12 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, 



THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, AND ITS 

 CONSEQUENCES. 



Every individual, whatever its species or order, begins and 

 increases until it attains to its state of fullest development, 

 under certain fixed laws, and in consequence of their opera- 

 tion. The microscopic monad develops into a foetus, the 

 foetus into a child, the child into a man ; and, however mar- 

 vellous the process, in none of its stages is there the slightest 

 mixture of miracle ; from beginning to end, all is progres- 

 sive development, according to a determinate order of things. 

 Has Nature^ during the vast geologic periods, been pregnant, 

 in like manner, with the human race % and is the species, like 

 the individual, an efiect of progressive development, induced 

 and regulated by law % The assertors of the revived hypo- 

 thesis of Maillet and Lamarck reply in the affirmative. Nor, 

 be it remarked, is there positive atheism involved in the be- 

 lief. God might as certainly have originated the species by 

 a law of development, as he maintains it by a law of deve- 

 lopment ; the existence of a First Great Cause is as perfectly 

 compatible with the one scheme as with the other ; and it 

 may be necessary thus broadly to state the fact, not only in 

 justice to the Lamarckians, but also fairly to warn their non- 

 geological opponents, that in this contest the old anti-atheistic 

 arguments, whether founded on the evidence of design, or ou 



