614 Distinctness of Man from all other Beings. 



here to Revelation, writing only in the spirit of natural theo- 

 logy,) close his non-conforming career as a species, upon earth, 

 in a manner different from the extinction of other species, which 

 yield to the progressive changes of the surface." 



To what manner of man's closing his career does he possibly 

 allude ? What becomes of the soul of man is not the question, 

 but merely how he closes his career. I thought he left the 

 stage from the same causes, and in the same manner, as other 

 animals. 



" No naturalist can doubt " (?) " that this beautiful world 

 existed, and was clad in verdure and inhabited, for countless" (?) 

 " ages before man became its denizen ; and there are no me- 

 morials to indicate that an analogous being ever previously 

 existed." 



The circumstance that no remains of man, or of any analo- 

 gous being, are found along with those extinct species that are 

 ascribed to a former creation, is in itself hardly a proof that he 

 did not then exist; for there may be something in the compo- 

 sition of human flesh and bones which does not permit of 

 their preservation for ages in the earth, when buried therein 

 without any coffin or any embalming. It is said, indeed, that 

 man and the monkey-tribe are proof against the action of 

 petrifaction. * 



" Man alone is a creature by himself; the only being whose 

 agency is at all opposed to the mutual and reciprocal system 

 of adaptations prevalent around him." 



Every animal, I thought, was as much a creature by itself 

 as man. The latter portion of his sentence is but a repetition 

 of what he has already observed, but the incorrectness of it 

 is manifest. Is it not in the order of nature that power should 

 be clashing with power, interest with interest ? the old proverb 

 being illustrated, " Every one for himself, and God for us 

 all." Man, for instance, kills the eagle, the eagle kills the 

 weasel, the weasel kills the swallow, the swallow kills the 

 gnat, the gnat sucks man's blood. 



* The commonly entertained notion that the bones of human beings, if 

 placed under favourable conditions, would not undergo the process of petri- 

 faction, may certainly rank as one of the most palpable of vulgar errors. 

 There is not the slightest foundation for the supposition, and in fact it is 

 completely negatived from the circumstance of human skeletons occurring 

 completely fossilised in a limestone in the Island of Guadaloupe. No 

 very satisfactory evidence has, however, yet been adduced, which would lead 

 us to suppose that our own race inhabited this planet even at so compara- 

 tively recent a period as that in which the mammoth and mastodon became 

 extinct. At the present time, particularly, any facts tending to the eluci- 

 dation of this question would be of the highest interest and importance ; 

 but there is perhaps no subject connected with geology the investigation 

 of which requires more caution. — Ed. 



