conditions of life occurred, might remain unaltered from long before the
Silurian Age to the present day. I grant there will generally be a
tendency to advance in complexity of organisation, though in beings fitted
for very simple conditions it would be slight and slow. How could a
complex organisation profit a monad? if it did not profit it there would be
no advance. The Secondary Infusoria differ but little from the living.
The parent monad form might perfectly well survive unaltered and fitted for
its simple conditions, whilst the offspring of this very monad might become
fitted for more complex conditions. The one primordial prototype of all
living and extinct creatures may, it is possible, be now alive! Moreover,
as you say, higher forms might be occasionally degraded, the snake Typhlops
SEEMS (?!) to have the habits of earth-worms. So that fresh creatures of
simple forms seem to me wholly superfluous.

"MUST YOU NOT ASSUME A PRIMEVAL CREATIVE POWER WHICH DOES NOT ACT WITH
UNIFORMITY, OR HOW COULD MAN SUPERVENE?"

I am not sure that I understand your remarks which follow the above. We
must under present knowledge assume the creation of one or of a few forms
in the same manner as philosophers assume the existence of a power of
attraction without any explanation. But I entirely reject, as in my
judgment quite unnecessary, any subsequent addition "of new powers and
attributes and forces;" or of any "principle of improvement," except in so
far as every character which is naturally selected or preserved is in some
way an advantage or improvement, otherwise it would not have been selected.
If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural
selection, I would reject it as rubbish, but I have firm faith in it, as I
cannot believe, that if false, it would explain so many whole classes of
facts, which, if I am in my senses, it seems to explain. As far as I
understand your remarks and illustrations, you doubt the possibility of