to mention it again; because, in all the higher MAMMALIA, at least, it
exists, throughout life, an eloquent witness to the organic connexion of
the individual with a mother, and therefore to her pre-existence. If it
were legitimate to suppose that the first individual of the species Man
was created in the condition answering to that of a new-born infant,
there would still be the need of maternal milk for its sustenance, and
maternal care for its protection, for a considerable period; while, if
we carry on the suggested stage to the period when this provision is no
longer indispensable, the development of hair, nails, bones, &c., will
have proceeded through many stages. And, in either condition, the navel
cord or its cicatrix remains, to testify to something anterior to both.
XII.
THE CONCLUSION.
"We have no experience in the creation of worlds."
CHALMERS.
We have passed, in review before us the whole organic world: and the
result is uniform; that no example can be selected from the vast
vegetable kingdom, none from the vast animal kingdom, which did not at
the instant of its creation present indubitable evidences of a previous
history. This is not put forth as a _hypothesis_, but as a _necessity_;
I do not say that it was _probably_ so, but that it was _certainly_ so;
not that it _may have been thus_, but that it _could not have been
otherwise_.
I do not touch the inorganic world: my acquaintance with chemistry is
inadequate for this: perhaps the same law does not extend to the
inorganic elements: perhaps their developments, and combinations are
not, like the economy of plants and animals, essentially and
exclusively cyclical: perhaps carbon and oxygen and hydrogen could be
created in conditions, which obviously did not depend on any previously
existing conditions. This I do not know: I neither affirm nor deny it.
But I think I have demonstrated in these pages, that such a cyclical
character does attach to, and is inseparable from, the history of all
organic essences; and that creation can be nothing else than a series of
irruptions into circles: that, supposing the irruption to have been made
at what part of the circle we please, and varying this condition
indefinitely at will,--we cannot avoid the conclusion that each organism
was from the first marked with the records of a previous being. But
since creation and previous history are inconsistent with each other; as
the very idea of the creation of an organism excludes the idea of
pre-existence of that organism, or of any part of it; it follows, that
such records are _false_, so far as they testify to time; that the
developments and processes thus recorded have been produced without
time, or are what I have called _prochronic_.
Nor is this conclusion in the least degree affected by the actual
chronology of creation. The phenomena were equally eloquent, and equally
false, whether any individual organism were created six thousand years
ago, or innumerable ages; whether primitively, or after the successive
creations and annihilations of former organisms.
The law of creation supersedes the law of nature; so far, at least, as
the organic world is concerned. The law of nature, established by
universal experience, is, that its phenomena depend upon certain natural
antecedents: the law of creation is, that the same phenomena depend upon
_no_ antecedents. The philosopher who should infer the antecedents from
the phenomena alone, without having considered the law of creation,
would be liable to form totally false conclusions. In order to be secure
from error, he must first assure himself that creation is eliminated
from the category of facts which he is investigating; and this he could
do only when the facts come within the sphere of personal observation,
or of historic testimony. Up to such a period of antiquity as is covered
by credible history, and within such a field of observation as history
may be considered fairly cognisant of,--the inference of physical
antecedents from physical phenomena, in the animal or vegetable world,
is legitimate and true. But, beyond that period, I cannot safely deduce
the same conclusion; because I cannot tell but that at any given moment
included in my inquiry, creation may have occurred, and have been the
absolute beginning of the circular series.
The question of the actual age of any species, whether plant or animal,
is one which cannot be answered, except on historic testimony. The
sequence of cause and effect is not adequate to answer it; for a
legitimate use of this principle, supposing it the only element of the
inquiry, would inevitably lead us to the eternity of all existing
organic life.
One of the familiar street-exhibitions in the metropolis is a tiny coach
and horses of glittering metal; which, by means of simple machinery,
course round and round the margin of a circular table. Let us suppose
two youths of philosophical turn to come up during the process. They
gaze for a while, and one asks his companion the following question.
"How long do you suppose that coach has been running round?"
"How long! for an indefinite period, for aught I know. I have counted
twenty-two turns, and can see no change: nor can I suggest any point
where the course could have begun."
Here a shrewd lad, carrying a grocer's basket, breaks in.
"Oh no; there have been only six-and-twenty turns altogether. Four turns
had been made when you came up. The whole began by the man taking the
carriage out of a box; then he set it down out there, just opposite to
us, and gave it a little push with his finger, and it has been running
ever since. I saw him do it."
Now perhaps you will say that a glance at the machinery beneath the
table would show in a moment how many turns had been made, and how many
could be made. Very true: but what if the tramp had locked up his
clock-work, and would not let you look at it?
The only evidence worth a rush is that of the lad who saw the whirligig
set a-going.
I wish it to be distinctly understood, that I am not proving the exact
or approximate antiquity of the globe we inhabit. I am not attempting to
show that it has existed for no more than six thousand years. I wish
this to be distinctly stated, because I am sure I shall meet with many
opponents unfair enough, or illogical enough, to misrepresent or
misunderstand my argument, and sound the trumpet of victory, because I
cannot demonstrate _that_. _All_ I set myself to do, is to invalidate
the testimony of the witness relied on for the indefinitely remote
antiquity; to show that in a very large and important field of nature,
evidence exactly analogous to that relied on would inevitably lead to a
false conclusion, and must, therefore, be rejected, or received only
contingently; received only as indicative of probability, and that only
in the absence of any positive witness to the contrary.
Perhaps it may be objected, that there is no sufficient analogy between
the phenomena from which the past history of a single organism is
inferred, and those from which the past history of a world is inferred.
Is there not?
Permit me to repeat an illustration I have already used. The geologist
finds a fossil skeleton. His acquaintance with anatomy enables him to
pronounce that the objects found are bones. He sees cylinders, condyles,
cavities for the marrow, scars of attachment of muscles and tendons,
foramina for the passage of nerves and blood-vessels; he finds the
internal structure, no less than the form and surface, such as to leave
not a doubt that these are real _bones_. Now universal experience has
taught him that bones imply the existence of flesh; that flesh implies
blood; that blood implies life; that life implies time. He therefore
concludes unhesitatingly, that this skeleton was once alive, and that
time passed over it in that living condition.
Is not this process of reasoning exactly parallel to that which he would
have pursued if he had examined an animal the moment after its creation,
(supposing this fact to be unknown to him,) and by which he would in
like manner have inferred past time? And where is the vital difference
between the two cases, which would operate to make a conclusion which is
manifestly false in the one case, necessarily true in the other?
One of the most eminent of living botanists has set forth in striking
terms the parallelism which I am suggesting. Speaking of the _shoot_ as
the vegetable individual, and the woody trunk as a kind of
ever-accumulating ground, which supports successive generations of
shoots, he uses the following comparison.
"The history of the grand development of nature on the surface of our
globe presents an analogy, which may perhaps serve to set this relation
in a clear light. The successive geological formations superposed during
the course of countless ages, present, buried in their depths, the
traces of as many formations of the organic world, each of which
carpeted the then superior stratum of the earth with a new life, until
it found its own grave in the succeeding formation, when a new uprising
of organic life took its place. In the same way, the stem of a tree is a
multistratified ground, in whose layers the history of earlier growths
is legibly preserved. The number of the woody layers indicates the
number of the generations which have perished, _i. e._ the age of the
whole tree: a distinct annual ring is the monument of a vigorous season,
an indistinct one of a bad season, a sickly one (which is often found
among healthy ones) indicates the unhealthiness of the foliage of that
particular year. The practised woodman can decipher many facts of the
past in the layers of the trunk; _e.g._ a good season for foliage or for
seed, damage by frost or by insects, &c."[98]
In order to perfect the analogy between an organism and the world, so as
to show that the law which prevails in the one obtains also in the
other, it would be necessary to prove that the development of the
physical history of the world is circular, like that already shown to
characterise the course of organic nature. And this I cannot prove. But
neither, as I think, can the contrary be proved.
The life of _the individual_ consists of a series of processes which are
cyclical. In the tree this is shown by the successive growths and deaths
of series of leaves: in the animal by the development and exuviation of
nails, hair, epidermis, &c.
The life of _the species_ consists of a series of processes which are
cyclical. This has been sufficiently illustrated in the preceding pages,
in the successive developments and deaths of generations of individuals.
We have reason to believe that species die out, and are replaced by
other species, like the individuals which belong to the species, and the
organs which belong to the individual. But is the life of _the species_
a circle returning into itself? In other words, if we could take a
sufficiently large view of the whole plan of nature, should we discern
that the existence of species [Greek: d] necessarily involved the
pre-existence of species [Greek: g], and must inevitably be followed by
species [Greek: e]? Should we be able to trace the same sort of relation
between the tiger of Bengal and the fossil tiger of the Yorkshire caves,
between _Elephas Indicus_ and _Elephas primigenius_, as subsists
between the leaves of 1857 and the leaves of 1856; or between the oak
now flourishing in Sherwood Forest and that of Robin Hood's day, from
whose acorn it sprang?[99]
I dare not say, we should; though I think it highly probable. But I
think you will not dare to say, we should _not_.[100]
It is certain that, when the Omnipotent God proposed to create a given
organism, the course of that organism was present to his idea, as an
ever revolving circle, without beginning and without end. He created it
at some point in the circle, and gave it thus an arbitrary beginning;
but one which involved all previous rotations of the circle, though only
as ideal, or, in other phrase, prochronic. Is it not possible--I do not
ask for more--that, in like manner, the natural course of the world was
projected in his idea as a perfect whole, and that He determined to
create it at some point of that course, which act, however, should
involve previous stages, though only ideal or prochronic?
All naturalists have speculated upon the great plan of Nature; a grand
array of organic essences, in which every species should be related in
like ratio to its fellow species, by certain affinities, without gaps
and without redundancies; the whole constituting a beautiful and perfect
unity, a harmonious scheme, worthy of the infinite Mind that conceived
it. Such a perfect plan has never been presented by any existing fauna
or flora; nor is it made up by uniting the fossil faunas and floras to
the recent ones; _yet the discovery of the fossil world has made a very
signal approach to the filling up of the great outline_; and the more
minutely this has been investigated, the more have hiatuses been
bridged over, which before yawned between species and species, and
links of connexion have been supplied which before were lacking.[101]
It is not necessary,--at least it does not seem so to me,--that all the
members of this mighty commonwealth should have an actual, a diachronic
existence; anymore than that, in the creation of a man, his foetal,
infantile, and adolescent stages should have an actual, diachronic
existence, though these are essential to his normal life-history. Nor
would their diachronism be more certainly inferrible from the physical
traces of them, in the one case than in the other. In the newly-created
Man, the proofs of successive processes requiring time, in the skin,
hairs, nails, bones, &c. could in no respect be distinguished from the
like proofs in a Man of to-day; yet the developments to which they
respectively testify are widely different from each other, so far as
regards the element of time. Who will say that the suggestion, _that the
strata of the surface of the earth, with their fossil floras and faunas,
may possibly belong to a prochronic development of the mighty plan of
the life-history of this world_,--who will dare to say that such a
suggestion is a self-evident absurdity? If we had no example of such a
procedure, we might be justified in dealing cavalierly with the
hypothesis; but it has been shown that, without a solitary exception,
the whole of the vast vegetable and animal kingdoms were created,--mark!
I do not say _may_ have been, but MUST have been created--on this
principle of a prochronic development, with distinctly traceable
records. It was _the law of organic creation_.
It may be objected, that, to assume the world to have been created with
fossil skeletons in its crust,--skeletons of animals that never really
existed,--is to charge the Creator with forming objects whose sole
purpose was to deceive us. The reply is obvious. Were the concentric
timber-rings of a created tree formed merely to deceive? Were the growth
lines of a created shell intended to deceive? Was the navel of the
created Man intended to deceive him into the persuasion that he had had
a parent?[102]
These peculiarities of structure were inseparable from the adult stage
of these creatures respectively, without which they would not have been
what they were. The Locust-tree could not have been an adult _Hymenaea_,
without concentric rings;--nay, it could not have been an exogenous tree
at all. The _Dione_ could not have been a _Dione_ without those
foliations and spines that form its generic character. The Man would not
have been a Man without a navel.
To the physiologist this is obvious; but some unscientific reader may
say, Could not God have created plants and animals without these
retrospective marks? I distinctly reply, No! not so as to preserve their
specific identity with those with which we are familiar. A Tree-fern
without scars on the trunk! A Palm without leaf-bases! A Bean without a
hilum! A Tortoise without laminae on its plates! A Carp without
concentric lines on its scales! A Bird without feathers! A Mammal
without hairs, or claws, or teeth, or bones, or blood! A Foetus
without a placenta! I have indeed written the preceding pages in vain,
if I have not demonstrated, in a multitude of examples, the absolute
necessity of retrospective phenomena in newly-created organisms. But if
it can be undeniably shown in one single example, our failure to
perceive it in ninety-nine other instances would in nowise invalidate
the deduction from that one. Granted that you can triumphantly convict
me of a _non-sequitur_, in ninety-nine out of every hundred of the cases
in which I have attempted to show this connexion; still, if I have
conclusively proved that in one solitary instance an animal or a plant
was created with but one solitary evidence of pre-development, the
principle for which I contend is established.
I trust, however, it does not rest on one example, nor on twenty, nor on
a hundred. It may be thought that I have multiplied my illustrations
needlessly: ten times as many might have been given. I wished to show
that the proof is of a cumulative character: a single good example
would, indeed, have established the principle; but I wished to show how
widely applicable it is; that it is, indeed, of universal application in
the organic kingdoms.
If, then, the existence of retrospective marks, visible and tangible
proofs of processes which were prochronic, was so necessary to organic
essences, that they could not have been created without them,--is it
absurd to suggest the _possibility_ (I do no more) that the world itself
was created under the influence of the same law, with visible tangible
proofs of developments and processes, which yet were only prochronic?
Admit for a moment, as a hypothesis, that the Creator had before his
mind a projection of the whole life-history of the globe, commencing
with any point which the geologist may imagine to have been a fit
commencing point, and ending with some unimaginable acme in the
indefinitely distant future. He determines to call this idea into actual
existence, not at the supposed commencing point, but at some stage or
other of its course.[103] It is clear, then, that at the selected stage
it appears, exactly as it would have appeared at that moment of its
history, if all the preceding eras of its history had been real. Just as
the new-created Man was, at the first moment of his existence, a man of
twenty, or five-and-twenty, or thirty years old; physically, palpably,
visibly, so old, though not really, not diachronically. He appeared
precisely what he would have appeared had he lived so many years.
Let us suppose that this present year 1857 had been the particular epoch
in the projected life-history of the world, which the Creator selected
as the era of its actual beginning. At his fiat it appears; but in what
condition? Its actual condition at this moment:--whatever is now
existent would appear, precisely as it does appear. There would be
cities filled with swarms of men; there would be houses half-built;
castles fallen into ruins; pictures on artists' easels just sketched in;
wardrobes filled with half-worn garments; ships sailing over the sea;
marks of birds' footsteps on the mud; skeletons whitening the desert
sands; human bodies in every stage of decay in the burial-grounds. These
and millions of other traces of the past would be found, _because they
are found in the world now_; they belong to the present age of the
world; and if it had pleased God to call into existence this globe at
_this_ epoch of its life-history, the whole of which lay like a map
before his infinite mind, it would certainly have presented all these
phenomena; not to puzzle the philosopher, but because they are
inseparable from the condition of the world at the selected moment of
irruption into its history; because they constitute its condition; they
make it what it is.
Hence the minuteness and undeniableness of the proofs of life which
geologists rely on so confidently, and present with such justifiable
triumph, do not in the least militate against my principle. The marks of
Hyaenas' teeth on the bones of Kirkdale cave; the infant skeletons
associated with adult skeletons of the same species; the abundance of
coprolites; the foot-tracks of Birds and Reptiles; the glacier-scratches
on rocks; and hundreds of other beautiful and most irresistible
evidences of pre-existence, I do not wish to undervalue, nor to explain
away. On the hypothesis that the actual commencing point of the world's
history was subsequent to the occurrence of such things in the perfect
ideal whole, these phenomena would appear precisely as if the facts
themselves had been diachronic, instead of prochronic, as was really the
case.[104]
Perhaps some one will say, "All this might be tenable, supposing the
world were an organism. Your argument goes to show that organic essences
in every stage of their existence present proofs of pre-existence; but
what analogy is there between the lifeless inorganic globe (in which
evidences of past processes are apparent, independent of the fossil
organisms), and a living organic being,--plant or animal?"
I answer, The point in the economy of the organic creatures, on which
their prochronism rests, is not the organic, but the circular condition
of their being. The problem, then, to be solved, before we can certainly
determine the question of analogy between the globe and the organism, is
this:--Is the life-history of the globe a cycle? If it is (and there are
many reasons why this is probable), then I am sure prochronism must
have been evident at its creation, since there is no point in a circle
which does not imply previous points. At all events, geologists cannot
prove that it is not.
Wherever we can discern a cyclical condition, there the law of which I
am treating must hold good; and it certainly obtains in other things
beside organisms. When the inorganic crust of the globe was first cleft
to contain rivers, whence came the water that flowed through the
fissures? A river is the produce of rivulets, which issue from mountain
springs; these originate in the water that percolates through the soil;
and this is derived from the rains, and snows, and dews, that are
deposited from the atmosphere. But there would be no deposition from the
atmosphere if the water had not first been carried up by evaporation;
and the vaporable fluid is obtained from the moistened soil; from the
lakes and rivers; and from the seas and oceans, whose loss is
perpetually recruited from the flowing rivers. Here, then, we get a
circle closely analogous to that of organic being. Was a given drop of
water created as a component particle of a running stream? Its position
and condition looked back to the mountain spring whence it must
naturally have issued. Was it called into being in the spring? It
looked up to the surface, whence it must have oozed. Was it formed on
the surface? It looked to the clouds, whence it must have dropped. Was
it created in the cloud? It looked down to the surface of the lake or
sea, whence it must have been raised. Was it created in the lake? It
looked to the river, whence it must have flowed.
The chief pelagic currents, which have hitherto so often been the
destruction of the navigator, but which may yet become his able and
subject servants, flow in circular systems. There is such an one in the
southern part of the Indian Ocean, known as the Hurricane Region;
another immense one ever running round and round the North Pacific; and,
above all, that wondrous river of hot water--a river whose well-marked
banks are not solid earth, but cold water--the Gulf Stream.