als so
characterised having been preserved. When we look at every complex
instinct and mechanism as the summing up of a long history of
contrivances, each most useful to its possessor, nearly in the same way
as when we look at a great mechanical invention as the summing up of the
labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous
workmen. How interesting does the geographical distribution of all
organic beings, past and present, become as throwing light on the
ancient geography of the world. Geology loses glory{520} from the
imperfection of its archives, but it gains in the immensity of its
subject. There is much grandeur in looking at every existing organic
being either as the lineal successor of some form now buried under
thousands of feet of solid rock, or as being the co-descendant of that
buried form of some more ancient and utterly lost inhabitant of this
world. It accords with what we know of the laws impressed by the
Creator{521} on matter that the production and extinction of forms
should, like the birth and death of individuals, be the result of
secondary means. It is derogatory that the Creator of countless
Universes should have made by individual acts of His will the myriads of
creeping parasites and worms, which since the earliest dawn of life have
swarmed over the land and in the depths of the ocean. We cease to be
astonished{522} that a group of animals should have been formed to lay
their eggs in the bowels and flesh of other sensitive beings; that some
animals should live by and even delight in cruelty; that animals should
be led away by false instincts; that annually there should be an
incalculable waste of the pollen, eggs and immature beings; for we see
in all this the inevitable consequences of one great law, of the
multiplication of organic beings not created immutable. From death,
famine, and the struggle for existence, we see that the most exalted end
which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the creation of the higher
animals{523}, has directly proceeded. Doubtless, our first impression is
to disbelieve that any secondary law could produce infinitely numerous
organic beings, each characterised by the most exquisite workmanship and
widely extended adaptations: it at first accords better with our
faculties to suppose that each required the fiat of a Creator.
There{524} is a [simple] grandeur in this view of life with its several
powers of growth, reproduction and of sensation,