OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 271 



nations seem nearly stationary and others appear to retro- 

 grade, there is always a progress in some place, so that no 

 long space of time ever elapses without showing, upon the 

 whole, a certain advance. By the work of our thoughtful 

 brains and busy hands, we modify external nature in a way 

 never known before. Under the operations of tillage, of 

 mechanism, of building, making, and inventing ; of those 

 applications of natural powers and forces which human wit 

 turns to account in so many ways ; of all the results of social 

 experience, of knowledge, and of arrangement ; the earth tends 

 to become a much serener field of existence than it was in the 

 earlier ages of man's history. Its progress in this respect 

 may not be clearly seen at a particular time, through the 

 obscuring effect of temporary and accidental causes ; but that 

 the tendency of the physical improvements wrought by man 

 upon the surface, and of the mechanic movements which he 

 invents for the saving of his own labour, is to improve the 

 daily comforts, and allow room for the intellectual and moral 

 advancement of earth's children, cannot be denied without 

 something like flying in the face of Providence itself. These 

 improvements, then, thus partly wrought out by the exertions 

 of the present race, I conceive as at once preparations for, 

 and causes of, the possible development of higher types of 

 humanity, beings less strong in the impulsive parts of our 

 nature, physical nature giving less matter for that nature to 

 contend with and subdue to its needs, more strong in the 

 reasoning and the moral, because there will be less of the 

 opposite to give these marring or check, more fitted for the 

 delights of social life, because society will then present less 

 to dread and more to love. 



The history and constitution of the world have now been 

 explained according to the best lights which a humble indi- 

 vidual has found within the reach of his perceptive and 

 reasoning faculties. We have seen a system in which all is 

 regularity and order, and all flows from and is obedient to a 

 divine code of laws of unbending operation. We are to un- 

 derstand from what has been laid before us, that man, with 

 his varied mental powers and impulses, is a natural problem, 



