370 THE LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION 
opens up infinite possibilities of existence, connected 
with infinitely varied manifestations of force, totally 
distinct from, yet as real as, what we term matter. 
The grand law of continuity which we see pervading 
our universe, would lead us to infer infinite gradations 
of existence, and to people all space with intelligence 
and will-power; and, if so, we have no difficulty in 
believing that for so noble a purpose as the progressive 
development of higher and higher intelligences, those 
primal and general will-forces, which have sufficed 
for the production of the lower animals, should have 
been guided into new channels and made to converge 
in definite directions. And if, as seems to me probable, 
this has been done, I cannot admit that it in any 
degree affects the truth or generality of Mr. Darwin’s 
great discovery. It merely shows, that the laws of 
organic development have been occasionally used for 
a special end, just as man uses them for his special 
ends; and, I do not see that the law of “natural 
selection’ can be said to be disproved, if it can be 
shown that man does not owe his entire physical and 
mental development to its unaided action, any more 
than it is disproved by the existence of the poodle 
or the pouter pigeon, the production of which may 
-have been equally beyond its undirected power. 
The objections which in this essay I have taken, to 
the view,—that the same law which appears to have 
sufficed for the development of animals, has been alone 
the cause of man’s superior physical and mental nature, 
—will, I have no doubt, be over-ruled and explained 
