408 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
lopment has 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 - 
enee, hut 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 incessant 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 bis highest aspects, it 
were to limit creative power and arrest its pros^ress 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be superseded by another form still nobler and more divine.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. 
