DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESES. 197 



to itself, the while that its general life merges imperceptibly 

 into that of the epoch that follows, just as it was impercep- 

 tibly interwoven with that which preceded. 



[Development Hypotheses.] 



This belief in a gradual and unbroken evolution of vitality 

 gives no encouragement to the doctrine of development from 

 lower to higher types, through some long-continued but 

 little-understood process of physical transmutation. We 

 say "physical" transmutation; for, whether we appeal, with 

 Lamarck, to the modifying influence of new external condi- 

 tions with the author of the Vestiges, to the force of internal 

 volition on the embryotic organism or with Mr Darwin, 

 to the gradual accumulation of minute beneficial changes, 

 which amount in the long-run to specific distinctions, we 

 adopt the same blind-chance process, and are merely phras- 

 ing in different terms the same materialistic* hypothesis. 

 Of such a process we have no direct evidence either in 

 existing nature or in that which has become extinct ; nor 

 by the assumption of such a process can the various grades 

 and affinities of vitality be logically reduced into one har- 

 monious and consistent scheme. If by any unknown ge- 

 iietic process the polype has given birth to the star-fish, the 

 star-fish to the mollusc, the mollusc to the fish, the fish to 

 the reptile, the reptile to the bird, and the bird to the 

 mammal, it must have been either through a graduated 

 succession of intermediate forms, or at once and directly. 



* Should this assertion appear unwan*anted, we have only to refer to 

 Lamarck's own avowal, to the advertisement first announcing the publi- 

 cation of the Vestiges in 1844, and to the whole tone and tenor of the 

 Origin of Species, in which there seems to be a studied non-recognition 

 of any higher Influence than chance, external conditions, nature, law, 

 and other kindred activities. 



