502 WHETHER THE LAW OF CONTINUITY CONSISTENT chap. xxiv. 



exist in the Divine Mind, whether realized or not materiullj-, 

 and in the visible creation, of which the "links do not pass 

 by an easy transition'' the one into the other, at least as 

 beheld by us. 



Dr. Asa Gray, an eminent American botanist, to whom we 

 are indebted for a philosophical essay of great merit on the 

 Origin of Sjoecies by Variation and Natural Selection, has well 

 observed, when speaking of the axiom of Leibnitz, " Katura 

 non agit saltatim," that nature secures her ends, and makes her 

 distinctions, on the whole, manifest and real, but without any 

 important breaks or long leaps. "We need not wonder that 

 gradations between species and varieties should occur, or that 

 genera and other groups should not be absolutely limited, 

 though they are rej)resented to be so in our systems. The 

 classifications of the naturalist define abruptly where nature 

 more or less blends. Our systems are nothing if not definite." 



The same writer reminds us that " plants and animals are 

 80 different, that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would 

 be to find points of comparison, whereas, with the naturalist, 

 it is all the other way. All the bi-oad differences vanish one 

 by one as we aj)proach the lower confines of the aiiimal and 

 Vegetable kingdoms, and no absolute distinction whatever is 

 now known between them."* 



The author of an elaborate review of Darwin's " Origin of 

 Species," himself an accomplished geologist, declares that if 

 we embrace the doctrine of the " continuous variation of all 

 organic forms from the lowest to the highest, including man 

 as the last link in the chain of being, there must have been 

 a transition from the instinct of the brute to the noble mind 

 of man; and in that case, where," he asks, ''are the missing 

 links, and at what point of his progressive improvement did 



* Natural Selection not inconsistent Asa Gray. Trlibncr & Co., London, 

 with Natural Theology, p. 55, by Dr. 1861. 



