hat, if you could, the theory would still suppose
man's actual preservation and development effected under totally
different conditions from those which have formed the uniform experience
of all his posterity; and so far from any subterfuge of a law stepping
in, it is a single expedient provided for our first parent alone."

"I do not think we are at all in a condition to consider any such
case, about which we cannot know any thing," replied Fellowes.

"Neither do I; but pardon me,--the question I asked does not depend
upon any such knowledge; it is a question which is wholly independent
whether of our ignorance or our knowledge. Granting, as you do, that
man was created, but that it was no miracle, nor any thing analogous
to one (as you say), still either he was created subject to our
conditions of development and preservation, or he was not; if he was
not, then I fear we have in form the miracle we wish to evade; if he
was, then I fear also that there are but the three imaginable modes of
obviating the difficulty which I have so liberally provided; and
supposing there were a thousand. I fear still that they all involve a
departure from the 'uniform course of Nature.'"

"But I do not see," replied Fellowes, "that it is absolutely necessary,
supposing that the first man was thrown upon the green of paradise."

"Or in a forest, or on a moor," said Harrington, "for you know nothing
of paradise."

"Well, then, in a forest, or on a moor;--I say if man were cast out
there, the same helpless being which all his posterity are,--unfortified,
as the lower animals are, by feathers or hair, or by instincts equal to
theirs,--who can affirm that it was beyond the possibilities of
his nature, that he might survive this cruel experiment? crawl, perhaps,
for an indefinite period on all fours, live on berries, and at last--by
very slow degrees doubtless, but still at last--emerge into---"

"The dignity of a savage," cried Harrington, "as the first step towards
something better,--his Creator having beneficently created him something
infinitely worse! Surely, you must be returning to a savage yourself, even
to hint at such a pedigree. But I have done: till those cases of which
certain philosophers have said so much have been authenticated; till you
can produce an instance of a new-born babe, exposed on a mountain-side,
in all the helplessness of his natal hour, and self-preserved,--nay,
two of them,--for you must at least have a pair