body and spirit-having the forms and limitation in space peculiar to matter, with the penetrability and invisibility of spirit. And who can say that we may not yet obtain such knowledge of the modes of existence of other bodies as to discover the means of rendering them visible to our bodily eyes, as we now hold conversation with a friend upon the shores of the Pacific or in the heart of Europe, or fly with the superhuman velocity of the wind from the Atlantic to the Mississippi Valley. Then may we not at last gaze upon the "spiritual bodies" in which our departed friends reside, and discover the means of listening to their spirit voices, and join hands consciously with the heavenly host? Oh, who can say what these exhaustless and illimitable powers of the noble soul of man may not accomplish? Does the reader smile? I believe these are the suggestions more of philosophy than of fancy. Does he say it is only a dream of impossibilities? He assumes that he knows every thing which the infinite Intelligence can fathom. To fetter the human soul with assumed impossibilities is impiety. The bird which would soar first looks upward. The soul never attains that which it does not strive for. If we would commune consciously with the unseen world we must have both faith and works. In reference to the perfectibility and exaltation of the intellectual and moral nature of man, let no one say "impossible."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

WILL THERE BE AN ANIMAL SUPERIOR TO MAN?

HE

E that has glanced over the long line of organic history, and observed how the ascent from the sea-weed to man has been effected, step by step, in regular succession, can not fail to start the inquiry, "Is man destined to be the last term of this series of improving types?" I reply that, while this is peculiarly a question to be answered by Revelation, science affords some intimations which tend to assure us in the possession of the dignity which we now enjoy as the archonts of terrestrial existence.

In the first place, all geological preparations and ideas converge in man. The world seems to have been designed with the view of stimulating to activity the powers of a thinking being. The universe is a rational product; and every department of it, and every isolated object, sustains an intelligible relation to other parts and objects. We are not left to infer, or even to know, that intelligent design is locked up in the secret plans of creation; but what is more suggestive, as well as more satisfactory, is the fact that this intelligence is patent before our eyes, so that we read, as it were, a revelation of the thought embodied in the works of the visible universe. And much of that which is not at once manifest yields to investigation, while a stimulus to investigation is found in the hints and suggestions. which Nature seems intentionally to have dropped along the pathway of him who follows the beckoning of his thoughts. Not only were these germs of thought planted from time to time during the whole progress of the past

creation; and not only is man the first creature capable of responding to the stimuli to mental activity, but more; this mentality, while it differs qualitatively from the highest endowments of the lower animals, is in itself the highest possible grade of endowments. It is qualitatively identical with that infinite Intelligence whose presence and supremacy are recognized throughout the universe. It is a fair presumption that when the course of animalization has attained the point toward which all these intellectual adaptations converge, a point is reached which will not be passed except under a different general scheme.

man.

Similar remarks apply to the co-ordination existing between the material world and the idea of the beautiful in The beauty and sublimity of Nature have no relation to any other creature. Man is the consummation of a dualism. While the beautiful implies man, it excludes his successor. No endowment beyond or higher than a response to the provisions of Nature is possible.

The beneficent provisions of the earth's crust not only prophesy man, but they reach their finality in man. It was only for human uses that the coal was treasured in the recesses of the earth; for human uses alone the mountains have lifted up their burdens of iron; for human uses only the grandest movements of geological history elaborated and distributed a soil. It is only for man that the forests yield their abundant supplies of timber and fuel. For man the edible and medicinal vegetables were provided. For man the natures of the domestic animals were moulded; and their domestic attachments are directed to no other being.

The last geological revolution produced results of a general rather than a local character. During the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and earlier Cenozoic ages, the action of geological agencies had been especially developed along belts parallel

to the main bodies of land. In the glacial epoch, however, a phenomenon occurred which, so far as we know, was unprecedented in its universality. The whole northern portion of both continents was covered by glaciers, whose ef fects were felt in America to the Ohio River, and whose débris were borne, in the next epoch, to the Gulf of Mexico. This sudden extension of the range of geological activity was something paralleled by the release of the human species from those restraints which confined all preceding animals within narrow limits, and constituted, like that, an indication that a full pause had been reached in continental preparations-as when the sculptor, after having developed singly, with time and care, the individual features of his work, subjects it finally to that general treatment which imparts the smooth and finished surface.

Lastly, it may be added that vertebrate development both points toward man and attains its consummation in man. The earliest fish which moved in the waters of the Paleozoic seas embodied, in its osteological organization, a prophecy of man; the Mesozoic reptile still pointed onward toward man; the Tertiary monkeys were a higher summit. of vertebrate organization from which the yet higher Alp of human structure was still pointed to, illumined by the rising dawn of the modern world. In the skeleton of man we have, at last, the fulfillment of the prophecies of ages.

Man stands in the focus of all the conceptions embodied in past history. We are as little authorized to allow that the course of development is destined to advance beyond him, as to deny that it has furnished intimations, in all ages, that it was destined to reach to him.

Consider, in the second place, man's superiority over the brutes. Among the myriads of animals which populated the earth during the cycles of geological history, supremacy was the reward only of superior force. Man gains su

premacy through his intellect. Brutes dominate through the physical forces belonging to matter; man, through the immaterial forces which are the attributes of Deity.

The chasm which separates the intelligence of man from that of the brutes is broad. It is not simply a step in the easy gradations observed among the brutes themselves; it is a break in the chain of gradations. Even if not qualitatively superior to that of brutes, its sudden expansion is so great that its sphere of activity creates a new quality in the being. Man is the first being in all the history of the world that could contemplate creation, and abstract the intelligence displayed in it, and experience a glow of satisfaction in attaining to the thoughts first conceived in the mind of the Omniscient. Man is the first animal capable of contemplating Deity. In these exalted endowments not only does he excel the brutes, but he excels them in so vast a degree as to suggest the belief that the gradations of animal existence had been concluded, and Nature had reached a full pause. The material part-the frame-work-of animality had been perfected by slow gradations; and now, on the creation of man, Nature superadded an unprecedented endowment-a spiritual organization which makes man both a prince and a masterpiece in creation.

When we speak of man's moral nature we touch a subject which recalls all that has just been said of his intellect, and affirms it with redoubled emphasis. There are reasons for believing that this endowment differs in kind from any thing in the nature of the brute. This, to the ability to understand God, adds the ability to sympathize in his moral attributes, and to enter into moral relations with him and with humanity. Man stands in contact with God. A farther approximation is impossible. He must be the limit, as he is the existing culmination of organic life.

These various considerations, with others, seem to teach