IT.] THE COAL IN THE FIRE. 91 



all the different stages of the change." And so I 

 think you may say of the wood and the coal. 



The man in the moon would be quite reasonable in 

 his conclusion ; for it is a law, a rule, and one which 

 you will have to apply again and again in the study of 

 natural objects, that however different two objects 

 may look in some respects, yet if you can find a 

 regular series of gradations between them, with all 

 shades of likeness, first to one of them and then to the 

 other, then you have a fair right to suppose them to 

 be only varieties of the same species, the same kind 

 of thing, and that, therefore, they have a common 

 origin. 



That sounds rather magniloquent. Let me give 

 you a simple example. 



Suppose you had come into Britain with Brute, the 

 grandson of yEneas, at that remote epoch when (as all 

 archaeologists know who h&ve duly read Geoffrey of 

 Monmouth and the Arthuric legends) Britain was 

 inhabited only by a few giants. Now if you had met 

 giants with one head, and also giants with seven heads, 

 and no others, you would have had a right to say, 

 " There are two breeds of giants here, one-headed and 

 seven-headed." But if you had found, as Jack the 

 Giant-Killer (who belongs to the same old cycle of 

 myths) appears to have found, two-headed giants 

 also, and three-headed, and giants, indeed, with any 

 reasonable number of heads, would you not have been 

 justified in saying, "They are all of the same breed, 

 after all ; only some are more capitate, or heady, than 

 others ! " 



I hope that you agree to that reasoning ; for by it 

 I think we arrive most surely at a belief in the unity 



