As far as observation can reach, the facts prove to be what theory

requires. Various evidences conspire to show that, below a certain depth,

the Earth is still molten. And that it was once wholly molten, is implied

by the circumstance that the rate at which the temperature increases on

descending below its surface, is such as would be found in a mass that had

been cooling for an indefinite period. The Moon, too, shows us, by its

corrugations and its conspicuous volcanoes, that in it there has been a

process of refrigeration and contraction, like that which had gone on in

the Earth. And in Venus, the existence of mountains similarly indicates an

igneous reaction of the interior upon a solidifying crust.

On the common theory of creation, these phenomena are inexplicable. To what

end the Earth should once have existed in a molten state, incapable of

supporting life, it cannot say. To satisfy this supposition, the Earth

should have been originally created in a state fit for the assumed purposes

of creation; and similarly with the other planets. While, therefore, to the

Nebular Hypothesis the evidence of original incandescence and still

continued internal heat, furnish strong confirmation, they are, to the

antagonist hypothesis, insurmountable difficulties.

But the argument from temperature does not end here. There remains to be

noticed a more conspicuous and still more significant fact. If the Solar

System was formed by the concentration of diffused matter, which evolved

heat while gravitating into its present dense form; then there are certain

obvious corollaries respecting the relative temperatures of the resulting

bodies. Other things equal, the latest-formed mass will be the latest in

cooling--will, for an almost infinite time, possess a greater heat than the

earlier-formed ones. Other things equal, the largest mass will, because of

its superior aggregative force, become hotter than the others, and radiate

more intensely. Other things equal, the largest mass, notwithstanding the

higher temperature it reaches, will, in consequence of its relatively small

surface, be the slowest in losing its evolved heat. And hence, if there is

one mass which was not only formed after the rest, but exceeds them

enormously in size, it follows that this one will reach an intensity of

incandescence much beyond that reached by the rest; and will continue in a

state of intense incandescence long after the rest have cooled.

Such a mass we have in the Sun. It is a corollary from the Nebular

Hypothesis, that the matter forming the Sun assumed its present concrete

form, at a period much more recent than that at which the planets became

definite bodies. The quantity of matter contained in the Sun is nearly five

million times that contained in the smallest planet, and above a thousand

times that contained in the largest. And while, from the enormous

gravitative force of the atoms, the evolution of heat has been intense, the

facilities of radiation have been relatively small. Hence the

still-continued high temperature. Just that condition of the central body

which is a necessary inference from the Nebular Hypothesis, we find

actually existing in the Sun.

It may be well to consider a little more closely, what is the probable

condition of the Sun's surface. Round the globe of incandescent molten

substances, thus conceived to form the visible body of the Sun, there is

known to exist a voluminous atmosphere: the inferior brilliancy of the

Sun's border, and the appearances during a total eclipse, alike show

this.[S] What now must be the constitution of this atmosphere? At a

temperature approaching a thousand times that of molten iron, which is the

calculated temperature of the solar surface, very many, if not all, of the

substances we know as solid, would become gaseous; and though the Sun's

enormous attractive force must be a powerful check on this tendency to

assume the form of vapour, yet it cannot be questioned that if the body of

the Sun consists of molten substances, some of them must be constantly

undergoing evaporation. That the dense gases thus continually being

generated will form the entire mass of the solar atmosphere, is not

probable. If anything is to be inferred, either from the Nebular

Hypothesis, or from the analogies supplied by the planets, it must be

concluded that the outermost part of the solar atmosphere consists of what

are called permanent gases--gases that are not condensible into fluid even

at low temperatures. If we consider what must have been the state of things

here, when the surface of the Earth was molten, we shall see that round the

still molten surface of the Sun, there probably exists a stratum of dense

aeriform matter, made up of sublimed metals and metallic compounds, and

above this a stratum of comparatively rare medium analogous to air. What

now will happen with these two strata? Did they both consist of permanent

gases, they could not remain separate: according to a well-known law, they

would eventually form a homogeneous mixture. But this will by no means

happen when the lower stratum consists of matters that are gaseous only at

excessively high temperatures. Given off from a molten surface, ascending,

expanding, and cooling, these will presently reach a limit of elevation

above which they cannot exist as vapour, but must condense and precipitate.

Meanwhile the upper stratum, habitually charged with its quantum of these

denser matters, as our air with its quantum of water, and ready to deposit

them on any depression of temperature, must be habitually unable to take up

any more of the lower stratum; and therefore this lower stratum will remain

quite distinct from it.

[S] See Herschel's "Outlines of Astronomy."

Since the foregoing paragraph was originally published, in 1858, the

proposition it enunciates as a corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis, has

been in great part verified. The marvellous disclosures made by

spectrum-analysis, have proved beyond the possibility of doubt, that the

solar atmosphere contains, in a gaseous state, the metals, iron, calcium,

magnesium, sodium, chromium, and nickel, along with small quantities of

barium, copper, and zinc. That there exist in the solar atmosphere other

metals like those which we have on the Earth, is probable; and that it

contains elements which are unknown to us, is very possible.

Be this as it may, however, the proposition that the Sun's atmosphere

consists largely of metallic vapours, must take rank as an established

truth; and that the incandescent body of the Sun consists of molten metals,

follows almost of necessity. That an _a priori_ inference which probably

seemed to many readers wildly speculative, should be thus conclusively

justified by observations, made without reference to any theory, is a

striking fact; and it gives yet further support to the hypothesis from

which this _a priori_ conclusion was drawn. It may be well to add that

Kirchhoff, to whom we owe this discovery respecting the constitution of the

solar atmosphere, himself remarks in his memoir of 1861, that the facts

disclosed are in harmony with the Nebular Hypothesis.

And here let us not omit to note also, the significant bearing which

Kirchhoff's results have on the doctrine contended for in a foregoing

section. Leaving out the barium, copper, and zinc, of which the quantities

are inferred to be small, the metals existing as vapours in the Sun's

atmosphere, and by consequence as molten in his incandescent body, have an

average specific gravity of 4.25. But the average specific gravity of the

Sun is about 1. How is this discrepancy to be explained? To say that the

Sun consists almost wholly of the three lighter metals named, would be

quite unwarranted by the evidence: the results of spectrum-analysis would

just as much warrant the assertion that the Sun consists almost wholly of

the three heavier. Three metals (two of them heavy) having been already

left out of the estimate because their quantities appear to be small, the

only legitimate assumption on which to base an estimate of specific

gravity, is that the rest are present in something like equal amounts. Is

it then that the lighter metals exist in larger proportions in the molten

mass, though not in the atmosphere? This is very unlikely: the known

habitudes of matter rather imply that the reverse is the case. Is it then

that under the conditions of temperature and gravitation existing in the

Sun, the state of liquid aggregation is wholly unlike that existing here?

This is a very strong assumption: it is one for which our terrestrial

experiences afford no adequate warrant; and if such unlikeness exists, it

is very improbable that it should produce so immense a contrast in specific

gravity as that of 4 to 1. The more legitimate conclusion is that the Sun's

body is not made up of molten matter all through; but that it consists of a

molten shell with a gaseous nucleus. And this we have seen to be a

corollary from the Nebular Hypothesis.

* * * * *

Considered in their _ensemble_, the several groups of evidences assigned

amount almost to proof. We have seen that, when critically examined, the

speculations of late years current respecting the nature of the nebulae,

commit their promulgators to sundry absurdities; while, on the other hand,

we see that the various appearances these nebulae present, are explicable as

different stages in the precipitation and aggregation of diffused matter.

We find that comets, alike by their physical constitution, their

immensely-elongated and variously-directed orbits, the distribution of

those orbits, and their manifest structural relation to the Solar System,

bear testimony to the past existence of that system in a nebulous form. Not

only do those obvious peculiarities in the motions of the planets which

first suggested the Nebular Hypothesis, supply proofs of it, but on closer

examination we discover, in the slightly-diverging inclinations of their

orbits, in their various rates of rotation, and their differently-directed

axes of rotation, that the planets yield us yet further testimony; while

the satellites, by sundry traits, and especially by their occurrence in

greater or less abundance where the hypothesis implies greater or less

abundance, confirm this testimony. By tracing out the process of planetary

condensation, we are led to conclusions respecting the internal structure

of planets which at once explain their anomalous specific gravities, and at

the same time reconcile various seemingly contradictory facts. Once more,

it turns out that what is _a priori_ inferable from the Nebular Hypothesis

respecting the temperatures of the resulting bodies, is just what

observation establishes; and that both the absolute and the relative

temperatures of the Sun and planets are thus accounted for. When we

contemplate these various evidences in their totality--when we observe

that, by the Nebular Hypothesis, the leading phenomena of the Solar System,

and the heavens in general, are explicable; and when, on the other hand, we

consider that the current cosmogony is not only without a single fact to

stand on, but is at variance with all our positive knowledge of Nature; we

see that the proof becomes overwhelming.

It remains only to point out that while the genesis of the Solar System,

and of countless other systems like it, is thus rendered comprehensible,

the ultimate mystery continues as great as ever. The problem of existence

is not solved: it is simply removed further back. The Nebular Hypothesis

throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as

much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not

easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from

making the Universe a less mystery than before, it makes it a greater

mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than creation by

evolution. A man can put together a machine; but he cannot make a machine

develop itself. The ingenious artizan, able as some have been, so far to

imitate vitality as to produce a mechanical pianoforte-player, may in some

sort conceive how, by greater skill, a complete man might be artificially

produced; but he is unable to conceive how such a complex organism

gradually arises out of a minute structureless germ. That our harmonious

universe once existed potentially as formless diffused matter, and has

slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far more astonishing

fact than would have been its formation after the artificial method

vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate to argue from phenomena to

noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular Hypothesis implies a First

Cause as much transcending "the mechanical God of Paley," as this does the

fetish of the savage.

VII. BAIN ON THE EMOTIONS AND THE WILL.

After the controversy between the Neptunists and the Vulcanists had been

long carried on without definite results, there came a reaction against all

speculative geology. Reasoning without adequate data having led to nothing,

inquirers went into the opposite extreme, and confining themselves wholly

to collecting data, relinquished reasoning. The Geological Society of

London was formed with the express object of accumulating evidence; for

many years hypotheses were forbidden at its meetings; and only of late have

attempts to organize the mass of observations into consistent theory been

tolerated.

This reaction and subsequent re-reaction, well illustrate the recent

history of English thought in general. The time was when our countrymen

speculated, certainly to as great an extent as any other people, on all

those high questions which present themselves to the human intellect; and,

indeed, a glance at the systems of philosophy that are or have been current

on the Continent, suffices to show how much other nations owe to the

discoveries of our ancestors. For a generation or two, however, these more

abstract subjects have fallen into neglect; and, among those who plume

themselves on being "practical," even into contempt. Partly, perhaps, a

natural accompaniment of our rapid material growth, this intellectual phase

has been in great measure due to the exhaustion of argument, and the

necessity for better data. Not so much with a conscious recognition of the

end to be subserved, as from an unconscious subordination to that rhythm

traceable in social changes as in other things, an era of theorizing

without observing, has been followed by an era of observing without

theorizing. During the long-continued devotion to concrete science, an

immense quantity of raw material for abstract science has been accumulated;

and now there is obviously commencing a period in which this accumulated

raw material will be organized into consistent theory. On all

sides--equally in the inorganic sciences, in the science of life, and in

the science of society--may we note the tendency to pass from the

superficial and empirical to the more profound and rational.

In Psychology this change is conspicuous. The facts brought to light by

anatomists and physiologists during the last fifty years, are at length

being used towards the interpretation of this highest class of biological

phenomena; and already there is promise of a great advance. The work of Mr.

Alexander Bain, of which the second volume has been recently issued, may be

regarded as especially characteristic of the transition. It gives us in

orderly arrangement, the great mass of evidence supplied by modern science

towards the building-up of a coherent system of mental philosophy. It is

not in itself a system of mental philosophy, properly so called; but a

classified collection of materials for such a system, presented with that

method and insight which scientific discipline generates, and accompanied

with occasional passages of an analytical character. It is indeed that

which it in the main professes to be--a natural history of the mind.

Were we to say that the researches of the naturalist who collects and

dissects and describes species, bear the same relation to the researches of

the comparative anatomist tracing out the laws of organization, which Mr.

Bain's labours bear to the labours of the abstract psychologist, we should

be going somewhat too far; for Mr. Bain's work is not wholly descriptive.

Still, however, such an analogy conveys the best general conception of what

he has done; and serves most clearly to indicate its needfulness. For as,

before there can be made anything like true generalizations respecting the

classification of organisms and the laws of organization, there must be an

extensive accumulation of the facts presented in numerous organic bodies;

so, without a tolerably-complete delineation of mental phenomena of all

orders, there can scarcely arise any adequate theory of the mind. Until

recently, mental science has been pursued much as physical science was

pursued by the ancients: not by drawing conclusions from observations and

experiments, but by drawing them from arbitrary a priori assumptions. This

course, long since abandoned in the one case with immense advantage, is

gradually being abandoned in the other; and the treatment of Psychology as

a division of natural history, shows that the abandonment will soon be

complete.

Estimated as a means to higher results, Mr. Bain's work is of great value.

Of its kind it is the most scientific in conception, the most catholic in

spirit, and the most complete in execution. Besides delineating the various

classes of mental phenomena as seen under that stronger light thrown on

them by modern science, it includes in the picture much which previous

writers had omitted--partly from prejudice, partly from ignorance. We refer

more especially to the participation of bodily organs in mental changes;

and the addition to the primary mental changes, of those many secondary

ones which the actions of the bodily organs generate. Mr. Bain has, we

believe, been the first to appreciate the importance of this element in our

states of consciousness; and it is one of his merits that he shows how

constant and large an element it is. Further, the relations of voluntary

and involuntary movements are elucidated in a way that was not possible to

writers unacquainted with the modern doctrine of reflex action. And beyond

this, some of the analytical passages that here and there occur, contain

important ideas.

Valuable, however, as is Mr. Bain's work, we regard it as essentially

transitional. It presents in a digested form the results of a period of

observation; adds to these results many well-delineated facts collected by

himself; arranges new and old materials with that more scientific method

which the discipline of our times has fostered; and so prepare the way for

better generalizations. But almost of necessity its classifications and

conclusions are provisional. In the growth of each science, not only is

correct observation needful for the formation of true theory; but true

theory is needful as a preliminary to correct observation. Of course we do

not intend this assertion to be taken literally; but as a strong expression

of the fact that the two must advance hand in hand. The first crude theory

or rough classification, based on very slight knowledge of the phenomena,

is requisite as a means of reducing the phenomena to some kind of order;

and as supplying a conception with which fresh phenomena may be compared,

and their agreement or disagreement noted. Incongruities being by and by

made manifest by wider examination of cases, there comes such modification

of the theory as brings it into a nearer correspondence with the evidence.

This reacts to the further advance of observation. More extensive and

complete observation brings additional corrections of theory. And so on

till the truth is reached. In mental science, the systematic collection of

facts having but recently commenced, it is not to be expected that the

results can be at once rightly formulated. All that may be looked for are

approximate generalizations which will presently serve for the better

directing of inquiry. Hence, even were it not now possible to say in what

way it does so, we might be tolerably certain that Mr. Bain's work bears

the stamp of the inchoate state of Psychology.

We think, however, that it will not be difficult to find in what respects

its organization is provisional; and at the same time to show what must be

the nature of a more complete organization. We propose here to attempt

this: illustrating our positions from his recently-issued second volume.

* * * * *

Is it possible to make a true classification without the aid of analysis?

or must there not be an analytical basis to every true classification? Can

the real relations of things be determined by the obvious characteristics

of the things? or does it not commonly happen that certain hidden

characteristics, on which the obvious ones depend, are the truly

significant ones? This is the preliminary question which a glance at Mr.

Bain's scheme of the emotions suggests.

Though not avowedly, yet by implication, Mr. Bain assumes that a right

conception of the nature, the order, and the relations of the emotions, may

be arrived at by contemplating their conspicuous objective and subjective

characters, as displayed in the adult. After pointing out that we lack

those means of classification which serve in the case of the sensations, he

says--

"In these circumstances we must turn our attention to _the manner

of diffusion_ of the different passions and emotions, in order to

obtain a basis of classification analogous to the arrangement of the

sensations. If what we have already advanced on that subject be at

all well founded, this is the genuine turning point of the method to

be chosen, for the same mode of diffusion will always be accompanied

by the same mental experience, and each of the two aspects would

identify, and would be evidence of, the other. There is, therefore,

nothing so thoroughly characteristic of any state of feeling as the

nature of the diffusive wave that embodies it, or the various organs

specially roused into action by it, together with the manner of the

action. The only drawback is our comparative ignorance, and our

inability to discern the precise character of the diffusive currents

in every case; a radical imperfection in the science of mind as

constituted at present.

"Our own consciousness, formerly reckoned the only medium of

knowledge to the mental philosopher, must therefore be still referred

to as a principal means of discriminating the varieties of human

feeling. We have the power of noting agreement and difference among

our conscious states, and on this we can raise a structure of

classification. We recognise such generalities as pleasure, pain,

love, anger, through the property of mental or intellectual

discrimination that accompanies in our mind the fact of an emotion. A

certain degree of precision is attainable by this mode of mental

comparison and analysis; the farther we can carry such precision the

better; but that is no reason why it should stand alone to the

neglect of the corporeal embodiments through which one mind reveals

itself to others. The companionship of inward feeling with bodily

manifestation is a fact of the human constitution, and deserves to be

studied as such; and it would be difficult to find a place more

appropriate than a treatise on the mind for setting forth the

conjunctions and sequences traceable in this department of nature. I

shall make no scruple in conjoining with the description of the

mental phenomena the physical appearances, in so far as I am able to

ascertain them.

"There is still one other quarter to be referred to in settling a

complete arrangement of the emotions, namely, the varieties of human

conduct, and the machinery created in subservience to our common

susceptibilities. For example, the vast superstructure of fine art

has its foundations in human feeling, and in rendering an account of

this we are led to recognise the interesting group of artistic or

aesthetic emotions. The same outward reference to conduct and

creations brings to light the so-called moral sense in man, whose

foundations in the mental system have accordingly to be examined.

"Combining together these various indications, or sources of

discrimination,--outward objects, diffusive mode or expression,

inward consciousness, resulting conduct and institutions--I adopt the

following arrangement of the families or natural orders of emotion."

Here, then, are confessedly adopted, as bases of classification, the most

manifest characters of the emotions; as discerned subjectively, and

objectively. The mode of diffusion of an emotion is one of its outside

aspects; the institutions it generates form another of its outside aspects;

and though the peculiarities of the emotion as a state of consciousness,

seem to express its intrinsic and ultimate nature, yet such peculiarities

as are perceptible by simple introspection, must also be classed as

superficial peculiarities. It is a familiar fact that various intellectual

states of consciousness turn out, when analyzed, to have natures widely

unlike those which at first appear; and we believe the like will prove true

of emotional states of consciousness. Just as our concept of space, which

is apt to be thought a simple, undecomposable concept, is yet resolvable

into experiences quite different from that state of consciousness which we

call space; so, probably, the sentiment of affection or reverence is

compounded of elements that are severally distinct from the whole which

they make up. And much as a classification of our ideas which dealt with

the idea of space as though it were ultimate, would be a classification of

ideas by their externals; so, a classification of our emotions, which,

regarding them as simple, describes their aspects in ordinary

consciousness, is a classification of emotions by their externals.

Thus, then, Mr. Bain's grouping is throughout determined by the most

manifest attributes--those objectively displayed in the natural language of

the emotions, and in the social phenomena that result from them, and those

subjectively displayed in the aspects the emotions assume in an analytical

consciousness. And the question is--Can they be correctly grouped after

this method?

We think not; and had Mr. Bain carried farther an idea with which he has

set out, he would probably have seen that they cannot. As already said, he

avowedly adopts "the natural-history-method:" not only referring to it in

his preface, but in his first chapter giving examples of botanical and

zoological classifications, as illustrating the mode in which he proposes

to deal with the emotions. This we conceive to be a philosophical

conception; and we have only to regret that Mr. Bain has overlooked some of

its most important implications. For in what has essentially consisted the

progress of natural-history-classification? In the abandonment of grouping

by external, conspicuous characters; and in the making of certain internal,

but all-essential characters, the bases of groups. Whales are not now

ranged along with fish, because in their general forms and habits of life

they resemble fish; but they are ranged with mammals, because the type of

their organization, as ascertained by dissection, corresponds with that of

the mammals. No longer considered as sea-weeds in virtue of their forms and

modes of growth, zoophytes are now shown, by examination of their economy,

to belong to the animal kingdom.

It is found, then, that the discovery of real relationships involves

analysis. It has turned out that the earlier classifications, guided by

general resemblances, though containing much truth, and though very useful

provisionally, were yet in many cases radically wrong; and that the true

affinities of organisms, and the true homologies of their parts, are to be

made out only by examining their hidden structures. Another fact of great

significance in the history of classification is also to be noted. Very

frequently the kinship of an organism cannot be made out even by exhaustive

analysis, if that analysis is confined to the adult structure. In many

cases it is needful to examine the structure in its earlier stages; and

even in its embryonic stage. So difficult was it, for instance, to

determine the true position of the Cirrhipedia among animals, by examining

mature individuals only, that Cuvier erroneously classed them with

Mollusca, even after dissecting them; and not until their early forms were

discovered, were they clearly proved to belong to the Crustacea. So

important, indeed, is the study of development as a means to

classification, that the first zoologists now hold it to be the only

absolute criterion.

Here, then, in the advance of natural-history-classification, are two

fundamental facts, which should be borne in mind when classifying the

emotions. If, as Mr. Bain rightly assumes, the emotions are to be grouped

after the natural-history-method; then it should be the

natural-history-method in its complete form, and not in its rude form. Mr.

Bain will doubtless agree in the position, that a correct account of the

emotions in their natures and relations, must correspond with a correct

account of the nervous system--must form another side of the same ultimate

facts. Structure and function must necessarily harmonize. Structures which

have with each other certain ultimate connexions, must have functions that

have answering connexions. Structures that have arisen in certain ways,

must have functions that have arisen in parallel ways. And hence if

analysis and development are needful for the right interpretation of

structures, they must be needful for the right interpretation of functions.

Just as a scientific description of the digestive organs, must include not

only their obvious forms and connexions, but their microscopic characters,

and also the ways in which they severally result by differentiation from

the primitive mucous membrane; so must a scientific account of the nervous

system, include its general arrangements, its minute structure, and its

mode of evolution; and so must a scientific account of nervous actions,

include the answering three elements. Alike in classing separate organisms,

and in classing the parts of the same organism, the complete

natural-history-method involves ultimate analysis, aided by development;

and Mr. Bain, in not basing his classification of the emotions on

characters reached through these aids, has fallen short of the conception

with which he set out.

"But," it will perhaps be asked, "how are the emotions to be analyzed, and

their modes of evolution to be ascertained? Different animals, and

different organs of the same animal, may readily be compared in their

internal and microscopic structures, as also in their developments; but

functions, and especially such functions as the emotions, do not admit of

like comparisons."

It must be admitted that the application of these methods is here by no

means so easy. Though we can note differences and similarities between the

internal formations of two animals; it is difficult to contrast the mental

states of two animals. Though the true morphological relations of organs

may be made out by the observations of embryos; yet, where such organs are

inactive before birth, we cannot completely trace the history of their

actions. Obviously, too, the pursuance of inquiries of the kind indicated,

raises questions which science is not yet prepared to answer; as, for

instance--Whether all nervous functions, in common with all other

functions, arise by gradual differentiations, as their organs do? Whether

the emotions are, therefore, to be regarded as divergent modes of action,

that have become unlike by successive modifications? Whether, as two organs

which originally budded out of the same membrane, have not only become

different as they developed, but have also severally become compound

internally, though externally simple: so two emotions, simple and near akin

in their roots, may not only have grown unlike, but may also have grown

involved in their natures, though seeming homogeneous to consciousness. And

here, indeed, in the inability of existing science to answer these

questions which underlie a true psychological classification, we see how

purely provisional any present classification is likely to be.

Nevertheless, even now, classification may be aided by development and

ultimate analysis to a considerable extent; and the defect in Mr. Bain's

work is, that he has not systematically availed himself of them as far as

possible. Thus we may, in the first place, study the evolution of the

emotions up through the various grades of the animal kingdom: observing

which of them are earliest and exist with the lowest organization and

intelligence; in what order the others accompany higher endowments; and how

they are severally related to the conditions of life. In the second place,

we may note the emotional differences between the lower and the higher

human races--may regard as earlier and simpler those feelings which are

common to both, and as later and more compound those which are

characteristic of the most civilized. In the third place, we may observe

the order in which the emotions unfold during the progress from infancy to

maturity. And lastly, comparing these three kinds of emotional development,

displayed in the ascending grades of the animal kingdom, in the advance of

the civilized races, and in individual history, we may see in what respects

they harmonize, and what are the implied general truths.

Having gathered together and generalized these several classes of facts,

analysis of the emotions would be made easier. Setting out with the

unquestionable assumption, that every new form of emotion making its

appearance in the individual or the race, is a modification of some

pre-existing emotion, or a compounding of several pre-existing emotions; we

should be greatly aided by knowing what always are the pre-existing

emotions. When, for example, we find that very few if any of the lower

animals show any love of accumulation, and that this feeling is absent in

infancy--when we see that an infant in arms exhibits anger, fear, wonder,

while yet it manifests no desire of permanent possession, and that a brute

which has no acquisitive emotion can nevertheless feel attachment,

jealousy, love of approbation; we may suspect that the feeling which

property satisfies, is compounded out of simpler and deeper feelings. We

may conclude that as, when a dog hides a bone, there must exist in him a

prospective gratification of hunger; so there must similarly at first, in

all cases where anything is secured or taken possession of, exist an ideal

excitement of the feeling which that thing will gratify. We may further

conclude that when the intelligence is such that a variety of objects come

to be utilized for different purposes--when, as among savages, divers wants

are satisfied through the articles appropriated for weapons, shelter,

clothing, ornament; the act of appropriating comes to be one constantly

involving agreeable associations, and one which is therefore pleasurable,

irrespective of the end subserved. And when, as in civilized life, the

property acquired is of a kind not conducing to one order of

gratifications, but is capable of administering to all gratifications, the

pleasure of acquiring property grows more distinct from each of the various

pleasures subserved--is more completely differentiated into a separate

emotion.

This illustration, roughly as it is sketched, will show what we mean by the

use of comparative psychology in aid of classification. Ascertaining by

induction the actual order of evolution of the emotions, we are led to

suspect this to be their order of successive dependence; and are so led to

recognize their order of ascending complexity; and by consequence their

true groupings.

Thus, in the very process of arranging the emotions into grades, beginning

with those involved in the lowest forms of conscious activity and end with

those peculiar to the adult civilized man, the way is opened for that

ultimate analysis which alone can lead us to the true science of the

matter. For when we find both that there exist in a man feelings which do

not exist in a child, and that the European is characterized by some

sentiments which are wholly or in a great part absent from the savage--when

we see that, besides the new emotions that arise spontaneously as the

individual becomes completely organized, there are new emotions making

their appearance in the more advanced divisions of our race; we are led to

ask--How are new emotions generated? The lowest savages have not even the

ideas of justice or mercy: they have neither words for them nor can they be

made to conceive them; and the manifestation of them by Europeans they

ascribe to fear or cunning. There are aesthetic emotions common among

ourselves, that are scarcely in any degree experienced by some inferior

races; as, for instance, those produced by music. To which instances may be

added the less marked but more numerous contrasts that exist between

civilized races in the degrees of their several emotions. And if it is

manifest, both that all the emotions are capable of being permanently

modified in the course of successive generations, and that what must be

classed as new emotions may be brought into existence; then it follows that

nothing like a true conception of the emotions is to be obtained, until we

understand how they are evolved.

Comparative psychology, while it raises this inquiry, prepares the way for

answering it. When observing the differences between races, we can scarcely

fail to observe also how these differences correspond with differences in

their conditions of existence, and therefore in their daily experiences.

Note the contrast between the circumstances and between the emotional

natures of savage and civilized. Among the lowest races of men, love of

property stimulates to the obtainment only of such things as satisfy

immediate desires or desires of the immediate future. Improvidence is the

rule: there is little effort to meet remote contingencies. But the growth

of established societies, having gradually given security of possession,

there has been an increasing tendency to provide for coming years: there

has been a constant exercise of the feeling which is satisfied by a

provision for the future; and there has been a growth of this feeling so

great that it now prompts accumulation to an extent beyond what is needful.

Note, again, that under the discipline of social life--under a comparative

abstinence from aggressive actions, and a performance of those

mutually-serviceable actions implied by the division of labour--there has

been a development of those gentle emotions of which inferior races exhibit

but the rudiments. Savages delight in giving pain rather than pleasure--are

almost devoid of sympathy. While among ourselves philanthropy organizes

itself in laws, establishes numerous institutions, and dictates countless

private benefactions.

From which and other like facts, does it not seem an unavoidable inference

that new emotions are developed by new experiences--new habits of life? All

are familiar with the truth, that in the individual, each feeling may be

strengthened by performing those actions which it prompts; and to say that

the feeling is _strengthened_, is to say that it is in part _made_ by these

actions. We know further, that not unfrequently, individuals, by

persistence in special courses of conduct, acquire special likings for such

courses disagreeable as these may be to others; and these whims, or morbid

tastes, imply incipient emotions corresponding to these special activities.

We know that emotional characteristics, in common with all others, are

hereditary; and the differences between civilized nations descended from

the same stock, show us the cumulative results of small modifications

hereditarily transmitted. And when we see that between savage and civilized

races, which diverged from each other in the remote past, and have for a

hundred generations followed modes of life becoming ever more unlike, there

exist still greater emotional contrasts; may we not infer that the more or

less distinct emotions which characterize civilized races, are the

organized results of certain daily-repeated combinations of mental states

which social life involves? Must we not say that habits not only modify

emotions in the individual, and not only beget tendencies to like habits

and accompanying emotions in descendants, but that when the conditions of

the race make the habits persistent, this progressive modification may go

on to the extent of producing emotions so far distinct as to seem new? And

if so, we may suspect that such new emotions, and by implication all

emotions analytically considered, consist of aggregated and consolidated

groups of those simpler feelings which habitually occur together in

experience: that they result from combined experiences, and are constituted

of them.

When, in the circumstances of any race, some one kind of action or set of

actions, sensation or set of sensations, is usually followed, or

accompanied by, various other sets of actions or sensations, and so entails

a large mass of pleasurable or painful states of consciousness; these, by

frequent repetition, become so connected together that the initial action

or sensation brings the ideas of all the rest crowding into consciousness:

producing, in a degree, the pleasures or pains that have before been felt

in reality. And when this relation, besides being frequently repeated in

the individual, occurs in successive generations, all the many nervous

actions involved tend to grow organically connected. They become

incipiently reflex; and on the occurrence of the appropriate stimulus, the

whole nervous apparatus which in past generations was brought into activity

by this stimulus, becomes nascently excited. Even while yet there have been

no individual experiences, a vague feeling of pleasure or pain is produced;

constituting what we may call the body of the emotion. And when the

experiences of past generations come to be repeated in the individual, the

emotion gains both strength and definiteness; and is accompanied by the

appropriate specific ideas.

This view of the matter, which we believe the established truths of

Physiology and Psychology unite in indicating, and which is the view that

generalizes the phenomena of habit, of national characteristics, of

civilization in its moral aspects, at the same time that it gives us a

conception of emotion in its origin and ultimate nature, may be illustrated

from the mental modifications undergone by animals.

It is well-known that on newly-discovered lands not inhabited by man, birds

are so devoid of fear as to allow themselves to be knocked over with

sticks; but that in the course of generations, they acquire such a dread of

man as to fly on his approach; and that this dread is manifested by young

as well as old. Now unless this change be ascribed to the killing-off of

the least fearful, and the preservation and multiplication of the more

fearful, which, considering the comparatively small number killed by man,

is an inadequate cause; it must be ascribed to accumulated experiences; and

each experience must be held to have a share in producing it. We must

conclude that in each bird that escapes with injuries inflicted by man, or

is alarmed by the outcries of other members of the flock (gregarious

creatures of any intelligence being necessarily more or less sympathetic),

there is established an association of ideas between the human aspect and

the pains, direct and indirect, suffered from human agency. And we must

further conclude, that the state of consciousness which impels the bird to

take flight, is at first nothing more than an ideal reproduction of those

painful impressions which before followed man's approach; that such ideal

reproduction becomes more vivid and more massive as the painful

experiences, direct or sympathetic, increase; and that thus the emotion in

its incipient state, is nothing else than an aggregation of the revived

pains before experienced.

As, in the course of generations, the young birds of this race begin to

display a fear of man before yet they have been injured by him; it is an

unavoidable inference that the nervous system of the race has been

organically modified by these experiences: we have no choice but to

conclude that when a young bird is thus led to fly, it is because the

impression produced on its senses by the approaching man, entails, through

an incipiently-reflex action, a partial excitement of all those nerves

which in its ancestors had been excited under the like conditions; that

this partial excitement has its accompanying painful consciousness; and

that the vague painful consciousness thus arising, constitutes emotion

proper--_emotion undecomposable into specific experiences, and therefore

seemingly homogeneous_.

If such be the explanation of the fact in this case, then it is in all

cases. If emotion is so generated here, then it is so generated throughout.

We must perforce conclude that the emotional modifications displayed by

different nations, and those higher emotions by which civilized are

distinguished from savage, are to be accounted for on the same principle.

And concluding this, we are led strongly to suspect that the emotions in

general have severally thus originated.

Perhaps we have now made sufficiently clear what we mean by the study of

the emotions through analysis and development. We have aimed to justify the

positions that, without analysis aided by development, there cannot be a

true natural history of the emotions; and that a natural history of the

emotions based on external characters, can be but provisional. We think

that Mr. Bain, in confining himself to an account of the emotions as they

exist in the adult civilized man, has neglected those classes of facts out

of which the science of the matter must chiefly be built. It is true that

he has treated of habits as modifying emotions in the individual; but he

has not recognized the fact, that where conditions render habits persistent

in successive generations, such modifications are cumulative: he has not

hinted that the modifications produced by habit are emotions in the making.

It is true, also, that he occasionally refers to the characteristics of

children; but he does not systematically trace the changes through which

childhood passes into manhood, as throwing light on the order and genesis

of the emotions. It is further true that he here and there refers to

national traits in illustration of his subject; but these stand as isolated

facts, having no general significance: there is no hint of any relation

between them and the national circumstances; while all those many moral

contrasts between lower and higher races which throw great light on

classification, are passed over. And once more, it is true that many

passages of his work, and sometimes, indeed, whole sections of it, are

analytical; but his analyses are incidental--they do not underlie his

entire scheme, but are here and there added to it. In brief, he has written

a Descriptive Psychology, which does not appeal to Comparative Psychology

and Analytical Psychology for its leading ideas. And in doing this, he has

omitted much that should be included in a natural history of the mind;

while to that part of the subject with which he has dealt, he has given a

necessarily-imperfect organization.

* * * * *

Even leaving out of view the absence of those methods and criteria on which

we have been insisting, it appears to us that meritorious as is Mr. Bain's

book in its details, it is defective in some of its leading ideas. The

first paragraphs of his first chapter, quite startled us by the strangeness

of their definitions--a strangeness which can scarcely be ascribed to

laxity of expression. The paragraphs run thus:--

"Mind is comprised under three heads--Emotion, Volition, and

Intellect.

"EMOTION is the name here used to comprehend all that is understood

by feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, passions,

sentiments, affections. Consciousness, and conscious states also for

the most part denote modes of emotion, although there is such a thing

as the Intellectual consciousness.

"VOLITION, on the other hand, indicates the great fact that our

Pleasures and Pains, which are not the whole of our emotions, prompt

us to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living

framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate

the last. To withdraw from a scalding heat and cling to a gentle

warmth, are exercises of volition."

The last of these definitions, which we may most conveniently take first,

seems to us very faulty. We cannot but feel astonished that Mr. Bain,

familiar as he is with the phenomena of reflex action, should have so

expressed himself as to include a great part of them along with the

phenomena of volition. He seems to be ignoring the discriminations of

modern science, and returning to the vague conceptions of the past--nay

more, he is comprehending under volition what even the popular speech would

hardly bring under it. If you were to blame any one for snatching his foot

from the scalding water into which he had inadvertently put it, he would

tell you that he could not help it; and his reply would be indorsed by the

general experience, that the withdrawal of a limb from contact with

something extremely hot, is quite involuntary--that it takes place not only

without volition, but in defiance of an effort of will to maintain the

contact. How, then, can that be instanced as an example of volition, which

occurs even when volition is antagonistic? We are quite aware that it is

impossible to draw any absolute line of demarcation between automatic

actions and actions which are not automatic. Doubtless we may pass

gradually from the purely reflex, through the consensual, to the voluntary.

Taking the case Mr. Bain cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such

moderate degree that the withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may

advance by infinitesimal steps to a heat which compels involuntary

withdrawal; and that there is a stage at which the voluntary and

involuntary actions are mixed. But the difficulty of absolute

discrimination is no reason for neglecting the broad general contrast; any

more than it is for confounding light with darkness. If we are to include

as examples of volition, all cases in which pleasures and pains "stimulate

the active machinery of the living framework to perform such operations as

procure the first and abate the last," then we must consider sneezing and

coughing, as examples of volition; and Mr. Bain surely cannot mean this.

Indeed, we must confess ourselves at a loss. On the one hand if he does not

mean it, his expression is lax to a degree that surprises us in so careful

a writer. On the other hand, if he does mean it, we cannot understand his

point of view.

A parallel criticism applies to his definition of Emotion. Here, too, he

has departed from the ordinary acceptation of the word; and, as we think,

in the wrong direction. Whatever may be the interpretation that is

justified by its derivation, the word Emotion has come generally to mean

that kind of feeling which is not a direct result of any action on the

organism; but is either an indirect result of such action, or arises quite

apart from such action. It is used to indicate those sentient states which

are independently generated in consciousness; as distinguished from those

generated in our corporeal framework, and known as sensations. Now this

distinction, tacitly made in common speech, is one which Psychology cannot

well reject; but one which it must adopt, and to which it must give

scientific precision. Mr. Bain, however, appears to ignore any such

distinction. Under the term "emotion," he includes not only passions,

sentiments, affections, but all "feelings, states of feeling, pleasures,

pains,"--that is, all sensations. This does not appear to be a mere lapse

of expression; for when, in the opening sentence, he asserts that "mind is

comprised under the three heads--Emotion, Volition, and Intellect," he of

necessity implies that sensation is included under one of these heads; and

as it cannot be included under Volition or Intellect, it must be classed

with Emotion: as it clearly is in the next sentence.

We cannot but think this is a retrograde step. Though distinctions which

have been established in popular thought and language, are not unfrequently

merged in the higher generalizations of science (as, for instance, when

crabs and worms are grouped together in the sub-kingdom _Annulosa_;) yet

science very generally recognizes the validity of these distinctions, as

real though not fundamental. And so in the present case. Such community as

analysis discloses between sensation and emotion, must not shut out the

broad contrast that exists between them. If there needs a wider word, as

there does, to signify any sentient state whatever; then we may fitly adopt

for this purpose the word currently so used, namely, "Feeling." And

considering as Feelings all that great division of mental states which we

do not class as Cognitions, may then separate this great division into the

two orders, Sensations and Emotions.

* * * * *

And here we may, before concluding, briefly indicate the leading outlines

of a classification which reduces this distinction to a scientific form,

and developes it somewhat further--a classification which, while suggested

by certain fundamental traits reached without a very lengthened inquiry, is

yet, we believe, in harmony with that disclosed by detailed analysis.

Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple homogeneous mental state,

forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of

subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great

classes--COGNITIONS and FEELINGS.

COGNITIONS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied with the

_relations_ that subsist among our feelings, are divisible into four great

sub-classes.

_Presentative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied in

localizing a sensation impressed on the organism--occupied, that is, with

the relation between this presented mental state and those other presented

mental states which make up our consciousness of the part affected: as when

we cut ourselves.

_Presentative-representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness

is occupied with the relation between a sensation or group of sensations

and the representations of those various other sensations that accompany it

in experience. This is what we commonly call perception--an act in which,

along with certain impressions presented to consciousness, there arise in

consciousness the ideas of certain other impressions ordinarily connected

with the presented ones: as when its visible form and colour, lead us to

mentally endow an orange with all its other attributes.

_Representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied

with the relations among ideas or represented sensations: as in all acts of

recollection.

_Re-representative cognitions_; or those in which the occupation of

consciousness is not by representation of special relations, that have

before been presented to consciousness; but those in which such represented

special relations are thought of merely as comprehended in a general

relation--those in which the concrete relations once experienced, in so far

as they become objects of consciousness at all, are incidentally

represented, along with the abstract relation which formulates them. The

ideas resulting from this abstraction, do not themselves represent actual

experiences; but are symbols which stand for groups of such actual

experiences--represent aggregates of representations. And thus they may be

called re-representative cognitions. It is clear that the process of

re-representation is carried to higher stages, as the thought becomes more

abstract.

FEELINGS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied, not with the

relations subsisting between our sentient states, but with the sentient

states themselves, are divisible into four parallel sub-classes.

_Presentative feelings_, ordinarily called sensations, are those mental

states in which, instead of regarding a corporeal impression as of this or

that kind, or as located here or there, we contemplate it in itself as

pleasure or pain: as when eating.

_Presentative-representative feelings_, embracing a great part of what we

commonly call emotions, are those in which a sensation, or group of

sensations or group of sensations and ideas, arouses a vast aggregation of

represented sensations; partly of individual experience, but chiefly deeper

than individual experience, and, consequently, indefinite. The emotion of

terror may serve as an example. Along with certain impressions made on the

eyes or ears, or both, are recalled in consciousness many of the pains to

which such impressions have before been the antecedents; and when the

relation between such impressions and such pains has been habitual in the

race, the definite ideas of such pains which individual experience has

given, are accompanied by the indefinite pains that result from inherited

experience--vague feelings which we may call organic representations. In an

infant, crying at a strange sight or sound while yet in the nurse's arms,

we see these organic representations called into existence in the shape of

dim discomfort, to which individual experience has yet given no specific

outlines.

_Representative feelings_, comprehending the ideas of the feelings above

classed, when they are called up apart from the appropriate external

excitements. As instances of these may be named the feelings with which the

descriptive poet writes, and which are aroused in the minds of his readers.

_Re-representative feelings_, under which head are included those more

complex sentient states that are less the direct results of external

excitements than the indirect or reflex results of them. The love of

property is a feeling of this kind. It is awakened not by the presence of

any special object, but by ownable objects at large; and it is not from the

mere presence of such object, but from a certain ideal relation to them,

that it arises. As before shown (p. 311) it consists, not of the

represented advantages of possessing this or that, but of the represented

advantages of possession in general--is not made up of certain concrete

representations, but of the abstracts of many concrete representations; and

so is re-representative. The higher sentiments, as that of justice, are

still more completely of this nature. Here the sentient state is compounded

out of sentient states that are themselves wholly, or almost wholly,

re-representative: it involves representations of those lower emotions

which are produced by the possession of property, by freedom of action,

etc.; and thus is re-representative in a higher degree.

This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further

expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed analysis

aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression through the

grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind, or through the

stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the advance, alike in

cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the presentative to the more

and more remotely representative. It is undeniable that intelligence

ascends from those simple perceptions in which consciousness is occupied in

localizing and classifying sensations, to perceptions more and more

compound, to simple reasoning, to reasoning more and more complex and

abstract--more and more remote from sensation. And in the evolution of

feelings, there is a parallel series of steps. Simple sensations;

sensations combined together; sensations combined with represented

sensations; represented sensations organized into groups, in which their

separate characters are very much merged; representations of these

representative groups, in which the original components have become still

more vague. In both cases, the progress has necessarily been from the

simple and concrete to the complex and abstract: and as with the

cognitions, so with the feelings, this must be the basis of classification.

The space here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might have

filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more important.

Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its defects, let

it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We repeat that, as a

natural history of the mind, we believe it to be the best yet produced. It

is a most valuable collection of carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we

cannot better express our sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those

who hereafter give to this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific

organization, Mr. Bain's book will be indispensable.

VIII. ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY.

That proclivity to generalization which is possessed in greater or less

degree by all minds, and without which, indeed, intelligence cannot exist,

has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be reached; and

yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the tendency to

predicate of every other case, that which has been found in the observed

cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this indispensable

tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited experience,

propositions which they wrongly assume to be universal or absolute. In one

sense, however, this can scarcely be regarded as an evil; for without

premature generalizations the true generalization would never be arrived

at. If we waited till all the facts were accumulated before trying to

formulate them, the vast unorganized mass would be unmanageable. Only by

provisional grouping can they be brought into such order as to be dealt

with; and this provisional grouping is but another name for premature

generalization.

How uniformly men follow this course, and how needful the errors are as

steps to truth, is well illustrated in the history of Astronomy. The

heavenly bodies move round the Earth in circles, said the earliest

observers: led partly by the appearances, and partly by their experiences

of central motions in terrestrial objects, with which, as all circular,

they classed the celestial motions from lack of any alternative conception.

Without this provisional belief, wrong as it was, there could not have been

that comparison of positions which showed that the motions are not

representable by circles; and which led to the hypothesis of epicycles and

eccentrics. Only by the aid of this hypothesis, equally untrue, but capable

of accounting more nearly for the appearances, and so of inducing more

accurate observations--only thus did it become possible for Copernicus to

show that the heliocentric theory is more feasible than the geocentric

theory; or for Kepler to show that the planets move round the sun in

ellipses. Yet again, without the aid of this approximate truth discovered

by Kepler, Newton could not have established that general law from which it

follows, that the motion of a heavenly body round its centre of gravity is

not necessarily in an ellipse, but may be in any conic section. And lastly,

it was only after the law of gravitation had been verified, that it became

possible to determine the actual courses of planets, satellites, and

comets; and to prove that, in consequence of perturbations, their orbits

always deviate, more or less, from regular curves. Thus, there followed one

another five provisional theories of the Solar System, before the sixth and

absolutely true theory was reached. In which five provisional theories,

each for a time held as final, we may trace both the tendency men have to

leap from scanty data to wide generalizations, that are either untrue or

but partially true; and the necessity there is for these transitional

generalizations as steps to the final one.

In the progress of geological speculation the same laws of thought are

clearly displayed. We have dogmas that were more than half false, passing

current for a time as universal truths. We have evidence collected in proof

of these dogmas; by and by a colligation of facts in antagonism with them;

and eventually a consequent modification. In conformity with this somewhat

improved hypothesis, we have a better classification of facts; a greater

power of arranging and interpreting the new facts now rapidly gathered

together; and further resulting corrections of hypothesis. Being, as we are

at present, in the midst of this process, it is not possible to give an

adequate account of the development of geological science as thus regarded:

the earlier stages are alone known to us. Not only, however, is it

interesting to observe how the more advanced views now received respecting

the Earth's history, have been evolved out of the crude views which

preceded them; but we shall find it extremely instructive to observe this.

We shall see how greatly the old ideas still sway, both the general mind,

and the minds of geologists themselves. We shall see how the kind of

evidence that has in part abolished these old ideas, is still daily

accumulating, and threatens to make other like revolutions. In brief, we

shall see whereabouts we are in the elaboration of a true theory of the

Earth; and, seeing our whereabouts, shall be the better able to judge,

among various conflicting opinions, which best conform to the ascertained

direction of geological discovery.

It is alike needless and impracticable here to enumerate the many

speculations which were in earlier ages propounded by acute

men--speculations some of which contained portions of truth. Falling in

unfit times, these speculations did not germinate; and hence do not concern

us. We have nothing to do with ideas, however good, out of which no science

grew; but only with those which gave origin to the system of Geology that

now exists. We therefore begin with Werner.

Taking for data the appearances of the Earth's crust in a narrow district

of Germany; observing the constant order of superposition of strata, and

their respective physical characters; Werner drew the inference that strata

of like characters succeeded each other in like order over the entire

surface of the Earth. And seeing, from the laminated structure of many

formations and the organic remains contained in others, that they were

sedimentary; he further inferred that these universal strata had been in

succession precipitated from a chaotic menstruum which once covered our

planet. Thus, on a very incomplete acquaintance with a thousandth part of

the Earth's crust, he based a sweeping generalization applying to the whole

of it. This Neptunist hypothesis, mark, borne out though it seemed to be by

the most conspicuous surrounding facts, was quite untenable if analyzed.

That a universal chaotic menstruum should deposit, one after another,

numerous sharply-defined strata, differing from each other in composition,

is incomprehensible. That the strata so deposited should contain the

remains of plants and animals, which could not have lived under the

supposed conditions, is still more incomprehensible. Physically absurd,

however, as was this hypothesis, it recognized, though under a distorted

form, one of the great agencies of geological change--that of water. It

served also to express the fact that the formations of the Earth's crust

stand in some kind of order. Further, it did a little towards supplying a

nomenclature, without which much progress was impossible. Lastly, it

furnished a standard with which successions of strata in various regions

could be compared, the differences noted, and the actual sections

tabulated. It was the first provisional generalization; and was useful, if

not indispensable, as a step to truer ones.

Following this rude conception, which ascribed geological phenomena to one

agency, acting during one primeval epoch, there came a greatly-improved

conception, which ascribed them to two agencies, acting alternately during

successive epochs. Hutton, perceiving that sedimentary deposits were still

being formed at the bottom of the sea from the detritus carried down by

rivers; perceiving, further, that the strata of which the visible surface

chiefly consists, bore marks of having been similarly formed out of

pre-existing land; and inferring that these strata could have become land

only by upheaval after their deposit; concluded that throughout an

indefinite past, there had been periodic convulsions, by which continents

were raised, with intervening eras of repose, during which such continents

were worn down and transformed into new marine strata, fated to be in their

turns elevated above the surface of the ocean. And finding that igneous

action, to which sundry earlier geologists had ascribed basaltic rocks, was

in countless places a source of disturbance, he taught that from it

resulted these periodic convulsions. In this theory we see:--first, that

the previously-recognized agency of water was conceived to act, not as by

Werner, after a manner of which we have no experience, but after a manner

daily displayed to us; and second, that the igneous agency, before

considered only as a cause of special formations, was recognized as a

universal agency, but assumed to act in an unproved way. Werner's sole

process, Hutton developed from the catastrophic and inexplicable into the

uniform and explicable; while that antagonistic second process, of which he

first adequately estimated the importance, was regarded by him as a

catastrophic one, and was not assimilated to known processes--not

explained. We have here to note, however, that the facts collected and

provisionally arranged in conformity with Werner's theory, served, after a

time, to establish Hutton's more rational theory--in so far, at least, as

aqueous formations are concerned; while the doctrine of periodic

subterranean convulsions, crudely as it was conceived by Hutton, was a

temporary generalization needful as a step towards the theory of igneous

action.

Since Hutton's time, the development of geological thought has gone still

further in the same direction. These early sweeping doctrines have received

additional qualifications. It has been discovered that more numerous and

more heterogeneous agencies have been at work, than was at first believed.

The igneous hypothesis has been rationalized, as the aqueous one had

previously been: the gratuitous assumption of vast elevations suddenly

occurring after long intervals of quiescence, has grown into the consistent

theory, that islands and continents are the accumulated results of

successive small upheavals, like those experienced in ordinary earthquakes.

To speak more specifically, we find, in the first place, that instead of

assuming the denudation produced by rain and rivers to be the sole means of

wearing down lands and producing their irregularities of surface,

geologists now see that denudation is only a part-cause of such

irregularities; and further, that the new strata deposited at the bottom of

the sea, are not the products of river-sediment solely, but are in part due

to the action of waves and tidal currents on the coasts. In the second

place, we find that Hutton's conception of upheaval by subterranean forces,

has not only been modified by assimilating these subterranean forces to

ordinary earthquake-forces; but modern inquiries have shown that, besides

elevations of surface, subsidences are thus produced; that local upheavals,

as well as the general upheavals, which raise continents, come within the

same category; and that all these changes are probably consequent on the

progressive collapse of the Earth's crust upon its cooling and contracting

nucleus--the only adequate cause. In the third place, we find that beyond

these two great antagonist agencies, modern Geology recognises sundry minor

ones: as those of glaciers and icebergs; those of coral-polypes; those of

_Protozoa_ having siliceous or calcareous shells--each of which agencies,

insignificant as it seems, is found capable of slowly working terrestrial

changes of considerable magnitude. Thus, then, the recent progress of

Geology has been a still further departure from primitive conceptions.

Instead of one catastrophic cause, once in universal action, as supposed by

Werner--instead of one general continuous cause, antagonized at long

intervals by a catastrophic cause, as taught by Hutton; we now recognize

several causes, all more or less general and continuous. We no longer

resort to hypothetical agencies to explain the phenomena displayed by the

Earth's crust; but we are day by day more clearly perceiving that these

phenomena have arisen from forces like those now at work, which have acted

in all varieties of combination, through immeasurable periods of time.

* * * * *

Having thus briefly traced the evolution of geologic science, and noted its

present form, let us go on to observe the way in which it is still swayed

by the crude hypotheses it set out with; so that even now, old doctrines

that are abandoned as untenable in theory, continue in practice to mould

the ideas of geologists, and to foster sundry beliefs that are logically

indefensible. We shall see, both how those simple sweeping conceptions with

which the science commenced, are those which every student is apt at first

to seize hold of, and how several influences conspire to maintain the twist

thus resulting--how the original nomenclature of periods and formations

necessarily keeps alive the original implications; and how the need for

arranging new data in some order, naturally results in their being thrust

into the old classification, unless their incongruity with it is very

glaring. A few facts will best prepare the way for criticism.

Up to 1839 it was inferred, from their crystalline character, that the

metamorphic rocks of Anglesea are more ancient than any rocks of the

adjacent main land; but it has since been shown that they are of the same

age with the slates and grits of Carnarvon and Merioneth. Again, slaty

cleavage having been first found only in the lowest rocks, was taken as an

indication of the highest antiquity: whence resulted serious mistakes; for

this mineral characteristic is now known to occur in the Carboniferous

system. Once more, certain red conglomerates and grits on the north-west

coast of Scotland, long supposed from their lithological aspect to belong

to the Old Red Sandstone, are now identified with the Lower Silurians.

These are a few instances of the small trust to be placed in mineral

qualities, as evidence of the ages or relative positions of strata. From

the recently-published third edition of _Siluria_, may be culled numerous

facts of like implication. Sir R. Murchison considers it ascertained, that

the siliceous Stiper stones of Shropshire are the equivalents of the

Tremadock slates of North Wales. Judged by their fossils, Bala slate and

limestone are of the same age as the Caradoc sandstone, lying forty miles

off. In Radnorshire, the formation classed as upper Llandovery rock, is

described at different spots, as "sandstone or conglomerate," "impure

limestone," "hard coarse grits," "siliceous grit"--a considerable variation

for so small an area as that of a county. Certain sandy beds on the left

bank of the Towy, which Sir R. Murchison had, in his _Silurian System_,

classed as Caradoc sandstone (evidently from their mineral characters), he

now finds, from their fossils, belong to the Llandeilo formation.

Nevertheless, inferences from mineral characters are still habitually drawn

and received. Though _Siluria_, in common with other geological works,

supplies numerous proofs that rocks of the same age are often of

widely-different composition a few miles off, while rocks of widely

different ages are often of similar composition; and though Sir. R.

Murchison shows us, as in the case just cited, that he has himself in past

times been misled by trusting to lithological evidence; yet his reasoning,

all through _Siluria_, shows that he still thinks it natural to expect

formations of the same age to be chemically similar, even in remote

regions. For example, in treating of the Silurian rocks of South Scotland,

he says:--"When traversing the tract between Dumfries and Moffat in 1850,

it occurred to me that the dull reddish or purple sandstone and schist to

the north of the former town, which so resembled the bottom rocks of the

Longmynd, Llanberis, and St. David's, would prove to be of the same age;"

and further on he again insists upon the fact that these strata "are

absolutely of the same composition as the bottom rocks of the Silurian

region."

On this unity of mineral character it is, that this Scottish formation is

concluded to be contemporaneous with the lowest formations in Wales; for

the scanty palaeontological evidence suffices neither for proof nor

disproof. Now, had there been a continuity of like strata in like order

between Wales and Scotland, there might have been little to criticise in

this conclusion. But since Sir R. Murchison himself admits, that in

Westmoreland and Cumberland, some members of the system "assume a

lithological aspect different from what they maintain in the Silurian and

Welsh region," there seems no reason to expect mineralogical continuity in

Scotland. Obviously therefore, the assumption that these Scottish

formations are of the same age with the Longmynd of Shropshire, implies the

latent belief that certain mineral characters indicate certain eras.

Far more striking instances, however, of the influence of this latent

belief remain to be given. Not in such comparatively near districts as the

Scottish lowlands only, does Sir R. Murchison expect a repetition of the

Longmynd strata; but in the Rhenish provinces, certain "quartzose

flagstones and grits, like those of the Longmynd," are seemingly concluded

to be of contemporaneous origin, because of their likeness. "Quartzites in

roofing-slates with a greenish tinge that reminded us of the lower slates

of Cumberland and Westmoreland," are evidently suspected to be of the same

age. In Russia, he remarks that the carboniferous limestones "are overlaid

along the western edge of the Ural chain by sandstones and grits, which

occupy much the same place in the general series as the millstone grit of

England;" and in calling this group, as he does, the "representative of the

millstone grit," Sir R. Murchison clearly shows that he thinks likeness of

mineral composition some evidence of equivalence in time, even at that

great distance. Nay, on the flanks of the Andes and in the United States,

such similarities are looked for, and considered as significant of certain

ages. Not that Sir R. Murchison contends theoretically for this relation

between lithological character and date. For on the page from which we have

just quoted (_Siluria_, p. 387), he says, that "whilst the soft Lower

Silurian clays and sands of St. Petersburg have their equivalents in the

hard schists and quartz rocks with gold veins in the heart of the Ural

mountains, the equally soft red and green Devonian marls of the Valdai

Hills are represented on the western flank of that chain, by hard,

contorted, and fractured limestones." But these, and other such admissions,

seem to go for little. Whilst himself asserting that the Potsdam-sandstone

of North America, the Lingula-flags of England, and the alum-slates of

Scandinavia are of the same period--while fully aware that among the

Silurian formations of Wales, there are oolitic strata like those of

secondary age; yet is his reasoning more or less coloured by the

assumption, that formations of like qualities probably belong to the same

era. Is it not manifest, then, that the exploded hypothesis of Werner

continues to influence geological speculation?

"But," it will perhaps be said, "though individual strata are not

continuous over large areas, yet systems of strata are. Though within a few

miles the same bed gradually passes from clay into sand, or thins out and

disappears, yet the group of strata to which it belongs does not do so; but

maintains in remote regions the same relations to other groups."

This is the generally-current belief. On this assumption the received

geological classifications appear to be framed. The Silurian system, the

Devonian system, the Carboniferous system, etc., are set down in our books

as groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other in a given

order; and are severally everywhere of the same age. Though it may not be

asserted that these successive systems are universal; yet it seems to be

tacitly assumed that they are so. In North and South America, in Asia, in

Australia, sets of strata are assimilated to one or other of these groups;

and their possession of certain mineral characters and a certain order of

superposition are among the reasons assigned for so assimilating them.

Though, probably, no competent geologist would contend that the European

classification of strata is applicable to the globe as a whole; yet most,

if not all geologists, write as though it were so. Among readers of works

on Geology, nine out of ten carry away the impression that the divisions,

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, are of absolute and uniform application;

that these great divisions are separable into subdivisions, each of which

is definitely distinguishable from the rest, and is everywhere recognizable

by its characters as such or such; and that in all parts of the Earth,

these minor systems severally began and ended at the same time. When they

meet with the term "carboniferous era," they take for granted that it was

an era universally carboniferous--that it was, what Hugh Miller indeed

actually describes it, an era when the Earth bore a vegetation far more

luxuriant than it has since done; and were they in any of our colonies to

meet with a coal-bed, they would conclude that, as a matter of course, it

was of the same age as the English coal-beds.

Now this belief that geologic "systems" are universal, is quite as

untenable as the other. It is just as absurd when considered _a priori_;

and it is equally inconsistent with the facts. Though some series of strata

classed together as Oolite, may range over a wider district than any one

stratum of the series; yet we have but to ask what were the circumstances

of its deposit, to see that the Oolitic series, like one of its individual

strata, must be of local origin; and that there is not likely to be

anywhere else, a series that exactly corresponds, either in its characters

or in its commencement and termination. For the formation of such a series

implies an area of subsidence, in which its component beds were thrown

down. Every area of subsidence is necessarily limited; and to suppose that

there exist elsewhere groups of beds completely answering to those known as

Oolite, is to suppose that, in contemporaneous areas of subsidence, like

processes were going on. There is no reason to suppose this; but every

reason to suppose the reverse. That in contemporaneous areas of subsidence

throughout the globe, the conditions would cause the formation of Oolite,

or anything like it, is an assumption which no modern geologist would

openly make: he would say that the equivalent series of beds found

elsewhere, would very likely be of dissimilar mineral character.

Moreover, in these contemporaneous areas of subsidence, the phenomena going

on would not only be more or less different in kind; but in no two cases

would they be likely to agree in their commencements and terminations. The

probabilities are greatly against separate portions of the Earth's surface

beginning to subside at the same time, and ceasing to subside at the same

time--a coincidence which alone could produce equivalent groups of strata.

Subsidences in different places begin and end with utter irregularity; and

hence the groups of strata thrown down in them can but rarely correspond.

Measured against each other in time, their limits will disagree. They will

refuse to fit into any scheme of definite divisions. On turning to the

evidence, we find that it daily tends more and more to justify these _a

priori_ positions. Take, as an example, the Old Red Sandstone system. In

the north of England this is represented by a single stratum of

conglomerate. In Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Shropshire, it expands

into a series of strata from eight to ten thousand feet thick, made up of

conglomerates, red, green, and white sandstones, red, green, and spotted

marls, and concretionary limestones. To the south-west, as between

Caermarthen and Pembroke, these Old Red Sandstone strata exhibit

considerable lithological changes; and there is an absence of fossil

fishes. On the other side of the Bristol Channel, they display further

changes in mineral characters and remains. While in South Devon and

Cornwall, the equivalent strata, consisting chiefly of slates, schists, and

limestones, are so wholly different, that they were for a long time classed

as Silurian. When we thus see that in certain directions the whole group of

deposits thins out, and that its mineral characters as well as its fossils

change within moderate distances; does it not become clear that the whole

group of deposits was a local one? And when we find, in other regions,

formations analogous to these Old Red Sandstone or Devonian formations; is

it certain--is it even probable--that they severally began and ended at the

same time with them? Should it not require overwhelming evidence to make us

believe as much?

Yet so strongly is geological speculation swayed by the tendency to regard

the phenomena as general instead of local, that even those most on their

guard against it seem unable to escape its influence. At page 158 of his

_Principles of Geology_, Sir Charles Lyell says:--

"A group of red marl and red sandstone, containing salt and gypsum,

being interposed in England between the Lias and the Coal, all other

red marls and sandstones, associated some of them with salt, and

others with gypsum, and occurring not only in different parts of

Europe, but in North America, Peru, India, the salt deserts of Asia,

those of Africa--in a word, in every quarter of the globe, were

referred to one and the same period.... It was in vain to urge as an

objection the improbability of the hypothesis which implies that all

the moving waters on the globe were once simultaneously charged with

sediment of a red colour. But the rashness of pretending to identify,

in age, all the red sandstones and marls in question, has at length

been sufficiently exposed, by the discovery that, even in Europe,

they belong decidedly to many different epochs."

Nevertheless, while in this and numerous passages of like implication, Sir

C. Lyell protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not

completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis that

all over the Earth the same continuous strata lie upon each other in

regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as though

geologic "systems" do thus succeed each other. A reader of his _Manual_

would certainly suppose him to believe, that the Primary epoch ended, and

the Secondary epoch commenced, all over the world at the same time--that

these terms really correspond to distinct universal eras in Nature. When he

assumes, as he does, that the division between Cambrian and Lower Silurian

in America, answers chronologically to the division between Cambrian and

Lower Silurian in Wales--when he takes for granted that the partings of

Lower from Middle Silurian, and of Middle Silurian from Upper, in the one

region, are of the same dates as the like partings in the other region;

does it not seem that he believes geologic "systems" to be universal, in

the sense that their separations were in all places contemporaneous? Though

he would, doubtless, disown this as an article of faith, is not his

thinking unconsciously influenced by it? Must we not say that though the

onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is traceable, under a

transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its antagonists?

* * * * *

Let us now consider another leading geological doctrine, introduced to us

by the cases just mentioned. We mean the doctrine that strata of the same

age contain like fossils; and that, therefore, the age and relative

position of any stratum may be known by its fossils. While the theory that

strata of like mineral characters were everywhere deposited simultaneously,

has been ostensibly abandoned, there has been accepted the theory that in

each geologic epoch similar plants and animals existed everywhere; and

that, therefore, the epoch to which any formation belongs may be known by

the organic remains contained in the formation. Though, perhaps, no leading

geologist would openly commit himself to an unqualified assertion of this

theory, yet it is tacitly assumed in current geological reasoning.

This theory, however, is scarcely more tenable than the other. It cannot be

concluded with any certainty, that formations in which similar organic

remains are found, were of contemporaneous origin; nor can it be safely

concluded that strata containing different organic remains are of different

ages. To most readers these will be startling propositions; but they are

fully admitted by the highest authorities. Sir Charles Lyell confesses that

the test of organic remains must be used "under very much the same

restrictions as the test of mineral composition." Sir Henry de la Beche,

who variously illustrates this truth, gives, as one instance, the great

incongruity there must be between the fossils of our carboniferous rocks

and those of the marine strata deposited at the same period. But though, in

the abstract, the danger of basing positive conclusions on evidence derived

from fossils, is clearly recognized; yet, in the concrete, this danger is

generally disregarded. The established conclusions respecting the ages of

strata, take but little note of it; and by some geologists it seems

altogether ignored. Throughout his _Siluria_, Sir R. Murchison habitually

assumes that the same, or kindred, species, lived in all parts of the Earth

at the same time. In Russia, in Bohemia, in the United States, in South

America, strata are classed as belonging to this or that part of the

Silurian system, because of the similar fossils contained in them--are

concluded to be everywhere contemporaneous if they enclose a proportion of

identical or allied forms. In Russia the relative position of a stratum is

inferred from the fact that, along with some Wenlock forms, it yields the

_Pentamerus oblongus_. Certain crustaceans called Eurypteri, being

characteristic of the Upper Ludlow rock, it is remarked that "large

Eurypteri occur in a so-called black grey-wacke slate in Westmoreland, in

Oneida County, New York, which will probably be found to be on the parallel

of the Upper Ludlow rock:" in which word "probably," we see both how

dominant is this belief of universal distribution of similar creatures at

the same period, and how apt this belief is to make its own proof, by

raising the expectation that the ages are identical when the forms are

alike. Besides thus interpreting the formations of Russia, England, and

America, Sir R. Murchison thus interprets those of the antipodes. Fossils

from Victoria Colony, he agrees with the Government-surveyor in classing as

of Lower Silurian or Llandovery age: that is, he takes for granted that

when certain crustaceans and mollusks were living in Wales, certain similar

crustaceans and mollusks were living in Australia.

Yet the improbability of this assumption may be readily shown from Sir R.

Murchison's own facts. If, as he points out, the crustacean fossils of the

uppermost Silurian rocks in Lanarkshire are, "with one doubtful exception,"

"all distinct from any of the forms on the same horizon in England;" how

can it be fairly presumed that the forms existing on the other side of the

Earth during the Silurian period, were nearly allied to those existing

here? Not only, indeed, do Sir R. Murchison's conclusions tacitly assume

this doctrine of universal distribution, but he distinctly enunciates it.

"The mere presence of a graptolite," he says, "will at once decide that the

enclosing rock is Silurian;" and he says this, notwithstanding repeated

warnings against such generalizations. During the progress of Geology, it

has over and over again happened that a particular fossil, long considered

characteristic of a particular formation, has been afterwards discovered in

other formations. Until some twelve years ago, Goniatites had not been

found lower than the Devonian rocks; but now, in Bohemia, they have been

found in rocks classed as Silurian. Quite recently, the Orthoceras,

previously supposed to be a type exclusively Palaeozoic, has been detected

along with mesozoic Ammonites and Belemnites. Yet hosts of such experiences

fail to extinguish the assumption, that the age of a stratum may be

determined by the occurrence in it of a single fossil form.

Nay, this assumption survives evidence of even a still more destructive

kind. Referring to the Silurian system in Western Ireland, Sir R. Murchison

says, "in the beds near Maam, Professor Nicol and myself collected remains,

some of which would be considered Lower, and others Upper, Silurian;" and

he then names sundry fossils which, in England, belong to the summit of the

Ludlow rocks, or highest Silurian strata; "some, which elsewhere are known

only in rocks of Llandovery age," that is, of middle Silurian age; and

some, only before known in Lower Silurian strata, not far above the most

ancient fossiliferous beds. Now what do these facts prove? Clearly, they

prove that species which in Wales are separated by strata more than twenty

thousand feet deep, and therefore seem to belong to periods far more remote

from each other, were really coexistent. They prove that the mollusks and

crinoids held characteristic of early Silurian strata, and supposed to have

become extinct long before the mollusks and crinoids of the later Silurian

strata came into existence, were really flourishing at the same time with

these last; and that these last possibly date back to as early a period as

the first. They prove that not only the mineral characters of sedimentary

formations, but also the collections of organic forms they contain, depend,

to a great extent, on local circumstances. They prove that the fossils met

with in any series of strata, cannot be taken as representing anything like

the whole Flora and Fauna of the period they belong to. In brief, they

throw great doubt upon numerous geological generalizations.

Notwithstanding facts like these, and notwithstanding his avowed opinion

that the test of organic remains must be used "under very much the same

restrictions as the test of mineral composition," Sir Charles Lyell, too,

bases positive conclusions on this test: even where the community of

fossils is slight and the distance great. Having decided that in various

places in Europe, middle Eocene strata are distinguished by nummulites; he

infers, without any other assigned evidence, that wherever nummulites are

found--in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, in Persia, Scinde, Cutch, Eastern

Bengal, and the frontiers of China--the containing formation is middle

Eocene. And from this inference he draws the following important

corollary:--

"When we have once arrived at the conviction that the nummulitic

formation occupies a middle place in the Eocene series, we are struck

with the comparatively modern date to which some of the greatest

revolutions in the physical geography of Europe, Asia, and northern

Africa must be referred. All the mountain chains, such as the Alps,

Pyrenees, Carpathians, and Himalayas, into the composition of whose

central and loftiest parts the nummulitic strata enter bodily, could

have had no existence till after the middle Eocene

period."--_Manual_, p. 232.

A still more marked case follows on the next page. Because a certain bed at

Claiborne in Alabama, which contains "_four hundred_ species of marine

shells," includes among them the _Cardita planicosta_, "and _some others_

identical with European species, or very nearly allied to them," Sir C.

Lyell says it is "highly probable the Claiborne beds agree in age with the

central or Bracklesham group of England." When we find contemporaneity

supposed on the strength of a community no greater than that which

sometimes exists between strata of widely-different ages in the same

country, it seems very much as though the above-quoted caution had been

forgotten. It appears to be assumed for the occasion, that species which

had a wide range in space had a narrow range in time; which is the reverse

of the fact. The tendency to systematize overrides the evidence, and

thrusts Nature into a formula too rigid to fit her endless variety.

"But," it may be urged, "surely, when in different places the order of

superposition, the mineral characters, and the fossils, agree, it may be

safely concluded that the formations thus corresponding are equivalents in

time. If, for example, the United States display the same succession of

Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous systems, lithologically similar, and

characterized by like fossils, it is a fair inference that these groups of

strata were severally deposited in America at the same periods that they

were deposited here."

On this position, which seems a strong one, we have, in the first place, to

remark, that the evidence of correspondence is always more or less

suspicious. We have already adverted to the several "idols"--if we may use

Bacon's metaphor--to which geologists unconsciously sacrifice, when

interpreting the structures of unexplored regions. Carrying with them the

classification of strata existing in Europe, and assuming that groups of

strata in other parts of the world must answer to some of the groups of

strata known here, they are necessarily prone to assert parallelism on

insufficient evidence. They scarcely entertain the previous question,

whether the formations they are examining have or have not any European

equivalents; but the question is--with which of the European series shall

they be classed?--with which do they most agree?--from which do they differ

least? And this being the mode of enquiry, there is apt to result great

laxity of interpretation. How lax the interpretation really is, may be

readily shown. When strata are discontinuous, as between Europe and

America, no evidence can be derived from the order of superposition, apart

from mineral characters and organic remains; for, unless strata can be

continuously traced, mineral characters and organic remains are the only

means of classing them as such or such.

As to the test of mineral characters, we have seen that it is almost

worthless; and no modern geologist would dare to say it should be relied

on. If the Old Red Sandstone series in mid-England, differs wholly in

lithological aspect from the equivalent series in South Devon, it is clear

that similarities of texture and composition can have no weight in

assimilating a system of strata in another quarter of the globe to some

European system. The test of fossils, therefore, is the only one that

remains; and with how little strictness this test is applied, one case will

show. Of forty-six species of British Devonian corals, only six occur in

America; and this, notwithstanding the wide range which the Anthozoa are

known to have. Similarly of the Mollusca and Crinoidea, it appears that,

while there are sundry genera found in America that are found here, there

are scarcely any of the same species. And Sir Charles Lyell admits that

"the difficulty of deciding on the exact parallelism of the New York

subdivisions, as above enumerated, with the members of the European

Devonian, is very great, so few are the species in common." Yet it is on

the strength of community of fossils, that the whole Devonian series of the

United States is assumed to be contemporaneous with the whole Devonian

series of England. And it is partly on the ground that the Devonian of the

United States corresponds in time with our Devonian, that Sir Charles Lyell

concludes the superjacent coal-measures of the two countries to be of the

same age. Is it not, then, as we said, that the evidence in these cases is

very suspicious?

Should it be replied, as it may fairly be, that this correspondence from

which the synchronism of distant formations is inferred, is not a

correspondence between particular species or particular genera, but between

the general characters of the contained assemblages of fossils--between the

_facies_ of the two Faunas; the rejoinder is, that though such

correspondence is a stronger evidence of synchronism it is still an

insufficient one. To infer synchronism from such correspondence, involves

the postulate that throughout each geologic era there has habitually

existed a recognizable similarity between the groups of organic forms

inhabiting all the different parts of the Earth; and that the causes which

have in one part of the Earth changed the organic forms into those which

characterize the next era, have simultaneously acted in all other parts of

the Earth, in such ways as to produce parallel changes of their organic

forms. Now this is not only a large assumption to make; but it is an

assumption contrary to probability. The probability is, that the causes

which have changed Faunas have been local rather than universal; that hence

while the Faunas of some regions have been rapidly changing, those of

others have been almost quiescent; and that when such others have been

changed, it has been, not in such ways as to maintain parallelism, but in

such ways as to produce divergence.

Even supposing, however, that districts some hundreds of miles apart,

furnished groups of strata that completely agreed in their order of

superposition, their mineral characters, and their fossils, we should still

have inadequate proof of contemporaneity. For there are conditions, very

likely to occur, under which such groups might differ widely in age. If

there be a continent of which the strata crop out on the surface obliquely

to the line of coast--running, say, west-northwest, while the coast runs

east and west--it is clear that each group of strata will crop out on the

beach at a particular part of the coast; that further west the next group

of strata will crop out on the beach; and so continuously. As the

localization of marine plants and animals is in a considerable degree

determined by the nature of the rocks and their detritus, it follows that

each part of this coast will have its more or less distinct Flora and

Fauna. What now must result from the action of the waves in the course of a

geologic epoch? As the sea makes slow inroads on the land, the place at

which each group of strata crops out on the beach will gradually move

towards the west: its distinctive fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and

sea-weeds, migrating with it. Further, the detritus of each of these groups

of strata will, as the point of outcrop moves westwards, be deposited over

the detritus of the group in advance of it. And the consequence of these

actions, carried on for one of those enormous periods required for geologic

changes, will be that, corresponding to each eastern stratum, there will

arise a stratum far to the west which, though occupying the same position

relatively to other beds, formed of like materials, and containing like

fossils, will yet be perhaps a million years later in date.

* * * * *

But the illegitimacy, or at any rate the great doubtfulness, of many

current geological inferences, is best seen when we contemplate terrestrial

changes now going on: and ask how far such inferences are countenanced by

them. If we carry out rigorously the modern method of interpreting

geological phenomena, which Sir Charles Lyell has done so much to

establish--that of referring them to causes like those at present in

action--we cannot fail to see how improbable are sundry of the received

conclusions.

Along each line of shore that is being worn away by the waves, there are

being formed mud, sand, and pebbles. This detritus, spread over the

neighbouring sea-bottom, has, in each locality, a more or less special

character; determined by the nature of the strata destroyed. In the English

Channel it is not the same as in the Irish Channel; on the east coast of

Ireland it is not the same as on the west coast; and so throughout. At the

mouth of each great river, there is being deposited sediment differing more

or less from that of other rivers in colour and quality; forming strata

that are here red, there yellow, and elsewhere brown, grey, or dirty white.

Besides which various formations, going on in deltas and along shores,

there are some much wider and still more contrasted formations. At the

bottom of the AEgaean Sea, there is accumulating a bed of Pteropod shells,

which will eventually, no doubt, become a calcareous rock. For some

hundreds of thousands of square miles, the ocean-bed between Great Britain

and North America, is being covered with a stratum of chalk; and over large

areas in the Pacific, there are going on deposits of coralline limestone.

Thus, throughout the Earth, there are at this moment being produced an

immense number of strata differing from each other in lithological

characters. Name at random any one part of the sea-bottom, and ask whether

the deposit there taking place is like the deposit taking place at some

distant part of the sea-bottom, and the almost-certainly correct answer

will be--No. The chances are not in favour of similarity, but very greatly

against it.

In the order of superposition of strata there is occurring a like variety.

Each region of the Earth's surface has its special history of elevations,

subsidences, periods of rest; and this history in no case fits

chronologically with the history of any other portion. River deltas are now

being thrown down on formations of quite different ages. While here there

has been deposited a series of beds many hundreds of feet thick, there has

elsewhere been deposited but a single bed of fine mud. While one region of

the Earth's crust, continuing for a vast epoch above the surface of the

ocean, bears record of no changes save those resulting from denudation;

another region of the Earth's crust gives proof of various changes of

level, with their several resulting masses of stratified detritus. If

anything is to be judged from current processes, we must infer, not only

that everywhere the succession of sedimentary formations differs more or

less from the succession elsewhere; but also that in each place, there

exist groups of strata to which many other places have no equivalents.