradistinction from those of inanimate nature. And it is hard to say whether Lamarck or Treviranus has the priority in propounding the main thesis of the doctrine of evolution; for though the first volume of Treviranus's _Biologie_ appeared only in 1802, he says, in the preface to his later work, the _Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens_, dated 1831, that he wrote the first volume of the _Biologie_ "nearly five-and-thirty years ago," or about 1796.

Now, in 1794, there is evidence that Lamarck held doctrines which present a striking contrast to those which are to be found in the _Philosophie zoologique_, as the following passages show:--

"685. Quoique mon unique objet dans cet article n'ait ete que de traiter de la cause physique de l'entretien de la vie des etres organiques, malgre cela j'ai ose avancer en debutant, que l'existence de ces etres etonnants n'appartiennent nullement a la nature; que tout ce qu'on peut entendre par le mot _nature_, ne pouvoit donner la vie, c'est-a-dire, que toutes les qualites de la matiere, jointes a toutes les circonstances possibles, et meme a l'activite repandue dans l'univers, ne pouvaient point produire un etre muni du mouvement organique, capable de reproduire son semblable, et sujet a la mort.

"686. Tous les individus de cette nature, qui existent, proviennent d'individus semblables qui tous ensemble constituent l'espece entiere. Or, je crois qu'il est aussi impossible a l'homme de connoitre la cause physique du premier individu de chaque espece, que d'assigner aussi physiquement la cause de l'existence de la matiere ou de l'univers entier. C'est au moins ce que le resultat de mes connaissances et de mes reflexions me portent a penser. S'il existe beaucoup de varietes produites par l'effet des circonstances, ces varietes ne denaturent point les especes; mais on se trompe, sans doute souvent, en indiquant comme espece, ce qui n'est que variete; et alors je sens que cette erreur peut tirer a consequence dans les raisonnements que l'on fait sur cette matiere."[34]

The first three volumes of Treviranus's Biologie, which contains his general views of evolution, appeared between 1802 and 1805. The _Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivants_, which sketches out Lamarck's doctrines, was published in 1802; but the full development of his views in the _Philosophie zoologique_ did not take place until 1809.

The _Biologie_ and the _Philosophie zoologique_ are both very remarkable productions, and are still worthy of attentive study, but they fell upon evil times. The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in support of the traditionally respectable hypotheses of special creation and of catastrophism; and the wild speculations of the _Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe_ were held to be models of sound scientific thinking, while the really much more sober and philosophical hypotheses of the _Hydrogeologie_ were scouted. For many years it was the fashion to speak of Lamarck with ridicule, while Treviranus was altogether ignored.

Nevertheless, the work had been done. The conception of evolution was henceforward irrepressible, and it incessantly reappears, in one shape or another,[35] up to the year 1858, when Charles Darwin and A.R. Wallace published their _Theory of Natural Selection_. The _Origin of Species_ appeared in 1859; and thenceforward the doctrine of evolution assumed a position and acquired an importance which it never before possessed. In the _Origin of Species_, and in his other numerous and important contributions to the solution of the problem of biological evolution, Darwin confined himself to the discussion of the causes which have brought about the present condition of living matter, assuming such matter to have once come into existence. On the other hand, Spencer[36] and E. Haeckel[37] dealt with the whole problem of evolution. The profound and vigorous writings of Spencer embody the spirit of Descartes in the knowledge of our own day, and may be regarded as the _Principes de la philosophie_ of the 19th century; while, whatever hesitation may not unfrequently be felt by less daring minds in following Haeckel in many of his speculations, his attempt to systematize the doctrine of evolution and to exhibit its influence as the central thought of modern biology, cannot fail to have a far-reaching influence on the progress of science.

If we seek for the reason of the difference between the scientific position of the doctrine of evolution in the days of Lamarck and that which it occupies now, we shall find it in the great accumulation of facts, the several classes of which have been enumerated above, under the second to the eighth heads. For those which are grouped under the second to the seventh of these classes, respectively, have a clear significance on the hypothesis of evolution, while they are unintelligible if that hypothesis be denied. And those of the eighth group are not only unintelligible without the assumption of evolution, but can be proved never to be discordant with that hypothesis, while, in some cases, they are exactly such as the hypothesis requires. The demonstration of these assertions would require a volume, but the general nature of the evidence on which they rest may be briefly indicated.

2. The accurate investigation of the lowest forms of animal life, commenced by Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam, and continued by the remarkable labours of Reaumur, Abraham Trembley, Bonnet, and a host of other observers in the latter part of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries, drew the attention of biologists to the gradation in the complexity of organization which is presented by living beings, and culminated in the doctrine of the _echelle des etres_, so powerfully and clearly stated by Bonnet, and, before him, adumbrated by Locke and by Leibnitz. In the then state of knowledge, it appeared that all the species of animals and plants could be arranged in one series, in such a manner that, by insensible gradations, the mineral passed into the plant, the plant into the polype, the polype into the worm, and so, through gradually higher forms of life, to man, at the summit of the animated world.

But, as knowledge advanced, this conception ceased to be tenable in the crude form in which it was first put forward. Taking into account existing animals and plants alone, it became obvious that they fell into groups which were more or less sharply separated from one another; and, moreover, that even the species of a genus can hardly ever be arranged in linear series. Their natural resemblances and differences are only to be expressed by disposing them as if they were branches springing from a common hypothetical centre.

Lamarck, while affirming the verbal proposition that animals form a single series, was forced by his vast acquaintance with the details of zoology to limit the assertion to such a series as may be formed out of the abstractions constituted by the common characters of each group.[38]

Cuvier on anatomical, and Von Baer on embryological grounds, made the further step of proving that, even in this limited sense, animals cannot be arranged in a single series, but that there are several distinct plans of organization to be observed among them, no one of which, in its highest and most complicated modification, leads to any of the others.

The conclusions enunciated by Cuvier and Von Baer have been confirmed in principle by all subsequent research into the structure of animals and plants. But the effect of the adoption of these conclusions has been rather to substitute a new metaphor for that of Bonnet than to abolish the conception expressed by it. Instead of regarding living things as capable of arrangement in one series like the steps of a ladder, the results of modern investigation compel us to dispose them as if they were the twigs and branches of a tree. The ends of the twigs represent individuals, the smallest groups of twigs species, larger groups genera, and so on, until we arrive at the source of all these ramifications of the main branch, which is represented by a common plan of structure. At the present moment it is impossible to draw up any definition, based on broad anatomical or developmental characters, by which any one of Cuvier's great groups shall be separated from all the rest. On the contrary, the lower members of each tend to converge towards the lower members of all the others. The same may be said of the vegetable world. The apparently clear distinction between flowering and flowerless plants has been broken down by the series of gradations between the two exhibited by the _Lycopodiaceae_, _Rhizocarpeae_, and _Gymnospermeae_. The groups of _Fungi_, _Licheneae_ and _Algae_ have completely run into one another, and, when the lowest forms of each are alone considered, even the animal and vegetable kingdoms cease to have a definite frontier.

If it is permissible to speak of the relations of living forms to one another metaphorically, the similitude chosen must undoubtedly be that of a common root, whence two main trunks, one representing the vegetable and one the animal world, spring; and, each dividing into a few main branches, these subdivide into multitudes of branchlets and these into smaller groups of twigs.

As Lamarck has well said:--[39]

"Il n'y a que ceux qui se sont longtemps et fortement occupes de la determination des especes, et qui ont consulte de riches collections, qui peuvent savoir jusqu'a quel point les _especes_, parmi les corps vivants, se fondent les unes dans les autres, et qui ont pu se convaincre que, dans les parties ou nous voyons des _especes_ isolees, cela n'est ainsi que parcequ'il nous en manque d'autres qui en sont plus voisines et que nous n'avons pas encore recueillies.

"Je ne veux pas dire pour cela que les animaux qui existent forment une serie tres-simple et partout egalement nuancee; mais je dis qu'ils forment une serie rameuse, irregulierement graduee et qui n'a point de discontinuite dans ses parties, ou qui, du moins, n'en a toujours pas eu, s'il est vrai que, par suite de quelques especes perdues, il s'en trouve quelque part. Il en resulte que les _especes_ qui terminent chaque rameau de la serie generale tiennent, au moins d'un cote, a d'autres especes voisines qui se nuancent avec elles. Voila ce que l'etat bien connu des choses me met maintenant a portee de demontrer. Je n'ai besoin d'aucune hypothese ni d'aucune supposition pour cela: j'en atteste tous les naturalistes observateurs."

3. In a remarkable essay[40] Meckel remarks:--

"There is no good physiologist who has not been struck by the observation that the original form of all organisms is one and the same, and that out of this one form, all, the lowest as well as the highest, are developed in such a manner that the latter pass through the permanent forms of the former as transitory stages. Aristotle, Haller, Harvey, Kielmeyer, Autenrieth, and many others have either made this observation incidentally, or, especially the latter, have drawn particular attention to it, and drawn therefrom results of permanent importance for physiology."

Meckel proceeds to exemplify the thesis, that the lower forms of animals represent stages in the course of the development of the higher, with a large series of illustrations.

After comparing the salamanders and the perenni-branchiate _Urodela_ with the tadpoles and the frogs, and enunciating the law that the more highly any animal is organized the more quickly does it pass through the lower stages, Meckel goes on to say:--

"From these lowest Vertebrata to the highest, and to the highest forms among these, the comparison between the embryonic conditions of the higher animals and the adult states of the lower can be more completely and thoroughly instituted than if the survey is extended to the Invertebrata, inasmuch as the latter are in many respects constructed upon an altogether too dissimilar type; indeed they often differ from one another far more than the lowest vertebrate does from the highest mammal; yet the following pages will show that the comparison may be also extended to them with interest. In fact, there is a period when, as Aristotle long ago said, the embryo of the highest animal has the form of a mere worm, and, devoid of internal and external organization, is merely an almost structureless lump of polype-substance. Notwithstanding the origin of organs, it still for a certain time, by reason of its want of an internal bony skeleton, remains worm and mollusk, and only later enters into the series of the Vertebrata, although traces of the vertebral column even in the earliest periods testify its claim to a place in that series."--Op. cit. pp. 4, 5.

If Meckel's proposition is so far qualified, that the comparison of adult with embryonic forms is restricted within the limits of one type of organization; and if it is further recollected, that the resemblance between the permanent lower form and the embryonic stage of a higher form is not special but general, it is in entire accordance with modern embryology; although there is no branch of biology which has grown so largely, and improved its methods so much since Meckel's time, as this. In its original form, the doctrine of "arrest of development," as advocated by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Serres, was no doubt an over-statement of the case. It is not true, for example, that a fish is a reptile arrested in its development, or that a reptile was ever a fish; but it is true that the reptile embryo, at one stage of its development, is an organism which, if it had an independent existence, must be classified among fishes; and all the organs of the reptile pass, in the course of their development, through conditions which are closely analogous to those which are permanent in some fishes.

4. That branch of biology which is termed morphology is a commentary upon, and expansion of, the proposition that widely different animals or plants, and widely different parts of animals or plants, are constructed upon the same plan. From the rough comparison of the skeleton of a bird with that of a man by Pierre Delon, in the 16th century (to go no further back), down to the theory of the limbs and the theory of the skull at the present day; or, from the first demonstration of the homologies of the parts of a flower by C.F. Wolff, to the present elaborate analysis of the floral organs, morphology exhibits a continual advance towards the demonstration of a fundamental unity among the seeming diversities of living structures. And this demonstration has been completed by the final establishment of the cell theory (see CYTOLOGY), which involves the admission of a primitive conformity, not only of all the elementary structures in animals and plants respectively, but of those in the one of these great divisions of living things with those in the other. No _a priori_ difficulty can be said to stand in the way of evolution, when it can be shown that all animals and all plants proceed by modes of development, which are similar in principle, from a fundamental protoplasmic material.

5. The innumerable cases of structures, which are rudimentary and apparently useless, in species, the close allies of which possess well-developed and functionally important homologous structures, are readily intelligible on the theory of evolution, while it is hard to conceive their _raison d'etre_ on any other hypothesis. However, a cautious reasoner will probably rather explain such cases deductively from the doctrine of evolution than endeavour to support the doctrine of evolution by them. For it is almost impossible to prove that any structure, however rudimentary, is useless--that is to say, that it plays no part whatever in the economy; and, if it is in the slightest degree useful, there is no reason why, on the hypothesis of direct creation, it should not have been created. Nevertheless; double-edged as is the argument from rudimentary organs, there is probably none which has produced a greater effect in promoting the general acceptance of the theory of evolution.

6. The older advocates of evolution sought for the causes of the process exclusively in the influence of varying conditions, such as climate and station, or hybridization, upon living forms. Even Treviranus has got no further than this point. Lamarck introduced the conception of the action of an animal on itself as a factor in producing modification. Starting from the well-known fact that the habitual use of a limb tends to develop the muscles of the limb, and to produce a greater and greater facility in using it, he made the general assumption that the effort of an animal to exert an organ in a given direction tends to develop the organ in that direction. But a little consideration showed that, though Lamarck had seized what, as far as it goes, is a true cause of modification, it is a cause the actual effects of which are wholly inadequate to account for any considerable modification in animals, and which can have no influence at all in the vegetable world; and probably nothing contributed so much to discredit evolution, in the early part of the 19th century, as the floods of easy ridicule which were poured upon this part of Lamarck's speculation. The theory of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, was suggested by William Charles Wells in 1813, and further elaborated by Patrick Matthew in 1831. But the pregnant suggestions of these writers remained practically unnoticed and forgotten, until the theory was independently devised and promulgated by Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in 1858, and the effect of its publication was immediate and profound.

Those who were unwilling to accept evolution, without better grounds than such as are offered by Lamarck, and who therefore preferred to suspend their judgment on the question, found in the principle of selective breeding, pursued in all its applications with marvellous knowledge and skill by Darwin, a valid explanation of the occurrence of varieties and races; and they saw clearly that, if the explanation would apply to species, it would not only solve the problem of their evolution, but that it would account for the facts of teleology, as well as for those of morphology; and for the persistence of some forms of life unchanged through long epochs of time, while others undergo comparatively rapid metamorphosis.

How far "natural selection" suffices for the production of species remains to be seen. Few can doubt that, if not the whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation; and that it must play a great part in the sorting out of varieties into those which are transitory and those which are permanent.

But the causes and conditions of variation have yet to be thoroughly explored; and the importance of natural selection will not be impaired, even if further inquiries should prove that variability is definite, and is determined in certain directions rather than in others, by conditions inherent in that which varies. It is quite conceivable that every species tends to produce varieties of a limited number and kind, and that the effect of natural selection is to favour the development of some of these, while it opposes the development of others along their predetermined lines of modification.

7. No truths brought to light by biological investigation were better calculated to inspire distrust of the dogmas intruded upon science in the name of theology than those which relate to the distribution of animals and plants on the surface of the earth. Very skilful accommodation was needful, if the limitation of sloths to South America, and of the _Ornithorhynchus_ to Australia, was to be reconciled with the literal interpretation of the history of the Deluge; and, with the establishment of the existence of distinct provinces of distribution, any serious belief in the peopling of the world by migration from Mount Ararat came to an end.

Under these circumstances, only one alternative was left for those who denied the occurrence of evolution; namely, the supposition that the characteristic animals and plants of each great province were created, as such, within the limits in which, we find them. And as the hypothesis of "specific centres," thus formulated, was heterodox from the theological point of view, and unintelligible under its scientific aspect, it may be passed over without further notice, as a phase of transition from the creational to the evolutional hypothesis.

8. In fact, the strongest and most conclusive arguments in favour of evolution are those which are based upon the facts of geographical, taken in conjunction with those of geological, distribution.

Both Darwin and Wallace lay great stress on the close relation which obtains between the existing fauna of any region and that of the immediately antecedent geological epoch in the same region; and rightly, for it is in truth inconceivable that there should be no genetic connexion between the two. It is possible to put into words the proposition, that all the animals and plants of each geological epoch were annihilated, and that a new set of very similar forms was created for the next epoch, but it may be doubted if any one who ever tried to form a distinct mental image of this process of spontaneous generation on the grandest scale ever really succeeded in realizing it.

In later years the attention of the best palaeontologists has been withdrawn from the hodman's work of making "new species" of fossils, to the scientific task of completing our knowledge of individual species, and tracing out the succession of the forms presented by any given type in time.

_Evolution at the Beginning of the 20th century._--Since Huxley and Sully wrote their masterly essays in the 9th edition of this encyclopaedia, the doctrine of evolution has outgrown the trammels of controversy and has been accepted as a fundamental principle. Writers on biological subjects no longer have to waste space in weighing evolution against this or that philosophical theory or religious tradition; philosophical writers have frankly accepted it, and the supporters of religious tradition have made broad their phylacteries to write on them the new words. A closer scrutiny of the writers of all ages who preceded Charles Darwin, and, in particular, the light thrown back from Darwin on the earlier writings of Herbert Spencer, have made plain that without Darwin the world by this time might have come to a general acceptance of evolution; but it seems established as a historical fact that the world has come to accept evolution, first, because of Darwin's theory of natural selection, and second, because of Darwin's exposition of the evidence for the actual occurrence of organic evolution. The evidence as set out by Darwin has been added to enormously; new knowledge has in many cases altered our conceptions of the mode of the actual process of evolution, and from time to time a varying stress has been laid on what are known as the purely Darwinian factors in the theory. The balance of these tendencies has been against the attachment of great importance to sexual selection, and in favour of attaching a great importance to natural selection; but the dominant feature in the recent history of the theory has been its universal acceptance and the recognition that this general acceptance has come from the stimulus given by Darwin.

Ontogeny.

A change has taken place in the use of the word evolution. Huxley, following historical custom, devoted one section of his article to the "Evolution of the Individual." The facts and theories respecting this are now discussed under such headings as EMBRYOLOGY; HEREDITY; VARIATION AND SELECTION; under these headings must be sought information on the important recent modifications with regard to the theory of the relation between the development of the individual and the development of the race, the part played by the environment on the individual, and the modern developments of the old quarrel between evolution and epigenesis. The most striking general change has been against seeing in the facts of ontogeny any direct evidence as to phylogeny. The general proposition as to a parallelism between individual and ancestral development is no doubt indisputable, but extended knowledge of the very different ontogenetic histories of closely allied forms has led us to a much fuller conception of the mode in which stages in embryonic and larval history have been modified in relation to their surroundings, and to a consequent reluctance to attach detailed importance to the embryological argument for evolution.

Phylogeny.

The vast bulk of botanical and zoological work on living and extinct forms published during the last quarter of the 19th century increased almost beyond all expectation the evidence for the fact of evolution. The discovery of a single fossil creature in a geological stratum of a wrong period, the detection of a single anatomical or physiological fact irreconcilable with origin by descent with modification, would have been destructive of the theory and would have made the reputation of the observer. But in the prodigious number of supporting discoveries that have been made no single negative factor has appeared, and the evolution from their predecessors of the forms of life existing now or at any other period must be taken as proved. It is necessary to notice, however, that although the general course of the stream of life is certain, there is not the same certainty as to the actual individual pedigrees of the existing forms. In the attempts to place existing creatures in approximately phylogenetic order, a striking change, due to a more logical consideration of the process of evolution, has become established and is already resolving many of the earlier difficulties and banishing from the more recent tables the numerous hypothetical intermediate forms so familiar in the older phylogenetic trees. The older method was to attempt the comparison between the highest member of a lower group and the lowest member of a higher group--to suppose, for example, that the gorilla and the chimpanzee, the highest members of the apes, were the existing representatives of the ancestors of man and to compare these forms with the lowest members of the human race. Such a comparison is necessarily illogical, as the existing apes are separated from the common ancestor by at least as large a number of generations as separate it from any of the forms of existing man. In the natural process of growth, the gap must necessarily be wider between the summits of the twigs than lower down, and, instead of imagining "missing links," it is necessary to trace each separate branch as low down as possible, and to institute the comparisons between the lowest points that can be reached. The method is simply the logical result of the fact that every existing form of life stands at the summit of a long branch of the whole tree of life. A due consideration of it leads to the curious paradox that if any two animals be compared, the zoologically lower will be separated from the common ancestor by a larger number of generations, since, on the average, sexual maturity is reached more quickly by the lower form. Naturally very many other factors have to be considered, but this alone is a sufficient reason to restrain attempts to place existing forms in linear phylogenetic series. In embryology the method finds its expression in the limitation of comparisons to the corresponding stages of low and high forms and the exclusion of the comparisons between the adult stages of low forms and the embryonic stages of higher forms. Another expression of the same method, due to Cope, and specially valuable to the taxonomist, is that when the relationship between orders is being considered, characters of subordinal rank must be neglected. It must not be supposed that earlier writers all neglected this method, or still less that all writers now employ it, but merely that formerly it was frequently overlooked by the best writers, and now is neglected only by the worst. The result is, on the one hand, a clearing away of much fantastic phylogeny, on the other, an enormous reduction of the supposed gaps between groups.

Comparative anatomy.

There has been a renewed activity in the study of existing forms from the point of view of obtaining evidence as to the nature and origin of species. Comparative anatomists have been learning to refrain from basing the diagnosis of a species, or the description of the condition of an organ, on the evidence of a single specimen. Naturalists who deal specially with museum collections have been compelled, it is true, for other reasons to attach an increasing importance to what is called the type specimen, but they find that this insistence on the individual, although invaluable from the point of view of recording species, is unsatisfactory from the point of view of scientific zoology; and propositions for the amelioration of this condition of affairs range from a refusal of Linnaean nomenclature in such cases, to the institution of a division between _master species_ for such species as have been properly revised by the comparative morphologist, and _provisional species_ for such species as have been provisionally registered by those working at collections. Those who work with living forms of which it is possible to obtain a large number of specimens, and those who make revisions of the provisional species of palaeontologists, are slowly coming to some such conception as that a species is the abstract central point around which a group of variations oscillate, and that the peripheral oscillations of one species may even overlap those of an allied species. It is plain that we have moved far from the connotation and denotation of the word _species_ at the time when Darwin began to discuss the origin of species, and that the movement, on the one hand, tends to simplify the problem philosophically, and, on the other, to make it difficult for the amateur theorist.

The conception of evolution is being applied more rigidly to the comparative anatomy of organs and systems of organs. When a series of the modifications of an anatomical structure has been sufficiently examined, it is frequently possible to decide that one particular condition is primitive, ancestral or central, and that the other conditions have been derived from it. Such a condition has been termed, with regard to the group of animals or plants the organs of which are being studied, _archecentric_. The possession of the character in the archecentric condition in (say) two of the members of the group does not indicate that these two members are more nearly related to one another than they are to other members of the group; the archecentric condition is part of the common heritage of all the members of the group, and may be retained by any. On the other hand, when the ancestral condition is modified, it may be regarded as having moved outwards along some radius from the archecentric condition. Such modified conditions have been termed _apocentric_. It is obvious that the mere apocentricity of a character can be no guide to the affinities of its possessor. It is necessary to determine if the modification be a simple change that might have occurred in independent cases, in fact if it be a multiradial apocentricity, or if it involved intricate and precisely combined anatomical changes that we could not expect to occur twice independently; that is to say, if it be a uniradial apocentricity. Multiradial apocentricities lie at the root of many of the phenomena that have been grouped under the designation _convergence_. Especially in the case of manifest adaptations, organs possessed by creatures far apart genealogically may be moulded into conditions that are extremely alike. Sir E. Ray Lankester's term, _homoplasy_, has passed into currency as designating such cases where different genetic material has been pressed by similar conditions into similar moulds. These may be called heterogeneous homoplasies, but it is necessary to recognize the existence of homogeneous homoplasies, here called multiradial apocentricities. A complex apocentric modification of a kind which we cannot imagine to have been repeated independently, and which is to be designated as uniradial, frequently forms a new centre around which new diverging modifications are produced. With reference to any particular group of forms such a new centre of modification may be termed a _metacentre_, and it is plain that the archecentre of the whole group is a metacentre of the larger group of which the group under consideration is a branch. Thus, for instance, the archecentric condition of any Avian structure is a metacentre of the Sauropsidan stem. A form of apocentricity extremely common and often perplexing may be termed _pseudocentric_; in such a condition there is an apparent simplicity that reveals its secondary nature by some small and apparently meaningless complexity.

Bionomics.

Another group of investigations that seems to play an important part in the future development of the theory of evolution relates to the study of what is known as organic symmetry. The differentiations of structure that characterize animals and plants are being shown to be orderly and definite in many respects; the relations of the various parts to one another and to the whole, the modes of repetition of parts, and the series of changes that occur in groups of repeated parts appear to be to a certain extent inevitable, to depend on the nature of the living material itself and on the necessary conditions of its growth. Closely allied to the study of symmetry is the study of the direct effect of the circumambient media on embryonic young and adult stages of living beings (see EMBRYOLOGY: _Physiology_; HEREDITY; and VARIATION AND SELECTION), and a still larger number of observers have added to our knowledge of these. It is impossible here to give even a list of the names of the many observers who in recent times have made empirical study of the effects of growth-forces and of the symmetrical limitations and definitions of growth. It is to be noticed, however, that, even after such phenomena have been properly grouped and designated under Greek names as laws of organic growth, they have not become explanations of the series of facts they correlate. Their importance in the theory of evolution is none the less very great. In the first place, they lessen the number of separate facts to be explained; in the second, they limit the field within which explanation must be sought, since, for instance, if a particular mode of repetition of parts occur in mosses, in flowering-plants, in beetles and in elephants, the seeker of ultimate explanations may exclude from the field of his inquiry all the conditions individual to these different organic forms, and confine himself only to what is common to all of them; that is to say, practically only the living material and its environment. The prosecution of such inquiries is beginning to make unnecessary much ingenious speculation of a kind that was prominent from 1880 to 1900; much futile effort has been wasted in the endeavour to find on Darwinian principles special "selection-values" for phenomena the universality of which places them outside the possibility of having relations with the particular conditions of particular organisms. On the other hand, many of those who have been specially successful in grouping diverse phenomena under empirical generalizations have erred logically in posing their generalizations against such a _vera causa_ as the preservation of favoured individuals and races. The thirty years which followed the publication of the _Origin of Species_ were characterized chiefly by anatomical and embryological work; since then there has been no diminution in anatomical and embryological enthusiasm, but many of the continually increasing body of investigators have turned again to bionomical work. Inasmuch as Lamarck attempted to frame a theory of evolution in which the principle of natural selection had no part, the interpretation placed on their work by many bionomical investigators recalls the theories of Lamarck, and the name _Neo-Lamarckism_ has been used of such a school of biologists, particularly active in America. The weakness of the Neo-Lamarckian view lies in its interpretation of heredity; its strength lies in its zealous study of the living world and the detection therein of proximate empirical laws, a strength shared by very many bionomical investigations, the authors of which would prefer to call themselves Darwinians, or to leave themselves without sectarian designation.

Biometrics.

Statistical inquiry into the facts of life has long been employed, and in particular Francis Galton, within the Darwinian period, has advocated its employment and developed its methods. Within quite recent years, however, a special school has arisen with the main object of treating the processes of evolution quantitatively. Here it is right to speak of Karl Pearson as a pioneer of notable importance. It has been the habit of biologists to use the terms variation, selection, elimination, correlation and so forth, vaguely; the new school, which has been strongly reinforced from the side of physical science, insists on quantitative measurements of the terms. When the anatomist says that one race is characterized by long heads, another by round heads, the biometricist demands numbers and percentages. When an organ is stated to be variable, the biometricist demands statistics to show the range of the variations and the mode of their distribution. When a character is said to be favoured by natural selection, the biometricist demands investigation of the death-rate of individuals with or without the character. When a character is said to be transmitted, or to be correlated with another character, the biometricist declares the statement valueless without numerical estimations of the inheritance or correlation. The subject is still so new, and its technical methods (see VARIATION AND SELECTION) have as yet spread so little beyond the group which is formulating and defining them, that it is difficult to do more than guess at the importance of the results likely to be gained. Enough, however, has already been done to show the vast importance of the method in grouping and codifying the empirical facts of life, and in so preparing the way for the investigation of ultimate "causes." The chief pitfall appears to be the tendency to attach more meaning to the results than from their nature they can bear. The ultimate value of numerical inquiries must depend on the equivalence of the units on which they are based. Many of the characters that up to the present have been dealt with by biometrical inquiry are obviously composite. The height or length of the arm of a human being, for instance, is the result of many factors, some inherent, some due to environment, and until these have been sifted out, numerical laws of inheritance or of correlation can have no more than an empirical value. The analysis of composite characters into their indivisible units and statistical inquiry into the behaviour of the units would seem to be a necessary part of biometric investigation, and one to which much further attention will have to be paid.

Segregation.

It is well known that Darwin was deeply impressed by differences in flora and fauna, which seemed to be functions of locality, and not the result of obvious dissimilarities of environment. A.R. Wallace's studies of island life, and the work of many different observers on local races of animals and plants, marine, fluviatile and terrestrial, have brought about a conception of segregation as apart from differences of environment as being one of the factors in the differentiation of living forms. The segregation may be geographical, or may be the result of preferential mating, or of seasonal mating, and its effects plainly can be made no more of than proximate or empirical laws of differentiation, of great importance in codifying and simplifying the facts to be explained. The minute attention paid by modern systematists to the exact localities of subspecies and races is bringing together a vast store of facts which will throw further light on the problem of segregation, but the difficulty of utilizing these facts is increased by an unfortunate tendency to make locality itself one of the diagnostic characters.

Bathmism.

Consideration of phylogenetic series, especially from the palaeontological side, has led many writers to the conception that there is something of the nature of a growth-force inherent in organisms and tending inevitably towards divergent evolution. It is suggested that even in the absence of modification produced by any possible Darwinian or Lamarckian factors, that even in a neutral environment, divergent evolution of some kind would have occurred. The conception is necessarily somewhat hazy, but the words _bathmism_ and _bathmic Evolution_ have been employed by a number of writers for some such conception. Closely connected with it, and probably underlying many of the facts which have led to it, is a more definite group of ideas that may be brought together under the phrase "phylogenetic limitation of variation." In its simplest form, this phrase implies such an obvious fact as that whatever be the future development of, say, existing cockroaches, it will be on lines determined by the present structure of these creatures. In a more general way, the phrase implies that at each successive branching of the tree of life, the branches become more specialized, more defined, and, in a sense, more limited. The full implications of the group of ideas require, and are likely to receive, much attention in the immediate future of biological investigation, but it is enough at present to point out that until the more obvious lines of inquiry have been opened out much more fully, we cannot be in a position to guess at the existence of a residuum, for which such a metaphysical conception as bathmism would serve even as a convenient disguise for ignorance.

Almost every side of zoology has contributed to the theory of evolution, but of special importance are the facts and theories associated with the names of Gregor Mendel, A. Weismann and Hugo de Vries. These are discussed under the headings HEREDITY; MENDELISM; and VARIATION AND SELECTION. It has been a feature of great promise in recent contributions to the theory of evolution, that such contributions have received attention almost directly in proportion to the new methods of observation and the new series of facts with which they have come. Those have found little favour who brought to the debate only formal criticisms or amplifications of the Darwinian arguments, or re-marshallings of the Darwinian facts, however ably conducted. The time has not yet come for the attempt to synthesize the results of the many different and often apparently antagonistic groups of workers. The great work that is going on is the simplification of the facts to be explained by grouping them under empirical laws; and the most general statement relating to these that can yet be made is that no single one of these laws has as yet shown signs of taking rank as a _vera causa_ comparable with the Darwinian principle of natural selection.

For evolution in relation to society see SOCIOLOGY.

REFERENCES.--Practically, every botanical and zoological publication of recent date has its bearing on evolution. The following are a few of the more general works: Bateson, _Materials for the Study of Variation_; Bunge, _Vitalismus und Mechanismus_; Cope, _Origin of the Fittest_, _Primary Factors of Organic Evolution_, _Darwin's Life and Letters_; H. de Vries, _Species and Varieties and their Origin by Mutation_; Eimer, _Organic Evolution_; Gulick, "Divergent Evolution through Cumulative Segregation," _Jour. Linn. Soc._ xx.; Haacke, _Schopfung des Menschen_; Mitchell, "Valuation of Zoological Characters," _Trans. Linn. Soc._ viii. pt. 7; Pearson, _Grammar of Science_; Romanes, _Darwin and after Darwin_; Sedgwick, Presidential Address to Section Zoology, _Brit. Ass. Rep. 1899_; Wallace, _Darwinism_; Weismann, _The Germ-Plasm_. Further references of great value will be found in the works of Bateson and Pearson referred to above, and in the annual volumes of the _Zoological Record_, particularly under the head "General Subject." (P. C. M.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This is brought out by F. Lassalle, _Die Philosophie Herakleitos_, p. 126.

[2] Zeller says that through this distinction Aristotle first made possible the idea of development.

[3] See this well brought out in G.H. Lewes's _Aristotle_, p. 187.

[4] Grote calls attention to the contrast between Plato's and Aristotle's way of conceiving the gradations of mind (_Aristotle_, ii. 171).

[5] Zeller observes that this scale of decreasing perfection is a necessary consequence of the idea of a transcendent deity.

[6] Melanges de philosophie juive et arabe, p. 225.

[7] Yet he leaves open the question whether the Deity has annexed thought to matter as a faculty, or whether it rests on a distinct spiritual principle.

[8] Locke half playfully touches on certain monsters, with respect to which it is difficult to determine whether they ought to be called men. (_Essay_, book iii. ch. vi. sect. 26, 27.)

[9] A similar coincidence between the teleological and the modern evolutional way of viewing things is to be met with in Locke's account of the use of pain in relation to the preservation of our being (bk. ii. ch. vii. sect. 4).

[10] _Philosophy of History_ (1893), p. 103, where an interesting sketch of the growth of the idea of progress is to be found.

[11] G.H. Lewes points out that Leibnitz is inconsistent in his account of the intelligence of man in relation to that of lower animals, since when answering Locke he no longer regards these as differing in degree only.

[12] Both Lewes and du Bois Reymond have brought out the points of contact between Leibnitz's theory of monads and modern biological speculations (_Hist. of Phil._ ii. 287, and _Leibnitzsche Gedanken in der modernen Naturwissenschaft_, p. 23 seq.).

[13] For Herder's position in relation to the modern doctrine of evolution see F. von Barenbach's _Herder als Vorganger Darwins_, a work which tends to exaggerate the proximity of the two writers.

[14] Kant held it probable that other planets besides our earth are inhabited, and that their inhabitants form a scale of beings, their perfection increasing with the distance of the planet which they inhabit from the sun.

[15] Kant calls the doctrine of the transmutation of species "a hazardous fancy of the reason." Yet, as Strauss and others have shown, Kant's mind betrayed a decided leaning at times to a more mechanical conception of organic forms as related by descent.

[16] Hegel somewhere says that the question of the eternal duration of the world is unanswerable: time as well as space can be predicated of finitudes only.

[17] _The Exercitationes de generatione animalium_, which Dr George Ent extracted from him and published in 1651.

[18] _De generatione animalium_, lib. ii. cap. x.

[19] _De generatione animalium_, lib. ii. cap. iv.

[20] "Cependant, pour revenir aux formes ordinaires ou aux ames materielles, cette duree qu'il leur faut attribuer, a la place de celle qu'on avoit attribuee aux atomes pourroit faire douter si elles ne vont pas de corps en corps; ce qui seroit la metempsychose, a peu pres comme quelques philosophes ont cru la transmission du mouvement et celle des especes. Mais cette imagination est bien eloignee de la nature des choses. Il n'y a point de tel passage; et c'est ici ou les transformations de Messieurs Swammerdam, Malpighi, et Leewenhoek, qui sont des plus excellens observateurs de notre tems, sont venues a mon secours et m'ont fait admettre plus aisement, que l'animal, et toute autre substance organisee ne commence point lorsque nous le croyons, et que sa generation apparente n'est qu'un developpement et une espece d'augmentation. Aussi ai-je remarque que l'auteur de la _Recherche de la verite_, M. Regis, M. Hartsoeker, et d'autres habiles hommes n'ont pas ete fort eloignes de ce sentiment." Leibnitz, _Systeme nouveau de la nature_ (1695). The doctrine of "Emboitement" is contained in the _Considerations sur le principe de vie_ (1705); the preface to the _Theodicee_ (1710); and the _Principes de la nature et de la grace_ (S 6) (1718).

[21] "Il est vrai que la pensee la plus raisonnable et la plus conforme a l'experience sur cette question tres difficile de la formation du foetus; c'est que les enfans sont deja presque tout formes avant meme l'action par laquelle ils sont concus; et que leurs meres ne font que leur donner l'accroissement ordinaire dans le temps de la grossesse." _De la recherche de la verite_, livre ii. chap. vii. p. 334 (7th ed., 1721).

[22] _Considerations sur les corps organises_, chap. x.

[23] Bonnet had the courage of his opinions, and in the _Palingenesie philosophique_, part vi. chap, iv., he develops a hypothesis which he terms "evolution naturelle"; and which, making allowance for his peculiar views of the nature of generation, bears no small resemblance to what is understood by "evolution" at the present day:--

"Si la volonte divine a cree par un seul Acte l'Universalite des etres, d'ou venoient ces plantes et ces animaux dont Moyse nous decrit la Production au troisieme et au cinquieme jour du renouvellement de notre monde?

"Abuserois-je de la liberte de conjectures si je disois, que les Plantes et les Animaux qui existent aujourd'hui sont parvenus par une sorte d'evolution naturelle des Etres organises qui peuplaient ce premier Monde, sorti immediatement des MAINS du CREATEUR?...

"Ne supposons que trois revolutions. La Terre vient de sortir des MAINS du CREATEUR. Des causes preparees par sa Sagesse font developper de toutes parts les Germes. Les Etres organises commencent a jouir de l'existence. Ils etoient probablement alors bien differens de ce qu'ils sont aujourd'hui. Ils l'etoient autant que ce premier Monde differoit de celui que nous habitons. Nous manquons de moyens pour juger de ces dissemblances, et peut-etre que le plus habile Naturaliste qui auroit ete place dans ce premier Monde y auroit entierement meconnu nos Plantes et nos Animaux."

[24] "Ce mot (germe) ne designera pas seulement un corps organise _reduit en petit_; il designera encore toute espece de _preformation originelle dont un Tout organique peut resulter comme de son principe immediat."--Palingenesie philosophique_, part. x. chap. ii.

[25] "M. Cuvier considerant que tous les etres organises sont derives de parens, et ne voyant dans la nature aucune force capable de produire l'organisation, croyait a la pre-existence des germes; non pas a la pre-existence d'un etre tout forme, puisqu'il est bien evident que ce n'est que par des developpemens successifs que l'etre acquiert sa forme; mais, si l'on peut s'exprimer ainsi, a la pre-existence du radical de l'etre, radical qui existe avant que la serie des evolutions ne commence, et qui remonte certainement, suivant la belle observation de Bonnet, a plusieurs generations."--Laurillard, _Eloge de Cuvier_, note 12.

[26] _Histoire naturelle_, tom. ii. ed. ii. (1750), p. 350.

[27] _Ibid._ p. 351.

[28] See particularly Buffon, l.c. p. 41.

[29] As Buffon has well said:--"L'idee de ramener l'explication de tous les phenomenes a des principes mecaniques est assurement grande et belle, ce pas est le plus hardi qu'on peut faire en philosophie, et c'est Descartes qui l'a fait."--l.c. p. 50.

[30] _Principes de la philosophie_, Troisieme partie, S 45.

[31] _Ethices_, Pars tertia, Praefatio.

[32] _Systeme de la Nature. Essai sur la formation des corps organises_, 1751, xiv.

[33] _Considerations philosophiques sur la gradation naturelle des formes de l'etre; ou les essais de la nature qui apprend a faire l'homme_ (1768).

[34] _Recherches sur les causes des principaux faits physiques_, par J.B. Lamarck. Paris. Seconde annee de la Republique. In the preface, Lamarck says that the work was written in 1776, and presented to the Academy in 1780; but it was not published before 1794, and at that time it presumably expressed Lamarck's mature views. It would be interesting to know what brought about the change of opinion manifested in the _Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivants_, published only seven years later.

[35] See the "Historical Sketch" prefixed to the last edition of the _Origin of Species_.

[36] _First Principles and Principles of Biology_ (1860-1864).

[37] _Generelle Morphologie_ (1866).

[38] "Il s'agit donc de prouver que la serie qui constitute l'echelle animale reside essentiellement dans la distribution des masses principals qui la composent et non dans celle des especes ni meme toujours dans celle des genres."--_Phil. zoologique_, chap. v.

[39] _Philosophie zoologique_, premiere partie, chap. iii.

[40] "Entwurf einer Darstellung der zwischen dem Embryozustande der hoheren Thiere und dem per manenten der niederen stattfindenden Parallele," _Beytrage zur vergleichenden Anatomie_, Bd. ii. 1811.

EVORA, the capital of an administrative district in the province of Alemtejo, Portugal; 72 m. E. by S. of Lisbon, on the Casa Branca-Evora-Elvas railway. Pop. (1900) 16,020. Evora occupies a fertile valley enclosed by low hills. It is surrounded by ramparts flanked with towers, and is further defended by two forts; but the neglected condition of these, combined with the narrow arcaded streets and crumbling walls of Roman or Moorish masonry, gives the city an appearance corresponding with its real antiquity. Evora is the see of an archbishop, and has several churches, convents and hospitals, barracks, a diocesan school and a museum. A university, founded in 1550, was abolished on the expulsion of the Jesuits in the 18th century. The cathedral, originally a Romanesque building erected 1186-1204, was restored in Gothic style about 1400; its richly decorated chancel was added in 1761. The church of Sao Francisco (1507-1525) is a good example of the blended Moorish and Gothic architecture known as Manoellian. The art gallery, formerly the archbishop's palace, contains a collection of Portuguese and early Flemish paintings. An ancient tower, and the so-called aqueduct of Sertorius, 9 m. long, have been partly demolished to make room for the market-square, in which one of the largest fairs in Portugal is held at midsummer. Both tower and aqueduct were long believed to have been of Roman origin, but are now known to have been constructed about 1540-1555 in the reign of John III., at the instance of an antiquary named Resende. The aqueduct was probably constructed on the site of the old Roman one. A small Roman temple is used as a public library; it is usually known as the temple of Diana, a name for which no valid authority exists. Evora is of little commercial importance, except as an agricultural centre, but its neighbourhood is famous for its mules and abounds in cork-woods; there are also mines of iron, copper, and asbestos and marble quarries.

Under its original name of _Ebora_, the city was from 80 to 72 B.C. the headquarters of Sertorius, and it long remained an important Roman military station. It was called _Liberalitas Juliae_ on account of certain municipal privileges bestowed on it by Julius Caesar (c. 100-44 B.C.). Its bishopric, founded in the 5th century, was raised to an archbishopric in the 16th. In 712 Evora was conquered by the Moors, who named it _Jabura_; and it was only retaken in 1166. From 1663 to 1665 it was held by the Spaniards. In 1832 Dom Miguel, retreating before Dom Pedro, took refuge in Evora; and here was signed the convention of Evora, by which he was banished. (See PORTUGAL.)

The administrative district of Evora coincides with the central part of Alemtejo (q.v.); pop. (1900) 128,062; area, 2856 sq. m.

EVREUX, a town of north-western France, capital of the department of Eure, 67 m. W.N.W. of Paris on the Western railway to Cherbourg. Pop. (1906) town, 13,773; commune, 18,971. Situated in the pleasant valley of the Iton, arms of which traverse it, the town, on the south, slopes up toward the public gardens and the railway station. It is the seat of a bishop, and its cathedral is one of the largest and finest in France. Part of the lower portion of the nave dates from the 11th century; the west facade with its two ungainly towers is, for the most part, the work of the late Renaissance, and various styles of the intervening period are represented in the rest of the church. A thorough restoration was completed in 1896. The elaborate north transept and portal are in the flamboyant Gothic; the choir, the finest part of the interior, is in an earlier Gothic style. Cardinal de la Balue, bishop of Evreux in the latter half of the 15th century, constructed the octagonal central tower, with its elegant spire; to him is also due the Lady chapel, which is remarkable for some finely preserved stained glass. Two rose windows in the transepts and the carved wooden screens of the side chapels are masterpieces of 16th-century workmanship. The episcopal palace, a building of the 15th century, adjoins the south side of the cathedral. An interesting belfry, facing the handsome modern town hall, dates from the 15th century. The church of St Taurin, in part Romanesque, has a choir of the 14th century and other portions of later date; it contains the shrine of St Taurin, a work of the 13th century. At Vieil Evreux, 3-1/2 m. south-east of the town, the remains of a Roman theatre, a palace, baths and an aqueduct have been discovered, as well as various relics which are now deposited in the museum of Evreux. Evreux is the seat of a prefect, a court of assizes, of tribunals of first instance and commerce, a chamber of commerce and a board of trade arbitrators, and has a branch of the Bank of France, a lycee and training colleges for teachers. The making of ticking, boots and shoes, agricultural implements and gas motors, and metal-founding and bleaching are carried on.

Vieil-Evreux (_Mediolanum Aulercorum_) was the capital of the Gallic tribe of the _Aulerci Eburovices_ and a flourishing city during the Gallo-Roman period. Its bishopric dates from the 4th century.

The first family of the counts of Evreux which is known was descended from an illegitimate son of Richard I., duke of Normandy, and became extinct in the male line with the death of Count William in 1118. The countship passed in right of Agnes, William's sister, wife of Simon de Montfort-l'Amaury (d. 1087) to the house of the lords of Montfort-l'Amaury. Amaury III. of Montfort ceded it in 1200 to King Philip Augustus. Philip the Fair presented it (1307) to his brother Louis, for whose benefit Philip the Long raised the countship of Evreux into a peerage of France (1317). Philip of Evreux, son of Louis, became king of Navarre by his marriage with Jeanne, daughter of Louis the Headstrong (Hutin), and their son Charles the Bad and their grandson Charles the Noble were also kings of Navarre. The latter ceded his countships of Evreux, Champagne and Brie to King Charles VI. (1404). In 1427 the countship of Evreux was bestowed by King Charles VII. on Sir John Stuart of Darnley (c. 1365-1429), the commander of his Scottish bodyguard, who in 1423 had received the seigniory of Aubigny and in February 1427/8 was granted the right to quarter the royal arms of France for his victories over the English (see Lady Elizabeth Cust, _Account of the Stuarts of Aubigny in France, 1422-1672_, 1891). On Stuart's death (before Orleans during an attack on an English convoy) the countship reverted to the crown. It was again temporarily alienated (1569-1584) as an appanage for Francis, duke of Anjou, and in 1651 was finally made over to Frederic Maurice de la Tour d'Auvergne, duke of Bouillon, in exchange for the principality of Sedan.

EWALD, GEORG HEINRICH AUGUST VON (1803-1875), German Orientalist and theologian, was born on the 16th of November 1803 at Gottingen, where his father was a linen-weaver. In 1815 he was sent to the gymnasium, and in 1820 he entered the university of his native town, where under J.G. Eichhorn and T.C. Tychsen he devoted himself specially to the study of Oriental languages. At the close of his academical career in 1823 he was appointed to a mastership in the gymnasium at Wolfenbuttel, and made a study of the Oriental manuscripts in the Wolfenbuttel library. But in the spring of 1824 he was recalled to Gottingen as _repetent_, or theological tutor, and in 1827 (the year of Eichhorn's death) he became professor _extraordinarius_ in philosophy and lecturer in Old Testament exegesis. In 1831 he was promoted to the position of professor _ordinarius_ in philosophy; in 1833 he became a member of the Royal Scientific Society, and in 1835, after Tychsen's death, he entered the faculty of theology, taking the chair of Oriental languages.

Two years later occurred the first important episode in his studious life. In 1837, on the 18th of November, along with six of his colleagues he signed a formal protest against the action of King Ernst August (duke of Cumberland) in abolishing the liberal constitution of 1833, which had been granted to the Hanoverians by his predecessor William IV. This bold procedure of the seven professors led to their speedy expulsion from the university (14th December). Early in 1838 Ewald received a call to Tubingen, and there for upwards of ten years he held a chair as professor _ordinarius_, first in philosophy and afterwards, from 1841, in theology. To this period belong some of his most important works, and also the commencement of his bitter feud with F.C. Baur and the Tubingen school. In 1847, "the great shipwreck-year in Germany," as he has called it, he was invited back to Gottingen on honourable terms--the liberal constitution having been restored. He gladly accepted the invitation. In 1862-1863 he took an active part in a movement for reform within the Hanoverian Church, and he was a member of the synod which passed the new constitution. He had an important share also in the formation of the Protestantenverein, or Protestant association, in September 1863. But the chief crisis in his life arose out of the political events of 1866. His loyalty to King George (son of Ernst August) would not permit him to take the oath of allegiance to the victorious king of Prussia, and he was therefore placed on the retired list, though with the full amount of his salary as pension. Perhaps even this degree of severity might have been held by the Prussian authorities to be unnecessary, had Ewald been less exasperating in his language. The violent tone of some of his printed manifestoes about this time, especially of his _Lob des Konigs u. des Volkes_, led to his being deprived of the _venia legendi_ (1868) and also to a criminal process, which, however, resulted in his acquittal (May 1869). Then, and on two subsequent occasions, he was returned by the city of Hanover as a member of the North German and German parliaments. In June 1874 he was found guilty of a libel on Prince Bismarck, whom he had compared to Frederick II. in "his unrighteous war with Austria and his ruination of religion and morality," to Napoleon III. in his way of "picking out the best time possible for robbery and plunder." For this offence he was sentenced to undergo three weeks' imprisonment. He died in his 72nd year of heart disease on the 4th of May 1875.

Ewald was no common man. In his public life he displayed many noble characteristics,--perfect simplicity and sincerity, intense moral earnestness, sturdy independence, absolute fearlessness. As a teacher he had a remarkable power of kindling enthusiasm; and he sent out many distinguished pupils, among whom may be mentioned Hitzig, Schrader, Noldeke, Diestel and Dillmann. His disciples were not all of one school, but many eminent scholars who apparently have been untouched by his influence have in fact developed some of the many ideas which he suggested. His numerous writings, from 1823 onwards, were the reservoirs in which the entire energy of a life was stored. His _Hebrew Grammar_ inaugurated a new era in biblical philology. All subsequent works in that department have been avowedly based on his, and to him will always belong the honour of having been, as Hitzig has called him, "the second founder of the science of the Hebrew language." As an exegete and biblical critic no less than as a grammarian he has left his abiding mark. His _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, the result of thirty years' labour, was epoch-making in that branch of research. While in every line it bears the marks of intense individuality, it is at the same time a product highly characteristic of the age, and even of the decade, in which it appeared. If it is obviously the outcome of immense learning on the part of its author, it is no less manifestly the result of the speculations and researches of many laborious predecessors in all departments of history, theology and philosophy. Taking up the idea of a divine education of the human race, which Lessing and Herder had made so familiar to the modern mind, and firmly believing that to each of the leading nations of antiquity a special task had been providentially assigned, Ewald felt no difficulty about Israel's place in universal history, or about the problem which that race had been called upon to solve. The history of Israel, according to him, is simply the history of the manner in which the one true religion really and truly came into the possession of mankind. Other nations, indeed, had attempted the highest problems in religion; but Israel alone, in the providence of God, had succeeded, for Israel alone had been inspired. Such is the supreme meaning of that national history which began with the exodus and culminated (at the same time virtually terminating) in the appearing of Christ. The historical interval that separated these two events is treated as naturally dividing itself into three great periods,--those of Moses, David and Ezra. The periods are externally indicated by the successive names by which the chosen people were called--Hebrews, Israelites, Jews. The events prior to the exodus are relegated by Ewald to a preliminary chapter of primitive history; and the events of the apostolic and post-apostolic age are treated as a kind of appendix. The entire construction of the history is based, as has already been said, on a critical examination and chronological arrangement of the available documents. So far as the results of criticism are still uncertain with regard to the age and authorship of any of these, Ewald's conclusions must of course be regarded as unsatisfactory. But his work remains a storehouse of learning and is increasingly recognized as a work of rare genius.

Of his works the more important are:--_Die Composition der Genesis kritisch untersucht_ (1823), an acute and able attempt to account for the use of the two names of God without recourse to the document-hypothesis; he was not himself, however, permanently convinced by it; _De metris carminum Arabicorum_ (1825); _Das Hohelied Salomo's ubersetzt u. erklart_ (1826; 3rd ed., 1866); _Kritische Grammatik der hebr. Sprache_ (1827)--this afterwards became the _Ausfuhrliches Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache_ (8th ed., 1870); and it was followed by the _Hebr. Sprachlehre fur Anfanger_ (4th ed., 1874); _Uber einige altere Sanskritmetra_ (1827); _Liber Vakedii de Mesopotamiae expugnatae historia_ (1827); _Commentarius in Apocalypsin Johannis_ (1828); _Abhandlungen zur biblischen u. orientalischen Literatur_ (1832); _Grammatica critica linguae Arabicae_ (1831-1833); _Die poetischen Bucher des alten Bundes_ (1835-1837, 3rd ed., 1866-1867); _Die Propheten des alten Bundes_ (1840-1841, 2nd ed., 1867-1868); _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_ (1843-1859, 3rd ed., 1864-1868); _Alterthumer Israels_ (1848); _Die drei ersten Evangelien ubersetzt u. erklart_ (1850); _Uber das athiopische Buch Henoch_ (1854); _Die Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus ubersetzt u. erklart_ (1857); _Die Johanneischen Schriften ubersetzt u. erklart_ (1861-1862); _Uber das vierte Esrabuch_ (1863); _Sieben Sendschreiben des neuen Bundes_ (1870); _Das Sendschreiben an die Hebraer u. Jakobos' Rundschreiben_ (1870); _Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott, oder Theologie des alten u. neuen Bundes_ (1871-1875). The _Jahrbucher der biblischen Wissenschaft_ (1849-1865) were edited, and for the most part written, by him. He was the chief promoter of the _Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes_, begun in 1837; and he frequently contributed on various subjects to the _Gotting. gelehrte Anzeigen_. He was also the author of many pamphlets of an occasional character.

The following have been translated into English:--_Hebrew Grammar_, by John Nicholson (from 2nd German edition) (London 1836); _Introductory Hebrew Grammar_ (from 3rd German edition) (London, 1870); _History of Israel_, 5 vols. (corresponding to vols. i.-iv. of the German), by Russell Martineau and J. Estlin Carpenter (London, 1867-1874); _Antiquities of Israel_, by H.S. Solly (London, 1876); _Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament_, by J. Frederick Smith (2 vols., London, 1876-1877); _Isaiah the Prophet_, chaps. i.-xxxiii., by O. Glover (London, 1869); _Life of Jesus Christ_, also by O. Glover (London, 1865).

See the article in Herzog-Hauck; T. Witton Davies, _Heinrich Ewald_ (1903); and cf. T.K. Cheyne, _Founders of Old Testament Criticism_ (1893); F. Lichtenberger, _History of German Theology in the Nineteenth Century_ (1889).

EWALD, JOHANNES (1743-1781), the greatest lyrical poet of Denmark, was the son of a melancholy and sickly chaplain at Copenhagen, where he was born on the 18th of November 1743. At the age of eleven he was sent to school at Schleswig, his father's birthplace, and returned to the capital only to enter the university in 1758. His father was by that time dead, and in his mother, a frivolous and foolish woman, he found neither sympathy nor moral support. At fifteen he fell passionately in love with Arense Hulegaard, a girl whose father afterwards married the poet's mother; and the romantic boy resolved on various modes of making himself admired by the young lady. He began to learn Abyssinian, for the purpose of going out as a missionary to Africa, but this scheme was soon given up, and he persuaded a brother, four years older than himself, to run away that they might enlist as hussars in the Prussian army. They managed to reach Hamburg just when the Seven Years' War was commencing and were allowed to enter a regiment. But the elder brother soon got tired and ran away, while the poet, after a series of extraordinary adventures, deserted to the Austrian army, where from being drummer he rose to being sergeant, and was only not made an officer because he was a Protestant. In 1760 he was weary of a soldier's life and deserted again, getting safe back to Denmark. For the next two years he worked with great diligence at the university, but the Arense for whom he had gone through so much hardship and taken so much pains married another man almost immediately after Ewald's final and very successful examination. The disappointment was one from which he never recovered, but his own weakness of will was largely to blame for it. He plunged into dissipation of every kind, and gave his serious thoughts only to poetry.

In 1763 his first work, a perfunctory dissertation, _De pyrologia sacra_, first saw the light. In 1764 he made a considerable success with a short prose story in the popular manner of Sneedorf, _Lykkens Tempel_ (The Temple of Fortune), which was translated into German and Icelandic. On the death of Frederick V., however, Ewald first appeared prominently as a poet; he published in 1766 three _Elegies_ over the dead king, which were received with universal acclamation, and of which one, at least, is a veritable masterpiece. But his dramatic poem _Adam og Eva_ (Adam and Eve), by far the finest imaginative work produced in Denmark up to that time, was rejected by the Society of Arts in 1767 and was not published until 1769. At the latter date, however, its merits were perceived. In 1770 Ewald attained success with _Philet_, a narrative and lyrical poem, and still more with his splendid _Rolf Krage_, the first original Danish tragedy. For the next ten years Ewald was occupied in producing one brilliant poetical work after another, in rapid succession. In 1771 he published _De brutale Klappers_ (The Brutal Clappers), a tragi-comedy or parody satirizing the dispute then raging between the critics and the manager of the Royal Theatre; in 1772 he translated from the German the lyrical drama of _Philemon and Baucis_, and brought out his versified comedy of _Harlequin Patriot_, a satire on the passion for political scribbling created by Struensee's introduction of the liberty of the press. In 1773 he published _Pebersvendene_ (Old Bachelors), a prose comedy. In 1771 he had already collected some of his lyrical poems under the title of _Adskilligt af Johannes Ewald_ (Miscellanies). In 1774 appeared the heroic opera of _Balder's Dod_ (Balder's Death), and in 1779 the finest of his works, the lyrical drama _Fiskerne_ (The Fishers), which contains the Danish National Song, "King Christian stood by the high Mast," his most famous lyric. In the two poems last mentioned, however, Ewald passed beyond contemporary taste, and these great works, the pride of Danish literature, were coldly received. But while the new poetry was slowly winning its way into popular esteem, the poet did not lack admirers, and at the head of these he founded in 1775 the Danish Literary Society, a body which became influential, and which made the study of Ewald a cultus. But the poet's health had broken; when he was writing _Rolf Krage_ he was already an inmate of the consumptive hospital, and when he seemed to be recovering, his health was shattered again by a night spent in the frosty streets. He embittered his existence by the recklessness of his private life, and finally, through a fall from a horse, he ended by becoming a complete invalid. His last ten years were full of acute suffering; his mother treated him with cruelty, his family with neglect, and but few even of his friends showed any manliness or generosity towards him. In 1774 he was placed in the house of an inspector of fisheries at Rungsted, where Anna Hedevig Jacobsen, the daughter of the house, tended the wasted poet with infinite tenderness and skill. He stayed in this house for three years, and wrote there some of his finest later lyrics. Meanwhile he had fallen deeply in love with the charming solace of his sufferings and won her consent to a marriage. This step, however, was prevented by his family, who roughly removed him to their own keeping near Kronborg. Here he was treated so infamously that he insisted on being taken back to Copenhagen in 1777, where he found an older, but no less tender nurse, in Ane Kirstine Skou. Here he wrote _Fiskerne_ with his imagination full of the familiar shore at Hornbaek, near Rungsted. In 1780 he was a little better, and managed to be present at the theatre at the first performance of his poem. But this excitement hastened his end, and after months of extreme agony he died on the 17th of March 1781, and was carried to the grave by a large assembly of his admirers, since he was now just recognized by the public for the first time as the greatest national poet. Among his papers were found fragments of three dramas, two on old Scandinavian subjects, entitled _Frode_ and _Helgo_, and the third a tragedy on the story of _Hamlet_, which he meant to treat in a way wholly distinct from Shakespeare's.

Ewald belongs to the race of poetical reformers who appeared in all countries of Europe at the end of the 18th century; but it is interesting to observe that in point of time he preceded all of them. He was born six years earlier than Goethe and Alfieri, sixteen years before Schiller, nine years before Andre Chenier, and twenty-seven years earlier than Wordsworth, but he did for Denmark what each of these poets did for his own country. Ewald found Danish literature given over to tasteless rhetoric, and without art or vigour. He introduced vivacity of style, freshness and brevity of form, and an imaginative study of nature which was then unprecedented. But perhaps his greatest claim to notice is the fact that he was the first person to call the attention of the Scandinavian peoples to the treasuries of their ancient history and mythology, and to suggest the use of these in imaginative writing. With a colouring more distinctly modern than that of Collins and Gray, his lyrics yet resemble the odes of these his English contemporaries more closely than those of any continental poet; from another point of view his ballads remind us of those of Schiller, which they preceded. His dramas, which had an immense influence on the Danish stage, are now chiefly of antiquarian interest, with the exception of "The Fishers," a work that must always live as a great national poem. In personal character and in fate Ewald seems to have been not unlike Heinrich Heine.

The first collected edition of Ewald's works began to appear in his lifetime. It is in four volumes, 1780-1784. His works have constantly been reprinted, but the standard edition is that by Liebenberg, in 8 vols., 1850-1855. The best biographies of him are those by C. Molbech (1831), Hammerich (1860) and Andreas Dolleris (1900). (E. G.)

EWART, WILLIAM (1798-1869), English politician, was born in Liverpool on the 1st of May 1798. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, gaining the Newdigate prize for English verse. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1827, and the next year entered parliament for the borough of Bletchingley in Surrey. He subsequently sat for Liverpool from 1830 to 1837, for Wigan in 1839, and for Dumfries Burghs from 1841 until his retirement from public life in 1868. He died at Broadleas, near Devizes, on the 23rd of January 1869, Ewart, who was an advanced liberal in politics, was responsible during his long political career for many useful measures. In 1834 he carried a bill for the abolition of hanging in chains, and in 1837 he was successful in getting an act passed for abolishing capital punishment for cattle-stealing and other offences. In 1850 he carried a bill for establishing free libraries supported out of the rates, and in 1864 he was instrumental in getting an act passed for legalizing the use of the metric system of weights and measures. He was always a strong advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, and on his motion in 1864 a select committee was appointed to consider the subject. Other reforms which he advocated and which have since been carried out were an annual statement on education, and the examination of candidates for the civil service and army.

EWE, a group of Negro peoples of the Slave Coast, West Africa. By the natives their country is called _Ewe-me_, "Land of the Ewe." The Ewe family forms five linguistic groups: the Anlo or Anglawa on the Gold Coast frontier, the Krepi of Anfueh speech, the Jeji, the Dahomeyans and the Mahi.

See further Dahomey, and A.B. Ellis, _The Ewe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_ ... (London, 1890).

EWELL, RICHARD STODDERT (1817-1872), American soldier, lieutenant-general in the Confederate army, was born in Georgetown, now a part of Washington, D.C., on the 2nd of February 1817, and graduated at West Point in 1840. As a cavalry officer he saw much active service in the Mexican War and later in Indian warfare in New Mexico. He resigned his commission at the outbreak of the Civil War, and entered the Confederate service. He commanded a brigade in the first Bull Run campaign, and a division in the famous Valley Campaign of "Stonewall" Jackson, to whom he was next in rank. At Cross Keys he was in command of the forces which defeated General Fremont. Ewell's division served with Jackson in the Seven Days and in the campaign of Second Bull Run. At the action of Groveton Ewell lost a leg, but did not on that account retire from active service, though other generals led his men in the sanguinary battles of Antietam (where they lost 47% of their numbers) and Fredericksburg. After the death of "Stonewall" Jackson, Ewell was promoted lieutenant-general and appointed to command the 2nd Corps, with which he had served from the beginning of the Valley Campaign. His promotion set aside General J.E.B. Stuart, the temporary commander of Jackson's corps; that Ewell, crippled as he was, was preferred to the brilliant cavalry leader was a marked testimony to his sterling qualities as a soldier. The invasion of Pennsylvania soon followed, Ewell's corps leading the advance of Lee's army. A federal force was skilfully cut off and destroyed near Winchester, Va., and Ewell's corps then raided Maryland and southern Pennsylvania unchecked. At the battle of Gettysburg, the 2nd Corps decided the fighting of the first day in favour of the Confederates, driving the enemy before them; on the second day it fought a desperate action on Lee's left wing. Ewell took part in the closing operations of 1863 and in all the battles of the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns. In the final campaign of 1865 he and the remnant of his corps were cut off and forced to surrender at Sailor's Creek, a few days before his chief capitulated to Grant at Appomattox. After the war General Ewell lived in retirement. He died near Spring Hill, Maury County, Tennessee, on the 25th of January 1872.

EWING, ALEXANDER (1814-1873), Scottish divine, was born of an old Highland family in Aberdeen on the 25th of March 1814. In October 1838 he was admitted to deacon's orders, and after his return from Italy he took charge of the episcopal congregation at Forres, and was ordained a presbyter in the autumn of 1841. In 1846 he was elected first bishop of the newly restored diocese of Argyll and the Isles, the duties of which position he discharged till his death on the 22nd of May 1873. In 1851 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford. Though hampered by a delicate bodily constitution, he worked in a spirit of buoyant cheerfulness. By the charm of his personal manner and his catholic sympathies he gradually attained a prominent position. In theological discussion he contended for the exercise of a wide tolerance, and attached little importance to ecclesiastical authority and organization. His own theological position had close affinity with that of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen and Frederick Denison Maurice; but his opinions were the fruit of his own meditation, and were coloured by his own individuality. The trend of his teaching is only to be gathered from fragmentary publications--letters to the newspapers, pamphlets, special sermons, essays contributed to the series of _Present Day Papers_, of which he was the editor, and a volume of sermons entitled _Revelation considered as Light_.

Besides his strictly theological writings, Ewing was the author of the _Cathedral or Abbey Church of Iona_ (1865), the first part of which contains drawings and descriptive letterpress of the ruins, and the second a history of the early Celtic church and the mission of St Columba. See _Memoir of Alexander Ewing, D.C.L._, by A.J. Ross (1877).

EWING, JULIANA HORATIA ORR (1841-1885), English writer of books for children, daughter of the Rev. Alfred Gatty and of Margaret Gatty (q.v.), was born at Ecclesfield, Yorkshire, in 1841. One of a large family, she was accustomed to act as nursery story-teller to her brothers and sisters, and her brother Alfred Scott Gatty provided music to accompany her plays. She was well educated in classics and modern languages, and at an early age began to publish verses, being a contributor to _Aunt Judy's Magazine_, which her mother started in 1866. _The Land of Lost Toys_ and many other of Juliana's stories appeared in this magazine. In 1867 she married Major Alexander Ewing, himself an author, and the composer of the well-known hymn "Jerusalem the Golden." From this time until her death (13th May 1885), previously to which she had been a constant invalid, Mrs Ewing produced a number of charming children's stories. The best of these are: _The Brownies_ (1870), _A Flat-Iron for a Farthing_ (1873), _Lob-lie-by the Fire_ (1874), _The Story of a Short Life_ (1885) and _Jackanapes_ (1884), the two last-named, in particular, obtaining great success; among others may be mentioned _Mrs Over-the-Way's Remembrances_ (1869), _Six to Sixteen, Jan of the Windmill_ (1876), _A Great Emergency_ (1877), _We and the World_ (1881), _Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales, Brothers of Pity_ (1882), _The Doll's Wash_, _Master Fritz_, _Our Garden_, _A Soldier's Children_, _Three Little Nest-Birds_, _A Week Spent in a Glass-House_, _A Sweet Little Dear_, and _Blue-Red_ (1883). Many of these were published by the S.P.C.K. Simple and unaffected in style, and sound and wholesome in matter, with quiet touches of humour and bright sketches of scenery and character, Mrs Ewing's best stories have never been surpassed in the style of literature to which they belong.

EWING, THOMAS (1789-1871), American lawyer and statesman, was born near the present West Liberty, West Virginia, on the 28th of December 1789. His father, George Ewing, settled at Lancaster, Fairfield county, Ohio, in 1792. Thomas graduated at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, in 1815, and in August 1816 was admitted to the bar at Lancaster, where he won high rank as an advocate. He was a Whig member of the United States senate in 1831-1837, and as such took a prominent part in the legislative struggle over the United States Bank, whose rechartering he favoured and which he resolutely defended against President Jackson's attack, opposing in able speeches the withdrawal of deposits and Secretary Woodbury's "Specie Circular" of 1836. In March 1841 he became secretary of the treasury in President W.H. Harrison's cabinet. When, however, after President Tyler's accession, the relations between the President and the Whig Party became strained, he retired (September 1841) and was succeeded by Walter Forward (1786-1852). Subsequently from March 1849 to July 1850 he was a member of President Taylor's cabinet as the first secretary of the newly established department of the interior. He thoroughly organized the department, and in his able annual report advocated the construction by government aid of a railroad to the Pacific Coast. In 1850-1851 he filled the unexpired term of Thomas Corwin in the U.S. Senate, strenuously opposing Clay's compromise measures and advocating the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He was subsequently a delegate to the Peace Congress in 1861, and was a loyal supporter of President Lincoln's war policy. He died at Lancaster, Ohio, on the 26th of October 1871.

His daughter was the wife of General William T. Sherman. His son, Hugh Boyle Ewing (1826-1905), served throughout the Civil War in the Federal armies, rising from the rank of colonel (1861) to that of brigadier-general (1862) and brevet major-general (1865), and commanding brigades at Antietam and Vicksburg and a division at Chickamauga; and was minister of the United States to the Netherlands in 1866-1870. Another son, Thomas Ewing (1829-1896), studied at Brown University in 1852-1854 (in 1894, by a special vote, he was placed on the list of graduates in the class of 1856); he was a lawyer and a free-state politician in Kansas in 1857-1861, and was the first chief-justice of the Kansas supreme court (1861-1862). In the Civil War he attained the rank of brigadier-general (March 1863) and received the brevet of major-general (1865). He was subsequently a representative in Congress from Ohio in 1877-1881; and from 1882 to 1896 practised law in New York City, where he was long one of the recognized leaders of the bar.

EXAMINATIONS. The term "examination" (i.e. inspecting, weighing and testing; from Lat. _examen_, the tongue of a balance) is used in the following article to denote a systematic test of knowledge, and of either special or general capacity or fitness, carried out under the authority of some public body.

1. _History._--The oldest known system of examinations in history is that used in China for the selection of officers for the public service (c. 1115 B.C.), and the periodic tests which they undergo after entry (c. 2200 B.C.). See CHINA; also W.A.P. Martin, _The Lore of Cathay_ (1901), p. 311 et seq.; T.L. Bullock, "Competitive Examinations in China" (_Nineteenth Century_, July 1894); and Etienne Zi, _Pratique des examens litteraires en Chine_ (Shanghai, 1894). The abolition of this system was announced in 1906, and, as a partial substitute, it was decided to hold an annual examination in Peking of Chinese graduates educated abroad (_Times_, 22nd of October 1906).

The majority of examinations in western countries are derived from the university examinations of the middle ages. The first universities of Europe consisted of corporations of teachers and of students analogous to the trade gilds and merchant gilds of the time. In the trade gilds there were apprentices, companions, and masters. No one was admitted to mastership until he had served his apprenticeship (q.v.), nor, as a rule, until he had shown that he could accomplish a piece of work to the satisfaction of the gild.

The object of the universities was to teach; and to the three classes established by the gild correspond roughly the _scholar_, the _bachelor_ or pupil-teacher (see Rashdall i. 209, note 2, and 221, note 5), and the _master_ or _doctor_ (two terms at first equivalent) who, having served his apprenticeship and passed a definite technical test, had received permission to teach. The early universities of Europe, being under the same religious authority and animated by the same philosophy, resembled each other very closely in curriculum and general organization and examinations, and by the authority of the emperor, or of the pope in most cases, the permission to teach granted by one university was valid in all (_jus ubicunque docendi_).

The earliest university examinations of which a description is available are those in civil and in canon law held at Bologna at a period subsequent to 1219. The student was admitted without examination as bachelor after from four to six years' study, and after from six to eight years' study became qualified as a candidate for the doctorate. He might obtain the doctorate in both branches of law in ten years (Rashdall i. 221-222).

The doctoral examination at Bologna in the 13th-14th centuries consisted of two parts--a private examination which was the real test, and a public one of a ceremonial character (_conventus_). The candidate first took an "oath that he had complied with all the statutable conditions, that he would give no more than the statutable fees or entertainments to the rector himself, the doctor or his fellow-students, and that he would obey the rector." He was then presented to the archdeacon of Bologna by one or more doctors, who were required to have satisfied themselves of his fitness by private examination. On the morning of the examination, after attending mass, he was assigned by one of the doctors of the assembled college two passages (_puncta_) in the civil or canon law, which he retired to his house to study, possibly with the assistance of the presenting doctor. Later in the day he gave a lecture on, or exposition of, the prepared passages, and was examined on them by two of the doctors appointed by the college. Other doctors might then put supplementary questions on law arising out of the passages, or might suggest objections to his answers. The vote of the doctors present was taken by ballot, and the fate of the candidate was determined by the majority. The successful candidate, who received the title of licentiate, was, on payment of a heavy fee and other expenses, permitted to proceed to the _conventus_ or final public examination. This consisted in the delivery of a speech and the defence of a thesis on some point of law, selected by the candidate, against opponents selected from among the students. The successful candidate received from the archdeacon the formal "licence to teach" by the authority of the pope in the name of the Trinity, and was invested with the insignia of office. At Bologna, though not at Paris, the "permission to teach" soon became fictitious, only a small number of doctors being allowed to exercise the right of teaching in that university (Rashdall).

In the faculty of arts of Paris, towards the end of the 13th century, the system was already more complicated than at Bologna. The baccalaureate, licentiateship, and mastership formed three distinct degrees. For admission to the baccalaureate a preliminary test or "Responsions" was first required, at which the candidate had to dispute in grammar or logic with a master. The examiners then inspected the certificates (_schedulae_) of residence and of having attended lectures in the prescribed subjects, and examined him in the contents of his books. The successful candidate was admitted to maintain a thesis against an opponent, a process called "determination" (see Rashdall i. 443 et seq.), and as bachelor was then permitted to give "cursory" lectures. After five or six years from the date of beginning his studies (matriculation) and being twenty years of age (these conditions varied at different periods), a bachelor was permitted to present himself for the examination for the licentiateship, which was divided into two parts. The first part was conducted in private by the chancellor and four examiners (_temptatores in cameris_), and included an inquiry into the candidate's residence, attendance at lectures, and performance of exercises, as well as examination in prescribed books; those candidates adjudged worthy were admitted to the more important examination before the faculty, and the names of successful candidates were sent to the chancellor in batches of eight or more at a time, arranged in order of merit. (The order of merit at the examination for the licentiateship existed in Paris till quite recently.) Each successful candidate was then required to maintain a thesis chosen by himself (_quodlibetica_) in St Julian's church, and was finally submitted to a purely formal public examination (_collatio_) at either the episcopal palace or the abbey of Ste Genevieve, before receiving from the chancellor, in the name of the Trinity, the licence to incept or begin to teach in the faculty of arts. After some six months more the licentiate took part "in a peculiarly solemn disputation known as his 'Vespers,'" then gave his formal inaugural lecture or disputation before the faculty, and was received into the faculty as master. This last process was called "inception."

In discussing the value of medieval examinations of the kind described, Paulsen (_The German Universities_ (1906), p. 25) asserts that they were well adapted to increase a student's alertness, his power of comprehending new ideas, and his ability quickly and surely to assimilate them to his own, and that "they did more to enable [students] to grasp a subject than the mute and solitary reviewing and cramming of our modern examinations can possibly do." At their best they fulfilled precisely the technical purpose for which they were intended; they fully tested the capacity of the candidate to teach the subjects which he was required to teach in accordance with the methods which he was required to use. The limitations of the test were the limitations of the educational and philosophic ideals of the time, in which a dogmatic basis was presupposed to all knowledge and criticism was limited to the superstructure. At their worst, even with venal examiners (and additional fees were often offered as a bribe), Rashdall regards these examinations (at the end of the 13th century) as probably "less of a farce than the pass examinations of Oxford and Cambridge almost within the memory of persons now living." It is, however, to be pointed out that the standard in Paris and elsewhere at a later date became scandalously low in some cases. In some universities the sons of nobles were regularly excused certain examinations. At Cambridge in 1774 Fellow Commoners were examined with such precipitation to fulfil the formal requirements of the statutes that the ceremony was termed "huddling for a degree" (Jebb, _Remarks upon the Present Mode of Education in the University of Cambridge_, 4th ed., 1774, p. 32). The last privileges of this kind were abolished at Cambridge by a grace passed on the 20th of March 1884.

In the medieval examinations described above we find most of the elements of our present examinations: certificates of previous study and good conduct, preparation of set-books, questioning on subjects not specially prepared, division of examinations into various parts, classification in order of merit, payment of fees, the presentation of a dissertation, and the defence and publication of a thesis (a term of which the meaning has now become extended).

The requirement to write answers to questions written or dictated, to satisfy a practical test (other than in teaching), and a clinical test in medicine, appear to be of later date.[1] The medieval candidate for the doctorate in medicine, although required to have attended practice before presenting himself, discussed as his thesis a purely theoretical question, often semi-theological in character, of which as an extreme example may be quoted "whether Adam had a navel."

The competitive system was developed considerably at Louvain, and in the 15th century the candidates for the mastership of arts were divided into three classes (_rigorosi_, honour-men; _transibiles_, pass-men; _gratiosi_, charity-passes), while a fourth, which was not published, contained the names of those who failed. In the 17th century the first class comprised the names of twelve, and the second, of twenty-four, candidates, who were divided on the report of their teachers into classes before the examination, and finally arranged in order of merit by the examiners (Vernulaeus, quoted by Sir W. Hamilton, _Discussions_, 1852; p. 647; Rashdall, loc. cit. ii. 262). At the Cambridge tripos (as described by Jebb in 1774, _Remarks_, &c., pp. 20-31) the first twenty-four candidates were also selected by a preliminary test; they were then divided further into "wranglers" (the disputants, _par excellence_) and _Senior Optimes_, the next twelve on the list being called the _Junior Optimes_. These names have in the mathematics tripos survived the procedure. (The name _Tripos_ is derived from the three-legged stool on which "an old bachilour," selected for the purpose, sat during his disputation with the senior bachelor of the year, who was required to propound two questions to him.)

The subjects in which the medieval universities examined were (i.) those of the trivium and quadrivium in the faculty of arts; (ii.) theology; (iii.) medicine; and (iv.) civil and canon law. The number of subjects in which examinations are held has since grown immensely. We can only sketch in outline the transformations of certain typical university systems of examinations.

At Oxford there is no record of a process of formal examination on books similar to that of Paris (Rashdall, ii. 442 et seq.), disputations being apparently the only test applied in its early history. Examinations were definitely introduced for the B.A. and M.A. degrees by Laud in 1636-1638 (Brodrick, _History of Oxford_, p. 114), but the standard prescribed was so much beyond the actual requirements of later times that it may be doubted if it was enforced. The studies fell in the 18th century into an "abject state," from which they were first raised by a statute passed in 1800 (_Report of Oxford University Commission of 1850-1852_, p. 60 et seq.), under which distinctions were first allotted to the ablest candidates for the bachelor's degree. Further changes were made in 1807 and 1825; and in 1830 a distinction was made between honours examinations of a more difficult character, at which successful candidates were divided into four classes, and pass examinations of an easier character. By the statutes of 1849 and 1858 an intermediate "Moderations" examination was instituted between the preliminary examination called "Responsions" and the final examination. Since 1850, although fresh subjects of examination have been introduced, no considerable change of system has been made.

The bachelor's degree at Oxford tended from an early period to be postponed to an advanced stage of studies, while the requirements for the master's degree diminished until, in 1807, the examination for the M.A. was abolished. It is now awarded to bachelors of three years' standing on payment of a fee.

Cambridge in early times followed the example of Oxford, and here also the bachelor's degree became more and more important (Bass Mullinger, _History of the University of Cambridge from 1535_..., p. 414), and the M.A. has been finally reduced to a mere formality, awarded on terms similar to those of the sister university. The standard of examinations was raised in Cambridge at an earlier date than at Oxford, and in the 18th century the tripos "established the reputation of Cambridge as a School of Mathematical Science." The school, however, produced few, if any, great mathematicians between Newton and George Green. It was only between 1830 and 1840 that the standard of the tripos became a high one. At Cambridge there is no intermediate examination between the "Previous Examination" (commonly called "Little-go"), which corresponds to Oxford "Responsions" or "Smalls" and the triposes and examinations for the "Poll" degree, which correspond to the Oxford final honours and pass examinations respectively. But most of the triposes have been divided into two parts, of which the second is not obligatory in order to obtain a degree. The "senior wrangler" was the first candidate in order of merit in the first part of the mathematical tripos. The abolition of order of merit at this examination was decided on in 1906, and names of candidates appeared in this order for the last time in 1909.

At the Scottish universities the B.A. degree has become extinct, and the M.A., awarded on the results of examination, is the first degree in the faculty of arts.

The incorporation of the university of London in 1836 marks an era in the history of examinations; the teaching and examining functions of a university were dissociated for the first time. Until 1858 the London examinations were open only to students in affiliated colleges, and the teachers had no share in the appointment of the examiners or in determining the curricula for examinations; in 1858 the examinations were thrown open to all comers, and no requirements were insisted on with regard to courses of study except for degrees in the faculty of medicine. The sole function of the university was to examine, and its examinations for matriculation and for degrees in arts and science were carried on by means of written papers not only in London but in many centres in the United Kingdom and the colonies. From the first the degrees were (unlike those of Oxford and Cambridge until 1871) open to all male persons without religious distinctions; and in 1878 they were opened to women. (Tripos examinations were thrown open to women at Cambridge by the grace of 24th Feb. 1881, and at Oxford women were admitted to examinations for honours by statute of 29th April 1884. Proposals to admit women to university degrees were rejected by Oxford and Cambridge in 1896 and 1897 respectively.)

The standard of difficulty set by the university of London was a high one, very much higher for its pass degrees than the corresponding standards at Oxford and Cambridge, while the standard for honours was equally high. In medicine the examinations were made both wider in range and more searching than those of any other examining body. But, for reasons dealt with below, great discontent was roused by the new system. In 1880 the Victoria University, Manchester, was established, in which teaching and examining were again united; and in the universities since established, with the exception of the Royal University of Ireland (which was created in 1880 as an examining body on the model of London, but which was dissolved under the Irish Universities Act 1908, and replaced by the National University of Ireland and the Queen's University of Belfast), the precedent of Victoria has been followed. By an act passed in 1898, of which the provisions came into force in 1900, the university of London was reconstituted as a teaching university, although provision was made for the continuance of the system of examinations by "external examiners" for "external students," together with "internal examinations" for "internal students," in which the teachers and the external examiners of the university are associated. The examinations in music and the final examinations in law and medicine are carried on [1910] both for "internal" and "external" students by "external" examiners only, who are, however, appointed on the recommendation of boards of studies consisting mainly of London teachers.

At the university of Dublin, examinations have been maintained both for the B.A. and M.A. degrees, and students may be admitted to the examinations in subjects other than divinity, law, medicine, and engineering without attendance at university courses.

The examinations of the newer universities, the Victoria University of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Wales, are open only to students at these universities, and are conducted by the teachers in association with one or more external examiners for each subject. In some universities, e.g. Manchester, the M.A. degree is given after examination to students who have taken a pass, and without examination to those who have taken an honours degree.

The universities which have departed furthest from the medieval system of examinations, at any rate in appearance, are those of Germany. The baccalaureate has disappeared, but students cannot be matriculated without having passed the _Abiturienten-examen_ (see below), probably the most severe of all entrance examinations (foreign students may be exempted under certain conditions). The student desiring to proceed to the doctorate is free from examinations thereafter until he presents his thesis for the doctor's degree,[2] when, if it is accepted, he is submitted to a public oral examination not only in his principal subject (_Hauptfach_), but also as a rule in two or more collateral subjects (_Nebenfacher_). The doctor's degree does not give the right to teach in a faculty (_venia legendi_). To acquire this a doctor must present a further thesis (_Habilitationsschrift_), and must deliver two lectures, one before the faculty, followed by a discussion (_colloquium_), the other in public; but these lectures "seem to be merely secondary and are tending to become so more and more"; "scientific productiveness is so sharply emphasized among the conditions for admission that it overshadows all the rest" (Paulsen, loc. cit. p. 165).

In France the examination for the baccalaureate, though conducted in part by university examiners, has become a school-leaving examination (see below). The licentiateship has been preserved in the faculties of arts, science and laws, and is in point of difficulty about equal to the pass degree examinations of the university of London, though differing in the nature of the tests. In the faculty of sciences, the three subjects of examination selected may, under a recent regulation, be taken separately. Until a few years ago the successful candidates at the licentiateship were arranged in order of merit. For the doctorate in the faculty of letters two theses must be submitted, of which the subject and plan must be approved by the faculty (until recently one of them was required to be written in Latin). Permission to print the theses is given by the rector or vice-rector after report from one or more professors, and they are then discussed publicly by the faculty and the candidate (_soutenance de these_). In this public discussion the "disputation" of the middle ages survives in its least changed form. The literary theses required by French universities are, as a rule, volumes of several hundred pages, and more important in character even than the German _Habilitationsschrift_. The possession of the doctorate is a _sine qua non_ for eligibility to a university chair, and to a lectureship in the university of Paris.

In the faculty of sciences a candidate for the doctorate may submit two theses, or else submit one thesis and undergo an oral examination.

For the doctorate in law, a thesis and two oral examinations are required.

In the faculty of medicine there is no licentiateship, but for the doctorate six examinations must be passed and a thesis submitted.

There is also a special doctorate, the "_doctorat d'Universite_," awarded on a thesis and an oral examination; and there are diplomas (_Diplomes d'Etudes superieures_) awarded on dissertations and examinations on subjects in philosophy, history and geography, classics or modern languages, selected mainly by the candidate and approved by the faculty.

2. _Professional Examinations._ (a) _Teaching._--University examinations for degrees having ceased to be used as technical tests of teaching capacity, new examinations have been devised for this purpose. The test for German university teachers has been described above. For secondary teachers, W. von Humboldt instituted a special examination in 1810 (Paulsen, _Gesch. des gelehrten Unterrichts_, ii. pp. 283 and 393), and an examination for primary teachers was instituted in Prussia in 1794.

In France there is a competitive examination for secondary teachers, the _agregation_, originally established in 1766. _Agreges_ have a right to state employment and they alone can occupy the highest teaching post (_chaire de professeur_) in a state secondary school, other posts being open to licentiates. There are also examinations for primary teachers. The tests for teachers are different for the two sexes.

In England there is no obligatory test for secondary teachers. The universities and the College of Preceptors conduct examinations for teaching diplomas. The Board of Education holds special examinations (Preliminary Certificate examination and Certificate examination, &c.) for primary teachers.

(b) _Medicine._--See MEDICAL EDUCATION.

(c) _Other Professions._--A system of professional examinations carried on by professional bodies, in some cases with legal sanction, was developed in England during the 19th century. Those in the following subjects are the most important: Accountancy (Institute of Chartered Accountants and Society of Accountants and Auditors), actuarial work (Institute of Actuaries), music (Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Trinity College of Music, Royal College of Organists, and the Incorporated Society of Musicians), pharmacy (Pharmaceutical Society), plumbing (the Plumbers' Company), surveying (Surveyors' Institution), veterinary medicine (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons), technical subjects, e.g. cotton-spinning, dyeing, motor-manufacture (City & Guilds of London Institute), architecture (Royal Institute of British Architects), commercial subjects, shorthand (the Society of Arts and London Chamber of Commerce), engineering (Institutions of Civil Engineers, of Mechanical Engineers, and of Electrical Engineers).

3. _School-leaving Examinations._--The faculty of arts in medieval universities covered secondary as well as higher education in the subjects concerned. The division in arts subjects between secondary and university education has been drawn at different levels in different countries. Thus the first two years of the arts curriculum in English and American universities correspond, roughly speaking, to the last two years spent in a secondary school of Germany or France, and the continental "school-leaving examinations" correspond to the intermediate examinations of the newer English universities and to the pass examinations for the degree at Oxford and Cambridge (Mark Pattison, _Suggestions on Academical Organization_, 1868, p. 238, and Matthew Arnold, _Higher Schools and Universities in Germany_, 1892, p. 209).

A tabular summary is given (see Tables I., II., III., IV.) of the requirements of the secondary school-leaving examinations of France, Prussia (for the nine-year secondary schools) and Scotland, and of the university of London.

There are in England a number of school examinations which, under prescribed conditions, also serve as school-leaving examinations, and give entrance to certain universities, especially the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations (both established in 1858), and the examinations of the Oxford and Cambridge "Joint Board." A movement to reduce the number of entrance examinations and to secure uniformity in their standard was set on foot in 1901. In that year the General Medical Council communicated to the Board of Education a memorial on the subject from the Headmasters' Conference. The memorial was further communicated to various professional bodies concerned. Conferences were held by the consultative committee of the Board of Education in 1903, with representatives of the universities, the Headmasters' Conference, the Association of Head-Masters, the Association of Head-Mistresses, the College of Preceptors, the Private Schools' Association, and with representatives of professional bodies. The committee were of opinion that a central board, consisting of representatives of the Board of Education and the different examining bodies, should be established, to co-ordinate and control the standards of the examinations, and to secure interchangeability of certificates, &c., as soon as a sufficient number of such bodies signified their willingness to be represented on the board. They recommended that the examination should be conducted by external and internal examiners, representing in each case the examining body and the school staff respectively, and that reports on the school work of candidates should be available for reference by the examiners (circular of the Board of Education of 12th of July 1904).

The "accrediting" system in the United States was started by the university of Michigan in 1871. A school desiring to be accredited is submitted to inspection without previous notice. If the inspection is satisfactory, the school is accredited by a university for from one to three years, and upon the favourable report of its principal any of its students are admitted to the university by which it has been accredited without any entrance examination. In practice it is found that many students whom their teachers refuse to certify are able to pass the university entrance examination. The statistics of nine years show that the standard of the certified students is higher than that of non-certified students. Two hundred and fifty schools are accredited by the university of Michigan. In 1904 it was stated that the system was gaining favour in the east,[3] and that it had been adopted more or less by all the eastern colleges and universities with the exception of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia.

4. _Methods of Examination._--Examinations may test (i.) knowledge, or, more exactly, the power of restating facts and arguments of a kind that may be learnt by rote; (ii.) the power of doing something, e.g. of making a _precis_ of a written document, of writing a letter or a report on a particular subject with a particular object in view, of translating from or into a foreign language, of solving a mathematical problem, of criticizing a passage from a literary work, of writing an essay on an historical or literary subject with the aid of books in a library, of diagnosing the malady of a patient, of analysing a chemical mixture or compound; and (the highest form under the rubric) of making an original contribution to learning or science as the result of personal investigation or experiment. Examinations are carried out at present by means of (1) written papers; (2) oral examinations; (3) practical, including in medicine clinical, tests; (4) theses; or a combination of these.

Written.

In written examinations the candidates are, as a rule, supplied with a number of printed questions, of which they must answer all, or a certain proportion, within a given time, varying, as a rule, from 1-1/2 to 3 hours, the latter being the duration most generally adopted for higher examinations in England. Whereas in France and Germany the questions are generally few in number and require long answers, showing constructive skill and mastery of the mother-tongue on the part of the candidates, such "essay-papers" are comparatively rare in England. In many subjects, the written examinations test memory rather than capacity. It has been suggested that sets of questions to be answered in writing should as a rule be divided into two parts: (i.) a number of questions requiring short answers and intended to test the range of the candidate's knowledge; (ii.) questions requiring long answers, intended to test its depth, and the candidate's powers of co-ordination and reflection. A necessary condition for the application of the second kind of test is that time should be given for reflection and for rewriting, say one-third or one-quarter of the whole time allowed. A further distinction is important, especially in such subjects as mathematics or foreign languages, in which it is legitimate to ask what precise power on the part of a candidate the passing of an examination shall signify. Owing to a prevailing confusion between tests of memory and tests of capacity, the allowance for chance fairly applied to the former is apt to be unduly extended to the latter. In applying tests of memory, it may be legitimate to allow a candidate to pass who answers correctly from 30 to 50% of the questions; such an allowance if applied to a test of capacity, such as the performance of a sum in addition, the solution of triangles by means of trigonometrical tables, or the translation of an easy passage from a foreign language, appears to be irrational. A candidate who obtains only 50% of the marks in performing such operations cannot be regarded as being able to perform them; and, if the examination is to be treated as a test of his capacity to perform them, he should be rejected unless he obtains full marks, less a certain allowance (say 10, or at most 20%) in view of the more or less artificial conditions inherent in all examinations.

Oral.

The oral examination is better suited than the written to discover the range of a candidate's knowledge; it also serves as a test of his powers of expression in his mother-tongue, or in a foreign language, and may be used (as in the examination for entrance to the Osborne Naval College) to test the important qualities (hardly tested in any other examinations at present), readiness of wit, common-sense and nerve. It may be objected that candidates are heavily handicapped by nervousness in oral examinations, but this objection does not afford sufficient ground for rejecting the test, provided that it is supplemented by others. Oral tests are used almost invariably in medical examinations; and there is a growing tendency to make them compulsory in dealing with modern languages. Oral examinations are much more used abroad than in England, where the pupils during their school years receive but little exercise in the art of consecutive speaking.

TABLE I.--PRUSSIA: ABITURIENTEN EXAMEN

I. Name of Examination.

_Abiturienten Examen_ (established in 1788).

II. Minimum Age for Entry.

Age only limited by condition of length of school course. The usual age is 17-18.

III. Length of Course of Study.

9 years.

Candidates who have not attended the 9 years' school course may be admitted to the examination on special application.

IV. Subjects.

In _Gymnasium_.

Written. Oral. German essay. Latin. Mathematics. Greek. Translation into Latin. English or French. Translation from Greek into Religion. German. History. Mathematics.

In _Real-Gymnasium_.

Written. Oral. German essay. Latin. Mathematics. English. Translation from Latin. French. Translation from German into Physics or Chemistry. or essay in English or Religion. French. History. Physics. Mathematics.

In _Ober-Realschule_.

Written. Oral. German essay. English. Mathematics. French. An exercise in French and in Physics. English (an essay in one Chemistry. language and a translation Religion. from the other into German). History. Physics or Chemistry. Mathematics.

V. Co-ordination with Teaching.

The object of the examination is defined as being a test of whether the candidate has fulfilled the aims laid down in the curricula, &c., prescribed for a _Gymnasium_, _Real-gymnasium_, or _Ober-realschule_, as the case may be, and the subjects of examination are those prescribed in the curricula for the kind of school concerned.

The report on the school work of each candidate in his various subjects is laid before the Examining Board before the beginning of the examination.

VI. Examiners.

The Examining Board consists of a government inspector (_der Konigliche Kommissar_) acting as chairman, the headmaster of the school, and the teachers of the highest classes in the school. The inspector may nominate a deputy, who is as a rule, the headmaster of the school.

Each teacher concerned selects for the written examination three alternative subjects in his branch, from which, after receiving a report thereon from the headmaster, the inspector makes a final choice.

The papers are marked by the teachers concerned and circulated the the whole Board of Examiners, who then decide whether individual candidates shall be (i.) rejected, (ii.) admitted with (ii.) admitted with oral examination, or (iii.) submitted to the oral examination.

VII. Nature of Examination and General Remarks.

The written examination extends over four or five days. Only one paper is given each day, for which 3 to 5-1/2 hours are allowed (5-1/2 hours for the German essay). For essays in foreign languages dictionaries may be used.

TABLE II.--FRANCE: BACCALAUREAT

I. Name of Examination.

_Baccalaureat de l'enseignement secondaire._

This examination has been carried on under different forms since 1808. The regulations summarized here date from 1902, when the _baccalaureat_ described replaced the _baccalaureat-es-lettres, baccalaureat-es-sciences_, and _baccalaureat de l'enseignement moderne._

II. Minimum Age for Entry.