144 EVOLUTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



that God Himself is not able to make two and 

 two either more or less than four. 



Darwin insists very strongly upon the imper- 

 fection of the geological record, or the history 

 of the world as revealed by its fossils. At first 

 sight this might appear like an ex parte state- 

 ment, but it is merely the statement of existing 

 facts ; for the Quaternary fossils lead down to 

 our own day, and yet even these are very im- 

 perfectly preserved, while the great breaks and 

 gaps which exist in our knowledge of all the 

 earlier periods, clearly indicate that if the 

 fossils of the Quaternary period, imperfectly as 

 even these have been preserved, form an almost 

 unbroken series leading to existing forms, the 

 history of terrestrial life, if complete, would 

 show that it had run in an unbroken course 

 from its first origin to the present time. 



There is no very manifest increase of perfec- 

 tion among established types, for these become 

 as it were stereotyped, and the higher forms 

 which supplant those of a lower type rise not 

 from the latter, but from the lower and more 

 plastic forms below them. For this reason, all 

 the main groups branch off very low down from 

 the common stem. Still, additional forms of 



