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THE GEOLOGIST. 



lopment lias ever been restricted to the newer and advancing varieties of our 

 race. It is true that man at present stands the crowning form of vital exist- 

 ence, but the facts of the past give no countenance to the believe that he shall 

 remain the crowning form in future epochs. From its dawn until now the 

 great evolution of life has been ever upward, geologically speaking (and be it 

 borne in mind we are treating the question solely from a geological stand- 

 point), shall it not continue to be upward still ? We see no symptom of decay 

 either in the physical or vital forces of nature ; and so long as these forces 

 continue to operate, mutation ard progress must inevitably follow. Man's 

 own history, physical and moral, has been one of ineessant change and progress. 

 The features of different races, their mental qualities, civil systems, and reli- 

 gious beliefs, have all less or more partaken of this mutation ; and the differ- 

 ence that now subsists between the most intellectual, city-dwelling, machine- 

 making Anglo-Saxons and the men of the old flint-implements and bone-caves 

 may be infinitesimally small, when compared with that which may exist between 

 the noblest living nations and races yet to be evoked. Unless science has alto- 

 gether misinterpreted the past, and the course of Creation as unfolded by 

 geology be no better than a delusion, the future must transcend the present, as 

 the present transcends that which has gone before it. Man present cannot 

 possibly be man future. Noble as he may appear in his highest aspects, it 

 were to limit creative power and arrest its progress to aver that man may not 

 be superseded by another form still nobler and more divine. Physiologically, 

 we cannot suppose that the homologies of the vertebrate skeleton have been 

 exhausted in the structural adaptations of man : psychologically, we dare not 

 presume against the correlation of a nobler intellect with a higher organisation. 

 On the contrary, in these ascending forms the divine idea of moral perfection, 

 though unconceivably unattainable by created existences, may be nearly and 

 more nearly approached, and stage by stage the loftiest and holiest aspirations 

 of the present may become the realisations of the future. To speculations such 

 as these, though lying fairly in the way of geological inquiry, science can do 

 little more than merely indicate the line of reasoning ; and if they shall be 

 thought to involve any question as to man's religious beliefs and his hopes of 

 a future life, on this point also science is mute, and defers with humility to the 

 teachings of a higher philosophy." 



Long as this review may appear, there is much more we should have liked 

 to have extracted, much more we should have liked to have said. Excellent 

 and much appreciated as Mr. Page's other elementary books are, this is the 

 chastest, the most popular, and the best of anything he has yet produced for 

 the student of our glorious science. 



