It is small comfort to be told you will be succeeded in lineal descent by angels when Lamarck and Darwin have made your ancestors without souls. However, can the progressive system not be seen as most consonant with a higher destiny if all spiritual natures advance? The link of common descent to inferior beings like idiots should be obvious. Infants die before they become responsible. Pope’s An essay on Man [1733] shows how man was "In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast", without speculation on his genealogy.