142 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



when we find that, moreover, it is generally admitted by that 

 class of men to be in itself a simply natural phenomenon, we 

 cannot but say that at least VESTIGES have been seen of 

 the natural ordinances or arrangements, by which the Al- 

 mighty Father caused this globe (and probably others within 

 our ken) to be overspread with the many creatures whose per- 

 fection is his praise. Rigid proof is not, indeed, attained ; but 

 we have all the evidence which is attainable in the case. It is 

 evidence from various quarters, all perfectly homogeneous ; it 

 harmonizes with everything else which science tells us of the 

 history of the universe ; it supplants a mean with an exalted 

 idea of the Deity, and has nothing opposed to it but the 

 prejudices formed in the nonage of our race. For these 

 reasons, I must, till disproof is offered, regard the theory 

 of Progressive Development as the true explanation of the 

 origin of organic nature. The simplest and most primitive 

 types of being, under a law to which that of like production 

 is subordinate, gave birth to a type superior to it in compo- 

 siteness of organization and endowment of faculties; this 

 again produced the next higher, and so on to the highest. 

 There has been, in short, a universal gestation of nature, 

 analogous to that of the individual being, and attended as 

 little by circumstances of a startling or miraculous kind as 

 the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week to 

 another of her pregnancy. We see but the chronicle of one 

 or two great areas, within which the development has reached 

 the highest forms. In some others, as Australia and the 

 islands of the Pacific, development has not yet passed through 

 the whole of its stages, because, owing to the comparatively 

 late uprise of the land, the terrestrial portion of the develop- 

 ment was there commenced more recently. It would com- 

 mence and proceed in any new appropriate area, on this or 

 any other sphere, exactly as it commenced upon our area in 

 the time of the earliest fossiliferous rocks, whichever these 

 are. Nay, it starts every hour with common infusions, and 

 in similar humble theatres, and would there proceed through 

 all the subsequent stages, granting suitable space and con- 

 ditions. Thus simple after ages of marvelling is Organic 



