I dare not say, we should; though I think it highly probable. But I think you will not dare to say, we should _not_.[100] It is certain that, when the Omnipotent God proposed to create a given organism, the course of that organism was present to his idea, as an ever revolving circle, without beginning and without end. He created it at some point in the circle, and gave it thus an arbitrary beginning; but one which involved all previous rotations of the circle, though only as ideal, or, in other phrase, prochronic. Is it not possible--I do not ask for more--that, in like manner, the natural course of the world was projected in his idea as a perfect whole, and that He determined to create it at some point of that course, which act, however, should involve previous stages, though only ideal or prochronic? All naturalists have speculated upon the great plan of Nature; a grand array of organic essences, in which every species should be related in like ratio to its fellow species, by certain affinities, without gaps and without redundancies; the whole constituting a beautiful and perfect unity, a harmonious scheme, worthy of the infinite Mind that conceived it. Such a perfect plan has never been presented by any existing fauna or flora; nor is it made up by uniting the fossil faunas and floras to the recent ones; _yet the discovery of the fossil world has made a very signal approach to the filling up of the great outline_; and the more minutely this has been investigated, the more have hiatuses been bridged over, which before yawned between species and species, and links of connexion have been supplied which before were lacking.[101]