It may be well to cite Mr. Spencer's final summary of the general truths which he claims to be revealed by morphology, because it will enable the reader to see just where the logical inconsequence of his position occurs: "The general truths of morphology thus coincide in their implications. Unity of type, maintained under extreme dissimilarities of form and mode of life, is explicable as resulting from descent with modification; but is otherwise inexplicable. The likenesses disguised by unlikenesses, which the comparative anatomist discovers between various organs in the same organisms, are worse than meaningless if it be supposed that organisms were severally formed as we now see them; but they fit in quite harmoniously with the belief that each kind of organism is a product of accumulated modifications upon modifications. And the presence, in all kinds of animals and plants, of functionally useless parts corresponding to parts that are functionally useful in allied animals and plants, while it is totally incongruous with the belief in a construction of each organism by miraculous interposition, is just what we are led to expect by the belief that organisms have arisen by progression."[85] Without expending much criticism upon the phrase "miraculous interposition," as a description of what takes place in special creation, it is sufficient to say that the act of special creation of a distinct organism is to be first viewed by itself, as if it stood alone in nature, and that it is like any other act of causing a new thing to exist which did not exist before. To this idea should be added the fact that in the creation of an animal organism there is involved the direct formation of a peculiar type of animal, with a capacity of producing other individuals of the same type through a process of generation. When, after having attained this conception of the act of special creation, and contemplated a single instance of the supposed exercise of such a power, we extend our inquiries, we find many other instances of the exercise of the same power; and then we observe a certain unity of type in some peculiarity of structure, maintained under extreme dissimilarities of form and mode of life. How, then, is this one similarity of pattern, amid such multiformity in other respects, "worse than meaningless," if we suppose that "organisms were severally framed as we now see them"? The very hypothesis that they were so severally framed carries in itself a meaning which can not be thus summarily ignored; because that hypothesis implies a power in the Creator to do just what we see. You may deny the power; but if you admit the existence of the infinite creating power, you are remitted to the inquiry into its probable methods; and you can no more say that the special creation of distinct organisms, with a certain unity amid a great multiformity, leaves the whole phenomena without a meaning, than you can say that any method which you can suggest is necessarily