204 THE LAW. 



beneficial kind ; so that, in the great struggle for existence 

 and under the influence of altered conditions, every creature, 

 advantageously modified, will have a chance of surviving, 

 whilst those unaffected must go to the wall. He fails, 

 however, to show how the operation of a purely physical 

 law should not affect alike every member of a species, and 

 to perceive that his doctrine of " natural selection" is "but a 

 materialistic phraseology for an undefined law of progress, 

 which forms part of a predestined plan, and must clearly 

 obey an intelligent behest. Above all, he fails to prove 

 how or in what manner it could be more advantageous, in 

 a world where every adaptation is perfect, for a crustacean 

 to drop the mask of a trilobite and assume that of a euryp- 

 terite, or for a eurypterite to drop, step by step, its charac- 

 teristic organisation, and put on the ultimate guise of a lob- 

 ster. Still further, if there has really been such a perpetual 

 transmutation of form and function, we are driven backward 

 and backward in the abysm of time to simpler and simpler 

 forms, and compelled to seek for herbivorous and carnivor- 

 ous races a common paternity and origin. To transmute, 

 however, the graminivorous into the carnivorous to change 

 entirely their every organ of prehension, mastication, and 

 digestion their habits and instincts and functions even 

 if it were conceivable, is utterly disproved by the geological 

 record, in which, from the earliest epochs, we find plant- 

 eater and flesh-eater arranged side by side in the great 

 drama of life, and as sharply defined in all their character- 

 istic organisation as they are at the present moment. 



The hypothesis, untenable as it may appear, must be 

 carried still further. As man is inseparably connected with 

 the great scheme of vitality, any genetic doctrine of trans- 

 mutation must be equally applicable to him as to the rest 

 of creation, and he must stoop, however humiliating, to 

 trace his pedigree from the order that stands next beneath 



