hypothesis, and the character of the intellects with whom it originated,
or by whom it has been since adopted! In the first place, it existed
as a wild dream ere Geology had any being as a science. It was an
antecedent, not a consequent,—a starting assumption, not a result. No
one will contend that Maillet was a geologist. Geology has no place among
the sciences in the age in which he lived and even no name. And yet
there is a translation of his _Telliamed_ now lying before me, bearing
date 1750, in which I find very nearly the same account given of the
origin of animals and plants as that in the “Vestiges,” and in which
the sea is described as that great and fruitful womb of nature in which
organization and life first began. Lamarck, at the time when Maillet
wrote, was a boy in his sixth year. He became, comparatively early in
life, a skilful botanist and conchologist; but not until turned of fifty
did he set himself to study general zoology; and his greater work on
the invertebrate animals, on which his fame as a naturalist chiefly
rests, did not _begin_ to appear—for it was published serially—until
the year 1815. But his development hypothesis, identical with that
of the “Vestiges,” was given to the world long before,—in 1802; at
a time when it had not been ascertained that there existed placoids
during the Silurian period, or ganoids during the Old Red Sandstone
period, or enaliosaurs during the Oolitic period; and when, though
Smith had constructed his “Tabular View of the British Strata,” his map
had not yet appeared, and there was little more known regarding the
laws of superposition among the stratified rocks than was to be found
in the writings of Werner. And if the presumption be strong, in the
circumstances, that Lamarck originated his development hypothesis ere
he became in any very great degree skilful as a zoologist, it is no
mere presumption, but a demonstrable truth, that he originated it ere
he became a geologist; for a geologist he never became. In common with
Maillet and Buffon, he held by Leibnitz’s theory of a universal ocean;
and such, as we have already seen, was his ignorance of fossils, that
he erected dermal fragments of the Russian _Asterolepis_ into a new
genus of Polyparia,—an error into which the merest tyro in palæontology
could not now fall. Such, in relation to these sciences, was the man
who perfected the dream of development. Nor has the most distinguished
of its continental assertors now living,—Professor Oken,—any higher
claim to be regarded as a disciple of the inductive school of Geology
than Lamarck. In the preface to the recently published translation of
his “Physio-Philosophy,” we find the following curious confession:—“I
wrote the first edition of 1810 _in a kind of inspiration_, and on that
account it was not so well arranged as a systematic work ought to be.
Now, though this may appear to have been amended in the second and third
edition, yet still it was not possible for me to completely attain the
object held in view. The book has therefore remained essentially the
same as regards its fundamental principles. It is only the empirical
arrangement into series of plants and animals that has been modified
from time to time, _in accordance with the scientific elevation of their
several departments, or just as discoveries and anatomical investigations
have increased, and rendered some other position of the objects a matter
of necessity_.” An interesting piece of evidence this; but certainly
rather simple as a confession. It will be found that while whatever gives
value to the “Physio-Philosophy” of the German Professor (a work which,
if divested of all the inspired bits, would be really a good one) was
acquired either before or since its first appearance in the ordinary way,
its development hypothesis came direct from the god. Further, as I have
already had occasion to state, Oken holds, like Lamarck and Maillet, by
the universal ocean of Leibnitz; he holds, also, that the globe is a vast
crystal, just a little flawed in the facets: and that the three granitic
components—quartz, feldspar, and mica—are simply the hail-drops of heavy
stone showers that shot athwart the original ocean, and accumulated into
rock at the bottom, as snow or hail shoots athwart the upper atmosphere,
and accumulates, in the form of ice, on the summits of high hills, or
in the arctic or antarctic regions. Such, in the present day, are the
geological notions of Oken! They were doubtless all promulgated in what
is modestly enough termed “a _kind_ of inspiration;” and there are few
now so ignorant of Geology as not to know that the _possessing_ agent in
the case—for _inspiration_ is not quite the proper word—must have been
at least of kin to that ingenious personage who volunteered of old to
be a lying spirit in the mouths of the four hundred prophets. And the
well-known fact, that the most popular contemporary expounder of Oken’s
hypothesis—the author of the “Vestiges”—has in every edition of his work
been correcting, modifying, or altogether withdrawing his statements
regarding both geological and zoological phenomena, and that his gradual
development as a geologist and zoologist, from the sufficiently low type
of acquirement to which his first edition bore witness, may be traced, in
consequence, with a distinctness and certainty which we in vain seek in
the cases of presumed development which he would so fain establish,—has
in its bearing exactly the same effect. His development hypothesis was
complete at a time when his geology and zoology were rudimental and
imperfect. Give me your facts, said the Frenchman, that I may accommodate
them to my theory. And no one can look at the progress of the Lamarckian
hypothesis, with reference to the dates when, and the men by whom, it was
promulgated, without recognizing in it one of perhaps the most striking
embodiments of the Frenchman’s principle which the world ever saw. It is
not the illiberal religionist that rejects and casts it off,—it is the
inductive philosopher. Science addresses its assertors in the language of
the possessed to the sons of Sceva the Jew;—“The astronomer I know, and
the geologist I know; but who are ye?”
One of the strangest passages in the “Sequel to the Vestiges,” is that
in which its author carries his appeal from the tribunal of science to
“another tribunal,” indicated but not named, before which “this new
philosophy” [remarkable chiefly for being neither philosophy nor new] “is
to be truly and righteously judged.” The principle is obvious, on which,
were his opponents mere theologians, wholly unable, though they saw
the mischievous character and tendency of his conclusions, to disprove
them scientifically, he might appeal from theology to science: “it is
with scientific truth,” he might urge, “not with moral consequences,
that I have aught to do.” But on what allowable principle, professing,
as he does, to found his theory on scientific fact, can he appeal from
science to the want of it? “After discussing,” he says, “the whole
arguments on both sides in so ample a manner, it may be hardly necessary
to advert to the objection arising from the mere fact, that nearly all
the scientific men are opposed to the theory of the ‘Vestiges.’ As this
objection, however, is likely to be of some avail with many minds, it
ought not to be entirely passed over. If I did not think there were
reasons, independent of judgment, for the scientific class coming so
generally to this conclusion, I might feel the more embarrassed in
presenting myself in direct opposition to so many men possessing talents
and information. As the case really stands, the ability of this class to
give at the present a true response upon such a subject appears extremely
challengeable. It is no discredit to them that they are, almost without
exception, engaged each in his own little department of science, and
able to give little or no attention to other parts of that vast field.
From year to year, and from age to age, we see them at work, adding, no
doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but
at the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive
views of nature Experiments in however narrow a walk, facts of whatever
minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies; all beyond
is regarded with suspicion and distrust. The consequence is, that
philosophy, as it exists amongst us, does nothing to raise its votaries
above the common ideas of their time. There can therefore be nothing
more conclusive against our hypothesis in the disfavor of the scientific
class, than in that of any other section of educated men.”
This is surely a very strange statement. Waiving altogether the _general_
fact, that great original discoverers in any department of knowledge are
never men of one science or one faculty, but possess, on the contrary,
breadth of mind and multiplicity of acquirement;—waiving, too, the
_particular_ fact, that the more distinguished original discoverers of
the present day rank among at once its most philosophic, most elegant,
and most extensively informed writers;—granting, for the argument’s sake,
that our scientific men _are_ men of narrow acquirement, and “exclusively
engaged, each in his own little department of science;”—it is surely
rational to hold, notwithstanding, that in at least these little
departments they have a better right to be heard than any other class of
persons whatever. We must surely not refuse to the man of science what we
at once grant to the common mechanic. A cotton-weaver or calico-printer
may be a very narrow man, “exclusively engaged in his own little
department;” and yet certain it is that, in a question of cotton-weaving
or calico-printing, his evidence is justly deemed more conclusive in
courts of law than that of any other man, however much his superior in
general breadth and intelligence. And had the author of the “Vestiges”
founded his hypothesis on certain facts pertaining to the arts of
cotton-weaving and calico-printing, the cotton-weaver and calico-printer
would have an indisputable right to be heard on the question of their
general correctness. Are we to regard the case as different because
it is on facts pertaining to science, not to cotton-weaving or
calico-printing, that he professes to found? His hypothesis, unless
supported by scientific evidence, is a mere dream,—a fiction as baseless
and wild as any in the “Fairy Tales” or the “Arabian Nights.” And, fully
sensible of the fact, he calls in as witnesses the physical sciences, and
professes to take down their evidence. He calls into court Astronomy,
Geology, Phytology, and Zoology. “Hold!” exclaims the astronomer, as the
examination goes on; “you are taking the evidence of my special science
most unfairly; I challenge a right of cross-examining the witness.”
“Hold!” cries the geologist; “you are putting my science to the question,
and extorting from it, in its agony, a whole series of fictions: I
claim the right of examining it fairly and softly, and getting from
it just the sober truth, and nothing more.” And the phytologist and
zoologist urge exactly similar claims. “No, gentlemen,” replies the
author of the “Vestiges,” “you are narrow men, confined each of you to
his own little department, and so I will not permit you to cross-examine
the witnesses.” “What!” rejoin the men of science, “not permit us to
examine our own witnesses!—refuse to us what you would at once concede
to the cotton-weaver or the calico-printer, were the question one of
cotton-weaving or of calico-printing! We are surely not much narrower
men than the man of cotton or the man of calico. It is but in our own
little departments that we ask to be heard.” “But you shall not be heard,
gentlemen,” says the author of the “Vestiges;” “at all events, I shall
not care one farthing for anything you say. For observe, gentlemen, my
hypothesis is nothing without the evidence of your sciences; and you all
unite, I see, in taking that evidence from me; and so I confidently raise
my appeal in this matter to people who know nothing about either you or
your sciences. It must be before another tribunal that the new philosophy
is to be truly and righteously judged.” Alas! what can this mean? or
where are we to seek for that tribunal of last resort to which this
ingenious man refers with such confidence the consideration of his case?
Can it mean, that he appeals from the only class of persons qualified to
judge of his facts, to a class ignorant of these, but disposed by habits
of previous scepticism to acquiesce in his conclusions, and take his
premises for granted;—that he appeals from astronomers and geologists to
low-minded materialists and shallow phrenologers,—from phytologists and
zoologists to mesmerists and phreno-mesmerists?
I remember being much struck, several years ago, by a remark dropped in
conversation by the late Rev. Mr. Stewart of Cromarty, one of the most
original-minded men I ever knew. “In reading in my Greek New Testament
this morning,” he said, “I was curiously impressed by a thought which,
simple as it may seem, never occurred to me before. The portion which
I perused was in the First Epistle of Peter; and as I passed from the
thinking of the passage to the language in which it is expressed,—‘This
Greek of the untaught Galilean fisherman,’—I said, ‘so admired by
scholars and critics for its unaffected dignity and force, was not
acquired, as that of Paul may have been, in the ordinary way, but formed
a portion of the Pentecostal gift! Here, then, immediately under my eye,
on these pages, are there embodied, not, as in many other parts of the
Scriptures, the mere _details_ of a miracle, but the direct _results_ of
a miracle. How strange! Had the old tables of stone been placed before
me, with what an awe-struck feeling would I have looked on the characters
traced upon them by God’s own finger! How is it that I have failed to
remember that, in the language of these Epistles, miraculously impressed
by the Divine power upon the mind, I possessed as significant and
suggestive a relic as that which the inscription miraculously impressed
by the Divine power upon the stone could possibly have furnished?” It
was a striking thought; and in the course of our walk, which led us over
richly fossiliferous beds of the Old Red Sandstone, to a deposit of the
Eathie Lias, largely charged with the characteristic remains of that
formation, I ventured to connect it with another. “In either case,” I
remarked, as we seated ourselves beside a sea-cliff, sculptured over with
the impressions of extinct plants and shells, “your relics, whether of
the Pentecostal Greek or of the characters inscribed on the old tables of
stone, could address themselves to but previously existing belief. The
sceptic would see in the Sinaitic characters, were they placed before
him, merely the work of an ordinary tool; and in the Greek of Peter and
John, a well-known language, acquired, he would hold, in the common way.
But what say you to the relics that stand out in such bold relief from
the rocks beside us, in _their_ character as the results of miracle? The
perished tribes and races which they represent all _began_ to exist.
There is no truth which science can more conclusively demonstrate than
that they had all a beginning. The infidel who, in this late age of
the world, would attempt falling back on the fiction of an ‘infinite
series,’ would be laughed to scorn. They all began to be. But how? No
true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;—it has been resigned
to sciolists and smatterers;—and there is but one other alternative.
They began to be, _through the miracle of creation_. From the evidence
furnished by these rocks we are shut down either to the belief in
_miracle_, or to the belief in something else infinitely harder of
reception, and as thoroughly unsupported by testimony as it is contrary
to experience. Hume is at length answered by the severe truths of the
stony science. He was not, according to Job, ‘in league with the stones
of the field,’ and they have risen in irresistible warfare against him in
the Creator’s behalf.”
FINAL CAUSES.—THEIR BEARING ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. CONCLUSION.
“Natural History has a principle on which to reason,” says Cuvier, “which
is peculiar to it, and which it employs advantageously on many occasions:
it is that of the _conditions of existence_, commonly termed _final
causes_.”
In Geology, which is Natural History extended over all ages,
this principle has a still wider scope,—embracing not merely the
characteristics and conditions of the beings which now exist, but of
all, so far as we can learn regarding them, which have ever existed,
and involving the consideration of not merely their peculiarities as
races placed before us without relation to time, but also of the history
of their rise, increase, decline, and extinction. In studying the
_biography_, if I may so express myself, of an individual animal, we
have to acquaint ourselves with the circumstances in which nature has
placed it,—its adaptation to these, both in structure and instinct,—the
points of resemblance which it presents to the individuals of other races
and families, and the laws which determine its terms of development,
vigorous existence, and decay. And all Natural History, when restricted
to the passing _now_ of the world’s annals, is simply a congeries of
biographies. It is when we extend our view into the geological field that
it passes from _biography_ into _history proper_, and that we have to
rise from the consideration of the birth and death of individuals, which,
in all mere biographies, form the great terminal events that constitute
beginning and end, to a survey of the birth and death of races, and the
elevation or degradation of dynasties and sub-kingdoms.
We learn from human history that nations are as certainly mortal as men.
They enjoy a greatly longer term of existence, but they die at last:
Rollin’s History of Ancient Nations is a history of the dead. And we
are taught by geological history, in like manner, that _species_ are as
mortal as individuals and nations, and that even genera and families
become extinct. There is no _man_ upon earth at the present moment whose
age greatly exceeds an hundred years;—there is no _nation_ now upon
earth (if we perhaps except the long-lived Chinese) that also flourished
three thousand years ago;—there is no _species_ now living upon earth
that dates beyond the times of the Tertiary deposits. All bear the stamp
of death,—individuals,—nations,—species; and we may scarce less safely
predicate, looking upon the past, that it is appointed for nations and
species to die, than that it “is appointed for _man_ once to die.” Even
our own species, _as now constituted_,—with instincts that conform to the
original injunction, “increase and multiply,” and that, in consequence,
“marry and are given in marriage,”—shall one day cease to exist: a fact
not less in accordance with beliefs inseparable from the faith of the
Christian, than with the widely-founded experience of the geologist. Now,
it is scarce possible for the human mind to become acquainted with the
fact, that at certain periods species began to exist and then, after the
lapse of untold ages, ceased to be, without inquiring whether, from the
“conditions of existence, commonly termed final causes,” we cannot deduce
a reason for their rise or decline, or why their term of being should
have been included rather in one certain period of time than another.
The same faculty which finds employment in tracing to their causes the
rise and fall of nations, and which it is the merit of the philosophic
historian judiciously to exercise, will to a certainty seek employment
in this department of history also; and that there will be an appetency
for such speculations in the public mind, we may infer from the success,
as a literary undertaking, of the “Vestiges of Creation,”—a work that
bears the same sort of relation, in this special field to sober inquiry,
founded on the true conditions of things, that the legends of the old
chroniclers bore to authentic history. The progressive state of geologic
science has hitherto militated against the formation of theory of the
soberer character. Its facts—still merely in the forming—are necessarily
imperfect in their classification, and limited in their amount; and
thus the essential data continues incomplete. Besides, the men best
acquainted with the basis of fact which already exists, have quite enough
to engage them in adding to it. But there are limits to the field of
palæontological discovery, in its relation to what may be termed the
chronology of organized existence, which, judging from the progress of
the science in the past, may be well nigh reached in favored localities,
such as the British islands, in about a quarter of a century from the
present time; and then, I doubt not, geological history, in legitimate
conformity with the laws of mind, and from the existence of the pregnant
principle peculiar, according to Cuvier, to that science of which Geology
is simply an extension, will assume a very extraordinary form. We cannot
yet aspire “to the height of this great argument:” our foundations are
in parts still unconsolidated and incomplete, and unfitted to sustain the
perfect superstructure which shall one day assuredly rise upon them; but
from the little which we can now see, “as if in a glass darkly,” enough
appears from which to
“Assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.”
The history of the four great monarchies of the world was typified, in
the prophetic dream of the ancient Babylonish king, by a colossal image,
“terrible in its form and brightness,” of which the “head was pure gold,”
the “breast and arms of silver,” the “belly and thighs of brass,” and the
legs and feet “of iron, and of iron mingled with clay.” The vision in
which it formed the central object was appropriately that of a puissant
monarch; and the image itself typified the merely human monarchies of the
earth. It would require a widely different figure to symbolize the great
monarchies of creation. And yet Revelation does furnish such a figure.
It is that which was witnessed by the captive prophet beside “the river
Chebar,” when “the heavens were opened, and he saw visions of God.” In
that chariot of Deity, glowing in fire and amber, with its complex wheels
“so high that they were dreadful,” set round about with eyes, there were
living creatures, of whose four faces three were brute and one human; and
high over all sat the Son of Man. It would almost seem as if, in this
sublime vision,—in which, with features distinct enough to impress the
imagination, there mingle the elements of an awful incomprehensibility,
and which even the genius of Raffaelle has failed adequately to
portray,—the history of all the past and of all the future had been
symbolized. In the order of Providence intimated in the geologic record,
the brute faces, as in the vision, outnumber the human;—the human
dynasty is one, and the dynasties of the inferior animals are three; and
yet who can doubt that they all equally compose parts of a well-ordered
and perfect whole, as the four faces formed but one cherubim; that
they have been moving onward to a definite goal, in the unity of one
grand harmonious design,—now “lifted up high” over the comprehension of
earth,—now let down to its humble level; and that the Creator of all has
been ever seated over them on the throne of his providence,—a “likeness
in the appearance of a man,”—embodying the perfection of his nature in
his workings, and determining the end from the beginning?
There is geologic evidence, as has been shown, that in the course of
creation the higher orders succeeded the lower. We have no good reason to
believe that the mollusc and crustacean preceded the fish, seeing that
discovery, in its slow course, has already traced the vertebrata in the
ichthyic form, down to deposits which only a few years ago were regarded
as representatives of the first beginnings of organized existence on our
planet, and that it has at the same time failed to add a lower system
to that in which their remains occur. But the fish seems most certainly
to have preceded the reptile and the bird; the reptile and the bird to
have preceded the mammiferous quadruped; and the mammiferous quadruped
to have preceded man,—rational, accountable man, whom God created in
his own image,—the much-loved Benjamin of the family,—last-born of all
creatures. It is of itself an extraordinary fact, without reference to
other considerations, that the order adopted by Cuvier, in his animal
kingdom, as that in which the four great classes of vertebrate animals,
when marshalled according to their rank and standing, naturally range
should be also that in which they occur in order of time. The brain
which bears an average proportion to the spinal cord of not more than
two to one, came first,—it is the brain of the fish; that which bears to
the spinal cord an average proportion of two and a half to one succeeded
it,—it is the brain of the reptile; then came the brain averaging as
three to one,—it is that of the bird; next in succession came the brain
that averages as four to one,—it is that of the mammal; and last of all
there appeared a brain that averages as _twenty-three_ to one,—reasoning,
calculating man had come upon the scene. All the facts of geological
science are hostile to the Lamarckian conclusion, that the lower brains
were developed into the higher. As if with the express intention of
preventing so gross a mis-reading of the record, we find, in at least two
classes of animals,—fishes and reptiles,—the higher races placed at the
beginning: the slope of the inclined plane is laid, if one may so speak,
in the reverse way, and, instead of rising towards the level of the
succeeding class, inclines downwards, with at least the effect, if not
the design, of making the break where they meet exceedingly well marked
and conspicuous. And yet the record does seem to speak of _development
and progression_;—not, however, in the province of organized existence,
but in that of insensate matter, subject to the purely chemical laws.
It is in the style and character of _the dwelling-place_ that gradual
improvement seems to have taken place;—not in the functions or the rank
of any class of its inhabitants; and it is with special reference to this
gradual improvement in our common mansion-house the earth, in its bearing
on the “conditions of existence,” that not a few of our reasonings
regarding the introduction and extinction of species and genera must
proceed.