THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. Hi 



ously so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic 

 kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the 

 follies of the wise. Had the laws of organic development 

 oeen known in his time, his theory might have been of a 

 more imposing kind. It is upon these that the present 

 hypothesis is mainly founded. I take existing natural 

 means, and show them to have been capable of producing 

 all the existing organisms with the simple and easily 

 conceivable aid of a- higher generative law, which we 

 perhaps still see operating upon a limited scale. I also 

 go beyond the French philosopher to a very important 

 point, the original Divine conception of all the forms of 

 being which these natural laws were only instruments in 

 working out and realizing. The actuality of such a con- 

 ception I hold to be strikingly demonstrated by the disco- 

 veries of Macleay, Vigors and Swainson, with respect to 

 the affinities and analogies of animal (and by implication 

 vegetable) organisms.* Such a regularity in the structure, 

 as we may call it, of the classification of animals, as is 

 shown in their systems, is totally irreconcilable with the 

 idea of form going on to form merely as needs and wishes 

 in the animals themselves dictated. Had such been the 

 case, all would have been irregular, as things arbitrary 

 necessarily are. But, lo, the whole plan of being is as 

 symmetrical as the plan of a house, or the laying out ot 

 an old-fashioned garden ! This must needs have been 

 devised and arrranged for beforehand ! And what a pre- 

 conception or forethought have we here ! Let us only 

 for a moment consider how various are the external phy- 

 sical conditions in which animals live — climate, soil, 

 temperature, land, water, air — the peculiarities of food, 

 and the various ways in which it is to be sought ; the pe 

 culiar circumstances in which the business of reproduc- 

 tion and the care taking of the young are to be attended to— 

 all these required to be taken into account, and thousands 

 of animal© were to be formed suitable in organization and 

 mental character for the concerns they were to have with 

 these various conditions and circumstances — here a tooth 

 fitted for crushing nuts ; there a claw fitted to serve as a 

 hook for juspension ; here to repress teeth and develop a 

 bony net- work instead ; there to arrange for a bronchial 

 apparatus, to last only for a certain brief time ; and all 

 these animals were to be schemed out, each as a part of 

 * These affinities and analogies are explained in the next chapter 



