microscopic yeast-plant to the branching oak; and a
series of vertebrated animals, from the worm-like
lamprey to the orang-otang; but not every one
will admit, as a consequence, the theory that all
plants are only gradual developments of a minute
mould, and all animals the improved descendants
of some primitive creature from which the lamprey
itself is descended. In searching after the
original condition of existing forms, some minds
may suspect that the circumstance of finding
that nature is composed of various regular series
of forms, has been made to prove much more
than it ought to be allowed to prove. Laplace's
celebrated comparison of the nebulae, in what are
supposed progressive stages of forwardness, to the
trees of different ages growing in a forest, has
appeared to some minds as assuming too much.
Certain stars called nebulae, beheld with the best
existing telescopes, have an ill-defined and cloudy
look; others are less and less so, till we arrive
at the perfect, point-like, glittering star, or
cluster of stars, shining like diamonds in the sky.
Hence it was concluded that these groups of
suns are in a state of transition, passing from a
vapoury chaos of inconceivable heat, into the coolness,
arrangement, and order of our own system.
But Lord Rosse builds a telescope of
unprecedented power, and those cloudy stars, the
imagined chaotic burning nebulae, are beheld as
groups of gold-dust, each grain a sun, doubtless
with its attendant worlds. If what is said of
Lord Rosse's telescope be true, and that the
nebulae are likely to prove all resolvable with
improved instruments, and not to be in different
stages of growth, the comparison fails, and
we see how little trust we ought to put
in this interpretation of a series—namely,
that any one individual form must have passed
in succession through those that are nearest
below it in the chain. But, as the force of
the argument will entirely depend on the
peculiar turn of mind of the individual to whom it
is addressed, it is only fair to take note of it.

Answer the Second would further suggest that
life may originate, either in what is called the
spontaneous generation of a multitude and
variety of organised beings of the simplest class,
or from a very few primordial forms into which life
was first breathed by the Creator. Varieties of these
would produce something more nearly perfect and
more highly organised; and of these, again, the
best only would survive, to be the parents of
something still nearer perfection; and so on, till
animated and vegetable nature became what we see
around us. No grand cataclysms on the earth
are needed; the fossil remains of former geological
epochs are merely the dead bodies of creatures
which have died out because they were
overpowered or pushed aside by stronger rivals
in the contest for the means of subsistence.
Every existing creature is the lineal descendant
of some creature that has lived before it; there
have been no successive new creations at successive
geological epochs. There often exist parts
in an animal's organisation—such as
rudimentary teeth which never bite, rudimentary feet
which never walk, and rudimentary wings which
never fly—that cannot be explained by the
final causes of adaptation and providential
contrivance; therefore, the final causes of adaptation
and contrivance, it is said, are inadequate
to explain the peculiarities of a creature's
organisation. Because it has them, it has survived
during the process of natural selection; if it had
not had them, it would have perished and
disappeared; that is all. And so have arisen the
immense variety of living creatures which we see
around us.

This view is not necessarily irreligious, as it
seems to be at the outset; for it does not deny
the existence of a Supreme Overruling Power,
although acting in a manner to which the minds
of men in general are little accustomed; nor of
a Sustaining and Regulating Influence, although
the desired ends are brought about by
contrivances which unthinking persons might call
accident. But God is Continuous and Unyielding
Law, and Incessant Energy, and All-pervading
Life; and all those we behold around us wherever
we direct our eyes. Whether we conceive many
successive creative acts, or few, or only one, a
creation once in existence must be sustained, not
from day to day, and from hour to hour, but
from half-second to half-second, without the
intermission of the smallest imaginable fragment
of time. But the creation which we see around
us is so complicated and perfect, that it can only
be sustained by an All-wise, Almighty Divinity.
The greater the complexity of the machinery
which is kept in action, the greater must be the
energy and the untiring power of the eternal
mainspring. It may be just as noble a conception
of the Deity to believe that he created a
few original forms capable of self-development
into other and needful forms, as to believe that
He required a fresh act of creation to supply
the voids caused by the action of His laws.

In any case, it is clear that the innumerable
species inhabiting this world have been modelled
somehow, so as to be in possession of that
perfection of structure and coadaptation which
most justly excites our admiration. The how,
religiously considered, may be a question of mode
rather than of principle. Whether a wonderful
adaptation of structure be effected directly at
once, or indirectly by secondary causes, the
perfection of the adaptation is alone sufficient to
prove that it must have been effected by Infinite
Wisdom. We ought not to feel greatly surprised,
nor need our self-esteem be deeply wounded, if
long-observant, reflective, and reverent men
suggest that we have hitherto misapprehended the
modus operandi of the Great Artificer. Instead
of wondering that man's views of. the Universe
are so incomplete, the wonder is that they
penetrate so far, and in many cases apprehend with
such clearness and certainty.

We see beautiful coadaptations plainly, in such
a creature as the woodpecker, with its feet, tail,
beak, and tongue, so admirably fitted to catch