reached its present physical condition, the plan of that condition was certainly not formed by any such process; for it was, if it was the product of anything, the product of an intelligent will operating in the production of preconceived results by the exercise of superhuman and infinite wisdom and foresight. When we turn to a department in which human influence has largely or wholly shaped the phenomena, we find numerous special creations that are not attributable to the operation of any law of development or evolution such as is supposed to have led to the production of one species of animal out of another, or out of several previous species. In short, a survey of all the departments of Nature leads to the conclusion that while there may be phenomena which are properly traceable to the operation of the forces of Nature, or to fixed general systems of production, there is another very large class of the phenomena which owe their existence to special acts of an intelligent will, finite or infinite, human or divine, according as their production required superhuman power or admitted of the efficacy of man's intervention. The way is now somewhat cleared for an examination of Mr. Spencer's application of the law of evolution to the gradual formation of different species of animals out of one or more previous species, without any act of special creation intervening anywhere in the series. We have seen that this alleged law is not of universal force as the cause of all the phenomena in all the departments of Nature. When we come to apply it as the hypothesis which is to account for the existence of different species of animals of very different types, we must remember that we are dealing with organisms endowed with life, and, although we can not sufficiently explain what life is, we know that animated organisms are brought into being by systems of production that are widely different from the modes in which inanimate matter may have been or has been made to assume its existing forms. Bearing this in mind, we come to the arguments and proofs by which Mr. Spencer maintains the immense superiority of the evolution hypothesis over that of special creations, in reference to the animal kingdom. It must be remembered that this is a department in which man can have had no agency in producing the phenomena, for whatever may have been the slight variations produced by human interference with the breeding of animals domesticated from their wild condition, we must investigate the origin of species as if there had never been any human intervention in the crossing of breeds, because that origin is to be looked for in a sphere entirely removed from all human interference. Man himself is included in the investigation, and we must make that investigation in reference to a time when he did not exist, or when he did not exist as we now know him.