But so far as our interpretation of physical movements has yet gone, we have every reason to infer that the human race is extremely modern, even when compared to the larger number of species now our contemporaries on the earth, and we may, therefore, ask whether his creation can be considered as one step in a supposed progressive system, by which the organic world has advanced slowly from a more simple to a more complex and perfect state? If we concede, for a moment, the truth of the proposition, that the sponge, the cephalopod, the fish, the reptile, the bird, and the mammifer, have followed each other in regular chronological order, the creation of each class being separated from the other by vast intervals of time, should we be able to recognize, in man's entrance upon the earth, the last term of one and the same series of progressive developments? In reply to this question it should first be observed, that the superiority of man depends not on those faculties and attributes which he shares in common with the inferior animals, but on his reason, by which he is distinguished from them. When it is said that the human race is of far higher dignity than were any pre-existing beings on the earth, it is the intellectual and moral attributes of our race, rather than the physical, which are considered; and it is by no means clear that the organization of man is such as would confer a decided pre-eminence upon him, if, in place of his reasoning powers, he was merely provided with such instincts as are possessed by the lower animals. If this be admitted, it would not follow, even if there were sufficient geological evidence in favor of the theory of progressive development, that the creation of man was the last link in the same chain. For the sudden passage from an irrational to a rational animal, is a phenomenon of a distinct kind from the passage from the more simple to the more perfect forms of animal organization and instinct. To pretend that such a step, or rather leap, can be part of a regular series of changes in the animal world, is to strain analogy beyond all reasonable bounds.