chievement of result without waste of time or opportunity,
without unnecessary pain, and with equitable allowance for pure
mistake, the process of evolution on this earth, so far as we can
judge, has been carried out neither with intelligence nor ruth, but
entirely through the routine of various sequences, commonly called
"laws," established or necessitated we know not how.

An incalculable amount of lower life has been certainly passed
through before that human organisation was attained, of which we and
our generation are for the time the holders and transmitters. This
is no mean heritage, and I think it should be considered as a sacred
trust, for, together with man, intelligence of a sufficiently high
order to produce great results appears, so far as we can infer from
the varied records of the prehistoric past, to have first dawned upon
the tenantry of the earth. Man has already shown his large power in
the modifications he has made on the surface of the globe, and in
the distribution of plants and animals. He has cleared such vast
regions of forest that his work that way in North America alone,
during the past half century, would be visable to an observer as far
off as the moon. He has dug and drained; he has exterminated plants
and animals that were mischievous to him; he has domesticated those
that serve his purpose, and transplanted them to great distances
from their native places. Now that this new animal man, finds
himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and
intelligence, he ought, I submit, to awake to a fuller knowledge of
his relatively great position, and begin to assume a deliberate part
in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course
it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has
already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power,
intelligence, and kindly feeling to render its future progress less
slow and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very
considerably, half unconsciously, and for his own personal advantages,
but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious
duty to do so deliberately and systematically.

SELECTION AND RACE.

The fact of an individual being naturally gifted with high qualities,
may be due either to his being an exceptionally good specimen of a
poor race, or an average specimen of a high one. The difference of
origin would betray itself in his descendants; they would revert
towards the