434 NATURE AND MAN. 



to the special, instead of having been elaborated in all its com- 

 pleteness in the first instance. If the original Bird was so 

 constructed as to be capable not only of engendering its own type, 

 but of giving origin by genetic succession to all the diversified 

 forms under which the ornithic type has presented itself, we must 

 regard that progenitor as " potentially " the entire class, and as 

 endowed with a capacity for producing the whole aggregate of 

 "adaptations" presented by its individual members. At each 

 stage in the progress of differentiation, we have thus precisely the 

 same evidence of " design," as if the entire set of specific types 

 had been turned out complete (as it were) by their Maker's hand 

 in the first instance ; and the substitution of the idea of progressive 

 divarication from a common Bird-type, for that of the original 

 multiplicity and continuous transmission of separate types, thus 

 involves no other modification in the mode of presenting the 

 argument, than the replacement of paroxysmal exertion by 

 continuous orderly operation, — a change which brings it into 

 conformity with the accredited evolutionary history of the physical 

 universe. 



It is freely admitted by Mr. Darwin that it is by analogy only 

 that we are led to regard the progenitors of the great divisions of 

 the Animal and Vegetable kingdoms as having themselves had a 

 common origin ; but if we go along with him as far as we have 

 now done, we can scarcely stop short of that conclusion. For as 

 we know that the primitive germ-particles from which Birds or 

 Mammals now spring are not distinguishable by any recognizable 

 differences from those in which Rhizopods or Zoophytes originate, 

 — the special " potentiality " of each only manifesting itself in the 

 progress of its development, — so it seems more in accordance with 

 Nature's order, that the distinctions between the fundamental 

 types of animal organization should have arisen, like those of 

 their subordinate divisions, by "descent with modification," than 

 by " special creations " of their several progenitors. Accepting 

 provisionally, then, the doctrine of evolution in this widest sense, 

 as implying the common origin of the whole organized creation — 

 past and present — from a single stock, we shall find that no further 

 modification will be required in the form in which I have put the 

 Argument from Design, than such as gives it yet further range and 



