122 EXPLANATIONS. 



series of advances in general organization, by the 

 efficacy of law, in times long antecedent to our 

 historical period. We should still have to say 

 that the evidence of such phenomena was to be 

 looked for elsewhere, — namely, in the history of the 

 progress of organic being as chronicled for us by 

 geology, and in the history which physiology 

 affords us of the progress of the individual embryo. 

 Seeing, then, that plants and animals came into 

 existence gradually, in the course of a vast period 

 of time, and in a succession conforming generally 

 to their grades in organization, and the stages 

 through which the embryo of one of the highest 

 has to pass before it attains maturity, we might 

 say that we had seen all that could well be 

 expected in the case, and enough to establish a 

 strong probabihty for the development theory. 

 Nevertheless, it may be admitted that any evidence 

 of the continued existence of the creative and 

 modifying laws, is still desirable, for the sake of 

 corroboration. And such is the light in which I 

 regard the facts which we possess regarding varia- 

 tions of type, and the production of some of the 

 lower plants and animals by means independent 

 of generation. As in the progress of an individual 

 being, even after birth, we see the laws which pre- 



