LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 71 



ence of Man upon it, may be fully urged without degrading 

 the latter, or altering his place in the scale of created beings. 

 Highest in organisation supreme in intellect and the moral 

 sense single in his capacity for language ministered to 

 in every way needful to his bodily wants, and to his higher 

 feelings and sense of beauty, by nature animate and inanimate 

 around him capable of raising himself, by his faculties of 

 reason and imagination, far beyond the world he inhabits 

 this is a being whose nobility cannot be degraded, or his 

 high destiny annulled, by admitting that the earth is not a 

 dwelling-place for him alone in the purposes of creation. 



Nor is our conception of the Creator of all narrowed or 

 impaired by this recognition. He has given existence to 

 man. He has given life to countless other beings, inferior 

 to man, but independent of him. To confess our utter in- 

 ability to say why these things are so, is but to add another 

 to the questions unapproachable by reason, and which it is 

 our wisdom to recognise as such. We are sure that there 

 is design, wise in itself and certain in its fulfillment. The 

 doctrine of Final Causes has incurred some discredit, not 

 from any inherent fault as a principle of reasoning for 

 this is unimpeachable but from the rash and premature 

 endeavours to carry it beyond the bounds of just induction. 



We come now to another class of questions respecting 

 animal life, more special in character ; questions which have 

 been, and yet are, the subjects of warm controversy, and 

 strikingly illustrate the spirit of modern enquiry. We allude 

 to those regarding the true nature and definition of species ; 

 their capacity for change or transmutation ; the exist- 

 ence of types in the different grades of animal life ; the 

 relations of date or order of succession of these several 

 types, genera, and species ; their connection with different 

 geological periods ; and, lastly, the manner of generation 



