ATTRIBUTES OF INANIMATE MATTER. 191 



It is pretty generally conceded on the part of those 

 who hold to the Mosaic account of creation that the 

 earth was first peopled with low orders of plants and 

 animals ; and that the time since the earliest forms of 

 organic life appeared must have been incalculably 

 long from the fact that layer upon layer of sedimentary 

 rock reveals beds of fossils which show what manner 

 of organism prevailed from cycle to cycle in the earth's 

 history. Possibly millions of years elapsed from the 

 dawn of organic life, to the creation of a fish the 

 lowest backboned animal then there had to be a reign 

 of reptiles and birds before mammals came, and im- 

 provements seem to have been going on all the while. 

 Man did not come with all the endowments and ac- 

 quirements of a philosopher, but in the state of a 

 savage, and there is no evidence nothing but in- 

 ference that primitive man was sired by an ape. 

 There is much to show that he was originally much 

 like the savages of uncivilized countries. The optimist 

 affects to believe that the first pair of human beings 

 came directly from the hand of the Almighty, and 

 therefore were necessarily " perfect," but in the ana- 

 tomical manipulation of man's organism it is found 

 that his mechanism has some important defects. The 

 most of his special senses are excelled by those in 

 some of the inferior animals; and it is only in his 

 entirety that man is superior to any of the lower ani- 

 mals. . . . 



In the purposive operations of organic structures 

 we sometimes see a progressive tendency in one part 

 of the organism and a retrograde action in another 

 region of the body. In the Ateles and some other 

 long-tailed monkeys, as the prehensile character of the 

 caudal extremity is developed, the thumb shrinks and 



