hence the germ itself can never be developed into anything but that which the specific power pre-existing determined in the nature of that germ, which is in the nature of the parent. The kind produced is that of specific mind or instinct as well as that of structure; and therefore, as surely as there are different kinds of animal bodies produced, so there are different kinds of minds included in the original design evolved in the germ and developed from the germ.

As one of the recognised powers that influence both moral and physical development, we may revert to avitism, a word derived from avitus, an ancestor, because this power is a principle in nature which determines that the offspring shall resemble its antecedents, and begins to act before the germ itself is formed. Here is a law fixed firmly in the nature of things, and what can be the force and meaning of that law but to fix a limit to the possibility of variation? It makes the continuance of kinds unavoidable, not to say species, because this term is too unsettled and indefinite, for scientific minds are not yet agreed how to define the word species. There is no doubt a tendency to variation, from the mere fact that the characteristics of either father or mother, irrespective of accidental interferences, may be mixed in variable proportions; and it is this very tendency which is so counteracted by the law just mentioned-avitism: that like begets like, is a true as well as a proverbial axiom. Monstrosities also occur, as before said, from interference with individual development, but they are never continued because prevented by the innate check

upon variation of any kind by the tendency ever to recur to the ancestral type. Without a certain tendency to variation how should we know one another? But if variation passed the verge of kind how should we know ourselves? Without variation there is no individualism, but variation without limit is confusion. Doubtless a degree of accidental variation may become permanent, or at least be prolonged to an indefinite extent, where opposing influences are excluded by circumstances; and, in fact, the distinctions existing amongst the various races of mankind are due to such variations, but they never extend beyond a certain limit, or humanity itself would vary into something else.

In consistence with this law of avitism, which, in the nature of things, must be invariably active in limiting variation, we have also the law which puts a full stop to any attempt to break the order of nature in preserving the continuance of distinct kinds of beings. The confusion of hybridism cannot be propagated; it began by man's interference, and ends where it began.

We will acknowledge that Darwin's hypothesis of change of species by selective modification is a bold and ingenious endeavour to account for many mysteries in the organised world. It is a vast improvement on the wild speculations of De Maillet, and the less wild hypothesis of Lamarck. But it is an attempt to avoid the simple acknowledgment that God created all living things according to their kinds, and with power to produce their like in mind and body. We do not wonder that

the first step towards proving the truth of the hypothesis is altogether wanting. As Mr. Huxley says, Mr. Darwin ought to demonstrate the possibility of developing from a particular stock, by selective breeding, two forms which should be infertile with one another.'* Now, Mr. Darwin has not shown this, nor has he shown, in consistence with his hypothesis, how it happens that he cannot point to a single instance where different species, either under natural selection or unnatural restraints, produce a new kind that will continue to breed together. Failing in these, the only demonstrations demanded by his hypothesis, we may rebut all his arguments with the simple fact that two laws are fixed in nature against the possibility of his hypothesis being true; the one is avitism, the law which limits variation by parental peculiarity, and the other hybridism, which being in itself a limited confusion of nature produced by interference, bears in itself a barrier to the extension of that confusion in the fact that hybrids cease to breed their like. If there be a law whereby transmutation is promoted, either by natural selection or any other means, there is also a law to prevent change of kind, and the one is incompatible with the other.

Seeing, then, that the Maker of nature has set in nature such fixed limits to deviation from the persistence of kindred and kind, we may, without being thought too stupid to understand argument, conclude

* Huxley's Lectures to Working Men, p. 146.

that there is no reason for believing that apes and men are but bodily and mental modifications derived from the same stock. It rather follows, from the law of avitism, as an inevitable truth, that all living creatures were created according to their kind, and therefore that the first man was expressly created as the parent of mankind, and not produced as by a natural selection from a peculiar race of apes, who were wiped out from creation without leaving a trace of their existence behind them. The law of avitism, of course, applies as restricting the dispositions and instincts in lines of inherited peculiarity equally with the distinctive characteristic forms propagated in kinds.

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CHAPTER VI.

MAN THE PRIMATE.

EVERY creature takes its place in nature; and that is precisely the proper place for any creature which it is best qualified to occupy. In this respect man is undoubtedly the primate-he takes the first place; and notwithstanding that Mr. Huxley merely follows Linnæus in his class of primates, including man with apes and monkeys, he not only uses a contradiction in the term primate as applied to any creatures but man, but he also contradicts facts, for there is no creature that can be classed as on a par or even next to man, in respect to position arising from endowment. Man is the first, that is, the only primate, and the rest are equally at a distance below him. There cannot be two or three primates in the same line, nor can two creatures with an infinite divergence between them be ever, on true scientific principles, classed together. Even according to Mr. Huxley's own acknowledgment, there is an infinite gap between man and the ape. Yet he leaps over this gap by an anatomical effort, and classes man and ape in the same category because their bones are somewhat alike, and so, notwithstanding the infinite