130 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION 



material is absorbed into the Asteroids. Hence, Mars is ready for 

 formation so far exterior to its true place, that when the next inter- 

 val elapses the residual force becomes strong enough to form the 

 Earth, after which the normal law is resumed without any further 

 disturbance. Under this law there can be no planet exterior to Nep- 

 tune, but there may be one interior to Mercury. 



Let us now look back upon some of the leading features alluded to 

 before, omitting the simpler relations of organized beings to the 

 world around, or those of individuals to individuals, to consider 

 only the different parallel series we have been comparing when 

 showing that in their respective great types the phenomena of ani- 

 mal life correspond to one another, whether we compare their rank 

 as determined by structural complication with the phases of their 

 growth, or with their succession in past geological ages; whether we 

 compare this succession with their embryonic growth, or all these 

 different relations with each other and with the geographical distri- 

 bution of animals upon earth. The same series everywhere! These 

 facts are true of all the great divisions of the animal kingdom, so 

 far as we have pursued the investigation; and though, for want of 

 materials, the train of evidence is incomplete in some instances, 

 yet we have proof enough for the establishment of this law of a 

 universal correspondence in all the leading features which binds 

 all organized beings of all times into one great system, intellectually 

 and intelligibly linked together, even where some links of the chain 

 are missing. It requires considerabe familiarity with the subject 

 even to keep in mind the evidence, for, though yet imperfectly un- 

 derstood, it is the most brilliant result of the combined intellectual 

 efforts of hundreds of investigators during half a century. The con- 

 nection, however, between the facts, it is easily seen, is only intellec- 

 tual; and implies therefore the agency of Intellect as its first cause. ^'^^ 



And if the power of thinking connectedly is the privilege of cul- 

 tivated minds only; if the power of combining different thoughts 

 and of drawing from them new thoughts is a still rarer privilege of 

 a few superior minds; if the ability to trace simultaneously several 

 trains of thought is such an extraordinary gift, that the few cases in 

 which evidence of this kind has been presented have become a 



""Agassiz, "Contemplations of God in the Cosmos," Christian Examiner, L (1851), 

 1-17. 



