132 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. Part I. 



SECTION XXXII 



RECAPITULATION. 



In recapitiilating the preceding statements, we may present the following con- 

 clusions : — 



1st/ The connection of all these known features of nature into one system ex- 

 hibits thought, the most comprehensive thought, in hmits transcending the highest 

 wonted powers of man. 



2d. The simultaneous existence of the most diversified types under identical 

 circumstances exhibits thought, the ability to adapt a great variety of structures to 

 the most uniform conditions. 



3d. The repetition of similar types, under the most diversified circumstances, 

 shows an immaterial connection between them; it exhibits thought, proving directly 

 how completely the Creative Mind is independent of the influence of a material 

 world. 



4th. The unity of plan in otherwise highly diversified types of animals, exhibits 

 thought; it exhibits more immediately premeditation, for no plan could embrace such 

 a diversity of beings, called into existence at such long intervals of time, unless it 

 had been framed in the beorinnino; with immediate reference to the end. 



6th. The correspondence, now generally known as special homologies, in the details 

 of structure in animals otherwise entirely disconnected, down to the most minute 

 peculiarities, exhibits thought, and more immediately the power of expressing a 

 general proposition in an indefinite number of ways, equally complete in themselves, 

 though differing in all their details. 



6th. The various degrees and difierent kinds of relationship among animals Avhich 

 can have no genealogical connection, exhibit thought, the power of combining dif- 

 ferent categories into a permanent, harmonious whole, even though the material 

 basis of this harmony be ever changing. 



7th. The simultaneous existence, in the earliest geological periods in which ani- 

 mals existed at all, of representatives of all the great types of the animal kingdom, 

 exliibits most especially thought, considerate thovight, combining power, premeditation, 

 prescience, omniscience. 



8th. The gradation based upon complications of structure which may be traced 



^ The numbers inscribed here correspond to the reader may at once refer back to the evidence, when 

 preceding sections, in the same order, so that the needed. 



