metaphysics. As redeeming features in all this, are the careful study of varietal forms, and the inquiries as to the limits of species, which have sprung from these discussions, and the harvest of which will be reaped by the true naturalists of the future. Thus these theories as to the origin of men and animals and plants are full of present significance, and may be studied with profit by all; and in no part of their applications more usefully then in that which relates to man. Let us then inquire,--1. What is implied in the idea of evolution as applied to man? 2. What is implied in the idea of creation? 3. How these several views accord with what we actually know as the result of scientific investigation? The first and second of these questions may well occupy the whole of this chapter, and we shall be able merely to glance at their leading aspects. In doing so, it may be well first to place before us in general terms the several alternatives which evolutionists offer, as to the mode in which the honour of an origin from apes or ape-like animals can be granted to us, along with the opposite view as to the independent origin of man which have been maintained either on scientific or scriptural grounds. All the evolutionist theories of the origin of man depend primarily on the possibility of his having been produced from some of the animals more closely allied to him, by the causes now in operation which lead to varietal forms, or by similar causes which have been in operation; and some attach more and others less weight to certain of these causes, or gratuitously suppose others not actually known. Of such causes of change some are internal and others external to the organism. With respect to the former, one school assumes an innate tendency in every species to change in the course of time.[AV] Another believes in exceptional births, either in the course of ordinary generation or by the mode of parthenogenesis.[AW] Another refers to the known facts of reproductive accelleration or retardation observed in some humble creatures.[AX] New forms arising in any of these ways or fortuitously, may, it is supposed, be perpetuated and increased and further improved by favouring external circumstances and the effort of the organism to avail itself of these,[AY] or by the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest.[AZ] [AV] Parsons, Owen. [AW] Mivart, Ferris. [AX] Hyatt and Cope. [AY] Lamarck, etc. [AZ] Darwin, etc.