The Three Barriers. 183 



mother ; and he would have the measure of the 

 intrinsic likelihood of the Darwinian doctrine, 

 in its bearing on that insect and its confede- 

 rates. It were idle to enlarge. There are 

 worthier lessons to be gleaned from the world 

 of instinct than such as affront all legitimate 

 analogy, and gratuitously dissociate the marvels 

 of nature from their only true solvent, the 

 ordination of God." 



Turning now from the disordered dreams of 

 unpruned fancy to the severities of observation ; 

 from ingenious suppositions of what might have 

 been, to the actual certainties that are ; we find 

 all Comparative Anatomy tending towards the 

 recognition and extrication of three supreme 

 values, in the grouping of animals, and the 

 graduation of life, past as welFas present: 

 the BACKBONE, the BREAST, and the BK IN. 

 And the key to the significance of animal life 

 and its prerogatives, thus grouped and graduated, 

 is not, and cannot be, Selective Development, 

 but is, and must be, Elective Design. 



" The first leet, in the ascending order, takes 

 note of all animals, as Vertebrates or Sub- 

 vertebrates : for every individual organism en- 

 dowed with a backbone, there are countless 

 millions without it Hence this first or exterior 



