Survival of the Fittest. 445 



harmony that exists among the planetary spheres. That the 

 law of the attraction of gravity, which is perhaps the great- 

 est discovery ever made by man, is subversive of natural and 

 revealed religion, which was at one time maintained by a no 

 more distinguished person than Leibnitz, is now no longer 

 objected to, even though its discoverer was unable to explain 

 what is the essence of the principle he had discovered. No 

 nobler conception of Deity could be entertained than that 

 which attributes to Him the creation of a few original forms 

 capable of self-development into other and needful forms, 

 or the origination de novo of these simple forms from inor- 

 ganic nature. It places a higher estimate upon His Omnip- 

 otence than the belief that He required a fresh act of creation 

 to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws. That 

 science is as yet unable to throw any light on the far higher 

 problem of the essence or origin of life, should constitute no 

 valid objection to the theory of descent. 



When all beings are looked upon not as special creations, 

 but as the lineal descendants of some beings that existed 

 long before the first bed of ancient Siluria was deposited, 

 they seem to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we 

 think it safe to conclude that no existing species will trans- 

 mit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. Few, very 

 few living species will transmit progeny of any kind, for the 

 manner in which all organisms are grouped shows that 

 the majority of species in each genus, and all the species 

 in many genera, have left no descendants, but have become 

 utterly extinct. It will only be the common and widely- 

 spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups 

 within each class, that will ultimately prevail and procreate 

 new and dominant species. Since all the living forms of life 

 are the lineal descendants of forms that lived long anterior to 

 the Silurian epoch, it is reasonably certain that the ordinary 

 succession by generation has never once been broken, and 

 that no cataclysmic disaster has laid waste the entire world. 

 Therefore, we may look into the future with some confidence 



