406 PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION. chap. xx. 



peariiig as an integral part of the same continuous series of 

 acts of development, one link in the same chain, the crowning 

 operation as it were of one and the same series of manifesta- 

 tions of creative power. If the dangers apprehended from 

 transmutation arise from the too intimate connection which 

 it tends to establish between the human and merely animal 

 natures, it might have been expected that the progressive 

 develo2:)ment of organization, instinct, and intelligence might 

 have been unpopular, as likely to pioneer the way for the re- 

 ception of the less favored doctrine. But the trite explana- 

 tion of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe 

 in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all 

 we know in jialseontology is as nothing compared to what we 

 have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as so 

 fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which 

 are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at 

 the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which 

 must be defective in the extreme. But exactly in propor- 

 tion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of 

 it are overrated, in that same degree are many progression- 

 ists unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting. 

 Their faith in the fulness of the annals leads them to regard 

 all breaks in the series of organic existence, or in the sequence 

 of the fossiliferous rocks, as proofs of original chasms and 

 leaps in the course of nature, signs of the intermittent action 

 of the creational force, or of catastrophes which devastated 

 the habitable surface; and they are therefore fearless of dis- 

 covering any continuity of plan (except that which must have 

 existed in the Divine mind_) which would imply a material 

 connection between the outgoing organisms and the incoming 

 ones. 



