we instantly find new types of organic life. The old species, which
exist in millions of individuals in the upper beds, disappear, and new
species are found in the chalk immediately below. This fact indicates a
long lapse of time. Had the chalk and upper beds been formed
simultaneously at the same period [as the supporters of the diluvial
theory represent], their organic remains must have been more or less
mixed; but _they are not_. Again, at the base of the Tertiary deposits
resting on the Chalk, we often find great masses of conglomerate or
shingle, made up of chalk-flints rolled by water. These separate the
Chalk from the overlying beds, and many of the rolled flints contain
certain petrified _chalk_-fossils. Now, every such fossil proves the
following points:--
"1. There was a time when the organic body was alive at the
bottom of the sea.
"2. It was afterwards imbedded in the cretaceous deposit.
"3. It became petrified; a very slow process.
"4. The Chalk was, by some change of marine currents, washed
away, or degraded, [_i. e._ worn away under the atmosphere
by the weather and casualties, a process slow almost beyond
description,] and the solid flints and fossils [thus
detached from their imbeddings], were rolled into shingles.
"5. Afterwards, these shingles were covered up, and buried
under Tertiary deposits.
"In this way of interpretation, a section of _a few
perpendicular feet_ indicates a LONG lapse of time, and the
co-ordinate fact of the entire change of organic types,
between the beds above and those below, falls in with the
preceding inference, and shows the lapse of time to have
been VERY LONG."[50]
IV.
THE CROSS-EXAMINATION.
"When the fact itself cannot be proved, that which comes
nearest to the proof of the fact is the proof of the
circumstances that necessarily and usually attend such
facts; and _these are called presumptions, and not proofs_,
for they stand instead of the proofs of the fact, till the
contrary be proved."--GILBERT; LAW OF EVIDENCE.
Such, then, is the evidence for the macro-chronology. I hope I have
summed it up fairly; of course, many details I have been forbidden to
adduce by want of space, but they would have been of the same kind as
those brought forward. I am not conscious of having in any degree
cushioned, or concealed, or understated a single proof which would have
helped the conclusion.
A mighty array of evidence it certainly is, and such as appears at first
sight to compel our assent to the sequent claimed for it. I must confess
that I have no sympathy with the _reasonings_ of those, however I honour
their design, who can find a sufficient cause for these phenomena in the
natural operations of the Antediluvian centuries, or in the convulsion
that closed them.
But is there no other alternative? Am I compelled to accept the
conclusions drawn from the phenomena thus witnessed unto, as undeniable
facts, since they refuse to be normally circumscribed within the limits
of the historic period? I verily believe there is another, and a
perfectly legitimate solution.
My first business is to examine, and, if I can, to disprove this
testimony. If I can show the witness to be liable to error; if I can
adduce a principle which invalidates all his proofs; if I can make it
undeniably manifest that, in a case precisely parallel, similar
conclusions, deduced from exactly analogous phenomena, would be
notoriously false; if I can do this, I think I have a right to demand
that the witness be bowed out of court, as perfectly nugatory and
worthless _in this cause_.
In the first place, there is nothing here but _circumstantial_ evidence;
there is no _direct_ testimony to the facts sought to be established.
Let it not seem unfair to make this distinction; it is one of great
importance. No witness has deposed to actual observation of the
processes above enumerated; no one has appeared in court who declares
he actually saw the living _Pterodactyle_ flying about, or heard the
winds sighing in the tops of the _Lepidodendra_. You will say, "It is
the same thing; we have seen the skeleton of the one, and the crushed
trunk of the other, and therefore we are as sure of their past existence
as if we had been there at the time." No, it is not the same thing; it
is not _quite_ the same thing; NOT QUITE. Strong as is the evidence, it
is not _quite_ so strong as if you had actually seen the living things,
and had been conscious of the passing of time while you saw them live.
It is only by a process of reasoning that you infer they lived at
all.[51]
The process is something like this. Here is an object in a mass of
stone, which has a definite form,--the form of the bone of a beast. The
more minutely you examine it, the more points of resemblance you find;
you say, If this is a bone, it ought to have so and so--condyles, scars
for the attachment of muscles in particular spots, a cavity for the
reception of marrow, a mark for the insertion of the ligament; you look
for each of these, and find all in the very conditions you have
prescribed; it is not only a bone, but a particular bone, the
thigh-bone, for instance. Here in the same block of stone is another
object: you work it out; it is another bone; its joint accurately fits
the preceding; it answers precisely to the tibia of a mammal. Other
bones at length appear, and you have got a perfect skeleton, no part
redundant, none wanting; the most minute, the most elaborate, the most
delicate portions of the osseous frame of a mammal are present, and
every one exactly correspondent to the rest in size, in maturity, _in
fit._ Each bone, out of the scores, displays exactly those characters,
and no other, which an anatomist would have said beforehand it ought to
have. Allowing for the difference of species, the skeleton, when worked
out of its matrix, and set up, is precisely like that of the little
beast at whose death you were actually present, whose bones you cleaned
with your own hands, and mounted for your own museum. It would be as
reasonable to deny that the one is the skeleton of a real animal as the
other.
Thus far there is matter of fact--observed, witnessed fact; you have
found in a stone a real skeleton.
You immediately infer that this skeleton once belonged to a living
animal, that breathed, and fed, and walked about, exactly as animals do
now. This conclusion seems so obvious and unavoidable, that we naturally
conclude it to rest on the same foundation as the fact that the object
_is_ a skeleton, or that _it was_ in the stone. But really it rests on a
totally different foundation; it is a conclusion deduced by a process of
reasoning from certain assumed premises.
Myriads, perhaps millions of skeletons of animals like this one have
come at different times under human observation, which have been
obviously referrible to creatures that, within the same sphere of
observation, had been alive. No similar skeleton has ever come within
the range of recorded observation that could be referred to any other
source than that of a quondam living animal. On these premises you build
the conclusion that a skeleton must, at some time or other, have
belonged to a living animal. And it may seem an impregnable position;
but yet its validity altogether depends on the exhaustive power of human
observation. If I could show, to your satisfaction, that a skeleton
might have existed; still more, if I could show you that a skeleton
_must_ have existed; still more, if I could prove that myriads of
skeletons, precisely like this, must have existed, without ever having
formed parts of antecedent living bodies; you would yourself acknowledge
that your conclusions were untenable. The utmost you could affirm, would
be, that possibly, perhaps probably, the skeleton you had found in the
stone had at some time belonged to a living animal, but that, so far as
any recognised premises exist, there was no certainty about it.
But the premises have not been fairly stated. There is more than the
relation of precedence and sequence in what we know of the connexion
between skeletons and living animals; there is the relation of cause and
effect. It is not only that universal experience has declared the _fact_
that every skeleton was once part of a living body; it has shown that
the very structure and nature of the skeleton _implied_ living body. The
skeleton, in every part, displays a regard for the advantages of the
living animal; it is built expressly for it; by itself it is nothing--a
machine without any object; its joints, its cavities, its apophyses, its
processes, all have special reference to tissues and organs which are
not here now, but which belong to the living body.
And then experience has shown that the skeleton is made in a particular
manner. The bone is deposited, atom by atom, in living organic cells,
which are formed by living blood, which implies a living animal. The
microscopic texture of your stone-girt skeleton does not differ from
that of the skeleton which you cleaned from the muscles with your own
hands; and therefore you infer that it was constructed in the same way,
namely, by the blood of a living body.
Well, I come back, notwithstanding, to my position,--that your right to
_affirm_ this must altogether depend on the exhaustive power of that
experience on which you build. And it will be overthrown, if I can show
that skeletons have been made in some other way than by the agency of
living blood.
Can I do this? I think I can. At least I think I can show enough greatly
to diminish, if not altogether to destroy, the confidence with which you
inferred the existence of vast periods of past time from geological
phenomena. I can adduce a principle, having the universality (within its
proper sphere) of LAW, hitherto unrecognised, whose tendency is to
invalidate the testimony of your witness.
V.
POSTULATES.
"A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism; but depth in
philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of
man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them,
and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate
and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity."--BACON.
"'What was the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wildfowl?'
'That the soul of our grand-dam might haply inhabit a bird.'
'What thinkest thou of his opinion?'
'I think nobly of the soul, and in nowise receive his opinion.'"
SHAKSPEARE.
As without some common ground it is impossible to reason, I shall take
for granted the two following principles:--
I. THE CREATION OF MATTER.
II. THE PERSISTENCE OF SPECIES.
I. If any geologist take the position of the necessary eternity of
matter, dispensing with a Creator, on the old ground, _ex nihilo nihil
fit_,--I do not argue with him. I assume that at some period or other in
past eternity there existed nothing but the Eternal God, and that He
called the universe into being out of nothing.
II. I demand also, in opposition to the development hypothesis, the
perpetuity of specific characters, from the moment when the respective
creatures were called into being, till they cease to be. I assume that
each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible
specific character, which made it what it was, and distinguished it from
everything else, however near or like. I assume that such character has
been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which
distinguish species from species _now_, were as definite at the first
instant of their creation as now, and are as distinct now as they were
then. If any choose to maintain, as many do, that species were gradually
brought to their present maturity from humbler forms,--whether by the
force of appetency in individuals, or by progressive development in
generations--he is welcome to his hypothesis, but I have nothing to do
with it. These pages will not touch him.
I believe, however, there is a large preponderance of the men of
science,[52] at least in this country, who will be at one with me here.
They acknowledge the almighty _fiat_ of God, as the energy which
produced being; and they maintain that the specific character which He
then stamped on his organic creation remains unchangeable.
VI.
LAWS.
"----[Greek: ton trochon tes geneseos]."--JAMES iii. 6.
The course of nature is a circle. I do not mean the _plan_ of nature; I
am not speaking of a circular arrangement of species, genera, families,
and classes, as maintained by MacLeay, Swainson, and others. Their
theories may be true, or they may be false; I decide nothing concerning
them; I am not alluding to any _plan_ of nature, but to its _course_,
_cursus_,--the way in which it _runs on_. This is a circle.
Here is in my garden a scarlet runner. It is a slender twining stem some
three feet long, beset with leaves, with a growing bud at one end, and
with the other inserted in the earth. What was it a month ago? A tiny
shoot protruding from between two thick fleshy leaves scarcely raised
above the ground. A month before that? The thick fleshy leaves were two
oval cotyledons, closely appressed face to face, with the minute
plumule between them, the whole enclosed in an unbroken,
tightly-fitting, spotted, leathery coat. It was a bean, a seed.
[Illustration: GERMINATION OF A SCARLET RUNNER.
_a._ The ripe bean, showing the hilum at *;
_b._ The same bean, with one cotyledon removed, to show the plumule.
_c._ A similar bean, twenty-four hours after planting.
_d._ The same, on the sixth day after planting.
_e._ The same, on the twelfth day.
_f._ The same, on the fourteenth day.
N.B. From _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, the front cotyledon has been cut away, to
show the progress of the plumule.]
Was this the commencement of its existence? O no! Six months earlier
still it was snugly lying, with several others like itself, in a green
fleshy pod, to the interior of which it was organically attached. A
month before that, this same pod with its contents was the centre of a
scarlet butterfly-like flower, the bottom of its pistil, within which,
if you had split it open, you would have discerned the tiny beans, whose
history we are tracing backwards, each imbedded in the soft green
tissue, but no bigger than the eye of a cambric needle.
But where was this flower? It was one of many that glowed on my garden
wall all through last summer; each cluster springing as a bud from a
slender twining stem, which was the exact counterpart of that with which
we commenced this little life-history.
And this earlier stem,--what of it? It too had been a shoot, a pair of
cotyledons with a plumule, a seed, an integral part of a carpel, which
was a part of an earlier flower, that expanded from an earlier bud, that
grew out of an earlier stem, that had been a still earlier seed, that
had been--and backward, _ad infinitum_, for aught that I can perceive.
The course, then, of a scarlet runner is a circle, without beginning or
end:--that is, I mean, without a natural, a normal beginning or end. For
at what point of its history can you put your finger, and say, "Here is
the commencement of this organism, before which there is a blank; here
it began to exist?" There is no such point; no stage which does not look
back to a previous stage, on which _this_ stage is inevitably and
absolutely dependent.
To some of my readers this may be rendered more clear by the
accompanying diagram:----
[Illustration: legume--reed--cotyledons--shoot--stem--bud--flower--carpel]
[Illustration: theca--spore--prothallus--sporal
frond--tuft--caudex--fertile frond--sorus]
See that magnificent tuft of Lady-fern on yonder bank, arching its
exquisitely cut fronds so elegantly on every side. A few years ago this
ample crown was but a single small frond, which you would probably not
have recognised as that of a Lady-fern. Somewhat earlier than this, the
plant was a minute flat green expansion (_prothallus_), of no definite
outline, very much like a Liverwort. This had been previously a
three-sided spore lying on the damp earth, whither it had been jerked by
the rupture of a capsule (_theca_). For this spore, though so small as
to be visible only by microscopic aid, had a previous history, which may
be traced without difficulty. It was generated with hundreds more, in
one of many capsules, which, were crowded together, beneath the oval bit
of membrane, that covered one of the brown spots (_sori_), which were
developed in the under surface of the fronds of an earlier Lady-fern.
That earlier individual had in turn passed through the same stages of
sporal frond, prothallus, spore, theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, spore,
theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, &c.--_ad infinitum_.
This sounding-winged Hawkmoth, which like a gigantic bee is buzzing
around the jasmine in the deepening twilight, hovering ever and anon to
probe the starry flowers that make the evening air almost palpable with
fragrance,--this moth, what "story of a life" can he tell? Nearly a year
of existence he has spent as a helpless, almost motionless pupa, buried
in the soft earth, from whence he has emerged but this evening. About a
twelvemonth ago he was a great fat green caterpillar with an arching
horn over his rump, working ever harder and harder at devouring poplar
leaves, and growing ever fatter and fatter. But before that he had one
day burst forth a little wriggling worm, from a globular egg glued to a
leaf. Whence came the egg? It was developed within the ovary of a parent
Hawkmoth, whose history is but an endless rotation of the same
stages,--pupa, larva, egg, moth, pupa, larva, &c. &c.
[Illustration: larva--pupa--moth--egg]
Behold this specimen of _Plumularia_, a shrub-like zoophyte, comprising
within its populous branches some twenty thousand polypes. Every
individual cell, now inhabited by its tentacled Hydra, has in its turn
budded out from a branch, which was itself but a lateral process from
the central axis. And this was but the prolongation of what was at first
a single cell, shooting up from a creeping root-thread. A little earlier
than this, there was neither cell nor root-thread, but the organism
existed in the form of a _planule_, a minute soft-bodied, pear-shaped
worm, covered with cilia, that crawled slowly over the stones and
sea-weeds. Whence came it? A few hours before, it had emerged from the
mouth of a vase-like cell, one of the ovarian capsules, which studded
the stem of an old well-peopled Plumularia-shrub, and which had been
gradually developed from its substance by a process analogous to
budding. And then if we follow the history of this earlier shrub
backward, it will only lead us through exactly correspondent stages,
primal cell, planule, ovarian capsule, stem, and so on interminably.
[Illustration: primal cell--axis--branch--polype--capsule--planule]
Once more. The cow that peacefully ruminates under the grateful shadow
of yonder spreading beech, was, a year or two ago, a gamesome heifer
with budding horns. The year before, she was a bleating calf, which
again had been a breathless foetus wrapped up in the womb of its
mother. Earlier still it had been an unformed embryo; and yet earlier,
an embryonic vesicle, a microscopically minute cell, formed out of one
of the component cells of a still earlier structure,--the germinal
vesicle of a fecundated ovum. But this ovum, which is the remotest point
to which we can trace the history of our cow as an individual, was,
before it assumed a distinct individuality, an undistinguishable
constituent of a viscus,--the ovary,--of another cow, an essential part
of _her_ structure, a portion of the tissues of _her_ body, to be traced
back, therefore, through all the stages which I have enumerated above,
to the tissues of another parent cow, thence to those of a former, and
so on, through a vista of receding cows, as long as you choose to follow
it.
[Illustration: embryo--foetus--calf--heifer--cow--ovum--germ.
vesicle--embr. vesicle]
This, then, is the order of all organic nature. When once we are in any
portion of the course, we find ourselves running in a circular groove,
as endless as the course of a blind horse in a mill. It is evident that
there is no one point in the history of any single creature, which is a
legitimate beginning of existence. And this is not the law of some
particular species, but of all: it pervades all classes of animals, all
classes of plants, from the queenly palm down to the protococcus, from
the monad up to man: the life of every organic being is whirling in a
ceaseless circle, to which one knows not how to assign any
commencement,--I will not say any certain or even probable, but any
_possible_, commencement. The cow is as inevitable a sequence of the
embryo, as the embryo is of the cow. Looking only at nature, or looking
at it only with the lights of experience and reason, I see not how it is
possible to avoid one of these two theories, the development of all
organic existence out of gaseous elements, or the eternity of matter in
its present forms.
Creation, however, solves the dilemma. I have, in my postulates, begged
the fact of creation, and I shall not, therefore, attempt to prove it.
Creation, the sovereign fiat of Almighty Power, gives us the commencing
point, which we in vain seek in nature. But what is creation? It is _the
sudden bursting into a circle_. Since there is no one stage in the
course of existence, which, more than any other affords a natural
commencing point, whatever stage is selected by the arbitrary will of
God, must be an unnatural, or rather a preter-natural, commencing point.
The life-history of every organism commenced at some point or other of
its circular course. It was created, called into being, in some definite
stage. Possibly, various creatures differed in this respect; perhaps
some began existence in one stage of development, some in another; but
every separate organism had a distinct point at which it began to live.
Before that point there was nothing; this particular organism had till
then no existence; its history presents an absolute blank; _it was not_.
But the whole organisation of the creature thus newly called into
existence, looks back to the course of an endless circle in the past.
Its whole structure displays a series of developments, which as
distinctly witness to former conditions as do those which are presented
in the cow, the butterfly, and the fern, of the present day. But what
former conditions? The conditions thus witnessed unto, as being
necessarily implied in the present organisation, were non-existent; the
history was a perfect blank till the moment of creation. The past
conditions or stages of existence in question, can indeed be as
triumphantly inferred by legitimate deduction from the present, as can
those of our cow or butterfly; they rest on the very same evidences;
they are identically the same in every respect, except in this one, that
they were _unreal_. They exist only in their results; they are effects
which never had causes.
Perhaps it may help to clear my argument if I divide the past
developments of organic life, which are necessarily, or at least
legitimately, inferrible from present phenomena, into two categories,
separated by the violent act of creation. Those unreal developments
whose apparent results are seen in the organism at the moment of its
creation, I will call _prochronic_, because time was not an element in
them; while those which have subsisted since creation, and which have
had actual existence, I will distinguish as _diachronic_, as occurring
during time.
Now, again I repeat, there is no imaginable difference to sense between
the prochronic and the diachronic development. Every argument by which
the physiologist can prove to demonstration that yonder cow was once a
foetus in the uterus of its dam, will apply with exactly the same
power to show that the newly created cow was an embryo, some years
before its creation.