6 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



condition of aggregation, which are always wanting in the 

 Anorgana. Upon this important distinction rests the divi- 

 sion of all natural history into two great and principal parts 

 — Biology, or the science of Organisms (Zoology and Botany), 

 and Anorganology, or the science of Anorgana (Mineralogy, 

 Geology, Meteorology, etc.). 



The great value of the Theory of Descent in regard to 

 Biology consists, as I have already remarked, in its explain- 

 ing to ns the origin of organic forms in a mechanical way, 

 and pointing out their active causes. But however highly 

 and justly this service of the Theory of Descent may be 

 valued, yet it is almost eclipsed by the immense importance 

 which a single necessary inference from it claims for itself 

 alone. This necessary and unavoidable inference is the 

 theory of the animal descent of the human race. 



The determination of the position of man in nature, and 

 of his relations to the totality of things — this question of all 

 questions for mankind, as Huxley justly calls it — ^is finally 

 solved by the knowledge that man is descended from 

 animals. In consequence of Darwin's reformed Theory of 

 Descent, we are now in a position to establish scientifically 

 the groundwork of a non-miixiculous history of the de- 

 velopment of the human race. All those who have defended 

 Darwin's theory, as well as all its thoughtful opponents, have 

 acknowledged that, as a matter of necessity, it follows from 

 his theory that the human race, in the fii^st place, must be 

 traced to ape-like mammals, and further back to the lower 

 vertebrate animals. 



It is true Darwin himself did not express at first this 

 most important of all the inferences from his theory. In 

 nis work, " On the Origin of Species," not a word is found 



