. . .pearing in matter life advances, not like the trickle of a single stream, but like the bursting forth of a potent, spreading fountain whose waters part in a thousand directions to make a thousand streams, each purposive, each at first seeking, but many of them unsuccessfully, to fulfil some part of the purpose of the whole. And in regard to this frequent unsuccess, we find the philosopher borne out by the palaeontologist, whose 'general picture ... of the evolution of the animal kingdom is accordingly that of an immense number of ... lives which evolve parallel to one another, and without coalescing, throughout longer or shorter geological times,' each of which 'culminates sooner or later in mutations of great size and highly specialized characters, which become extinct and leave no descendants.' At the heart of life, as in the philosophic mirror we watch its advance, there seems one guiding and supreme purpose, which is manifest in the continuous effort 'to engr. . . Read More