436 • CONCLUSIOxV. Cuap. XIV. 



In the distant future I see open fields for far more impor- 

 tant researclics. Psychology Avill be based on a new founda- 

 tion, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power 

 and capacity by gradation. Light Avill be thrown on the origin 

 of man and his history. 



Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied 

 with the view that each species has been independently cre- 

 ated. To my mind it accords better with what avc know of 

 the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the pro- 

 duction and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of 

 the world should have been due to secondary causes, like 

 those determining the birth and death of the individual. 

 "When I Adew all beings not as special creations, but as the 

 lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long be- 

 f<.)rc the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, tliey 

 seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we 

 may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its 

 imaltcred likeness to a distant futurit}'. And of the species 

 now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a 

 far-distant futurity ; for the manner in which all organic be- 

 ings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species in 

 each genus, and all the species in many genera, have left no 

 descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far 

 take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be 

 the connnon and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger 

 and.<l<)minant groups within each class, nvhich will ultimately 

 prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the 

 living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which 

 lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that 

 the ordinary succession by generation has never once been 

 broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. 

 Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future 

 of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection 

 works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal 

 and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfec- 

 tion. 



It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed 

 with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the 

 bushes, witli various insects Hitting about, and Avith Avorms 

 crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elab- 

 orately constructed forms, so dift'erent from each other, and 

 dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been 

 produced by laAvs acting around us. Tliesc laws, taken in the 



