direction at least, the process of zoölogical change had come to an end,
and a process of psychological change was to take its place. Henceforth
along this supreme line of generation there was to be no further
evolution of new species through physical variation, but through the
accumulation of psychical variations one particular species was to be
indefinitely perfected and raised to a totally different plane from that
on which all life had hitherto existed. Henceforth, in short, the
dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, but
the progress of Civilization.

As we thoroughly grasp the meaning of all this, we see that upon the
Darwinian theory it is impossible that any creature zoologically
distinct from Man and superior to him should ever at any future time
exist upon the earth. In the regions of unconditional possibility it is
open to any one to argue, if he chooses, that such a creature may come
to exist; but the Darwinian theory is utterly opposed to any such
conclusion. According to Darwinism, the creation of Man is still the
goal toward which Nature tended from the beginning. Not the production
of any higher creature, but the perfecting of Humanity, is to be the
glorious consummation of Nature's long and tedious work. Thus we
suddenly arrive at the conclusion that Man seems now, much more clearly
than ever, the chief among God's creatures. On the primitive barbaric
theory, which Mr. Darwin has swept away, Man was suddenly flung into the
world by the miraculous act of some unseen and incalculable Power acting
from without; and whatever theology might suppose, no scientific reason
could be alleged why the same incalculable Power might not at some
future moment, by a similar miracle, thrust upon the scene some mightier
creature in whose presence Man would become like a sorry beast of
burden. But he who has mastered the Darwinian theory, he who recognizes
the slow and subtle process of evolution as the way in which God makes