238 THE LAW. 



ment of man's intellectual and moral faculties." This, 

 however, is a mere plausible assertion; the "anatomical 

 evidence" is not produced ; and every one cognisant of the 

 history of man knows that intellectual and moral develop- 

 ment has ever been restricted to the newer, and advancing 

 varieties of our race. It is true that man at present stands 

 the crowning form of vital existence, but the facts of the 

 past give no countenance to the belief that he shall remain 

 the crowning form in future epochs. From its dawn until 

 now the great evolution of life has been ever upward, geo- 

 logically speaking (and be it borne in mind we are treating 

 the question solely from a geological stand-point) : shall it 

 not continue to be upward still ? We see no symptom of 

 decay either in the physical or vital forces of nature ; and 

 so long as these forces continue to operate, mutation and 

 progress must inevitably follow. Man's own history, phy- 

 sical and moral, has been one of incessant change and pro- 

 gress. The features of different races, their mental quali- 

 ties, civil systems, and religious beliefs, have all less or 

 more partaken of this mutation ; and the difference that 

 now subsists between the most intellectual, city-dwelling, 

 machine -making Anglo-Saxons and the men of the old 

 flint-implements and bone-caves may be infinitesimally small 

 when compared with that which may exist between the 

 noblest living nations and races yet to be evoked. Unless 

 science has altogether misinterpreted the past, and the 

 course of Creation as unfolded by geology be no better than 

 a delusion, the future must transcend the present, as the 

 present transcends that which has gone before it. Man 

 present cannot possibly be man future. Noble as he may 

 appear in his highest aspects, it were to limit creative 

 power and arrest its progress to aver that man may not be 

 superseded by another form still nobler and more divine. 

 Physiologically, we cannot suppose that the homologies of 



