326 THE ACTION OF NATURAL 
may admit, that even those who claim for him a 
position as an order, a class, or a sub-kingdom by 
himself, have some show of reason on their side. He 
is, indeed, a being apart, since he is not influenced 
by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other 
organic beings. Nay more; this victory which he has 
gained for himself, gives him a directing influence 
over other existences. Man has not only escaped 
“natural selection”? himself, but he is-actually able 
to take away some of that power from nature which 
before his appearance she universally exercised. We 
can anticipate the time when the earth will produce 
only cultivated plants and domestic animals; when 
man’s selection shall have supplanted “natural selec- 
> and when the ocean will be the only domain 
in which that power can be exerted, which for count- 
less cycles of ages ruled supreme over all the earth. 
tion ;’ 
Their Bearing on the future Development of Man. 
We now find ourselves enabled to answer those who 
maintain, that if Mr. Darwin’s theory of the Origin of 
Species is true, man too must change in form, and be- 
come developed into some other animal as different from 
his present self as he is from the Gorilla or the Chim- 
panzee; and who speculate on what this form is likely 
to be. But it is evident that such will not be the case ; 
for no change of conditions is conceivable, which will 
render any important alteration of his form and organi- 
zation so universally useful and necessary to him, as 
to give those possessing it always the best chance of 
