CONCLUSION. Summary of the Argument—Its Practical and Scientific Bearings -Opposition unavailing-Prospect of its Adoption. SUMMING up our inquiry, the question of man's Where, Whence, and Whither, resolves itself into this : : 1. That, Zoologically, man and other animals belong to the same vital scheme; that this scheme is based on a determinate and pervading plan; that adaptive modification of structural parts seems to be the principle according to which the higher and more complex forms are evolved from the lower; and that this connection establishes relations between him and his fellow-creatures that are inseparable. 2. That, Geographically, man, like other animals, is influenced by his physical surroundings; that these influences extend alike to his material and mental nature; that they are important factors in the production of variation among mankind; and that, taken in connection with the principle of adaptive modification, they afford some indication of the methods through which vital development is effected. 3. That, Ethnologically, man appears in several great varieties distinguished by mental as well as by physical characteristics; that the study of these characteristics leads us to regard some as higher and others as lower in the scale of being; that, judging from all we can learn from history, tradition, and analogy, the higher must be the more recent and the lower the more ancient varieties; and that, carrying out this principle of descent, the lowest known variety may have been preceded by others lower and lower in proportion to their antiquity. 4. That, Functionally, man, like other animals, has his relations to external nature the requirements of which are imperative; that, being endowed with higher mental as well as with higher structural capabilities, he exercises a wider influence on vitality than other animals; that in virtue of this influence, and according to his civilisation, he extirpates, disseminates, and modifies plant-life and animal-life ; and that in proportion to his superiority he in like manner modifies his own race, the higher ever passing over the lower, and the earlier ever disappearing before the spread of the recent and advancing. 5. That, Historically, we can have no certain evidence of the outcomings and incomings of those early races which preceded all history; that, even were tradition reliable and history certain, it is as impossible for the race as it is for the individual to trace itself back to its origin; that we can only arrive at a notion of man's antiquity by inductive reasoning from the evolution of nationalities, the growth of language, and the progress of civilisation; and that this induction for all prehistoric time must be founded exclusively on the discoveries of geology. 6. That, Geologically, there is the amplest evidence of man having been an inhabitant of Western Europe for ages preceding the popularly-received chronology; that man's occupation of Europe does not fix the measure of his antiquity in Northern Africa and Asia, to which everything points as the region from which the races of Europe were descended; that the discovery of prehistoric remains in Asia could not be received as the earliest of indications of the human race, but that geology must seek for the earliest traces of man in the regions that are now occupied by the lowest varieties-thus implying an antiquity for the human species that cannot be expressed in years and centuries, but only relatively to other geological events. 7. That, Genetically man must deal with his origin as he deals with his other natural-history relations; that as he is inseparably associated with the great scheme of life, so he must apply to his own species whatever genetic process he may seek to apply to his fellow-creatures; that if there be a plan of progressive development such as natural science has been recently striving to establish, by which the higher forms of life have been gradually evolved from the lower, then man must seek for his origin in the same course of development; that this hypothetical process, as applied to man, does not involve anything either degrading or materialistic, but is simply an effort of science to present some comprehensible indication of the creative method, which, so far as we can perceive, works only through means and processes; and that though the process could be proved to demonstration, it would still leave untouched the plan to which all the ascensive orders of life have ever conformed, and which can only be resolved into the will of the Creator. And lastly, that, Progressively, the whole history of the past as well as the experience of the present point to an upward ascension of vitality; that all the forces of nature with which this ascension has been associated, or upon which it depends, being as active and oper ative as ever, we may fairly infer a corresponding progression in the future; that in virtue of his higher nature the progression will be more rapid and perceptible in man than in the lower animals; and that physically, intellectually, socially, and morally, the developments of the future will transcend the man of |