528 ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long be- 

 fore the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, 

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

 we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit 

 its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the 

 species now living very few will transmit progeny of any 

 kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all 

 organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number 

 of species in each genus, and all the species in many genera, 

 have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. 

 We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to 

 foretell that it will be the common and widely-spread species, 

 belonging to the larger and dominant groups within each 

 class, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and 

 dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the 

 lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cam- 

 brian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succes- 

 sion by generation has never once been broken, and that no 

 cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may 

 look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. 

 And as natural selection works solely by and for the good 

 of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend 

 to progress towards perfection. 



It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed 

 with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the 

 bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms 

 crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these 

 elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, 

 and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have 

 all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, 

 taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; 

 Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction ; Varia- 

 bility from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of 

 life, and from use and disuse : a Ratio of Increase so high as 

 to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to 

 Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the 

 Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of 

 nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object 

 which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production 

 of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in 



