UNIVERSALITY OP CREATIONAL PROGRESS. 307 



its progress, and must be amenable to all its laws. In this 

 view, Life is simply one of the great features of the uni- 

 verse, carried along with it through all its mutations, and 

 governed by the same great law of creational progression. 



And this great law of creational progression is alike 

 operative in the material, vital, intellectual, and moral 

 phenomena of the universe. Nothing stands still. That 

 which has been will never occur again ; that which appears 

 now will assume a different aspect in the future. All the 

 former distributions of sea and land, with their various 

 surfaces, climates, and productions, have disappeared ; and 

 the existing distribution is as incessantly passing into 

 newer forms and aspects. All the phases of life which 

 Geology has revealed differ with each successive formation ; 

 higher succeeds lower at each advancing stage ; and the 

 present, we may rest assured, will be followed by a similar 

 progressional advancement. Man, too, in all his inter- 

 relations, is subject to the same all-pervading law. Physi- 

 cally, the lower variety has preceded the higher, and the 

 highest variety of the present day stands on a lower plat- 

 form than that which is destined to succeed it. Race after 

 race has risen from barbarism to higher and higher stages 

 of intellectualism and civilisation ; and in the moral world 

 clearer and purer views gain, age by age, a wider recogni- 

 tion and more general fulfilment. Nothing stands still; 

 truth alone is eternal ; and as the whole world, physical, 

 vital, intellectual, and moral, must partake of this progress, 

 truth itself will illuminate a broader field, and lead to 

 nobler and more godlike activities.* 



* " In the lapse of ages, hypothetical^ invoked for the mutation of 

 specific distinctions," says Professor Owen, " I would remark that Man 

 is not likely to preserve his longer than contemporary species theirs. 

 Seeing the greater variety of influences to which he is subject, the 

 present characters of the human kind are likely to be sooner changed 

 than those of lower existing species. And with such change of specific 



