PDF - Wallace Online

204 NATURAL SELECTION ^ ixthose exquisitely toned sounds, which are only appreciatedby the higher races, and which are probably destined formore elevated uses and more refined enjoyment in a highercondition than we have yet attained to. So, those facultieswhich enable us to transcend time and space, and to realisethe wonderful conceptions of mathematics and philosophy, orwhich give us an intense yearning for abstract truth (all ofwhich were occasionally manifested at such an early periodof human history as to be far in advance of any of the fewpractical applications which have since grown out of them),are evidently essential to the perfect development of man asa spiritual being, but are utterly inconceivable as having beenproduced through the action of a law which looks only, andcan look only, to the immediate material welfare of the individualor the race.The inference I would draw from this class of phenomenais, that a superior intelligence has guided the developmentof man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, justas man guides the development of many animal and vegetableforms. The laws of evolution alone would, perhaps, neverhave produced a grain so well adapted to man's use as wheatand maize ;such fruits as the seedless banana and breadfruit;or such animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or theLondon dray-horse. Yet these so closely resemble the unaidedproductions of nature, that we may well imagine abeing who had mastered the laws of development of organicforms through past ages, refusing to believe that any newpower had been concerned in their production, and scornfullyrejecting the theory (as my theory will be rejected bymany who agree with me on other points) that in these fewcases a controlling intelligence had directed the action of thelaws of variation, multiplication, and survival, for his ownpurposes. We know, however, that this has been done ;andwe must therefore admit the possibility that, if we are notthe highest intelligences in the universe, some higher intelligencemay have directed the process by which the humanrace was developed, by means of more subtle agencies thanwe are acquainted with. At the same time I must confessthat this theory has the disadvantage of requiring the interventionof some distinct individual intelligence, to aid in the