continue in all their analogies and differences productive of the same effects, then the same causes have produced other consequences, which is absurd. It is vain to look for any facts in creation that shall contradict reason, for reason, as far as we can discover, exists for no other purpose but that of discerning God's works, and corresponding with God in His works, by learning from them, reasoning from laws of nature to the Maker of those laws.

The theory of development as propounded in the Vestiges of a Natural History of Creation, is not very different from the Darwinian theory, or rather hypothesis; it, too, suggests supposed possibilities, rather than explains facts. The inherent qualities' and 'modes of action depending solely on organisation,' 'without immediate superintending power,' suit one hypothesis as well as the other. The Vestiges supposes two local origins for the human race necessary-namely, one for the Asiatic, American, and European varieties, and another for the African. The former seems to be connected with the great development of the quadrumana in Southern Asia, the latter with that of Western Africa.* Thus development and natural selections provide for each other what seems and what is necessary as above; but where the necessary and the seeming are as undefined as the outline of a fog, we cannot say which is which, the seeming or the necessary. There is one other theory imported from the South Seas, quite

in keeping in point of fact with either of the foregoing theories. The wise among the natives of Tahiti say that a heap of vegetables, in the act of rotting, gave rise to a number of worms, and out of those worms men and women were at length developed.* This is a very good theory as theories now go. It is quite worthy of Aristotle, who affirms pretty much the same thing of the first man. But the Tahitian theory has, moreover, the advantage of being sustained by tradition if not by fact, and that is better than theory without either fact or tradition. Perhaps, however, we ought to view the matter as a mythical teaching of the true philosophy that vegetables support the life of lower animals, and that these support men. We cannot too freely rejoice with all that lives. If man rightly understands his place, he feels along every line of life; and all the enjoyment in nature is joy for man. Let us sing with the birds and skip with the lambs; let us shout for gladness of heart as the trees clap their hands in the sunshine and the breath of heaven. The more we rejoice with the light and the play of all life, the more we shall love one another. Though we may not, like Francis of Assisi, claim birds and beasts as our brothers and sisters, we may own them with love as our fellow-creatures, and tenderly use them in awe of the Hand that formed them. We may call on all the powers of earth and all the hosts of heaven with us to praise their Maker. But we

* See Latham's Varieties of Man-Tahitian.

† Aristotle says men crawled out as worms, or came out as from eggs -De Gen. An., lib. iii. cap. ult.

will not confound ourselves with brute natures, either in origin or end; for is it not to man alone to whom is given the soul to say and sing Halleluiah?

The notion that all living things sprang from a single primitive living germ is as if a tree of infinite ramification and extent had been developed from one seed, utterly unlike any it bore. The branches, moreover, instead of being supposed all of one nature, are assumed to have taken on themselves distinct and independent powers, so as to produce ever-diverging variations in every added spray to the utmost sprig. Thus, in consequence of some undefined native conatus in each new variation, the grand tree of life bears a totally different fruit on each branch, the things in common being only life and its concomitant organisation. And then again, the lifeendeavour, proceeding along the varied collateral and off-set lines, is supposed to operate in such a manner that in one direction the result, under the pressure and process of a selective force, is the production of a whale, while under similar influence, with uncertain modifications, in another direction we have a water-wagtail. Such, indeed, is the marvellous struggle of life as presented in this theory, that under conditions more or less favourable, or the reverse, the same inherent lifeenergy from the primal germ takes the forms of midges and mites in pairs at the extremities of one branch, while on another it results very satisfactorily in the evolution of the first man and his wife. The most remarkable feature in the general results from this lifegerm is, however, the fixed fact that kinds of beings,

male and female, arise who continue in a strange manner to produce their own likenesses, and that with such persisting obstinacy that no philosopher has ever been able to detect a trace of a tendency in one kind to become parents of another kind, or even to discover when kinds began to exist.

Of course, if it can be proved that creatures do desire and endeavour to improve themselves and rise above their original status, and if it be also proved that the endeavour is followed, in however slow a manner, by the production of organs and faculties of higher order, man and woman might verily as well have come forth together from the ultimate struggle of the life laid up in the primitive germ as any other kind and pair of creatures. It will, however, be but becoming modesty to wait for the proofs before we commit our reason to the belief of such a theory, even though in the meantime we get the discredit of being charged with prejudice, in consequence of our pre-conceived opinions. But are we not warranted to defend ourselves from the charge of unfairness by venturing at least to ask the question, When human nature was any other nature, or at what period in the past it emerged from the inferior stock, and began to walk erect and to talk with some show of reason about the propria quæ hominibus?

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CHAPTER IV.

CREATION NOT CONFUSION.

Ir man did not begin as man, how could man begin? If there sprang from some reptilian spawn a Protean sort of being that, during long ages of struggle for life, passed through all the various stages of each lower order of animated existence until it emerged at length, through some approximate maternity, into the veritable form of a man with a human mind, we should still be justified in making research for evidences of this strange metempsychosis; and if we did not discover those evidences, we should no more be required to credit the assertion of such a process than to believe the less wondrous transmigration of souls, as taught in Hindoo mythology. But presuming that the Darwinian hypothesis does not assume this system of metamorphosis, what does it assume? If it means that man has not actually passed through an infinite series of transitions, does it mean that one form of being was transmuted by degrees into another form, until ultimately man appeared? Then it becomes a question whether any idea of identity and individuality could be entertained as any part of such theory of transmutations. Trans