io8 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



genei'alizeil combinations of characters, which subsequently be- 

 came more and more distinctly specialized in the progress of 

 geological time. But I put forth this merely as an expression 

 of the plan according to which the succession of animal and 

 vegetable forms had been created, not as indicating any genetic 

 continuity between the earlier and the later. Some years before, 

 indeed, while criticizing the "Vestiges of the Natural History 

 of Creation," and exposing the unsoundness of the author's 

 data and the fallacy of his reasonings, I had taken occasion to 

 say that I had not the least objection, either philosophical or 

 theological, to the doctrine of Progressive Development, if only 

 it could be shown to have a really scientific basis : since the 

 development of the very highest type of animal life from the 

 very lowest, during the long succession of geological ages, did 

 not seem to me more strange than the actual development of 

 that same type during a nine months' gestation. And I had 

 further argued that it really involves a far higher idea of Creative 

 Design to believe that a small number of types of organic life 

 originally introduced were continuously evolved in the course 

 of geological ages, according to a definite and unchanging plan, 

 into a countless variety of forms suitable to the "conditions of 

 existence " at each period, and finally into the flora and fauna 

 of the present epoch, — than to suppose that the changes which 

 successively took place in those conditions necessitated inter- 

 ferences from time to time on the part of the Creator, in com- 

 pensating, by the creation of new species, for the extinction of 

 the old. For, to compare great things with small, we regard 

 the production of a chronometer whose pendulum or balance- 

 spring is furnished with a self-acting compensation for changes 

 of temperature, as a higher effort of constructive skill than the 

 production of an ordinary clock or watch, in which the needful 

 compensations have to be made, as occasion requires by the 

 interposition of an external power. 



By those who had been following the line of thought I have 

 just indicated, the publication of Mr. Darwin's " Origin of 

 Species " was felt, as by myself, to be the inauguration of a 

 new era in a biological science. It gave a distinct shape to 

 ideas on which many of us had been pondering as vague specu- 



