NATURAL SELECTION CRITICISED. 301 



The continuity in space is but as the continuity in 

 time. There, too, there are identities, or self-identities, 

 each, in its place. " The infinitude of the universe " (says 

 Kant, WW. vi. 208) "embraces within it with equal 

 necessity every nature that its transcendent wealth pro- 

 duces ; from the highest class of thinking beings down 

 to the most insignificant insect, there is not a single 

 member of them all indifferent ; not one can fail without 

 a break in the harmony of the whole which consists in 

 its community." " Indisputably, in the highest idea of 

 reason," says Schelling, " the plant is predetermined ; from 

 idea to plant as necessary moment of it, there is a con- 

 tinuous progress." 1 Plants and animals are considered 

 by Erigena under the point of view of two different stages 

 of the realisation of one and the same universal life. Of 

 that universal life the esse, viverc, intelliyere of the Middle 

 Ages are but the natural unfoldings. There is but a 

 single scene of reason, let contingency ramp as it may. 

 Did the earth not rotate, for example, one half of it were 

 frozen into futility as the other half to a like effect 

 scorched. Mr. Darwin's sinuosities of accident, accumu- 

 lations of chance, beside the eternal presence of all- 

 pervading purpose ! 



The tubercle he sees in the ear proof of the original 

 brute ! Three pages, with an actual drawing, are devoted 

 to this in the Descent of Man, A minute, almost imper- 

 ceptible, inconstant nodule in the circumference of the 

 external ear, this shall be but the original bestial ear-tip, 

 only " folded in." Of another peculiarity in the ear he 

 says this just in passing : "It has been asserted that 

 the ear of man alone possesses a lobule ; but a rudiment 



1 How Mr. Darwin himself laments that quite a quantity of good 

 food should be lost by disturbance, on the part of man, of " that 

 chain by which so many animals are linked together" see back 

 d propos of certain stercovora, at pp. 81, 82. 



