EVOLUTION AND THEISM. 407 



now revealed by the study of its primeval conditions, has been 

 one of upward progress ; and that the time required to bring it 

 up to the capacity for recording its doings, even by picture-writing, 

 must be measured by thousands — not of years — but of centuries. 



If, then, we have to trace back our ozvn ancestry to a primeval 

 type now represented by races whose limited capacity makes them 

 incapable of receiving any culture much higher than their own 

 (save through an education prolonged through many generations), 

 why should we shrink from attributing to these last the ancestry 

 to which /'//d'/> bodily and mental organization distinctly points? 

 And why should we assume, in the case of Man, a special creative 

 exertion of Divine power, when everything points to a continuity of 

 the same original plati of action, that has previously manifested 

 itself in the progressive evolution of the highest mammal from the 

 primordial jelly-speck? 



To myself the conception of a continuity of action which 

 required no departure to meet special contingencies, because the 

 plan was all-perfect in the beginning, is a far higher and nobler 

 one than that of a succession of interruptions, such as would be 

 involved in the creation de novo of the vast series of new types 

 which Pateontological study is daily bringing to our knowledge. 

 And in describing the process of evolution in the ordinary 

 language of science, as due to " secondary causes," we no more 

 dispense with a P'irst Cause, than we do when we speak of those 

 physical forces, which, from the Theistic point of view, are so 

 many diverse modes of manifestation of one and the same power. 

 Nor do we in the least set aside the idea of an original design, 

 when we regard these adaptations which are commonly attributed 

 to special exertions of contriving power and wisdom, as the out- 

 come of an all-comprehensive Intelligence which foresaw that the 

 product would be " good," before calling into existence the germ 

 from which it would be evolved. We simply, to use the language 

 of Whewell, " transfer the notion of design and end from the 

 region of facts to that of laws," that is, from the particular cases 

 to the general plan : and find ourselves aided in our conception 

 of the infinity of Creative Wisdom and Power, when we regard it 

 as exerted in a manner which shows that not only the peopling of 

 the globe with the plants and animals suited to every phase of 



