the only method which will afford a rational meaning in what we see. You must go the length of denying the entire postulate of a Creator, before you can be in a situation to deny the meaning that is involved in the idea of creation; for that idea implies an absolute power to apply a uniform pattern of structure to a whole class of organisms varied in all other respects. The theory that each kind of organism is a product of accumulated modifications upon modifications, without any special interposition to produce the modified and distinct forms, must be maintained on one of two suppositions: either that at some period there was an absolute commencement of organic life in some form, upon this globe, and that then all the other forms which we see were left to be evolved out of that one by the ungoverned accumulation of modifications upon modifications, or else that there was never any absolute commencement of organic life at any time, but that matter, by some peculiar property derived from some source that is not suggested, took on combinations which resulted in some crude form of animated organism, and that then the accumulations of modifications upon modifications followed from some process of generation by which the successive organisms became multiplied and varied. Of the former supposition, I understand Mr. Darwin to have been a representative naturalist. Of the latter, I understand Mr. Spencer to be an advocate. Upon what may be called the Darwinian doctrine, the idea of a Creator, causing to exist at some time some crude form of animal life, is admitted. Upon the Spencerian doctrine, which will be in this respect more closely examined hereafter, I do not see that the idea of a creating power comes in anywhere, either at the commencement of a series of organisms or at any point in that series. But, upon the logical proposition asserted in the passage last above quoted, it is obvious that, unless the idea of a Creator is absolutely denied, the presence of a unity of type amid any amount of dissimilarities of form and mode of life can not be pronounced to be without meaning, because the idea of a Creator implies a power to make that very unity amid the uniformity, which is asserted to be inexplicable without resorting to the theory that it was not made at all, but that it grew out of events over which no superintending or governing power was exercised. Upon this kind of dogmatic assertion there can be no common ground of reasoning.