A number of species, however, keeping in a body
might remain for a long period unchanged, whilst within the same period,
several of these species, by migrating into new countries and coming into
competition with foreign associates, might become modified; so that we must
not overrate the accuracy of organic change as a measure of time.
In the future I see open fields for far more important researches.
Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by
Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power
and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of man
and his history.
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 Cambrian 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
distinct futurity.
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