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plete knowledge and of absolute control. The universal rule is that everything is brought about by way of Natural Consequence. But another rule is that all Consequences meet and fit into each other in endless circles of Harmony and Purpose; and this can only be explained by the fact that what we call Natural Consequence is always the conjoint effect of an infinite number of Elementary Forces, whose action and reaction are under the direction of the Will which we see obeyed, and of the Purposes which we see actually attained.

It is, indeed, the completeness of the analogy between our own works on a small scale, and the works of the Creator on an infinitely large scale, which is the greatest mystery of all. Man is constrained to adopt the principle of Adjustment, because the Forces of Nature are external to and independent of his Will. They may be managed, but they cannot be disobeyed. It is impossible to suppose that they stand in the same relation to the Will of the Supreme; yet it seems as if He took the same method of dealing with them never violating them, never breaking them, but always ruling them by that which we call Adjustment, or Contrivance. Nothing gives us such an idea of Immutability of Laws as this; nor does anything give us such an idea of their pliability to use. How imperious they are, yet how submissive! How they reign, yet how they serve!

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THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

(From "Primeval Man," Part II.)

THE Human Race has no more knowledge or recollection of its own origin than a child has of its own birth. But a child drinks in with its mother's milk some knowledge of the relation in which it stands to its own parents, and as it grows up it knows of other children being born around it. It sees one generation going and another generation coming; so that long before the years of childhood close, the ideas of Birth and Death are alike familiar. Whatever sense of mystery may, in the first dawnings of reflection, have attached to either of these ideas is soon lost in the familiar experience of the world. The same experience extends to the lower animals: they too are born and die. But no such experience ever comes to us, casting any light on the Origin of our Race, or of any other.

Some varieties of form are effected, in the case of a few animals, by domestication, and by constant care in the selection of

peculiarities transmissible to the young.

But these variations

are all within certain limits; and wherever human care relaxes or is abandoned, the old forms return, and the selected characters disappear. The founding of new forms by the union of dif ferent species, even when standing in close natural relation to each other, is absolutely forbidden by the sentence of sterility which Nature pronounces and enforces upon all hybrid offspring.

And so it results that Man has never seen the origin of any species. Creation by birth is the only kind of creation he has ever seen; and from this kind of creation he has never seen a new species come. And yet he does know (for this the science of Palæontology has most certainly revealed) that the introduction of new species has been a work carried on constantly and continuously during vast but unknown periods of time. The whole face of animated nature has been changed — not once, but frequently, not suddenly for the most part-perhaps not suddenly in any case-but slowly and gradually, and yet completely.

When once this fact is clearly apprehended - whenever we become familiar with the idea that Creation had a History — we are inevitably led to the conclusion that Creation has also had a Method. And then the further question arises, "What has this Method been?" It is perfectly natural that men who have any hopes of solving this question should take that supposition which seems the readiest; and the readiest supposition is, that the agency by which new species are created is the same agency by which new individuals are born. The difficulty of conceiving any other compels men, if they are to guess at all, to guess upon this foundation.

PERPETUITY OF MAN.

(From "Primeval Man," Part II.)

SUCH as Man now is, Man, so far as we yet know, has always been. Two skeletons at least have been found respecting which there is strong ground for believing that they belong to the very earliest race which lived in Northern Europe. One of these skeletons indicates a coarse, perhaps even what we should call

as we might fairly some living specimens of our race a Brutal Man; yet even this skeleton is, in all its proportions, strictly Human; its cranial capacity indicates a volume of

brain, and some peculiarities of shape, not materially different from many skulls of savage races, now living. The other skeleton-respecting which the evidence of extreme antiquity is the strongest is not only perfectly Human in all its proportions, but its skull has a cranial capacity not inferior to that of many modern Europeans. This most ancient of all known human skulls is so ample in its dimensions that it might have contained the brains of a Philosopher. So conclusive is this evidence against any change whatever in the specific characters of Man since the oldest Human Being yet known was born, that Prof. Huxley pronounces it to be clearly indicated that "the first traces of the primordial stock whence Man has proceeded need no longer be sought, by those who entertain any form of the doctrine of Progressive Development, in the newest tertiaries [that is in the oldest deposits yet known to contain human remains at all]; but they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the age of those tertiaries than that is from us."

So far, therefore, the evidence is on the side of the originality of Man as a Species - nay, even, as a Class, by himself - separated by a gulf practically immeasurable from all the creatures that are, or that are known ever to have been, his contemporaries in the world. In the possession of this ground, we can wait for such further evidence in favor of transmutation as may be brought to light. Meanwhile, at least, we are entitled to remain incredulous, remembering - as Prof. Phillips has said- that "everywhere we are required by the hypothesis to look somewhere else; which may fairly be interpreted to signify that the hypothesis everywhere fails in the first and most important step. How is it conceivable that the second stage should be everywhere preserved, but the first nowhere?"

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

(From "Primeval Man," Part III.)

IN passing from the subject of Man's Origin to the subject of his Antiquity, we pass from almost total darkness to a question which is comparatively accessible to reason and open to research. Evidence bearing upon this question may be gathered along several walks of science; and these are all found tending in one direction, and pointing to one general result.

First comes the evidence of History name all Literature, whether it prof

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does no more than allude to them in poetry and song. Then comes Archaeology- the evidence of Human Monuments, belonging to times or races whose voice, though not silenced, has become inarticulate to us. Piecing on to this evidence, comes that which Geology has recently afforded from human remains associated with the latest physical changes on the surface and in the climates of the globe. Then comes the evidence of Language, founded on the facts of Human Speech, and the laws which regulate its development and growth. And lastly, there is the evidence afforded by the existing Physical Structure and the existing Geographical Distribution of the various Races of Mankind.

One distinction, however, it is important to bear in mind: Chronology is of two kinds: First, Time measurable by Years; and secondly, Time measurable only by an ascertained Order or Succession of Events. The one may be called Time-absolute, the other Time-relative.

Now, among all the sciences which afford us any evidences on the Antiquity of Man, one- and only one- gives us any knowledge of Time-absolute; and that is History. From all the others we can gather only the less definite information of Timerelative. They can tell us nothing more than the order in which certain events took place. But of the length of interval between those events, neither Archæology, nor Geology, nor Ethnology can tell us anything. Even History, that is, the records of Written Documents, carries us back to times of which no contemporary account remains, and the distance of which from any known epoch is, and must be, a matter of conjecture.

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BARTOLOMEO LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA,

ARGENSOLA, BARTOLOMEO LEONARDO DE, a scholarly Spanish poet and historian (1565-1631). His verse lacks native force, but shows considerable depth of sentiment, while in form it displays exquisite finish. His history of "The Conquest of the Moluccas" is esteemed a model of correct and idiomatic Spanish prose.

SONNET: ON PROVIDENCE.

(Translation of Herbert.)

PARENT of good! Since all thy laws are just,
Say, why permits thy judging Providence
Oppression's hand to bow meek Innocence,

And gives prevailing strength to Fraud and Lust;
Who steels with stubborn force the arm unjust,

That proudly wars against Omnipotence?
Who bids thy faithful sons, that reverence
Thine holy will, be humbled in the dust?"
Amid the din of Joy fair Virtue sighs,

While the fierce conqueror binds his impious head
With laurel, and the car of triumpn roiis.
Thus I, when radiant 'fore my wondering eyes
A heavenly spirit stood, and smiling said:
"Blind moralist! is Earth the sphere of souls ?"

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