"I acknowledge I can form no supposition on the subject." "Only remember that, if you could, the theory would still suppose man's actual preservation and development effected under totally different conditions from those which have formed the uniform experience of all his posterity; and so far from any subterfuge of a law stepping in, it is a single expedient provided for our first parent alone." "I do not think we are at all in a condition to consider any such case, about which we cannot know any thing," replied Fellowes. "Neither do I; but pardon me,--the question I asked does not depend upon any such knowledge; it is a question which is wholly independent whether of our ignorance or our knowledge. Granting, as you do, that man was created, but that it was no miracle, nor any thing analogous to one (as you say), still either he was created subject to our conditions of development and preservation, or he was not; if he was not, then I fear we have in form the miracle we wish to evade; if he was, then I fear also that there are but the three imaginable modes of obviating the difficulty which I have so liberally provided; and supposing there were a thousand. I fear still that they all involve a departure from the 'uniform course of Nature.'" "But I do not see," replied Fellowes, "that it is absolutely necessary, supposing that the first man was thrown upon the green of paradise." "Or in a forest, or on a moor," said Harrington, "for you know nothing of paradise." "Well, then, in a forest, or on a moor;--I say if man were cast out there, the same helpless being which all his posterity are,--unfortified, as the lower animals are, by feathers or hair, or by instincts equal to theirs,--who can affirm that it was beyond the possibilities of his nature, that he might survive this cruel experiment? crawl, perhaps, for an indefinite period on all fours, live on berries, and at last--by very slow degrees doubtless, but still at last--emerge into---"