CREATION LONG DRAWN OUT.

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Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."1

Placing the origin of life at such a distance in the past does not at all diminish the marvel of it, and lengthening out the process does not destroy creation. In the wheat-straw, sugar-cane, and other endogenous plants, we observe certain divisions of the stem which are called nodes or knots, and the space between an internode. In exogens the nodes are not always so perceptible, but they may be regarded as always existing, and may be observed in the young shoots of the vine. The leaves originate at the nodes, and have a spiral or cork-screw arrangement round the branch, being more or less distant above one another, according to the length of the internode. Sometimes the internode is not developed, and then we may get two leaves opposite one another at the node; or if several internodes are undeveloped, a complete circle or whorl of leaves. The leaves which constitute a regular flower are made up of several whorls, and are brought together by the dwarfing of the intermediate part of the axis, like several rings of a spiral spring pressed down on one another. Were it possible that we should be eye-witnesses of the complete process of the evolution of living things on the earthif all the species and individuals that have lived, and all that live now, were to blossom into life in the course of a single hour, like the splendid leaves of a gigantic flower, spending no time in the development of internodes, we should marvel and call it creation. Is it any the less creation when the process is the same, but the internodes are drawn out, when the leaves of life are ranged around branches which have their root in

1 Darwin: Origin of Species, Conclusion.

I

deeper than Silurian strata, but draw their nourishment from the same source? "When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become ! "1

If we are to have the complex structure, the process of formation is evidently necessary, and for anything that we know, there is some necessity for its being long. It may be that Minerva cannot spring full-grown from Jupiter's head, any more than houses can be built without bricks, or books printed before the type is set up. Equally certain does it seem that without the highly differentiated and intricate animal machinery there cannot be any high form of life, any more than civilisation can advance without division of labour. For the superior life there must be the more elaborate organization, and the highly elaborate organization must be preceded by the less elaborate and the simple. One of the lowest creatures in the animal scale is the sponge, of which the parts are so little differentiated that they may be likened to the members of a rude community, where each individual catches and cooks his own food, and makes his own rude clothes, rendering no service to the

1 Darwin: Origin of Species, Conclusion.

HIGHER ORGANISMS COME LATER.

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society, and receiving none from it. From the sponge we pass upwards, through creatures in which there is an increasing multiplication of parts having unlike actions, and an increasing closeness in their mutual relationships, until we come to structures like our own, where the functions are numerous and the division of labour is carried so far that the heart cannot say to the brain, I have no need of thee; and the lungs cannot say to the heart, I have no need of thee. That the greater differentiation of functions is accompanied by a closer interdependence of them is quite clear. From the sponge a piece may be cut off without interfering in any appreciable degree with the activity and growth of the rest; the hydra may be cut in two, and will still live; but a fish cannot afford to be so divided; and when we arrive at man, a slight change initiated in one part will instantly and powerfully affect all other parts—will convulse an immense number of muscles, send a wave of contraction through all the blood-vessels, awaken a crowd of ideas with an accompanying gush of emotions, affect the action of the lungs, of the stomach, and of all the secreting organs. The pre-eminence of enjoying a highly specialized organization is not without some concomitant disadvantages: the crab may lose a limb and replace it, where a man must put up with the loss; the frog can dispense with air for a long time, but a man would soon die of suffocation. These evils attending the greater differentiation of function appear to arise from the nature of the case, and are not of such weight as to be set against the advantages: it is better to be a man than a frog, or a fish, or a kangaroo, or a monkey-man is the higher animal. But the higher animal could not come upon the stage of life before the

lower;1 the more highly differentiated must be evolved from the less differentiated, just as man must make simple tools before he can make complex engines, the simple having to be used in the manufacture of the complex.

In this consideration, perhaps, we have the answer to the question why-during those immeasurable epochs which geology records-have there existed none of those highest organic forms which have now overrun the earth? why, during untold millions of years, were there no beings endowed with capacities for wide thought and high feeling? The answer that the earth was not, in remote times, a fit habitation for such a creature is not warranted by the evidence; besides which it suggests the question, Why, during such vast periods, did the earth remain fit only for inferior creatures? On the hypothesis of Evolution the difficulty is removed, and there is no room to doubt the wisdom of the arrangement: the lower types come first, because they have to give birth to the higher, as simple mechanism is used in the manufacture of mechanism more complex and intricate.

It

It would seem probable, then, that Man came upon the stage of existence as soon as all the necessary preparative processes had gone through their course. will be admitted by every Evolutionist, that an Omniscient Being must have foreseen man's advent. Is it too much to say that such a crowning glory of Evolution

1 This must not be understood to imply that Paleontology shows any uniform progression in the types of past life. There were some highly organized animals in early times. But the records of the earliest times are lost. See Huxley on Persistent Types of Life.

LOWER ANIMALS BOTH ENDS AND INSTRUMENTS. 133

was intended, and that the necessary processes were started by the Divine Will initiating the motions in the original nebulous mass, or at any rate impinging on matter at the appropriate points in the appropriate instant, if not at many different stages of the process? This would not imply that the series of structures, linking man with the first speck of living matter, were mere instruments for the evolution of man, and were not also ends in themselves; nor would it imply that any imperfection attached to them because a higher form was to come afterwards. If they were the highest that were possible in their time, taking every circumstance into consideration, it would not be proper to call them imperfect; and if they were ends in themselves, the Creator delighting to evolve their life, there was the more wisdom in making them subserve a further purpose. Professor Huxley says, that the teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in Man or one of the higher Vertebrata, was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow at the hands of Mr Darwin.1 If this means that the human eye was not formed by direct creation for man's special benefit, but has been evolved from the eye of some lower creature, which in its day was also able to see more or less perfectly, it appears to be true. But if we deny purpose in the formation of man's eye, because he gets it through lower vertebrate animals, and deny it in the lower vertebrates, because they inherit the eye from still lower creatures, we come at last to the creatures that have no eyes at all, having denied teleology at every step. We may do the same with the human ear and every other

1 Academy, October 1869.