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paleolithic age, — great as are tlie changes effected on the 
surface of the earth and in its productions by his agency, yet 
we find limits placed everywhere barring infinite progression. 
He is powerless to extinguish one atom of the matter or force 
with which he plays, he cannot alter or diminish the great 
currents which circulate within or around the globe. He can 
translate but not originate, combine but not create. 
33. Life, as a working power, is plainly limited by the ma- 
chinery through which it works . The machine requires constant 
supply of food. Life itself is only a directing force. Life 
is a peculiar form of action in living bodies at variance with 
the laws of matter and motion. But these life-motions them- 
selves are limited, so far as we can discern, by the laws of 
environment. At present our powers of investigation are com- 
pletely baffled by life. We stand within the shadow of some 
mightier Power than the universe displays fully to our gaze. 
Evolution, by sure footsteps, leads to inevitable decline and 
death. Evolution into immortality is inconceivable. There 
can be no modification equal to a total change at one bound, 
and intermediate steps there are none. 
34. Life is limited in its manifestations. It is well es- 
tablished in all the pi’ovinces of biology, that life exists 
in certain types only ; these types are subject to variations 
within limits, but such variations are always liable to recur- 
rence towards their primitives, so that both type and variety 
are limited; the only difference being that the one is far 
more temporary than the other. It is therefore evident that 
life is limited by law ; laws of type and heredity govern it. 
35. Heredity, too, has its limits. After controlling the mode 
of evolution of a race, it controls the mode of its change or 
extinction. Deviations, either in the physiological or moral 
order, appear, grow, prevail, decline, and become extinct. 
The process may be arrested and held in suspense by condi- 
tions either natural or artificial, but, these being removed, the 
tendency towards the former average state commences, and 
works out a restoration to pristine form by natural law. The 
basis of the evolution is a law of heredity, it is assumed by 
the evolutionists that this is without reversals, but of this we 
have no experience. If it were so, it must still be limited. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer says, “ No more in the case of man 
than in the case of any other being, can we presume that 
evolution has taken place, or will hereafter take place, 
spontaneously.” 
36. Moral heredity has its limits as well as physical. There 
is a tendency in every individual and in every family to return 
towards the average condition. Every observer who is old 
