Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3 Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.

Commencing now to scrutinize the two hypotheses respecting the genesis of these multitudinous bodies, I may first remark concerning that of Laplace, that he might possibly not h...

It would take too much space to deal fully with the various questions which this last passage raises. There is the question--Whence come these "Forces," spoken of as separate fr...

In the centre of a spiral nebula is seen a mass both more luminous and more resolvable than the rest. Assume that, in process of time, all the spiral streaks of luminous matter...

In the order of superposition of strata there is being established a like variety. Each region of the Earth's surface has its special history of elevations, subsidences, periods...

The principle thus displayed in the humbler forms of life, is traceable during the development of the higher; though being here soon masked by the assumption of the hereditary t...

Increase of density and escape of heat are correlated phenomena, and hence in the foregoing section, treating of the respective densities of the celestial bodies in connexion wi...

Thus far in comparing the governmental organization of the body-politic with that of an individual body, we have considered only the respective co-ordinating centres. We have ye...

Not only the directions, but also the velocities of rotation seem thus explicable. It might naturally be supposed that the large planets would revolve on their axes more slowly...

The first is that since the cooling of the Earth reached an advanced stage, the components of its crust have been ever increasing in heterogeneity. When the so-called elements,...

Now this belief that geologic "systems" are universal, is no more tenable than the other. It is just as absurd when considered _a priori_; and it is equally inconsistent with th...

NOTE V. Shortly before I commenced the revision of the foregoing essay, friends on two occasions named to me some remarkable photographs of nebulæ recently obtained by Mr. Isaac...

And Hobbes carries this comparison so far as actually to give a drawing of the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are made up of multitudes of men. Just...

Verification of the reasons above given for the paucity of this direct evidence, is yielded by contemplation of it; for it is observable that the cases named are cases which, fr...

The last of these definitions, which we may most conveniently take first, seems to us very faulty. We cannot but feel astonished that Mr. Bain, familiar as he is with the phenom...

When we pass to disturbing forces of a non-mechanical kind, the same truth becomes still more conspicuous. Expose several persons to a drenching storm; and while one will subseq...

In the first place, such adjustments as those exemplified above are made comprehensible. Though it is inconceivable that a structure like that of the pitcher-plant could have be...

But these conclusions may be successfully contested. Receiving them though we have been, for years past, as established truths, a critical examination of the facts has convinced...

"Silver and gold have to perform in the organism of the state, the same function as the blood-corpuscles in the human organism. As these round discs, without themselves taking a...

"By degrees, in the midst of the chaos of the rising society, small aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union with each other.... Soon inequality of stre...

Though, after occupying themselves with primitive arts and products, anthropologists have devoted their attention mainly to the physical characters of the human races; it must,...

"Where the life is comparatively simple, or where surrounding circumstances render some one function supremely important, the survival of the fittest may readily bring about the...

Thus, on contemplating the various grades of organisms in their ascending order, we find them more and more distinguished from their inanimate media in _structure_, in _form_, i...

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When during a long epoch a continent, slowly sinking, gives place to a far-spreading ocean some miles in depth, at the bottom of which no deposits from rivers or abraded shores...

Why do I introduce these familiar truths so entirely irrelevant to my subject? I do it to show, in the first place, the contrast between a vague conception of a cause and a dist...

6. _Impulsiveness._--This trait is closely allied with the last: unenduring emotions are emotions which sway the conduct now this way and now that, without any consistency. The...

Acting alone, the primordial factor must have initiated the primary differentiation in all units of protoplasm alike. I say alike, but I must forthwith qualify the word. For sin...

Let us take next a universal physiological law of a less conspicuous kind. To the ordinary observer, it seems that the multiplication of organisms proceeds in various ways. He s...

If the advance of Man towards greater heterogeneity is traceable to the production of many effects by one cause, still more clearly may the advance of Society towards greater he...

With but little break we come here upon a significant analogy, parallel to an analogy already described. As was pointed out, an inorganic body that is modifiable by its medium,...

With the view of showing that _if_ the Nebular Hypothesis be true, the genesis of the solar system supplies one illustration of this law, let us assume that the matter of which...

Meanwhile, how would the surfaces of the upheaved masses be occupied? At first their deserts of naked rocks would bear only the humblest forms of vegetal life, such as we find i...

It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here indicated are not to be taken as intellectual processes--not as processes in which recognized relations between pleasures...

The advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous is displayed not only in the separation of these arts from each other and from religion, but also in the multiplied differe...

The first cardinal fact is that all protophytes are cellular--all show us this contrast between outside and inside. Supposing the multitudinous specialities of the envelope in d...

[Footnote 25: If the "rice-grain" appearance is thus produced by the tops of the ascending currents (and M. Faye accepts this interpretation), then I think it excludes M. Faye's...

We think not; and had Mr. Bain carried farther an idea with which he has set out, he would probably have seen that they cannot. As already said, he avowedly adopts "the natural-...

But during the growth of that civilization which has been made possible by these ego-altruistic sentiments, there have been slowly evolving the altruistic sentiments. Developmen...

Here we might show how the general truth, that every active force produces more than one change, is again exemplified in the highly-involved flow of the tides, in the ocean curr...

Simultaneously there has been going on a second differentiation of a more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has been segregated into distinct class...

Other apparently inexplicable phenomena are at the same time divested of their strangeness. I refer to the beliefs in, and worship of, compound monsters--impossible hybrid anima...

[Footnote 29: A critical reader may raise an objection. If animal-worship is to be rationally interpreted, how can the interpretation set out by assuming a belief in the spirits...

"But if natural selection is a mere phrase, vague enough and wide enough to cover any number of the physical causes concerned in ordinary generation, then the whole of Mr. Spenc...