nly
be necessary to go back to a point in the history of life when living
creatures were as yet formless, undeveloped--the materials, as we may
call them, of the animal creation as we now see it, and not in any but a
strictly scientific sense, what we mean when we ordinarily speak of
animals. The true settlement of such questions as these can only be
obtained when long and patient study shall have completed Darwin's
investigations by determining under what laws and within what limits the
slight variations which characterise each individual animal or plant are
congenitally introduced into its structure. As things stand the
probabilities certainly are that a creature with such especial
characteristics as man has had a history altogether of his own, if not
from the beginning of all life upon the globe, yet from a very early
period in the development of that life. He resembles certain other
animals very closely in the structure of his body; but the part which
external conditions had to play in the earliest stages of evolution of
life must have been so exceedingly large that identity or close
similarity in these external conditions may well account for these
resemblances. And the enormous gap which separates his nature from that
of all other creatures known, indicates an exceedingly early difference
of origin.

Lastly, it is quite impossible to evolve the Moral Law out of anything
but itself. Attempts have been made, and many more will no doubt be
made, to trace the origin of the spiritual faculty to a development of
the other faculties. And it is to be expected that great success will
ultimately attend the endeavours to show the growth of all the
subordinate powers of the soul. That our emotions, that our impulses,
that our affections should have had a history, and that their present
working should be the result of that history, has nothing in it
improbable. There can be no question that we inherit these things very
largely, and that they are also very largely due to special
peculiarities of constitution in each individual. That large part of us
which is rightly assigned to our nature as distinct from our own will
and our own free action, it is perfectly reasonable to find subject to
laws of Evolution. Much of this nature, indeed, we share with the lower
animals. They, too, can love; can be angry or pleased; can put affection
above appetite; can show generosity and nobility of spirit; can be
patient, persevering, tender, s