51 



time, when she wreathed the swan with snow, and bathed 

 the dove in iridescence. That the infinitely more ex- 

 alted powei's of life mnst exercise more intimate influence 

 over matter than the reckless forces of cohesion; — and 

 that the loves and hatreds of the now conscions creatures 

 would modify their forms into parallel beauty and degra- 

 dation, we might have anticipated by reason, and we 

 ought long since to have known by observation. But this 

 law^ of its spirit over the substance of the creature in- 

 volves, necessarily, the indistinctness of its type, and the 

 existence of inferior and of higher conditions, which 

 w^hole 8eras of heroism and affection — whole geras of 

 misery and misconduct, confirm into glory, or confuse 

 into shame. Collecting the causes of changed form, in 

 lower creatures, by distress, or by adaptation, — by the dis- 

 turbance or intensifying of the parental strength, and the 

 native fortune — the wonder is, not that species should 

 sometimes be confused, but that the greater number of 

 them remain so splendidly, so manifestly, so eternally 

 distinct; and that the vile industries and vicious curi- 

 osities of modern science, while they have robbed the 

 fields of Eno^land of a thousand livins^ creatures, have not 

 created in them one. 



61. But even in the paltry knowledge we have ob- 

 tained, what unanimity have we? — w^hat security? Sup- 

 pose any man of ordinary sense, knowing the value of 

 time, and the relative importance of subjects of thought, 

 and that the whole scientific world was agog concerning 



