Note 4 — SIR CHARLES LYELL ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.[1]

Professor Louis Agassiz, the most patient, learned, and acute investigator of embryology now living, finds in that science (upon which, in truth, rests the final settlement of the so-called development theory) 'no single fact to justify the assumption that the laws of development, now known to be so precise and definite for every animal, have ever been less so, or have ever been allowed to run into each other. The philosopher's stone is no more to be found in the organic than the inorganic world; and we shall seek as vainly to transform the lower animal types into the higher ones by any of our theories, as did the alchemists of old to change the baser metals into gold.' He also says: 'To me the fact that the embryonic form of the highest vertebrate recalls in its earlier stages the first representatives of its type in geological times and its lowest representatives at the present day, speaks only of an ideal relation, existing, not in the things themselves, but in the mind that made them. It is true that the naturalist is sometimes startled at these transient resemblances of the young among the higher animals in one type to the adult condition of the lower animals in the same type; but it is also true that he finds each one of the primary divisions of the animal kingdom bound to its own norm of development, which is absolutely distinct from that of all others; it is also true that, while he perceives correspondences between the early phases of the higher animals and the mature state of the lower ones he never sees any one of them diverge in the slightest degree from its own structural character—never sees the lower rise by a shade beyond the level which is permanent for the group to which it belongs—never sees the higher ones stop short of their final aim, either in the mode or the extent of their transformation.' He likewise ('Methods of Study in Natural History,' page 140) discusses the matter of breeds as bearing upon diversities of species in a manner to justify his conclusion, that: 'The influence of man upon animals is, in other words, the influence of mind upon them; and yet the ordinary mode of argument upon this subject is, that, because the intelligence of man has been able to produce certain varieties in domesticated animals, therefore physical causes have produced all the diversity existing among wild ones. Surely, the sounder logic would be to infer that, because our finite intelligence may cause the original pattern to vary by some slight shades of difference, therefore a superior intelligence must have established all the boundless diversity of which our boasted varieties are but the faintest echo. It is the most intelligent farmer who has the greatest success in improving his breeds; and if the animals he has so fostered are left to themselves without that intelligent care, they return to their normal condition. So with plants....'—Ed. Con.