The Relation of Science and Religion.pdf - Online Christian Library

SCIENCE AND DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 277every class. This law of development, applicableto all animal life, admits of greateror less diversity of result in the history ofdistinct races, according to the complexityof the organism.Third, as to the relations of different ordersin the scale of animal life, it is proved that allvital organism has been modelled on a commonplan as appears in the arrangement andfunctions of the nerve system, providing forsensibility and motor activity. In accordancewith this, we find in different orders of animallife not merely analogies or resemblancesin structure, but homologies or examples ofcomplete identity of structure and function.Thus the brain, and the two sets of nervelines, namely sensory and motor, are thesame in nature and functions in all animals,from the frog to man inclusive, and theydiffer only in complexity of arrangementwithin the central organ, and extent oframification of the nerve lines. Diversityof nature thus far appears in the relativecomplexity of organism. This is a conclusionwhich assigns to Inan his place in thescale of animal life; that is, in so far as weregard man exclusively by reference to hi~l