GEOLOGY. 581 



philosophers and learned men of the highest class, looking 

 at the incessant change in created beings, have asked them- 

 selves the question whether the human species was really 

 the masterpiece and the last effort of creative power, or 

 whether it will in its turn disappear in some new ship- 

 wreck, to be succeeded by creatures of still purer essence. 



Looking at the progress which each creation shows, some 

 of the German savants admit, with Bremser, the latter hy- 

 pothesis, and among them are some daring enough to at- 

 tempt to prove the point by figures. 1 



In his remarkable work on Geology, M. Louis Figuier has 

 written on this subject a beautiful passage, which we are 

 happy to lay before the reader. " It is not impossible," he 

 says, " that man may be a step in the ascending and pro- 

 gressive scale of animated beings. The divine power, which 

 strewed on earth life, sensation, and thought ; which gave to 

 the plant organization ; to the animal movement, sensation, 

 and intelligence ; to man, besides these manifold gifts, the 



1 Bremser thus explains himself in reference to this subject : 

 "It may still be presumed, supposing there should be a new radical change, 

 that beings more perfect than those which resulted from preceding ones will be cre- 

 ated. In man mind bears the same proportion to matter as 50 to 50, with slight 

 differences more or less, for sometimes mind and sometimes matter predominates. 

 In a subsequent creation, supposing that in which man was formed not to be the 

 last, there would probably be organizations in which the mind would act more 

 freely, and where it would be in the proportion of 75 to 25. It results from these 

 considerations that man was formed at the most passive epoch of existence on our 

 earth. Man is a sad middle state between the animal and the angel ; he aspires 

 to elevated knowledge, and cannot reach it, albeit our modern philosophers fancy 

 such is not the case. Man wishes to fathom the first cause of all that exists, and 

 cannot attain to it ; with fewer intellectual faculties he would not have the pre- 

 sumption to want to know these causes, which, on the other hand, would be quite 

 clear to him if he were endowed with a more extended mind." 



