84 LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 



thousand are the same to all actual or possible comprehension 

 of the matter. 



We have already spoken of the manifest design in the vast 

 and various profusion of life spread over the earth at suc- 

 cessive epochs; and we may now advert to another case, 

 where designed progression is obvious to our reason, though 

 in a different sense from that of the progressive transmuta- 

 tion of species. This is the fact already adverted to, and 

 well authenticated of the successive introduction of higher 

 forms and attributes of life into the series, as time has moved 

 onwards through the ages anterior to our own being on the 

 earth. From the period when the Cephalopoda were supreme 

 in the animal kingdom, to that when Man became its head, 

 we have a series of types, each rising in organisation, of which 

 Fishes, Eeptiles, Birds, and Mammals represent the most 

 remarkable forms. The only controversy as to this point 

 has arisen from certain seeming irregularities in the order of 

 succession ; these higher grades of life coming in without 

 any apparent conformity to our measures of time or relative 

 change. But the main fact is in no way impeached by this 

 irregularity, and intention is on the very face of it. Making 

 every allowance for our inability in many cases to say which 

 of two proximate organisations is highest or most perfect, 

 we cannot doubt as to the relative character of the fossils 

 of the Silurian and Devonian ages, and that of the Oolitic 

 remains, where the Mammalia first come into view; nor, 

 again, can we hesitate as to the relation of Oolitic life to 

 that of our own day. 



We may quit this subject with the general remark, that if 

 transformation of species be ever proved, it will probably be so 

 in the lowest forms of animal life, where the organisation is of 

 the simplest kind, and where the functions seem limited to 

 mere maintenance and reproduction ; the latter, moreover, 

 effected in some of them by means very different from the 



