Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/526

506 a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of the creative cause, may retain their favourite theory compatibly with the doctrine of transmutation.

Professor Agassiz, having observed that, 'while human thought is consecutive, divine thought is simultaneous,' Dr. Asa Gray has replied that, 'if divine thought is simultaneous, we have no right to affirm the same of divine action.'

The whole course of nature may be the material embodiment of a preconcerted arrangement; and if the succession of events be explained by transmutation, the perpetual adaptation of the organic world to new conditions leaves the argument in favour of design, and therefore of a designer, as valid as ever; 'for to do any work by an instrument must require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of more than of less power, than to do it directly.'

As to the charge of materialism brought against all forms of the developement theory, Dr. Gray has done well to remind us that 'of the two great minds of the seventeenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory, that it was subversive of natural religion.'

It may be said that, so far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at successive geological periods of life,—sensation,—instinct,—the intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason,—and lastly the improvable reason of Man himself, presents us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter.