UNITY OF COMPOSITION. 259 
The religious world who have always been accustomed to think 
that God created the animals after “their kind,’ need not fear for 
the truth of the Bible narrative; it is not in the slightest danger 
of subversion; even supposing that Darwin’s theory could be 
established, yet we all admit that God works by laws, and the 
law of development may be the very agency he commanded to 
proceed to do his will in those early days of creation, and if this 
be the case, it redounds more to his glory that such wonderful 
diversity as is shown in the animal kingdom should have been the 
result of such a law, than if he had called into existence each 
family separately. The creation of life must always remain beyond 
the power of any law. Even granting that the globe has been 
peopled with life from a very crude and low type, yet between 
the sponges and the stone upon which they grow there is a great 
eulf fixed. In the one, there is that. mysterious something called 
“life,” and in the other it is wanting. No ages, no development, 
can ever—from that which has no power of any alteration, or any 
growth—produce a superior existence. Life is a power entirely 
foreign to matter, and to grant it, there must be a Creator! 
Cuvier met the new ideas broached by St. Hilaire, with a 
strong opposition. “If,” said the great naturalist, “you mean 
by wnity—identity, the evidence of our senses is a_ sufficient 
contradiction. If, however, we only are to understand resemblance, | 
or analogy, the proposition is true within certain limits; but as 
old, in its principle, as zoology itself. Recent discoveries have 
added important facts, but these in no way controvert the principle.” 
Geoffroy replied, that unity of composition was neither perfect 
identity, nor yet simple analogy, but something midway between 
the two. It had more to do with the mutual relation of animals 
than with their individual forms, and treated rather of the general 
plan than of the particular example of the type. Had not Cuvier 
acknowledged that there were four distinct types in the animal king- 
dom? and did not the animals of each of these types—the verte- 
brates, for instance—offer among themselves both identities and 
analogies? In other words, the great zoologist accused Nature of 
leaving—in the evident plan of her organisation—-great chasms, 
which she had not attempted to bridge; and that animals which 
were plainly the transition from one type to another—the cepha- 
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