Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/27

 a proof of this, but it is a fact that every relevant law and illustration in nature contradict its possibility. The similarity in the ascending scale is incidental and unavoidable. Though one common plan runs through animal forms, and though the human form is shown to be like the form of the Crustacea highly developed, it does not prove that man is descended from such prior forms. This general resemblance is what should be expected, if creation is the work of one God, whose image in some degree must be wrought into every creature. Similarity of structure shows a common origin in the one Creator rather than derivation from the Monera through natural laws, which never vary.

That the lower forms came first and the higher successively and man last, is taken as confirmatory evidence that higher forms came from a primal form through modification of functions. It is important to observe that the order in which things were created came out of the method of creating that links all in mutual use, but not that the lower might beget the higher.

As the earth passed through its elementary stages, wherein it could sustain only the lowest forms of life, to its more nearly finished condition suited to man and to human uses, forms came forth adapted to the state of the earth's progress,