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him, and it is this difference, taken in its totality, that 

 constitutes the new special endowment in the develop- 

 ment of the human species. That this endowment 

 has been evolved by means operating in conformity 

 with a great aboriginal and aU-embracing plan, and 

 not a thing brought about either by a direct and 

 independent act, or by the ordinary course of repro- 

 duction, is the doctrine which science is trying to 

 establish. If the development hypothesis means 

 more than this, we cannot accept it; if it means 

 less, natural science may cease to contend for it. 

 "For our own part, as we have elsewhere observed 

 when treating of the same subject,* believing as we 

 do that Ufe in all its relations — its incomings and 

 outgoings in time, its modifications in form, and its 

 distribution over space — are under the incessant 

 operation of fixed and determinable laws, we are as 

 free to entertain the question of vitality as we are to 

 entertain the formation of a stratum of sandstone or 

 the aggregation of a mineral crystal; but this we 

 cannot do unless at every stage of our reasoning we 

 associate a superintendiag vdth a creative inteUect. 

 And we have yet to learn wherein the variation of a 

 natural law, or the variation of a weU-known form of 

 life — even to the ten-thousandth degree — is less an 

 act of the Creator than the original establishment of 

 * Past and Present Life of the Globe. 



