260 WHAT IS A SPECIES? 



association of animated beings. Still, as the natural platform 

 gradually varied, and existing forms .slowly became obsolete, 

 replacing them by others more appropriate to the cycle. 



To those who can look through the clouds of language 

 into the firmament of thought, it is needless to demonstrate that 

 inexorably limited as our powers of conception are, no real 

 difference that we can appreciate underlies these different 

 views ; the essential proposition in each is identical, and they 

 stand apart in virtue only of the words in which they are 

 clothed, and the varying set of inchoate ideas which each indi- 

 vidual mentally associates with these. Creator, God, Creative 

 Energy, Natural Laws — are all beyond our conceptive faculties. 

 Each mind conjures up some more or less vague cluster of ideas, 

 which represents what it understands by these words ; but no 

 mind can ever arrive at a sufficiently definite and perfect con- 

 ception of the powers themselves to decide whether they are all 

 identical, distinct, or merely allotropic essences. 



And as a matter of fact, as might have been expected from 

 these premises, no formula of words that we may adopt, as 

 representing to us our abstract conception of the universal 

 scheme, can, if we reason logically, affect our decision as to 

 what does, or should, constitute a species. 



Those who affirm that everything progresses under the cease- 

 less operation of natural laws, will at once admit that all hard 

 and fast lines of demarcation must be more or less artificial, and 

 all systems of classification, and even the definition of the 

 minimum sub-divisions we call species, more or less matters of 

 convenience. 



To those who hold to the direct intervention of Providence 

 in every detail, it should be sufficient to point out that, as each 

 individual is equally with each natural order the special work 

 of the Creator, any gathering up of larger or smaller groups 

 of individuals into what we call species must, as we can only 

 imperfectly trace His design, be more or less arbitrary. 



To those, lastly, who hold that the Creator intervenes in 

 some cases to produce markedly different forms, but in 

 others allows a multitude of minor differences to arise through 

 the operation of natural laws, it should suffice to remark 

 that we are unable to do more than guess where He has 

 intervened and where natural laws have operated, that we 

 are quite ignorant of what are great and what small differences 

 in His eyes, and that however anxious we may be to restrict the 

 term species to those groups of individuals which have arisen 

 from a distinct c/eative act, our ignorance absolutely precludes 

 our doing this with any certainty. We cannot follow His 

 hand, we can only conjecture, what differences may and what 



