ORIGIN OP THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 105 



was prevalent, we necessarily can see no natural origin for 

 species, and a miraculous one must be admitted. 



Here we have undoubtedly the strongest of the argu- 

 ments usually adduced against a natural origin of life. Yet 

 it is one which may easily be replied to. In the first 

 place, there is no reason to suppose that, although life had 

 been imparted by natural means after the first cooling of the 

 surface to a suitable temperature, it would have continued there- 

 after to be capable of being imparted in like manner. The 

 great work of the peopling of this globe with living species 

 is mainly a fact accomplished: the highest known species 

 came as a crowning effect thousands of years ago. The work 

 being thus, to all appearance, finished, we are not necessa- 

 rily to expect that the origination of life and of species should 

 be conspicuously exemplified in the present day. We are 

 rather to expect that the vital phenomena presented to our 

 eyes should mainly, if not entirely, be limited to a regular 

 and unvarying succession of races by the ordinary means of 

 generation. This, however, is no more an argument against 

 a time when phenomena of the first kind prevailed, than it 

 would be a proof against the fact of a mature man having 

 once been a growing youth, that he is now seen growing no 

 longer. We might consider the primitive production of 

 species either as one phenomenon of the nature of the develop- 

 ment of an individual embryo, and that phenomenon as past, 

 just as the individual creation is perfected at birth, or as ex- 

 pressly and wholly a consequence of conditions, which being 

 temporary, the results were temporary also. From the occu- 

 pation of all the great geographical provinces with a more or 

 less full suite of the forms of life, a new development may 

 have hardly any chance of being now drawn forth, and none 

 of being advanced to any extent, even though the same life- 

 creating laws be still in force. Or the operations of these 

 laws might be observant of times, and those of rare occur- 

 rence, so that hundreds of human generations may pass 

 without an opportunity of witnessing such effects. However 

 it may actually have been, assuredly the most rigid disproof 

 of primitive creation as a fact of our time could be no con- 



