THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 105 



over the development of the animated tribes on the face of 

 the earth, and that of the individual in embryo. 



The tendency of all these illustrations is to make us 

 look to development as the principle which has been im- 

 mediately concerned it the peopling of this globe, a pro- 

 cess extending over a vast space of time, but which is 

 nevertheless connected in character with the briefer pro- 

 cess'by which an individual being is evoked from a simple 

 germ. What mystery is there here — and how shall I pro- 

 ceed to enunciate the conception which I have ventured 

 to form of what may prove to be its proper solution ! It 

 is an idea by no means calculated to impress by its great- 

 ness, or to puzzle by its profoundness. It is an idea more 

 marked by simplicity than perhaps any other of those 

 which have explained the great secrets of nature. But in 

 this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims to the faith 

 >f mankind. 



The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest 

 and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to 

 be regarded as a series of advances of the principle of de- 

 velopment, which have depended upon external physical 

 circumstances, to which the resulting animals are appro- 

 priate. I contemplate the whole phenomena as having 

 been in the first place arranged in the counsels of Divine 

 Wisdom, to take place not only upon this sphere, but 

 upon all the others in space, under necessary modifica- 

 tions, and as being carried on, from first to last, here and 

 elsewhere, under the immediate favor of the creative will 

 or energy.* The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form 

 of all organization, we must regard as the meeting-point 

 between the inorganic and the organic — the end of the 

 mineral and the beginning of the vegetable and animal 

 kingdoms, which thence start in different directions, but 

 in perfect parallelism and analogy. We have already seen 

 that this nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature and 

 independent being in the infusory animalcules, as well as 

 the starting point of the foetal progress of every higher in- 

 dividual in creation, both animal and vegetable. We have 



* When I formed this idea, I was not aware of one which seems 

 faintly to foreshadow it— namely, Socrates's doctrine, afterwards 

 dilated on by Plato, that " previous to the existence of the world, 

 and beyond its present limits, there existed certain archetypes, the 

 embodiment (if we may use such a word) of general ideas ; and 

 that these archetypes were models., in imitation of which all parti 

 cular beings were created. 1 ' 



9 



