GENERAL ADAPT AT lOXS 341 



tulate the continuous action and guidance of higher intelli- 

 gences; and further, that these have prul)ahly been working 

 towards a single end, the development of intellectual, moral, 

 and spiritual beings. I will now indicate briefly how the facts 

 adduced in the present and preceding chapters tend to support 

 this view. 



Having shown in the last chapter that the phenomena of 

 groiuth in the animal world, and especially as manifested in 

 the feathers of birds and the transformation> of the higlier 

 insects, are absolutely unintelligible and unthinkable in the 

 absence of such intelligence, we must go a stc}) further and 

 assume, as in the highest degree proliable, a pur|)o>c which 

 this ever-present, directing, and organising intelligence has had 

 always in view. We cannot help seeing that we ourselves are 

 the highest outcome of the developmental process on the earth ; 

 that at the time of our first ajopearance, plants and animals 

 in many diverging lines had approached their highest develop- 

 ment; that all or almost all of these have furnished species 

 "which seem peculiarly adapted to our purposes, whether as 

 food, as providing materials for our clothing and our varied 

 arts, as our humble servants and friends, or as gratifying our 

 highest faculties by their beauty of form and colour : and as 

 our occupation of the earth has already led to the extinction 

 of many species, and seems likely ultimately to destroy many 

 more except so far as we make special efforts to preserve them, 

 we must, I think, assume that all these consequences of our 

 development were foreseen, and that results which srrm to bo 

 so carefully adapted to our wants during our growing civilisa- 

 tion were really prepared for us. If this be so, it follows that 

 the much-despised anthropomorphic view of the whole develop- 

 ment of the earth and of organic nature was, after all, tho 

 true one. 



But if the view now advocated is not so wholly unscientific, 

 so utterly contemptible as it has hitherto been declared to bo 

 by many of our great nuthnrities, it is certainly advisable to 

 show how various facts in nature bear upon it and are ex- 



