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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
impossible, and that every individual fish which swims in the 
ocean must be the result of an act of distinct creation. Each 
fish presents evidences of special design. Every single argu- 
ment which has been used to prove that living creatures could 
not have attained their present forms through a process of 
development will prove equally that they could not have been 
generated in any but their mature forms. This absurd conclu- 
sion would no doubt have been acceptable enough, had we been 
familiar with none but adult forms of life, had we known 
nothing of that admitted and undeniable course of development 
which leads from the germ and embryo to the full organisation 
of the creature in its prime. A world of butterflies would 
plausibly argue that their own development out of grovelling 
cabbage-eating caterpillars was about as contrary to common 
sense as any theory that could well be devised, insulting to the 
Author of Nature, as supposing that He would bring a clean 
thing out of an unclean, and degrading to themselves, the chil- 
dren of the sun, fed on nectar and clad with the rainbow. 
This argument against development based upon the superior 
dignity of one creature above another creature will not bear a 
moment’s examination. The largest brain, the fairest beauty 
ever found among mankind, have been nurtured by food. A 
Newton and a Cleopatra could not have been clever or beautiful 
without some such sustenance as beef and chicken. They fed 
on the ox, and the ox fed upon grass, and the grass fed upon 
manure ; or if they washed down the tender flesh of pullets with 
Mareotic wine, the wine that gave the grapes had its roots in 
compost, and the chicken picked worms out of a dunghill. Of 
this dignified creature, man, so punctilious about his origin, it 
is said in a certain place, 44 The worm shall feed sweetly on him.” 
You will perceive, perhaps, from what has been said, that the 
worm is only taking a just revenge — devouring its devourer. 
In reality, however, opposition to the development theory 
founds itself not upon argument but upon authority. Men 
suppose that they have sound historical witness that man was 
produced a few thousand years back in a perfect state by a dis- 
tinct act of creation. Moral failure, they think, first made him 
liable to bodily pain, and that he was exiled from the external 
Paradise because he had destroyed the Paradise within him of 
his own integrity. It will be interesting, therefore, to hear 
what so eminent a teleologist as Sir Charles Bell — a religious 
philosopher above suspicion — says on the subject of pain, bear- 
ing in mind that the Bridgewater Treatises to which his work 
was contributed are specially 44 on the Wisdom, Power, and 
Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation.” 44 To suppose,” 
he says, 44 that we could be moved by the solicitations of pleasure 
and have no experience of pain, would be to place us where 
