406 PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION. CHAP. xx. 



pearing as an integral part of the same continuous series of 

 acts of development, one link in the same chain, the crowning- 

 operation as it were of one and the same series of manifesta 

 tions of creative power. If the dangers apprehended from 

 transmutation arise from the too intimate connection which 

 it tends to establish between the human and merely animal 

 natures, it might have been expected that the progressive 

 development of organisation, instinct, and intelligence might 

 have been unpopular, as likely to pioneer the way for the re 

 ception of the less favoured doctrine. But the true explana 

 tion of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe 

 in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all 

 we know in paleontology is as nothing compared to what we 

 have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as so 

 fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which 

 are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at 

 the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which 

 must be defective in the extreme. But exactly in propor 

 tion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of 

 it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists 

 unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting. 

 Their faith in the fullness of the annals leads them to 

 regard all breaks in the series of organic existence, or in 

 the sequence of the fossiliferous rocks, as proofs of original 

 chasms and leaps in the course of nature, signs of the inter 

 mittent action of the creational force, or of catastrophes which 

 devastated the habitable surface ; and they are therefore fear 

 less of discovering any continuity of plan (except that which 

 must have existed in the Divine mind) which would imply a 

 material connection between the outgoing organisms and the 

 incoming ones. 



