LIFE ON THE EARTH. 141 



not in the degree, of these various faculties. It is a 

 marvellous approximation, deal with the matter as we 

 will. And interpreting it, as we must needs do, 

 through the long gradation downwards of inferior 

 forms, living or extinct, we can come to no other con- 

 clusion than that of a great Scheme and Desiyn, under 

 which animal life is created or evolved progressively 

 with higher powers and endowments. It does not in- 

 validate this conclusion that we are unable to decipher 

 the total series, or to explain the unequal or broken 

 steps of progress. Nor is it touched by the con- 

 troversy now going on between the doctrine of special 

 successive creations and that of evolution in time from 

 one or more primordial forms. If the former be true, 

 the design of the Creator is expressed in the successive 

 appearance on the earth, at intervals of unknown 

 length, of creatures rising in the organisation of those 

 parts which minister to intelligence if the latter, the 

 same designing Power must have given to certain 

 primordial forms capacities and laws of transmutation 

 and development, enabling them to multiply into end- 

 less varieties, and through some of these changes to at- 

 tain to forms and faculties approximate to those of man. 

 Eeason or theorise as we will on this matter, we can- 

 not but end with the belief that there is a preconceived 

 plan, however hidden from our comprehension, in all 

 that concerns the being and conditions of animal life, 

 and nothing fortuitous in the position of man, at the 

 summit of the scale so designed. 



But recognising this conclusion, how entire is the 

 blank beyond ! What conjecture can we form as to 



