e upon the men of
our time, and one which the philosophers of the days of Newton
could never have expected to be vouchsafed. The great fact
established by it is, that the organic creation, as we now see it,
was not placed upon the earth at once; it observed a PROGRESS. Now
we can _imagine_ the Deity calling a young plant or animal into
existence instantaneously; but we see that he does not usually do
so. The young plant and also the young animal go through a series
of conditions, advancing them from a mere germ to the fully
developed repetition of the respective parental forms. So, also, we
can _imagine_ Divine power evoking a whole creation into being by
one word; but we find that such had not been his mode of working in
that instance, for geology fully proves that organic creation
passed through a series of stages before the highest vegetable and
animal forms appeared. Here we have the first hint of organic
creation having arisen in the manner of natural order. The analogy
does not prove identity of causes, but it surely points very
broadly to natural order or law having been the mode of procedure
in both instances."

To the allusion in the last sentence there can be no demur; that
there is "natural order or law" in creation who will contest? But it
is the author's law and the author's order that are in dispute--his
transmutation of species, the higher classes emerging from and
partly annihilating the lower, under meliorated conditions of being.
That the simpler form of organic life should first appear; that
remains of invertebrated animals should be first found; then, with
these, fish, being the lowest of the vertebrated; next, reptiles and
birds, which occupy higher grades; and finally, along with the rest,
mammifers, the highest of all--all this appears natural enough. _How
could it be otherwise?_ When the earth was a slimy bed, what but the
lowest forms of life--the mollusca, and other soft animals, without
bony structure--could possibly live in or occupy it? During the
carboniferous era, when the earth was enveloped in an atmosphere of
hydrogen, vegetation might thrive; but man, and animals like
him, dependent on vital air, could not exist; nor are remains of
them found in this epoch of the globe's vicissitudes. All this
is comprehensible. But the perplexing inquiry is, whence did
the successive grades of animals emerge? Th