With the exposure of this crowning absurdity, we must close our direct examination of this "History of Creation." We have not room to consider some of the appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of the essential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of the immaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with the atheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimate children. But they have already been refuted so often and so conclusively, that any revival of them at the present day is hardly deserving of notice. If we should stop here, then, it may fairly be left to the judgment of our readers, whether we have not fulfilled the pledge given at the outset, by showing that this theory is faulty at every point, even when viewed from the author's own ground. The proposal of it is no new thing. In one or another form, varying in particulars, but agreeing in substance, it has been before the world ever since the days of Democritus, and more especially of his follower, Epicurus. Lucretius clothed it in sonorous and majestic verse, for it is a theme fitted above all others to excite the fancy, and to receive the richest embellishments from the imagination. Modern authors have promulgated it again and again, with little other change than what was requisite to adapt it to recent improvements in science, and to engraft upon it some of their own favorite hypotheses and fancies. The version of it by the French naturalist Lamarck was the latest and the most in vogue, till the appearance of the present volume. So frequently has it been confuted, that the revival of it at this late period seems little more than a harmless exercise of ingenuity, a poetical and scientific dream, and one need hardly take the pains to expose its assumptions and fallacies. The violent suppositions which it involves only remind one of the remark quoted from Pascal on a former page, that "unbelievers are the most credulous persons in the world." If set forth only as a novel and pleasing fancy, it may be classed with other ingenious fictions, that are published without a thought of deception. But if seriously proposed, it can be fitly characterized only by borrowing the homely but energetic language of Dr. Bentley.