48 APPLIED TO. MAN. 859 
evidently essential to the perfect development of man 
as a spiritual being, but are utterly inconceivable as 
having been produced through the action of a law 
which looks only, and can look only, to the immediate 
material welfare of the individual or the race. 
The inference I would draw from this class‘ of phe- 
nomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the 
development of man in a definite direction, and for a 
special purpose, just as man guides the development of 
many animal and vegetable forms. The laws of evolu- 
tion alone would, perhaps, never have produced a grain 
so well adapted to man’s use as wheat and maize; such , 
fruits as the seedless banana and bread-fruit; or such 
animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or the London 
dray-horse. Yet these so closely resemble the unaided 
productions of nature, that we may well imagine a 
being who had mastered the laws of development of or- 
ganic forms through past ages, refusing to believe that 
any new power had been concerned in their produc-~ 
tion, and scornfully rejecting the theory (as my theory 
will be rejected by many who agree with me on other 
points), that in these few cases a controlling intelli- 
gence had directed the action of the laws of variation, 
multiplication, and survival, for his own purposes. We 
know, however, that this has been done; and we must 
therefore admit the possibility that, if we are not the 
highest intelligences in the universe, some higher intel- 
ligence may have directed the process by which the 
human race was developed, by means of more subtle 
agencies than we are acquainted with. At the same 
