348 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



those determining the birth and death of the individual. 

 When I view all beings not as special creations, but as 

 the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived 

 long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was de- 

 , posited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging 

 from the past, we may safely infer that not one living 

 species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant 

 futurity. And of the species now living very few will 

 transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity ; 

 for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, 

 shows that the greater number of species in each genus, 

 and all the species in many genera, have left no descend- 

 ants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far 

 take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it 

 will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging 

 to the larger and dominant groups within each class, 

 which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and domi- 

 nant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal 

 descendants of those which lived long before the Cam- 

 brian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succes- 

 sion by generation has never once been broken, and that 

 no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we 

 may look with some confidence to a secure future of great 

 length. And as natural selection works solely by and for 

 the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endow- 

 ments will tend to progress toward perfection. »' 



THE GRANDEUE OF THIS VIEW OF LIFE. 



It is interesting to contemplate a tangled 

 bank, clothed with many plants of many 

 kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various in- 

 sects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the 

 damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately con- 



