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somewhat on that Humian expedient of natural con- 

 jecture so copiously exemplified, on occasion of a few 

 trite texts, in Mr. Buckle. But that natural conjecture 

 is always insecure, equivocal, and many-sided. It may 

 be said that ancient warfare, for example, giving victory 

 always to the personally ablest and bravest, must have 

 resulted in the improvement of the race ; or that, the 

 weakest being always necessarily left at home, the im- 

 provement was balanced by deterioration ; or that the 

 ablest were necessarily the most exposed to danger, and 

 so, etc., etc., according, to ingenuity usque ad infinitum. 

 Trustworthy conclusion is not possible to this method, 

 but only to the induction of facts, or to scientific de- 

 monstration. 



Neither molecularists nor Darwinians, then, are able 

 to level out the difference between organic and inorganic, 

 or between genera and genera or species and species. 

 The differences persist despite of both ; the distributed 

 identity remains unaccounted for. Nor, consequently, 

 is Mr. Darwin's theory competent to explain the objec- 

 tive idea by any reference to time and conditions. Liv- 

 ing beings do exist in a mighty chain from the moss to 

 the man ; but that chain, far from founding, is founded 

 in the idea, and is not the result of any mere natural 

 growth of this into that. That chain is itself the most 

 brilliant stamp, the sign-manual, of design. On every 

 ledge of nature, from the lowest to the highest, there is 

 a life that is its, a creature to represent it, reflect it 

 so to speak, pasture on it. The last, highest, brightest 

 link of this chain is man ; the incarnation of thought it- 

 self, which is the summation of this universe ; man, that 

 includes in himself all other links and their single secret 

 the personified universe, the subject of the world. 



