88 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



others, might be able to produce an immense variety 

 of species, gives us a ray of hope, though feeble, 

 that here perhaps some results may be obtained, by 

 the application of the principle of the mechanism of 

 Nature ; without which, in fact, no science can exist. 

 This analogy of forms (in so far as they seem to 

 have been produced in accordance with a common 

 prototype,' notwithstanding their great variety) 

 strengthens the supposition that they have an actual 

 blood-relationship, due to derivation from a common 

 parent ; a supposition which is arrived at by ob- 

 servation of the graduated approximation of one 

 class of animals to another, beginning with the one 

 in which the principle of purposiveness seems to be 

 most conspicuous, namely, man, and extending down 

 to the polyps, and from these even down to mosses 

 and lichens, and arriving finally at raw matter, the 

 lowest stage of Nature observable by us. From 

 this raw matter and its forces, the whole apparatus 

 of Nature seems to have been derived according to 

 mechanical laws (such as those which resulted in 

 the production of crystals) ; yet this apparatus, as 

 seen in organic beings, is so incomprehensible to us, 

 that we feel ourselves compelled to conceive for it a 

 different principle. But it would seem that the 

 archaeologist of Nature is at liberty to regard the 

 great Family of creatures (for as a Family we must 

 conceive it, if the above-mentioned continuous and 

 connected relationship has a real foundation) as 

 having sprung from the immediate results of her 

 earliest revolutions, judging from all the laws of 

 their mechanisms known to or conjectured by him.' 

 In our arrival at the age of these seers, we 



