AiiD ITS CONSEQUENCES. 13 



the preliminary doctrine of final causes, cannot be brought 

 to bear. 



There are, however, beliefs, in no degree less important to 

 the moralist or the Christian than even that in the being of 

 a God, which seem wholly incompatible with the develop- 

 ment hypothesis. If, during a period so vast as to be scarce 

 expressible by figures, the creatures now human have been 

 rising, by almost infinitesimals, from compound microscopic 

 cells, — ^minute vital globules within globules, begot by elec- 

 tricity on dead gelatinous matter*, — until they have at length 

 become the men and women whom we see around us, we must 

 hold either the monstrous belief, that all the vitalities, whether 

 those of monads or of mites, of fishes or of reptiles, of birds 

 or of beasts, are individually and inherently immortal and 

 undying, or that human souls are not so. The difference be- 

 tween the dying and the undying, — between the spirit of the 

 brute that goeth downward, and the spirit of the man that 

 goeth upward, — is not a difference infinitesimally, or even 

 atomically, small. It possesses all the breadth of the eternity 

 to come, and is an infinitely great difference. It cannot, if I 

 may so express myself, be shaded off" by infinitesimals or 

 atoms ; for it is a difference which — as there can be no class 

 of beings intermediate in their nature between the dying and 

 the undying — admits not of gradation at alL What mind 

 regulated by the ordinary principles of human belief can pos- 

 sibly hold that every one of the thousand vital points which 

 swim in a drop of stagnant water are inherently fitted to 

 maintain their individuality throughout eternity ? Or how 

 can it be rationally held that a mere progressive step, in it- 

 self no greater or more important than that effected by the 

 addition of a single brick to a house in the building state, or 

 of a single atom to a body in the growing state, could ever 

 have produced immortality? And yet, if the spirit of a 

 monad or of a mollusc be not immortal, then must there either 



