134 LIFE OJS T THE EARTH. 



tion is chiefly needed for philosophers, since to the 

 general sense of mankind familiarity disguises this 

 great wonder of the world of life. But the science 

 of our day, bringing fresh methods to bear upon it, has 

 boldly encountered the problem encountered, but not 

 yet solved it, as far as regards that question of intention 

 or design which lies at the bottom of the whole. The 

 wider observation and better classification, and the 

 study of fossil remains, aided by all the resources of 

 comparative anatomy, have wonderfully enlarged this 

 domain of knowledge, but in doing so have given 

 origin, and legitimately, to new hypotheses still under 

 active controversy. I especially allude here to that 

 doctrine of evolution or transmutation of species by 

 which it is sought to reduce to certain natural laws 

 of change, selection, and succession those inter-relations 

 which pervade the animal world from man clown to 

 the lowest zoophyte a doctrine which has received 

 its latest and happiest illustration from the work of 

 Mr. Darwin on the Origin of Species. 



But, apart from this larger hypothesis, other and 

 more absolute results have been derived from the 

 researches of our own day. It is almost needless to 

 mention one of these, coming in refutation of a vulgar 

 notion that the creation of the rest of the animal world 

 is but a corollary to that of man a ministration, as 

 it were, to his higher being. Every part of natural 

 history, and very especially the history disclosed to 

 us by fossil remains, utterly annuls any such concep- 

 tion. Man is the highest and most wonderful member 

 of the created series. But he is integrally a member 



