436 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [No. 4, 



successive stages. It is simply a historical fact that there is an ad- 

 vance in the ohservecl forms. But to state a fact is not to account 

 for it, and Moliere's physician added nothing to science when he averred 

 that medicine cured because it possessed a vis meclicatrix. All present 

 were aware that theories such as Dr. Bronn's or Dr. Darwin's had a 

 far wider and deeper interest than they would have simply as scienti- 

 fic speculations, because they touched on questions relating to man's 

 spiritual nature. That nature enabled man to look upward to the 

 eternal, and downward to the endless variety of cosmical phenomena. 

 Would any similarities of structure between man and other contem- 

 porary or palceozoic species bridge over the chasm placed between 

 him and them by the possession of that spiritual nature ? If it be 

 said that the power of ulterior development had existed from the date 

 of the primal monad, — this would only increase a billion-fold any 

 difficulties that may be supposed to lie in the received theories of 

 creation ; — for, whence came this monad ? It must have been creat- 

 ed. And what a marvellous creature ! to hold shut up within it the 

 numberless forms of all the species that have arisen in the world 

 through countless ages, along with all the laws of their successive 

 development, each one involving such marvellous adaptations to all 

 other portions of the Kosmos ! 



He would add an expression of his hearty concurrence with two re- 

 marks made by the lecturer : — viz. where he spoke of the rashness 

 with which his author theorized on the early geological periods ; and 

 where he stated his belief that Dr. Bronn's assumption of a mysteri- 

 ous " Kraft" or power was neither legitimate nor very intelligible. 



Mr. Blyth rose, as the friend of Mr. Darwin of more than a quar- 

 ter of a century standing, to advocate his theory. He expatiated 

 upon the vastness of geological periods, as amply sufficient for bring- 

 ing about the present order of things in the organic kingdoms, by the 

 operation of Mr. Darwin's principle of Natural Selection. The 

 immensity of the lapses of past time he illustrated by comparing 

 them with the profundities of space, and by the computed distances of 

 sundry astronomical objects. He also argued a far higher anti- 

 quity than is generally supposed for the existence of the human being 

 upon this planet, as testified by the discoveries of Dr. Lund in certain 

 low caverns in Brazil, more than twenty years ago, and abundantly by 



