26 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



tary organs, those exceedingly remarkable structures in 

 animals and plants which have no object and refute every 

 teleological explanation seeking for the final purpose of the 

 organism. A great number of other phenomena might have 

 been mentioned, which are no less important, and are ex- 

 plained in the simplest manner by Darwin's reformed 

 Theory of Descent. For the present I will only mention 

 the phenom^ena presented to us by the geographical distri- 

 hution of animals and plants on the surface of our planet, 

 as well as the geological distribution of the extinct and 

 petrified organisms in the different strata of the earth's 

 crust. These important palseontological and geographical 

 phenomena, which were formerly only known to us as facts, 

 are now traced to their active causes by the Theory of 

 Descent. 



The same statement applies fui'ther to all the general laws 

 of Comparative Anatomy, especially to the great law of 

 division of labour or seioaration (polymorphism, or dif- 

 ferentiation), a law which determines the form or structure 

 of human society, as well as the organization of individual 

 animals and plants. It is this law which necessitates an 

 ever increasing variety, as well as a progressive develop- 

 ment of organic forms. This law of the division of labour 

 has, up to the present time, been only recognized as a fact, 

 and it, like the law of progressive development, or the law 

 of progress which we perceive active everywhere in the 

 history of nations (as also in that of animals and plants), is 

 explained by Darwin's Doctrine of Descent. Then, if we 

 turn our attention to the great whole of organic nature, if 

 we compare all the individual groups of phenomena of this 

 immense domain of life, it cannot fail to appear, in the light 



