204 NATURAL SELECTION ^ ix 



those exquisitely toned sounds, which are only appreciated 

 by the higher races, and which are probably destined for 

 more elevated uses and more refined enjoyment in a higher 

 condition than we have yet attained to. So, those faculties 

 which enable us to transcend time and space, and to realise 

 the wonderful conceptions of mathematics and philosophy, or 

 which give us an intense yearning for abstract truth (all of 

 which were occasionally manifested at such an early period 

 of human history as to be far in advance of any of the few 

 practical applications which have since grown out of them), 

 are evidently essential to the perfect development of man as 

 a spiritual being, but are utterly inconceivable as having been 

 produced through the action of a law which looks only, and 

 can look only, to the immediate material welfare of the indi- 

 vidual or the race. 



The inference I would draw from this class of phenomena 

 is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development 

 of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, just 

 as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable 

 forms. The laws of evolution alone would, perhaps, never 

 have produced a grain so well adapted to man's use as wheat 

 and maize ; such fruits as the seedless banana and bread- 

 fruit ; or such animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or the 

 London dray-horse. Yet these so closely resemble the un- 

 aided productions of nature, that we may well imagine a 

 being who had mastered the laws of development of organic 

 forms through past ages, refusing to believe that any new 

 power had been concerned in their production, and scornfully 

 rejecting the theory (as my theory will be rejected by 

 many who agree with me on other points) that in these few 

 cases a controlling intelligence had directed the action of the 

 laws of variation, multiplication, and survival, for his own 

 purposes. We know, however, that this has been done ; and 

 we must therefore admit the possibility that, if we are not 

 the highest intelligences in the universe, some higher intelli- 

 gence may have directed the process by which the human 

 race was developed, by means of more subtle agencies than 

 we are acquainted with. At the same time I must confess 

 that this theory has the disadvantage of requiring the inter- 

 vention of some distinct individual intelligence, to aid in the 



