This can only be explained by the possession of an essential distinction in his nature. In man a new and distinct principle is superinduced upon the principle of Life, just as the principle of Life is superinduced upon that which governs inanimate and inorganic matter. Life in its highest conscious and intellectual development explains all the facts of human existence up to a certain point. Beyond that it explains nothing. To the spiritual nature of man, including the moral and the religious sentiment, the mere animal makes no approach. There is not in him the faintest idea which could by growth and development be elevated to a comprehension of it. Of moral distinctions, purely such, no animal has, or can be made to have, the most distant conception. The idea of right and wrong, of good and evil, as such, no amount of education can impart to him. The dog can be taught that killing sheep is wrong, so far as the approbation of his master is concerned; he may be made to feel love, hate, pride, jealousy, shame, and even remorse of a certain sort; he may be governed by the hope of reward and the fear of punishment; but no such idea of an essential moral distinction can be conveyed to him as can be impressed upon and comprehended by a child, long before he is regarded as the subject of moral responsibility.

Of this difference between ourselves and animals we have an almost intuitive perception. We recognize it at every moment of our lives. When do we ever consider an animal as the subject of praise or blame, as having done right or wrong, as having a conscience, as responsible for his actions (with any approach to the same sense in which we do a human being), any more than we do a stone or a crystal, a chair or a table? If we witness, in a community of animals, hatred, revenge, robbery, cruelty, child-murder, and incest, we are moved with no horror, we feel no disapprobation, the idea of wrong never enters into our minds. But, if we are told of precisely the same state of things in a community of men, words can hardly express the horror and disgust with which we are filled at the exhibition of so low and degraded a condition of our species.

If this be true with regard to the moral sentiment, it is, if possible, even more so with regard to the religious. No animal has the faintest conception of a power superior to that of

man.

He is the only God of the dog, the horse, and the elephant. Different opinions may be held concerning the origin of this sentiment; of its universal existence there can be no question. It may be attributed to an original instinct, to the convictions of reason, to a primeval revelation; it may exhibit itself merely in the form of some vague supernatural fear, some indistinct superstition, some unintelligible idolatrous rite; but, however it originated, and in whatever way exhibited, wherever we find man, there we find it in his possession. It is this which gives to the powers he possesses in common with other animals their onward and upward direction; it is this which imparts to him the new motives that stimulate him to a continued career of progress and improvement; and thus it is upon this element in his nature that depends his immeasurable superiority to every other creature.

CHAPTER XVIII. (W.)

CONCLUSION.

THE Kingdom of Life presents a vast collection of objects, which vary almost indefinitely in their character, and yet present so many points of resemblance in the midst of their multifarious differences, that we cannot fail to recognize them as all belonging to one common system, allied to each other as the component parts of one great whole, and proceeding from some one uniform cause always consistent with itself in the principles on which it acts and the end at which it aims. The subjects of this kingdom constitute a series beginning with those of a low and imperfect organization, and rising gradually to those of an organization higher and more perfect. In its general plan, the course which creation has taken from its beginning appears to have been that of progressive improvement, bringing out in the first instance the humblest and simplest forms of life, and then gradu

ally introducing in the midst of them those of a higher and more complex character. Corresponding to this, there are found in the assemblage of living things, as they now present themselves, representatives of all the different stages through which creation has passed from its beginning; so that the study of the chain of life as it is now exhibited is, at the same time, a study of it as its several links have been wrought and bound together in successive periods of time. In a certain sense, then, we have the privilege of looking at the events of creation both historically and contemporaneously, and thus of studying them by a double light.

But though this is the general order of creation, there are found many departures from a perfectly regular sequence. The series does not go on uninterruptedly; there are frequent departures from it in various directions. The line of succession does not proceed in unbroken regularity, either in the order of time, or in the relation which the individuals of the existing creation bear to each other. A lower race seems sometimes to have come into existence after a higher, and creation, after advancing to a certain point, to have taken some steps backward. Among living animals there are found in every class examples of those that combine in themselves some of the attributes of such as are either above or below them. These attributes serve to connect them with other classes, and thus interfere with well-defined lines of demarcation. Among the Mammalia, bats fly like Birds, and whales swim and inhabit the water like Fishes. Among Birds, some can only walk or run, and others can only swim. Reptiles and Fishes in some instances approximate the power of flight, and in others produce their young alive. In some animals, the respiration is at one period of life like that of Fishes, and at another like that of Reptiles; in others, the two modes are always united together. In some, different attributes are so combined that it has been found difficult to arrange their place in a scheme of classification.

But, notwithstanding this, we do not fail to recognize in the history of creation, whether we trace it backward to its beginning, or study it in the forms of life as they now exist, a system, of which the essential element, the characteristic feature, is prog

ress and improvement. This general plan is distinct; and it should make no difference as to our views of its connection with its great Author, whether we regard it as the result of successive distinct exertions of his power, with the constant superintendence of his wisdom and goodness, or of a law impressed upon matter in its original constitution, and producing this system of things by a process of gradual development. The ultimate results are the only true exponents of the character of their cause; and we are to receive the works of nature around us as containing in themselves the written history of their Author, whatever opinion we may be led to form of the course and the instruments he may have seen fit to adopt in bringing them into existence.

Still, those views which represent the creation as his continuous work, which recognize his connection with it as immediate and constant, which imply that the power, wisdom, and goodness, that have brought it into existence, have not resigned it to the control of an intelligent, impersonal, and irresponsible law, but have always continued, and will always continue, to take a direct interest in it,- are certainly most congenial to those sentiments by which he has distinguished our nature from that of other animals. The creature is responsible to his Creator; with reverence be it said, the Creator is no less responsible to his creature. The capacity to fear, reverence, and love an Infinite Being, which we find within ourselves when the idea of such a Being is once fairly presented to our minds, implies the existence of such a Being to be feared, reverenced, and loved, for no other could have imparted such an idea. It were a violation of the eternal and necessary bond which exists between the Maker and his works, that such a sentiment should have been implanted in us when the corresponding reality did not exist. The moral and religious elements in man are as much a part of his nature as those elements which he has in common with other animals, and are as much a part of his natural history as the instincts of the bee and the beaver, or the intelligence of the dog and the elephant, are a part of the natural history of those animals. We may, in conclusion, derive advantage from tracing the connection which the nature of man, as an animal and as man, has with that of the

system of things in which he is placed, and also the connection which his Creator has borne to it.

The words of science, as well as of Revelation, teach us, that in the beginning "the earth was without form, and void." In this, the first stage of its creation, it was unfit for the residence of living things. It presented nothing but inorganic matter and its laws; chemical laws governing its elements, physical laws governing its masses. Its temperature was uncertain, unequal, and extreme; its atmosphere unfit for the support of respiration; its surface not yet converted into a soil which could support vegetable life, or, to which this is necessary, animal life. This era seems to have been extended through an immense period of time, occupied by a perpetual action and reaction of different agents among themselves, sometimes violent, sometimes moderate, the result of which was the establishment of such a condition of the surface, such an equilibrium of temperature, and such a con· stitution of the atmosphere, as rendered the earth capable of supporting life. Plants and animals were then introduced, but at first only in their lower forms; for it was only the lower forms which could endure the imperfect condition of the residence in which they were placed. As this condition was improved by continued changes and successive revolutions, higher forms were created corresponding to this improvement. This progress does not appear to have been uniformly upward and onward, but irregular and interrupted. The repeated destruction of the whole or a part of living things, rendering necessary a new creation, seems to have been occasioned by the conflict of mere physical agents, which continued after life had been introduced, causing various revolutions upon the surface, such as the breaking out of volcanoes, changes in the level of the sea, the subsidence of tracts of land, and the upheaval of mountains. Still, in spite of all interruptions in the course of events, a gradual progress was made toward higher developments of life.

Thus, then, with difficulty life maintained its hold in creation and produced its higher forms, against the force of the chemical and physical agencies whose tendency was to destroy them. When life began, a contest began. Often repressed, often extinguished over wide fields of its operations, life seems to