Cha.. XV.] CONCLUSION. 



305 



propaetic 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 dominant 

 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 suc- 

 cession 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 endowments will tend to progress towards per- 

 fection. 



It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, 

 clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds 

 singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, 

 and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and 

 to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so 

 different from each other, and dependent upon each 

 other in so complex a manner, have all been produced 

 by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the 

 largest sense, being Growth with Eeproduction; Inherit- 

 ance which is almost implied by reproduction; Varia- 

 bility from the indirect and direct action of the condi- 

 tions of life, and from use and disuse: a Eatio of In- 

 , crease so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as 

 L consequence to liatural Selection, entailing Divergence 

 \>i Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. 

 I'rhus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, 

 Ithe most exalted object which we are capable of con- 

 ceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, 

 directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life. 



