ness
of speculation. Very little has been done towards determining the laws of
life, and therefore the space is still free to those busy dreamers, who
are to science what constructors of Utopias are to history and politics.
His solution is simple enough, and with good reason may it be simple,
since it depends on nothing but the will of its framer. The germ of
life--that primary cell with its granule, in which some physiologists have
detected the first elementary form of life--he finds to be a product of
chemistry. From this germ, cell, or animalcule, or whatever it may be
called, has been developed, in succession, all the various forms of
existence--each form having, at some propitious moment, given birth to
the form just above it, which again has not only propagated itself, but
produced an offspring of a still higher grade in the scale of creation.
Thus the introduction of life, and the various species of animals, is
easily accounted for. "It has pleased Providence to arrange, that one
species should give birth to another, till the second highest gave birth
to man, who is the very highest."--(P. 234.) Under favourable skies, some
remarkable baboon had, we presume, a family of Hottentots, whose facial
angle, we believe, ranks them, with physiologists, next to the brute
creation; these grew, and multiplied, and separated from the tribes of the
_Simiae_; under a system of improved diet, and perhaps by change of
climate, they became first tawny, and then white, and at last rose into
that Caucasian family of which we here, in England, boast ourselves to be
distinguished members.

Such a solution as this most people will at once regard as utterly
unworthy of serious consideration. This _progressive development_ is
nowhere seen, and contradicts all that we do see; for no progeny, even
amongst hybrids, was ever known to be of a superior order, in the animal
creation, to both its parents. Such a proposed origin of the human race
would be sufficient, with most of us, for its condemnation. "Give us at
least," we exclaim, "a man to begin with--some savage and his squaw--some
Iceland dwarf if you will, wrapt in his nutritious oils--something in the
shape of humanity!" In short, it is a thing to be scoffed away, and
deserving only of a niche in some future _Hudibras_. But although the
theory is thus rash and absurd, and requires only to be stated to be
scouted, the author, in his exposition of it, advances some propositions
which ar