The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862

But it is not merely upon the structural relations established between these groups by anatomical features in the adult that we must decide this question. We must examine it also from the embryological point of view. Every animal in its growth undergoes a succession of changes: is there anything in these changes implying a transition of one type into another? Baer has given us the answer to this question. He has shown that there are four distinct modes of development, as well as four plans of structure; and though we have seen that higher animals of one class pass through phases of growth in which they transiently resemble lower animals of the same class, yet each one of these four modes of development is confined within the limits of the type, and a Vertebrate never resembles, at any stage of its growth, anything but a Vertebrate, or an Articulate anything but an Articulate, or a Mollusk anything but a Mollusk, or a Radiate anything but a Radiate.

Yet, although there is no embryological transition of one type into another, the gradations of growth within the limits of the same type and the same class, already alluded to, are very striking throughout the Animal Kingdom. There are periods in the development of the germs of the higher members of all the types, when they transiently resemble in their general outline the lower representatives of the same type, just as we have seen that the higher orders of one class pass through stages of development in which they transiently resemble lower orders of the same class. This gradation of growth corresponds to the gradation of rank in adult animals, as established upon comparative complication of structure. For instance, according to their structural character, all naturalists have placed Fishes lowest in the scale of Vertebrates. Now all the higher Vertebrates have a Fish-like character at first, and pass successively through phases in which they vaguely resemble other lower forms of the same type before they assume their own characteristic form; and this is equally true of the other great divisions, so that the history of the individual is, in some sort, the history of its type.

There is still another aspect of this question,—that of time. If neither the gradation of structural rank among adult animals, nor the gradation of growth in their embryological development gives us any evidence of a transition between types, does not the sequence of animals in their successive introduction upon the globe afford any proof of such a connection? In this relation, I must briefly allude to the succession of geological formations that compose the crust of our globe. The limits of this article will not allow me to enter at any length into the geological details connected with this question; but I will, in the most cursory manner, give a sketch of the great geological periods, as generally accepted now by geologists. The first of these periods has been called the Azoic or lifeless period, because it is the only one that contains no remains of organic life, and it is therefore supposed that at that early stage of the world’s history the necessary conditions for the maintenance of animals and plants were not yet established. After this, every great geological period that follows has been found to be characterized by a special set of animals and plants, differing from all that follow and all that precede it, till we arrive at our own period, when Man, with the animals and plants that accompany him on earth, was introduced.

There is, then, an order of succession in time among animals; and if there has been any transition between types and classes, any growth of higher out of lower forms, it is here that we should look for the evidence of it. According to this view, we should expect to find in the first period in which organic remains are found at all only the lowest type, and of that type only the lowest class, and, indeed, if we push the theory to its logical consequences, only the lowest forms of the lowest class. What are now the facts? This continent affords admirable opportunities for the investigation of this succession, because, in consequence of its mode of formation, we have, in the State of New York, a direct, unbroken sequence of all the earliest geological deposits.

The ridge of low hills, called the Laurentian Hills, along the line of division between Canada and the States was the first American land lifted above the ocean. That land belongs to the Azoic period, and contains no trace of life. Along the base of that range of hills lie the deposits of the next great geological period, the Silurian; and the State of New York, geologically speaking, belongs almost entirely to this Silurian period, with its lowest Taconic division, and the Devonian period, the third in succession of these great epochs. I need hardly remind those of my readers who have travelled through New York, and have visited Niagara or Trenton, or, indeed, any of the localities where the broken edges of the strata expose the buried life within them, how numerous this early population of the earth must have been. No one who has held in his hand one of the crowded slabs of sand—or lime-stone, full of Crustacea, Shells, and Corals, from any of the old Silurian or Devonian beaches which follow each other from north to south across the State of New York, can suppose that the manifestation of life was less multitudinous then than now. Now, what does this fossil creation tell us? It says this: that, in the Silurian period, the first in which organic life is found at all, there were the three classes of Radiates, the three classes of Mollusks, two of the classes of Articulates, and one class of Vertebrates. In other words, at the dawn of life on earth, the plan of the animal creation with its four fundamental ideas was laid out,—Radiates, Mollusks, Articulates, and Vertebrates were present at that first representation of life upon our globe. If, then, all the primary types appeared simultaneously, one cannot have grown out of another,—they could not be at once contemporaries and descendants of each other.

The diagram on the opposite page represents the geological periods in their regular succession, and the approximate time at which all the types and all the classes of the Animal Kingdom were introduced; for there is still some doubt as to the exact period of the introduction of several of the classes, though all geologists are agreed respecting them, within certain limits, not very remote from each other, according to geological estimates of time.

If such discussions were not inappropriate here from their technical character, I think I could show upon combined geological and zoological evidence that the classes which are not present with the others at the beginning, such as Insects among Articulates, or Reptiles, Birds, and Mammalia among Vertebrates, are always introduced at the time when the conditions essential to their existence are established,—as, for instance, Reptiles, at the period when the earth was not fully redeemed from the waste of waters, and extensive marshes afforded means for the half-aquatic, half-terrestrial life even now characteristic of all our larger Reptiles, while Insects, so dependent on vegetable growth, make their appearance with the first forests; so that we need not infer, because these and other classes come in after the earlier ones, that they are therefore a growth out of them, since it is altogether probable that they would not be created till the conditions necessary for their maintenance on earth were established. From a merely speculative point of view it seems to me natural to suppose that the physical and the organic world have progressed together, and that there is a direct relation between the successive creations and the condition of the earth at the time of those creations. We know that all the beings of the Silurian and Devonian periods were marine; the land, so far as it existed in their time, was a great beach, and along those shores, wherever any part of the continents was lifted above the level of the waters, the Silurian and Devonian animals lived. Later, in the marshes and the fern-forests of the Carboniferous period, Reptiles and Insects found their place; and only when the earth was more extensive, when marshes had become dry land, when islands had united to form continents, when mountain-chains had been thrown up to make the inequalities of the surface, were the larger quadrupeds introduced, to whose mode of existence all these circumstances are important accessories.

But while all the types and most of the classes were introduced upon the earth simultaneously at the beginning, these types and classes have nevertheless been represented in every great geological period by different sets or species of animals. In this sense, then, there has been a gradation in time among animals, and every successive epoch of the world’s physical history has had its characteristic population. We have found that there is a correspondence between the gradation of structural complication among adult animals as known to us to-day, which we may call the Series of Rank, and the gradation of embryological changes in the same animals, which we may call the Series of Growth; and there is also a correspondence between these two series and the order of succession in time, that establishes a certain gradation in the introduction of animals upon earth, and which we may call the Series of Time. Take as an illustration the class of Echinoderms. The first representatives of this class were a sort of Star-Fishes on stems; then were introduced animals of the same order without stems; in later periods come in the true Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins; and the highest order of the class, the Holothurians, are introduced only in the present geological epoch. Compare now with this the ordinal division of the class as it exists today. The present representative of those earliest Echinoderms on stems is an animal that upon structural evidence stands lowest in the class; next above it are the Comatulæ, corresponding to the early Echinoderms without stems; next in our classification are the Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins; and the Holothurians stand highest, on account of certain structural features that place them at the head of their class. The Series of Time and the Series of Rank, then, accord perfectly, and investigations of the embryological development of these animals have shown that the higher Echinoderms pass through changes in the egg that indicate the same kind of gradation, for the young in some of them have a stem which is gradually dropped, and their successive phases of development recall the adult forms of the lower orders. Take as another illustration the class of Polyps. First in time we find a kind of Polyp Coral, one among the early Reef-Builders, who built their myriad lives into the solid crust of our globe then as their successors do now. These old Corals have their representatives among the present Polyps, and from their structure they are placed lowest in their class, while the embryological development of the higher ones recalls in the younger condition of the germ the same peculiar character. I might multiply examples, and draw equally striking illustrations from the other classes; and though these correspondences cannot be fully established while our knowledge of the embryological growth of animals is so scanty, and information about their geological succession, yet wherever we have been able to trace the connected history of any group of animals in time, and to compare it with the history of their embryological development and their structural relations as they exist to-day, the correspondence is found to be so complete that we are justified in believing that it will not fail in other instances. I may add that a gradation of exactly the same character controls the geographical distribution of animals over the surface of the globe. Here again I must beg my readers to take much of the evidence, which, if expanded, would fill a volume, for granted, since it would be entirely inappropriate here. But I may briefly state that animals are not scattered over the surface of our globe at random, but that they are associated together in what are called faunæ, and that these faunæ have their homes within certain districts—called by naturalists zoölogical provinces. The limits of these provinces are absolutely fixed, in the ocean as well as on the land, by certain physical conditions connected with climate, with altitude, with the pressure of the atmosphere, the weight of the water, etc.; and this is true even for animals of migratory habits, for all such migrations are periodical, and have boundaries as definite and impassable as those that limit the permanent homes of animals. There is a certain series established by the relations between different kinds of animals, as thus distributed over the globe, which agrees with the gradation in their rank, their growth, and their succession in time;—the law which distributes animals in successive faunæ, and in accordance both with their relative superiority or inferiority, and with the physical conditions essential to their existence, being the same as that which controls their structural relations, their embryological development, and their succession in time.

What, then, does this correspondence between the Series of Rank, the Series of Growth, the Series of Time, and the Series of Geographical Distribution in the life of animals teach us? Surely not that the connection between animals is a material one; for the same kind of relation exists between lower and higher animals of one type or one class to-day, in their structural features, in their embryological growth, and in their geographical distribution, as we trace in their order of succession in time; and therefore, if this kind of evidence proves that the later animals are the descendants of the earlier in any genealogical sense, it should also prove that the animals living in one part of the earth at present grow out of animals living in another part, and that the higher animals of one class as it exists now are developed out of the lower ones. The first of these propositions needs no refutation; and with regard to the second, all our investigations go to show that every being born into the world to-day adheres to its individual law of life, and though it passes through transient phases of growth that resemble other beings of its own kind, never pauses at a lower stage of development, or passes on to a higher condition than the one it is bound to fill. If, then, this connection is not a material one, what is it?—for that such a connection does exist throughout the Animal Kingdom, as intimate, as continuous, as complex as any series which the development theorists have ever contended for, is not to be denied. What can it be but an intellectual one? These correspondences are correspondences of thought,—of a thought that is always the same, whether it is expressed in the history of the type through all time, or in the life of the individuals that represent the type at the present moment, or in the growth of the germ of every being born into that type to-day. In other words, the same thought that spans the whole succession of geological ages controls the structural relations of all living beings as well as their distribution over the surface of the earth, and is repeated within the narrow compass of the smallest egg in which any being undergoes its growth.

THE SOUTHERN CROSS

Deem not the ravished glory thine;Nor think the flag shall scathless waveWhereon thou bidd’st its presage shine,—Land of the traitor and the slave!God never set that holy signIn deathless light among His starsTo make its blazonry divineA scutcheon for thine impious wars!And surely as the Wrong must failBefore the everlasting Right,So surely thy device shall paleAnd shrivel in the Northern Light!Look, where its coming splendors stream!The red and white athwart the blue,—While far above, the unconquered gleamOf Freedom’s stars is blazing through!Hark to the rustle and the sweep,Like sound of mighty wings unfurled,And bearing down the sapphire steepHeaven’s hosts to help the imperilled world!Light in the North! Each bristling lanceOf steely sheen a promise bears;And all the midnight where they glanceA rosy flush of morning wears!Yon symbol of your Southern skyShall surely mean but grief and loss;Then tremble, as ye raise on high,In sacrilege, the Southern Cross!O brothers! we entreat in pain,Take ye the unblessed emblem down!Or purge your standard of its stain,And join it with the Northern Crown!

CONCERNING THE SORROWS OF CHILDHOOD

Once upon a time, Mr. Smith, who was seven feet in height, went out for a walk with Mr. Brown, whose stature was three feet and a half. It was in a distant age, in which people were different from what they are now, and in which events occurred such as do not usually occur in these days. Smith and Brown, having traversed various paths, and having passed several griffins, serpents, and mail-clad knights, came at length to a certain river. It was needful that they should cross it; and the idea was suggested that they should cross it by wading. They proceeded, accordingly, to wade across; and both arrived safely at the farther side. The water was exactly four feet deep,—not an inch more or less. On reaching the other bank of the river, Mr. Brown said,—

“This is awful work; it is no joke crossing a river like that. I was nearly drowned.”

“Nonsense!” replied Mr. Smith; “why make a fuss about crossing a shallow stream like this? Why, the water is only four feet deep: that is nothing at all!”

“Nothing to you, perhaps,” was the response of Mr. Brown, “but a serious matter for me. You observe,” he went on, “that water four feet deep is just six inches over my head. The river may be shallow to you, but it is deep to me.”

Mr. Smith, like many other individuals of great physical bulk and strength, had an intellect not much adapted for comprehending subtile and difficult thoughts. He took up the ground that things are what they are in themselves, and was incapable of grasping the idea that greatness and littleness, depth and shallowness, are relative things. An altercation ensued, which resulted in threats on the part of Smith that he would throw Brown into the river; and a coolness was occasioned between the friends which subsisted for several days.

The acute mind of the reader of this page will perceive that Mr. Smith was in error; and that the principle asserted by Mr. Brown was a sound and true one. It is unquestionable that a thing which is little to one man may be great to another man. And it is just as really and certainly great in this latter case as anything ever can be. And yet, many people do a thing exactly analogous to what was done by Smith. They insist that the water which is shallow to them shall be held to be absolutely shallow; and that, if smaller men declare that it is deep to themselves, these smaller men shall be regarded as weak, fanciful, and mistaken. Many people, as they look back upon the sorrows of their own childhood, or as they look round upon the sorrows of existing childhood, think that these sorrows are or were very light and insignificant, and their causes very small. These people do this, because to them, as they are now, big people, (to use the expressive phrase of childhood,) these sorrows would be light, if they should befall. But though these sorrows may seem light to us now, and their causes small, it is only as water four feet in depth was shallow to the tall Mr. Smith. The same water was very deep to the man whose stature was three feet and a half; and the peril was as great to him as could have been caused by eight feet depth of water to the man seven feet high. The little cause of trouble was great to the little child. The little heart was as full of grief and fear and bewilderment as it could hold.

Yes, I stand up against the common belief that childhood is our happiest time. And whenever I hear grown-up people say that it is so, I think of Mr. Smith, and the water four feet deep. I have always, in my heart, rebelled against that common delusion. I recall, as if it were yesterday, a day which I have left behind me more than twenty years. I see a large hall, the hall of a certain educational institution, which helped to make the present writer what he is. It is the day of the distribution of the prizes. The hall is crowded with little boys, and with the relations and friends of the little boys. And the chief magistrate of that ancient town, in all the pomp of civic majesty, has distributed the prizes. It is neither here nor there what honors were borne off by me; though I remember well that that day was the proudest that ever had come in my short life. But I see the face and hear the voice of the kind-hearted old dignitary, who has now been for many years in his grave. And I recall especially one sentence he said, as he made a few eloquent remarks at the close of the day’s proceedings.

“Ah, boys,” said he, “I can tell you this is the happiest time of all your life!”

“Little you know about the matter,” was my inward reply.

I knew that our worries, fears, and sorrows were just as great as those of any one else.

The sorrows of childhood and boyhood are not sorrows of that complicated and perplexing nature which sit heavy on the heart in after-years; but in relation to the little hearts that have to bear them, they are very overwhelming for the time. As has been said, great and little are quite relative terms. A weight which is not absolutely heavy is heavy to a weak person. We think an industrious flea draws a vast weight, if it draw the eighth part of an ounce. And I believe that the sorrows of childhood task the endurance of childhood as severely as those of manhood do the endurance of the man. Yes, we look back now, and we smile at them, and at the anguish they occasioned, because they would be no great matter to us now. Yet in all this we err just as Mr. Smith the tall man erred, in that discussion with the little man, Mr. Brown. Those early sorrows were great things then. Very bitter grief may be in a very little heart. “The sports of childhood,” we know from Goldsmith, “satisfy the child.” The sorrows of childhood overwhelm the poor little thing. I think a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear, as well as a smile, an incident in the early life of Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his biography. When five years old, he got hold of the gun of an elder brother and broke the spring of its lock. What anguish the little boy must have endured, what a crushing sense of having caused an irremediable evil, before he sat down and printed in great letters the following epistle to his brother, the owner of the gun:—“Oh, Jamie, think no more of guns, for the main-spring of that is broken, and my heart is broken!” Doubtless the poor little fellow fancied that for all the remainder of his life he never could feel as he had felt before he touched the unlucky weapon. And looking back over many years, most of us can remember a child crushed and overwhelmed by some trouble which it thought could never be got over; and we can feel for our early self as though sympathizing with another being.

What I wish in this essay is, that we should look away along the path we have come in life; and that we should see, that, though many cares and troubles may now press upon us, still we may well be content. I speak to ordinary people, whose lot has been an ordinary lot. I know there are exceptional cases; but I firmly believe, that, as for most of us, we never have seen better days than these. No doubt, in the retrospect of early youth, we seem to see a time when the summer was brighter, the flowers sweeter, the snowy days of winter more cheerful, than we ever find them now. But, in sober sense, we know that it is all an illusion. It is only as the man travelling over the burning desert sees sparkling water and shady trees where he knows there is nothing but arid sand.

I dare say you know that one of the acutest of living men has maintained that it is foolish to grieve over past suffering. He says, truly enough in one sense, that the suffering which is past is as truly non-existent as the suffering which has never been at all; that, in fact, past suffering is now nothing, and is entitled to no more consideration than that to which nothing is entitled. No doubt, when bodily pain has ceased, it is all over: we do not feel it any more. And you have probably observed that the impression left by bodily pain passes very quickly away. The sleepless night, or the night of torment from toothache, which seemed such a distressing reality while it was dragging over, looks a very shadowy thing the next forenoon. But it may be doubted whether you will ever so far succeed in overcoming the fancies and weaknesses of humanity as to get people to cease to feel that past sufferings and sorrows are a great part of their present life. The remembrance of our past life is a great part of our present life. And, indeed, the greater part of human suffering consists in its anticipation and in its recollection. It is so by the inevitable law of our being. It is because we are rational creatures that it is so. We cannot help looking forward to that which is coming, and looking back on that which is past; nor can we suppress, as we do so, an emotion corresponding to the perception. There is not the least use in telling a little boy who knows that he is to have a tooth pulled out to-morrow, that it is absurd in him to make himself unhappy to-night through the anticipation of it. You may show with irrefragable force of reason, that the pain will last only for the two or three seconds during which the tooth is being wrenched from its place, and that it will be time enough to vex himself about the pain when he has actually to feel it. But the little fellow will pass but an unhappy night in the dismal prospect; and by the time the cold iron lays hold of the tooth, he will have endured by anticipation a vast deal more suffering than the suffering of the actual operation. It is so with bigger people, looking forward to greater trials. And it serves no end whatever to prove that all this ought not to be. The question as to the emotions turned off in the workings of the human mind is one of fact. It is not how the machine ought to work, but how the machine does work. And as with the anticipation of suffering, so with its retrospect. The great grief which is past, even though its consequences no longer directly press upon us, casts its shadow over after-years. There are, indeed, some hardships and trials upon which it is possible that we may look back with satisfaction. The contrast with them enhances the enjoyment of better days. But these trials, it seems to me, must be such as come through the direct intervention of Providence; and they must be clear of the elements of human cruelty or injustice. I do not believe that a man who was a weakly and timid boy can ever look back with pleasure upon the ill-usage of the brutal bully of his school-days, or upon the injustice of his teacher in cheating him out of some well-earned prize. There are kinds of great suffering which can never be thought of without present suffering, so long as human nature continues what it is. And I believe that past sorrows are a great reality in our present life, and exert a great influence over our present life, whether for good or ill. As you may see in the trembling knees of some poor horse, in its drooping head, and spiritless paces, that it was overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers, the heartlessness of companions, and the idiotic folly and cruelty of parents. No, it will not do to tell us that past sufferings have ceased to exist, while their remembrance continues so vivid, and their results so great. You are not done with the bitter frosts of last winter, though it be summer now, if your blighted evergreens remain as their result and memorial. And the man who was brought up in an unhappy home in childhood will never feel that that unhappy home has ceased to be a present reality, if he knows that its whole discipline fostered in him a spirit of distrust in his kind which is not yet entirely got over, and made him set himself to the work of life with a heart somewhat soured and prematurely old. The past is a great reality. We are here the living embodiment of all we have seen and felt through all our life,—fashioned into our present form by millions of little touches, and by none with a more real result than the hours of sorrow we have known.