s been taking place
under the law of development, and the sure precursor of what is about to
follow. In the organic world, the successive orders, and genera, and
species are the counterparts of these temporary embryonic forms of the
individual. Indeed, we may say of those successive geological beings
that they are mere embryos of the latest--embryos that had gained a
power of reproduction. How shall we separate the history of the
individual from the history of the whole? Do not the fortunes and way of
progress of the one follow the fortunes and way of progress of the
other? If, in a transitory manner, these forms are assumed by the
individual, equally in a transitory manner are they assumed by the race.
Nor would it be philosophical to suppose that the management in the one
instance differs from the management in the other. If the one is
demonstrably the issue of a law in action, so must the other be too. It
does not matter that the entire cycle is passed through by the
individual in the course of a few months, while in the race it demands
ages. [Sidenote: Individual and race development conducted in the same
way.] The standard of time that ought to be applied is the respective
duration of life. In man it is much if he attains to threescore years
and ten; but the entire period of human record, embracing several
thousand years, offers not a single instance of the birth, maturity, and
death of a species. They, therefore, who think they find, in the
successive species that have in an orderly manner replaced each other in
the life of the earth, the sure proof of Divine intervention, would do
well to determine at what point the production of such forms by law
ceases, and at what point their production by the immediate act of God
begins. Their task will be as hard to tell where one colour in the
rainbow ends and where the next commences. They will also do well to
remember that, in great mundane events, the scale of time is ample, and
that there may be no essential difference between a course that is run
over in a few days and one that requires for its completion thousands of
centuries.

[Sidenote: Catastrophes disproved by the co-existence of types.] The
co-existence of different types in the organic series was the
incontrovertible fact by which was demonstrated the gradual passage from
form to form without catastrophes, the argument relied upon gathering
strength from such circumstances as these, that even the fossil shells