Editorial Comuient. 263 
vice was not confined to this. In clear and temperate English 
it marshalled such facts as were at the disposal of the science 
of that day into a clear and convincing proof of the develop- 
ment of all the material and mental phenomena of our world 
from previous existences, which diminished in number and 
variation as they were traced backward. Even the great 
thought which compared the progressive multiplication and 
variation of organic beings to the branching out of kingdoms, 
•classes and orders from the parent stem of life is fully and 
lucidly expressed. 
That the whole work is pervaded b}' a devout and reveren- 
tial spirit should not lessen its influence, and that some 
grotesque errors are found cited as scientific ^acts should not 
condemn its work as a whole. The argument of this work, as 
resumed in the admirable reply to his critics and detractors 
printed in 1846, "is to show that the whole revelation of the 
work of God presented to our senses and reason is a system 
based in what we are compelled, for want of a better term to 
call Law" * ''-^ * * "a system" * '^ "which only proposes a cer- 
tain mode of his working" * * "while the whole physical ar- 
rangement of the universe was placed under law by the dis- 
coveries of Kepler and Newton there was still such a iiiysfc- 
rioiis conception of the origin of organic nature" * * "that 
men were almost forced to make large exceptions from any 
proposed plan of universal order." * * "My starting point was 
a statement of the arrangements of the bodies in space with a 
hypothesis respecting the mode in which those arrangements 
had been efifected." * * * After quoting AI. Quetelet 'Sur 
I'homme, et le developpement de ses Facultes' to show that 
deaths, crimes, stature, weight, strength, etc., are shown bv 
statistics to be amenable to natural laws, though individually 
appearing so discordant, he resumes "Xow wc have here two 
remarkable truths. The wondrous masses which people the 
mighty void are under the control of natural law. The work- 
ing of the little world of the human mind — the opposite ex- 
treme of the system — are under law likewise." * * * "Can it" 
(not) "be that as the first and last j^arts of the system are 
under law" * * "so the whole is under law." He then deducts 
from the character of the successive formations of the eaitl 's 
crust and their contents the gradual progression from the 
simplest to the highest forms of animal and plant life. p. v. 
