384 OUTLINES OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 



" adaptations " of the natural theologian. We may contemplate 

 these phenomena as ordained to take place in every situation, 

 and at every time, where and when the requisite materials and 

 conditions are presented in other orbs as well as in this in 

 any geographical area of this globe which may at any time 

 arise observing only the variations due to difference of 

 materials and of conditions." 1 



" For the history, then, of organic nature, I embrace, not as a 

 proved fact, but as a rational interpretation of things as far as 

 science has revealed them, the idea of Progressive Development. 

 We contemplate the simplest and most primitive types of being, 

 as giving, under a law to which that of like-production is sub- 

 ordinate, birth to a type superior to it in composite ness of 

 organization and endowment of faculties; this again producing 

 the next higher, and so on to the highest. We contemplate, in 

 short, a universal gestation of nature, analogous to that of the 

 individual being ; and attended as little by circumstances of 

 a startling or miraculous kind, as the silent advance of an 

 ordinary mother from one week to another of her pregnancy. 

 We see but the chronicle of one or two great areas, within which 

 the development has reached the highest forms. In some others, 

 as Australia and the islands of the Pacific, development appears 

 to have not yet passed through the whole of its stages, because, 

 owing to the comparatively late uprise of the land, the terrestrial 

 portion of the development was there commenced more recently. 

 It would commence and proceed in any new appropriate area, on 

 this or any other sphere, exactly as it commenced upon our area 

 in the time of the earliest fossiliferous rocks, whichever these 

 are. Nay, it perhaps starts every hour with common infusions, 

 and in similar humble theatres, and might there proceed through 

 all the subsequent stages, granting suitable space and conditions. 

 Thus simple after ages of marvelling appears Organic 

 Creation, while yet the whole phenomena are, in another point 

 of view, wonders of the highest kind, being the undoubted results 

 of ordinances arguing the highest attributes of foresight, skill, 

 and goodness on the part of their Divine Author." 2 



Progressive evolution is here clearly attributed to some inherent 

 tendency implanted in the first living things, and apparently the 

 writer imagines that the same or closely similar results may 

 have been arrived at along many different lines of evolution, each 

 commencing at a distinct starting point and at a different time and 



1 " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." 12th ed., 1884, pp. 201, 202. 



2 Ibid., pp.230, 231. 



