e development of all organic beings whatever,
that every part of him which can come under the scrutiny of the anatomist
or naturalist, has been evolved according to these regular laws from a
simple minute ovum, indistinguishable to our senses from that of any of the
inferior animals. If this be so--if man is what he is, notwithstanding the
corporeal mode of origin of the individual man, so he will assuredly be
neither less nor more than man, whatever may be shown regarding the
corporeal origin of the whole race, whether this was from the dust of the
earth, or by the modification of some pre-existing animal form."

Man is indeed compound, in him two distinct orders of being impinge and
mingle; and with this an origin from two concurrent modes of action is
congruous, and might be expected _a priori_. At the same time as the "soul"
is "the form of the body," the former might be expected to modify the
latter into a structure of harmony and beauty standing alone in the organic
world of nature. Also that, with the full perfection and beauty of that
soul, attained by the concurrent action of "Nature" and "Grace," a
character would be formed like nothing else which is visible in this world,
and having a mode of action different, inasmuch as complementary to all
inferior modes of action.

Something of this is evident even to those who approach the subject from
the point of view of physical science only. Thus Mr. Wallace observes,[307]
that on his view man is to be placed "apart, as not only the head and {284}
culminating point of the grand series of organic nature, but as in some
degree _a new and distinct order of being_.[308] From those infinitely
remote ages when the first rudiments of organic life appeared upon the
earth, every plant and every animal has been subject to one great law of
physical change. As the earth has gone through its grand cycles of
geological, climatal, and organic progress, every form of life has been
subject to its irresistible action, and has been continually but
imperceptibly moulded into such new shapes as would preserve their harmony
with the ever-changing universe. No living thing could escape this law of
its being; none (except, perhaps, the simplest and most rudimentary
organisms) could remain unchanged and live amid the universal change around
it."

"At length, however, there came into existence a being in whom that subtle
force we term _mind_, became of greater importance than his mere bodily