then to the
development of those exquisitely toned sounds, which are only
appreciated by the higher races, and which are probably destined for
more elevated uses and more refined enjoyment, in a higher condition
than we have yet attained to. So, those faculties which enable us to
transcend time and space, and to realize the wonderful conceptions of
mathematics and philosophy, or which give us an intense yearning for
abstract truth, (all of which were occasionally manifested at such an
early period of human history as to be far in advance of any of the few
practical applications which have since grown out of them), are
evidently essential to the perfect development of man as a spiritual
being, but are utterly inconceivable as having been produced through the
action of a law which looks only, and can look only, to the immediate
material welfare of the individual or the race.

The inference I would draw from this class of phenomena is, that a
superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite
direction, and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development
of many animal and vegetable forms. The laws of evolution alone would,
perhaps, never have produced a grain so well adapted to man's use as
wheat and maize; such fruits as the seedless banana and bread-fruit; or
such animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or the London dray-horse. Yet
these so closely resemble the unaided productions of nature, that we may
well imagine a being who had mastered the laws of development of organic
forms through past ages, refusing to believe that any new power had been
concerned in their production, and scornfully rejecting the theory (as
my theory will be rejected by many who agree with me on other points),
that in these few cases a controlling intelligence had directed the
action of the laws of variation, multiplication, and survival, for his
own purposes. We know, however, that this has been done; and we must
therefore admit the possibility that, if we are not the highest
intelligences in the universe, some higher intelligence may have
directed the process by which the human race was developed, by means of
more subtle agencies than we are acquainted with. At the same time I
must confess, that this theory has the disadvantage of requiring the
intervention of some distinct individual intelligence, to aid in the
production of what we can hardly avoid considering as the ultimate aim
and outcome of all organized existe