I02 THEOLOGIANS AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS. 



consideration of forms as they are — which gives us no insight into 

 their generation — and need not despair of gaining a full insight 

 into this department of Nature. The agreement of so many kinds 

 of animals in a certain common plan of structure, which seems to 

 be visible not only in their skeletons, but also in the arrangement 

 of the other parts — so that a wonderfully simple typical form, by 

 the shortening and lengthening of some parts, and by the suppres- 

 sion and development of 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, ho science can e)ust. 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 observation 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 pol)'ps, 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 la^s (such as those which resulted in the produc- 

 tion 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 

 archjeologist of Nature is at liberty to regard the great Family of 

 creatures (for as a Family we must conceive it, if the above-men- 

 tioned continuous and connected relationship has a real founda- 

 tion) 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." 



What a connecting link between all past and 

 future thought lies in this great passage ! We can 



