dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, but
the progress of Civilization.

As we thoroughly grasp the meaning of all this, we see that upon the
Darwinian theory it is impossible that any creature zoologically
distinct from Man and superior to him should ever at any future time
exist upon the earth. In the regions of unconditional possibility it is
open to any one to argue, if he chooses, that such a creature may come
to exist; but the Darwinian theory is utterly opposed to any such
conclusion. According to Darwinism, the creation of Man is still the
goal toward which Nature tended from the beginning. Not the production
of any higher creature, but the perfecting of Humanity, is to be the
glorious consummation of Nature's long and tedious work. Thus we
suddenly arrive at the conclusion that Man seems now, much more clearly
than ever, the chief among God's creatures. On the primitive barbaric
theory, which Mr. Darwin has swept away, Man was suddenly flung into the
world by the miraculous act of some unseen and incalculable Power acting
from without; and whatever theology might suppose, no scientific reason
could be alleged why the same incalculable Power might not at some
future moment, by a similar miracle, thrust upon the scene some mightier
creature in whose presence Man would become like a sorry beast of
burden. But he who has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who recognizes
the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which God makes
things come to pass, must take afar higher view. He sees that in the
deadly struggle for existence which has raged throughout countless aeons
of time, the whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in
order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of God's handiwork,
the Human Soul.

To the creature thus produced through a change in the direction in which
natural selection has worked, the earth and most of its living things
have become gradually subordinated. In all the classes of the animal and
vegetal worlds many ancient species have become extinct, and many modern
species have come into being, through the unchecked working of natural
selection, since Man became distinctively human. But in this respect a
change has long been coming over the face of nature. The destinies of
all other living things are more and more dependent upon the will of
Man. It rests with him to determine, to a great degree, what plants and
animals shall remai