| → within each class, which 1861 1866 1869 1872 |
| which 1859 1860 |
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each mental power and capacity by gradation.
will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. |
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| Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the
system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species
each genus, and all the species
many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to
that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant
→within each class, which
will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the
epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of
length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all
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