110 Proceedings of the lioyal Fhy steal Society. 



recently taken up by learned Germans and others on the 

 Continent, and carried forward by them to what appears 

 to be their legitimate outcome and conclusion ; as in recently 

 published works on the history of creation, or the develop- 

 ment of the earth and its inhabitants by the action of na- 

 tural causes — in short, a non-miraculous history of creation. 

 Here we learn of the probable eternity of matter — plastic 

 matter, I should say — evolving forces, starting thus into 

 life, and going on to self-evolve and develop all creatures, 

 vegetable and animal alike — running thus upwards in various 

 ascending lines of development (I should say, by a series of 

 miracles), to form all the so-called species, genera, orders, 

 families, and classes of animated nature. Everywhere, 

 however, among these newly-formed creatures, from their 

 very abundance, we are told there is over-crowding, there is 

 not room for all, the strong choke out the weak, and then 

 many of these stronger ones, not content with more room, 

 struggle and strive by natural selection, as it is termed, and 

 otherwise, after something unknown, but different from what 

 they are, to which they are impelled by some force or other. 

 Thus stretching and straining after some unknown capacities, 

 and powers, and structures, these, somehow or other, become 

 evolved within them, and their life thus progresses to higher 

 and still higher forms, until one line of development, more 

 fortunate in some of its circumstances than all the others, 

 culminates in rational man. The links between the irrational 

 brute and him — (the ape, being not his father, but his great- 

 great -great -great -grandfather perhaps;) these links, like 

 many other much-wanted intervening and connecting links 

 in the many-evolving chains of both vegetable and animal 

 life — have unfortunately not been as yet discovered, though 

 doubtless they must have existed, if the theory be true. 

 A wondrous parentage, truly, requiring, it seems to me, 

 a still more wondrous faith in these modern interpreters 

 of Nature, and of Nature's laws ! Here, then, we seem to 

 find ourselves face to face with a system of theories which 

 appears to leave all creatures, high and low alike, in a 

 world without a God, either as a Creator at the first, or as still 

 ruling over all by His superintending providence. Need I 



