204 
NATURAL SELECTION 
IX 
those exquisitely toned sounds, which are only appreciated 
by the higher races, and which are probably destined for 
more elevated uses and more refined enjoyment in a higher 
condition than we have yet attained to. So, those faculties 
which enable us to transcend time and space, and to realise 
the wonderful conceptions of mathematics and philosophy, or 
which give us an intense yearning for abstract truth (all of 
which were occasionally manifested at such an early period 
of human history as to be far in advance of any of the few 
practical applications which have since grown out of them), 
are evidently essential to the perfect development of man as 
a spiritual being, but are utterly inconceivable as having been 
produced through the action of a law which looks only, and 
can look only, to the immediate material welfare of the indi- 
vidual or the race. 
The inference I would draw from this class of phenomena 
is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development 
of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, just 
as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable 
forms. The laws of evolution alone would, perhaps, never 
have produced a grain so well adapted to man’s use as wheat 
and maize ; such fruits as the seedless banana and bread- 
fruit ; or such animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or the 
London dray-horse. Yet these so closely resemble the un- 
aided productions of nature, that we may well imagine a 
being who had mastered the laws of development of organic 
forms through past ages, refusing to believe that any new 
power had been concerned in their production, and scornfully 
rejecting the theory (as my theory will be rejected by 
many who agree with me on other points) that in these few 
cases a controlling intelligence had directed the action of the 
laws of variation, multiplication, and survival, for his own 
purposes. We know, however, that this has been done; and 
we must therefore admit the possibility that, if we are not 
the highest intelligences in the universe, some higher intelli- 
gence may have directed the process by which the human 
race was developed, by means of more subtle agencies than 
we are acquainted with. At the same time I must confess 
that this theory has the disadvantage of requiring the inter* 
vention of some distinct individual intelligence, to aid in the 
