XXV.] GENERAL REMARKS ON DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIES. 331 



physical, difficulty of conceiving how such a being as man The deve- 

 can be descended from an ape, the ape from a fish, and lop™*^!!* 

 the fish from a Protozoon, is paralleled in the life of every from the 

 human being, by the facts that the child, before it learns fgj^^^g jg 

 to speak, appears to have no higher mental nature than paralleled 

 that of a dog ; that for some considerable time after birth of every 

 it appears to have no mental nature at all ; and that at ""^''^'I'i'ial- 

 the first moment of its conception it is not only without 

 mental nature, but without any higher organic nature than 

 that of a Protozoon. The development of the individual 

 is in the highest degree mysterious ; but the mystery is 

 only repeated, and the difliculty is not increased, if it is 

 true, as I believe it is, that the development of the indi- 

 vidual, from the structureless germ up to the man, has had 

 its parallel in the development of the race. The relation 

 of man's spiritual nature to his animal nature is, no doubt, 

 one of the greatest of all mysteries ; but the relation of life 

 to matter is equally mysterious, though it is a lower kind 

 of mystery. E"o merely physical science can elucidate a 

 spiritual mystery like this; but, in my opinion, the dis- 

 covery that man's brain has no anatomical superiority to 

 tliat of the highest apes, from which his mental superiority 

 could possibly be guessed, is so far from lending support 

 to a materialistic view of our spiritual nature, that it tends 

 to cut away the ground from under any materialistic 

 argument. I do not see any improbability in the belief Man's 

 that the same Creative Power which at the beginning *^P"'itual 



° f' nature 



created matter, and afterwards gave it life, finally, when the may be a 

 action of that life had developed the bodily frame and ^^^^t of 

 the instinctive mental powers of man, completed the work Creative 

 by breathing into man a breath of higher and spiritual life. 



organic 

 pes 



The theory, or rather the law, of organic types has been The law of 

 sometimes set up in opposition to the theory of develop- ?^'^^ 

 ment. The notion of any opposition between them, how- 

 ever, is a pure misconception. By the law of types is 

 meant the fact, which has been stated at greater length in 

 the chapter on Morphology, that homologous parts are 

 found through vast numbers of species — as, for instance, 



