316. Yet while thus demurring at many points both to Professor Lombroso's statistics themselves and to the conclusions based upon them, I recognise that there are underlying facts of great importance which give to his view such plausibility as it possesses. It is certainly not true, as I hold, either that the human race in general is nervously degenerating, or that nervous degeneration tends to a maximum in its most eminent members. But it can be plausibly maintained that the proportion of nervous to other disorders tends to increase. And it is certain that not nervous degeneration but nervous change or development is now proceeding among civilised peoples more rapidly than ever before, and that this self-adaptation to wider environments must inevitably be accompanied in the more marked cases by something of nervous instability. And it is true also that from one point of view these changes might form matter for regret; and that in order to discern what I take to be their true meaning we have to regard the problem of human evolution from a somewhat unfamiliar standpoint.

The thesis which I have called plausible only, - the increased modern importance of nervous in comparison with other disorders - is quite untrustworthy unless in the first place we remember that such increase is probably relative only, other types of disease having positively declined, as their common causes - hunger, filth, and exposure - have become rarer among civilised men. Moreover, our standard of health and sanity becomes constantly higher. Savages and rude populations probably suffer from nervous instabilities as often as we, but they notice it less intelligently, and care less about it. The second proposition, that nervous development is now proceeding more rapidly than ever before, is I think proved by the great general advance in all achievements needing rapid and precise nervous adjustment. The perpetual "record-breaking" in athletics, which we take in this age as a matter of course, is far more of a nervous than of a muscular affair, and the standard of modern capacity for every kind of work of brain and hand (I do not say the standard of industrial probity, or of imaginative elevation), rises as steadily as the standard of the machinery with which we supplement our bodily powers.

317. I pass on to the second point mentioned just above. The nervous system itself is probably tending in each generation to become more complex and more delicately ramified. As is usual when any part of an organism is undergoing rapid evolutive changes, this nervous progress is accompanied with some instability. Those individuals in whom the hereditary or the acquired change is the most rapid are likely also to suffer most from this perturbation which masks evolution - this occasional appearance of what may be termed "nervous sports " of a useless or even injurious type. Such are the fancies and fanaticisms, the bizarre likes and dislikes, the excessive or aberrant sensibilities, which have been observed in some of the eminent men whom Lombroso discusses. Their truest analogue, as we shall presently see more fully, lies in the oddities or morbidities of sentiment or sensation which so often accompany the development of the human organism into its full potencies, or precede the crowning effort by which a fresh organism is introduced into the world.

Such at least is my view; but the full acceptance of this view must depend upon some very remote and very speculative considerations bearing upon the nature and purport of the whole existence and evolution of man. Yet however remote and speculative the thesis which I defend may be, it is not one whit remoter or more speculative than the view which, faute de mieux, is often tacitly assumed by scientific writers. My supposed opponent and I are like two children who have looked through a keyhole at the first few moves in a game of chess, - of whose rules we are entirely ignorant. My companion urges that since we have only seen pawns moved, it is probable that the game is played with the pawns alone; and that the major pieces seen confusedly behind the pawns are only a kind of fringe or ornament of the board. I reply that those pieces stand on the board like the pawns j and that since they are larger and more varied than the pawns, it is probable that they are meant to play some even more important role in the game as it develops.

We agree that we must wait and see whether the pieces are moved; and I now maintain that I have seen a piece moved, although my companion has not noticed it.

The chessboard in this parable is the Cosmos; the pawns are those human faculties which make for the preservation and development on this planet of the individual and the race; the pieces are faculties which may either be the mere by-products of terrene evolution, or on the other hand may form an essential part of the faculty with which the human germ or the human spirit is originally equipped, for the purpose of self-development in a cosmical, as opposed to a merely planetary, environment.

318. I know not where to find what I may call the planetary scheme of man's evolution set forth at length. Perhaps one of its supporters might argue somewhat as follows: " The basis from which we start must be the existence of the material universe. This universe has certain laws, presumably antecedent to living matter, and to which living matter, however it may have come to exist in the universe, must inevitably conform. Living creatures, if life is to persist, must eat and must propagate; and the germ from which they sprang must have involved the faculties necessary for thus persisting. That germ developed along various lines into various animals; and the higher animals prove their superiority by outliving and dominating the lower. The main set and tendency of man's faculties points to a more and more complete dominion over the material world. But the way in which faculties develop is largely by the occurrence of sports, - of unpredictable varieties. Some of these, although they may not tend to increase man's power over the material world, tend to his pleasure in other ways, and are fostered by him.

And, apart from actual sports, the brain is such a complex affair, and the inter-connections of faculty are so subtle, that the mere development of those useful faculties which lie in the direct track of evolution tends also to the formation of by-products, - instincts, appetites, and powers, which tend to persist and grow, and which gradually come to fill a large part of human consciousness. Religion, Art, spiritual love, etc, are such by-products; their existence proves that the brain is a complex thing j but it does not prove that any spiritual world exists which can satisfy their cravings".

These arguments of course receive many answers from theological and philosophical standpoints. It is urged in various ways that the qualities here described as by-products are at once too fundamental and too elevated to be thus regarded as the mere incidental concomitants of faculties of far lower range.

Arguments of this type, however, for the most part ignore altogether the evolutionary scheme put forward on the other side, and rest upon considerations which in this work I am myself precluded from urging. I must now try to show that the evolutionary scheme itself, when more closely considered, points to a wider than planetary scope.