172 A NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 



that the efforts during the last half century 

 to discover the means whereby evolution was 

 effected will in their turn be regarded with 

 feelings akin to those we experience, when 

 we think of the talents largely wasted by 

 the wise men of old in their quest of the 

 unattainable. 



Biologists have exhibited almost super- 

 human patience, acumen, and perseverance 

 in seeking to discover the first processes of 

 ]ife and the genesis of organisms, but we 

 venture to suggest that such investigations 

 are neither the fittest to discover the general 

 plan of life, nor the meaning of its phen- 

 omena. A landscape cannot be viewed 

 through a microscope, nor the design of an 

 edifice apprehended by scrutiny of the bricks 

 of which it is composed or of the manner 

 in which they are cemented together. 



Although we had no knowledge of the origin 

 of a cathedral, we should without hesitation 

 conclude that an architect to design and a 

 master-builder to direct construction were as 

 indispensable to bring such an edifice into 

 existence, as the materials of which it is built 

 or the hands that carried out the master- 

 builder's instructions. And if we should 

 be told, that after the foundations were laid 

 this symmetrical building that commands our 



