PLANTS AND ANIMALS IMPROVABLE UP TO A POINT 233 



it becomes very difficult, indeed impossible, to say, in the present state of geological science, when and in what order 

 plants and animals made their appearance. " It would," Sir Charles Lyell observes, " be presumptuous to suppose 

 that when a small part only of the globe has been investigated, we are acquainted with the oldest fossiUferous strata 

 in the crust of our planet. Even when these are found, we cannot assume that there never were any antecedent 

 strata containing organic remains, which may have become metamorphic." 



As science advances, the tendency is to push life in its simplest and most complex forms further and further 

 back into the abyss of time. The early appearance of hfe on our globe does not interfere with the order of creation 

 as a progressive work. It concerns the when rather than the how and the why, and enlarges our purview of the 

 time required for the several creative acts. It does not interfere with the limits assigned to the several kinds of 

 plants and animals, or their range and distribution in space. Neither does it affect the infinite gradations in plants 

 and animals, the general plan of creation, the production of types and sub-types, and the improvabihty of the types 

 and sub-types up to a point, or within prescribed limits. liaw and order impose limits or boundaries on plants 

 and animals, as on everything else. 



These boundaries apply to the duration and distribution of plants and animals — they live and die in certain 

 places and at certain periods : they apply to the capacities and powers of plants and animals ; to their fertihty 

 and infertility ; to everything, in fact, which pertains to them. 



§ 41. Plants and Animals Improvable up to a Point. 



Law and order limit the degree of development of plants and animals, as shown by embryology, and the time 

 required for their reproduction. They also hmit the amount of progress possible. To take an extreme example. 

 Man — assuming, as most modem writers do, his savage origin — has gradually emerged from his wild, untutored state : 

 he has laboriously toiled through the stone age, the bronze age, and is now far advanced in the iron age. Still 

 man (as man) has not essentially changed during the historic period, that is, for the last five or six thousand years. 

 His brain and nervous system and intellect have been cultivated, but if he were isolated and left to himself there 

 is reason to beheve he would slowly retrogress as he has slowly improved. This, of course, may only show that man 

 is naturally and essentially a social animal.^ 



There is nothing to show that man is capable of indefinite improvement, or that he will, in time, become 

 practically a new being. 



If the divine origin of man be assumed, savage man affords a striking example of deterioration. The time 

 occupied in the deteriorating process probably equalled that involved in his civilisation. It is not at all impro- 

 bable that from a very early period of his history civiUsed and savage man were contemporaneous ; certain tribes 

 being prone to wickedness and backsliding, others to virtue and advancement. The good and evil propensities 

 of mankind are not obliterated in the present day. The history of nations points to progress within Umits. The 

 nations of antiquity have all had their rise and fall, and, as far as experience goes, over-civilisation and refinement 

 result in deterioration and disintegration. Over-training and in-breeding, as a rule, impair rather than improve a race. 

 The late Professor John Goodsir, one of the greatest comparative anatomists and anthropologists of modern 

 times, held firmly to the belief that man was originally an intellectual, moral being. This behef pervades his 

 " Lectures on the Dignity of the Human Body." In Lecture IX., namely, that on " Retrogressive Man," he says : 

 " I beheve that man was not originally savage, and that the less civilised races are not undeveloped but degraded 

 forms. Man, in virtue of possessing a spiritual element, stands alone amongst the organised beings of the globe. 

 The existence of this element associates the being possessing it with the spiritual world." ^ 



The improvable element in plants and animals is traceable to their tissues, especially to the nervous tissues, 

 or what represents them when not differentiated as nerves. The improvable element is essentially intellectual in 

 character. All plants and animals, from the lowest to the highest, have in their substance, or in part of their 

 substance, a guiding, directive principle which enables them to control their actions and to modify and adapt 

 themselves to the circumstances in which they are placed. This guiding, directive principle is not brought into 

 play by irritabihty and extraneous stimulation. This is equivalent to saying that the First Cause works in and 

 through the plants and animals to given ends : in other words, plants and animals are supervised, and are not 

 at the mercy of environment or of any set of extraneous conditions. They are superior to their surroundings, but 

 they cannot form themselves as wholes or parts of wholes. They are created things, the offspring of progenitors. 

 This view is opposed to the theory of " natural selection," which rejects a Creator or intelhgent First Cause, and 

 refers all modifications in plants and animals chiefly to externalities and to chance. 



' Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish castaway and original of Robinson Crusoe, who lived for several years on an uninhabited desolate island, 

 had, when rescued, nearly lost the power of speech. 



" "The Anatomical Memoirs of John Goodsir, F.R.S., late Professor of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh," vol. i. p. 276. 



VOL. I. 3 Q 



