158 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



they are pictured before our eyes in the metamorphosis of the 

 tadpole, and even practically exemplified in a narrow degree 

 in the natural history of the bee. It has been shown that no 

 organism is independent, but all stand in " a web of intimate 

 relation," undeniably indicating that their origin is one con- 

 nected phenomenon. It has been seen that the higher animals, 

 when their organization is examined, are only improvements 

 upon the lower advanced forms of the same beings j and the 

 same holds good regarding plants. In conformity, too, with 

 this gradation of forms, is the succession of the actual animals 

 throughout the geological ages ; a fact most important a piece 

 of actual tangible evidence, bearing wholly, when taken in 

 connexion with proofs of other kinds, in favour of the natural 

 origin of species. When, in addition to all this, we learn that 

 life is believed by many men of science to spring occasionally, 

 even now, from inorganic elements when we find that, more- 

 over, it is generally admitted by that class of men to be in 

 itself a simply natural phenomenon, it seems difficult to resist 

 the impression that VESTIGES, at least, are seen of the manner 

 and method of the Creator in this part of his work. It appears 

 to be a case in which rigid proof is hardly to be looked for. 

 But such evidences as exist, are remarkably consistent and 

 harmonious. The theory pointed to comports with everything 

 else which we have learned accurately regarding the history of 

 the universe. Science has not one positive affirmation on the 

 other side. Indeed, the view opposed to it is not one in which 

 science is concerned j it appears as merely one of the preju- 

 dices formed in the non-age of our race, and which it becomes 

 the manhood of humanity to dismiss. For the history, then, 

 of organic nature, I embrace, not as a proved fact, but as a 

 rational interpretation of things as far as science has revealed 

 them, the idea of Progressive Development. We contemplate 

 the simplest and most primitive types of being, as giving, 

 under a law to which that of like production is subordinate, 

 birth to a type superior to it in compositeness of organization and 

 endowment of faculties ; this again producing the next higher, 

 and so on to the highest. We contemplate, in short, a universal 

 gestation of nature, analogous to that of the individual being ; 

 and attended as little by circumstances of a startling or mira- 

 culous kind, as the silent advance of an ordinary mother from 

 one week to another of her pregnancy. We see but the 

 chronicle of one or two great areas, within which the develop- 

 ment has reached the highest forms. In some others, as 



