Survival of the Fittest. 445 
harmony that exists among the planetary spheres. That the 
law of the attraction of gravity, which is perhaps the great- 
est discovery ever made by man, is subversive of natural and 
revealed religion, which was at one time maintained by a no 
more distinguished person than Leibnitz, is now no longer 
objected to, even though its discoverer was unable to explain 
what is the essence of the principle he had discovered. No 
nobler conception of Deity could be entertained than that 
which attributes to Him the creation of a few original forms 
capable of self-development into other and needful forms, 
or the origination de novo of these simple forms from inor- 
ganic nature. It places a higher estimate upon His Omnip- 
otence than the belief that He required a fresh act of creation 
to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws. That 
science is as yet unable to throw any light on the far higher 
problem of the essence or origin of life, should constitute no 
valid objection to the theory of descent. 
When all beings are looked upon not as special creations, 
but as the lineal descendants of some beings that existed 
long before the first bed of ancient Siluria was deposited, 
they seem to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we 
think it safe to conclude that no existing species will trans- 
mit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. Few, very 
few living species will transmit progeny of any kind, for the 
manner in which all organisms are grouped shows that 
the majority of species in each genus, and all the species 
in many genera, have left no descendants, but have become 
utterly extinct. It will only be the common and widely- 
spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups 
within each class, that will ultimately prevail and procreate 
new and dominant species. “Since all the living forms of life 
are the lineal descendants of forms that lived long anterior to 
the Silurian epoch, it is reasonably certain that the ordinary 
succession by generation has never once been broken, and 
that no cataclysmic disaster has laid waste the entire world. 
Therefore, we may look into the future with some confidence 
