96 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



from a common parent; a supposition which is ar- 

 rived at by observation of the graduated approxi- 

 mation of one class of animals to another, beginning 

 with the one in which the principle of purposiveness 

 seems to be most conspicuous, namely, man, and ex- 

 tending down to the polyps, and from these even 

 down to mosses and lichens, and arriving finally at 

 raw matter, the lowest stage of Nature observable 

 by us. From this raw matter and its forces, the 

 whole apparatus of Nature seems to have been de- 

 rived according to mechanical laws (such as those 

 which resulted in the production of crystals) ; yet this 

 apparatus, as seen in organic beings, is so incom- 

 prehensible to us, that we feel ourselves compelled to 

 conceive for it a different principle. But it would 

 seem that the archaeologist of Nature is at liberty to 

 regard the great Family of creatures (for as a Family 

 we must conceive it, if the above-mentioned continu- 

 ous and connected relationship has a real foundation) 

 as having sprung from their immediate results of her 

 earliest revolutions, judging- from all the laws of 

 their mechanisms known to or conjectured by him." 

 In our arrival at the age of these seers, we feel 

 the play of a freer, purer air; a lull in the miasmatic 

 currents that bring intolerance on their wings. The 

 tolerance that approaches is due to no surrender of 

 its main position by dogmatic theology, but to that 

 larger perception of the variety and complexity of 

 life, ignorance of, or wilful blindness to, which is the 

 secret of the survival of rigid opinion. The demon- 



