conclusion even more surprising. "Hence," says he, "any one who observes
merely the print of a cloven hoof, may conclude that it has been left by a
ruminant animal, and regard the conclusion as equally certain with any
other in physics or in morals. Consequently this single footmark clearly
indicates to the observer the forms of the teeth, of all the leg bones,
thighs, shoulders, and of the trunk of the body of the animal which left
the mark. It is much surer than all the marks of Zadig.
"By thus employing the method of observation, where theory is no longer
able to direct our views, we procure astonishing, results. The smallest
fragment of bone, even the most apparently insignificant apophysis,
possesses a fixed and determinate character relative to the class, order,
genus, and species of the animal to which it belonged; insomuch that when
we find merely the extremity of a well-preserved bone, we are able, by a
careful examination, assisted by analogy and exact comparison, to
determine the species to which it once belonged, as certainly as if we had
the entire animal before us. Before venturing to put entire confidence in
this method of investigation, in regard to fossil bones, I have very
frequently tried it with portions of bones belonging to well-known
animals, and always with such complete success, that I now entertain no
doubts with regard to the results which it affords."
The remarkable correlation between the parts of existing animals having
been thus proved by the most rigid and satisfactory tests, we shall
inquire with interest for the result, when Cuvier applied the same
principles to the fossil animals. If the laws of anatomical structure were
the same when these extinct races lived as they now are, these principles
will apply equally well to the bones found in the rocks; and though often
only scattered fragments are brought to light, the anatomist will be able
to reconstruct the whole animal, and present him to our view. Cuvier was
the first who solved this problem. The quarries around Paris had furnished
a vast number of bones of strange animals, and these were thrown
promiscuously into the collections of that city. Well prepared by previous
study, this distinguished anatomist went among them with the inquiry, _Can
these bones live?_ The spirit of scientific prophecy was upon him, and, as
he uttered his inspirations, _there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and
the bones came together, bone to his bone. And the sinews and the flesh
came upon them, and the skin covered them._ "I found myself," says he, "as
if placed in a charnel-house, surrounded by mutilated fragments of many
hundred skeletons of more than twenty kinds of animals, piled confusedly
around me. The task assigned me was to restore them all to their original
position. At the voice of comparative anatomy, every bone and fragment of
a bone resumed its place. I cannot find words to express the pleasure I
experienced in seeing, as I discovered one character, how all the
consequences which I predicted from it were successively confirmed; the
feet were found in accordance with the characters announced by the teeth;
the teeth in harmony with those indicated beforehand by the feet; the
bones of the legs and thighs, and every connecting portion of the
extremities, were found set together precisely as I had arranged them,
before my conjectures were verified by the discovery of the parts entire;
in short, each species was, as it were, reconstructed from a single one of
its component elements."
It is hardly necessary to say that, since this first successful
experiment, the same principles have been more thoroughly investigated and
extended with the same success into every department of fossil organic
nature. The results which have crowned the labors of such men as Agassiz,
Ehrenberg, Kaup, Goldfuss, Bronn, Blainville, Brongniart, Deshayes, and
D'Orbigny, on the continent of Europe, and of Conybeare, Buckland,
Mantell, Lindley, and Hutton, and eminently of Owen, in Great Britain,
although sustained by the most rigid principles of science, are
nevertheless but little short of miraculous; and they demonstrate most
clearly the identity of anatomical laws, in all ages, among animals and
plants of every size and character, from the lofty lepidodendra and
sigillaria to the humblest moss or sea-weed, and from the gigantic
dinotherium, mastodon, megatherium, and iguanodon, to the infinitesimal
infusoria.
_In the sixth place, physiological laws have always been the same upon the
globe._
That death has reigned in all past ages over all animated tribes, as it
now reigns, so that in that war there has never been a discharge, I need
not attempt formally to prove. For the preserved and petrified relics of
all the former races, that now lie entombed in the rocks, furnish a silent
but impressive demonstration of the former triumph of that great
physiological law, which is stamped by the signet of Jehovah upon all
existing organic natures--_Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return._
Scarcely more necessary is it to attempt to show that the same system of
reproduction for filling the chasms which death occasions, and which is
now universal in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, has always existed.
Indeed, such a system is a necessary counterpart to a system of
dissolution. And we find the same phases to this reproductive system in
ancient and in modern periods. Organic remains clearly teach us that there
have always been viviparous as well as oviparous creatures, and
gemmiparous as well as fissiparous animals and plants. The second great
physiological law of existing nature has, then, always been the same.
The character of the nourishment by which animals and plants have been
sustained has never varied. The latter have ever been nourished by
inorganic, and the former by organic, matter. Some animals have ever fed
upon the flesh of other animals, as their petrified remains, enclosing the
masticated and half-digested fragments of other animals, testify. Other
tribes have fed only upon herbs or fruits; and some were omnivorous; just,
in fact, as we find the habits of existing animals.
No less certain are we that the processes of digestion and assimilation
have ever been unchanged. We find the same organs for these purposes as in
existing animals, viz., the mouth, the stomach, the intestines, and the
blood-vessels, as the coprolites and the cololites abundantly testify. We
infer, therefore, with great confidence, the existence of gastric juice
and bile for completing the transformation of the food into blood. Indeed,
the discovery by a lady (Miss Mary Anning, of England) of that singular
secretion from which the color called _India ink_ is prepared, with the
ink-bag of the sepia, or loligo, in a petrified state, shows that the
process of secretion existed in these ancient animals; and when we find
that in all respects their structure was like that of existing animals,
although some of the softer vessels have not been preserved, we cannot
doubt but the entire process of digestion, and the conversion of blood
into bone, nerve, and muscle, was precisely the same as it now is.
In the fact, also, that we find in fossil specimens organs of respiration,
such as lungs, gills, and trachea, we learn that the process of a
circulation of blood, and its purification by means of the oxygen of the
atmosphere, have never varied. Animal heat, too, dependent as it is
essentially upon this oxygenating process, was always derived from the
same source as at present.
The perfectly preserved minute vessels of vegetables enable us, by means
of the microscope, to identify them with the plants now alive; and they
prove, too, incontestably, that the nourishment of vegetables has always
been of the same kind, and has been converted into the various proximate
principles of plants by the same processes.
Again. We have evidence that these ancient animals possessed the same
senses as their congeneric races now on the globe. We have one good
example in which that most delicate organ, the eye, is most perfectly
preserved. It is well known that the visual organ of insects and of
crustaceans is composed of a multitude--often several hundreds or
thousands--of eyes, united into one, so as to serve the purpose of a
multiplying glass; each eye producing a separate image of the object
observed. Such an eye had the trilobite. Each contained at least four
hundred nearly spherical lenses on the surface of the cornea, united into
one organ; revealing to us the interesting fact, that the relations of
light to animal organization were the same in that remote era as they now
are.
But I need not multiply proof of the functional identity of organic nature
in all ages. It may, however, be inquired, how this identity, as well as
that of anatomical structure, is reconciled with the great anomalies, both
in size and form, which have confessedly prevailed among ancient animals.
Compare the plants and animals which now occupy the northern parts of the
globe with those which flourished there in the remote periods of
geological history, and can we believe them to be portions of one great
system of organic nature?
Compare, for instance, the thirty or forty species of ferns now growing to
the height of a few inches, or one or two feet, in Europe and this
country, with the more than two hundred species already dug out of the
coal mines, many of which were forty to forty-five feet in height; or the
diminutive ground pines, and equiseta, now scarcely noticed in our
forests, with the gigantic lepidodendron, sigillaria, calamites, and
equiseta, of the carboniferous period; and who will not be struck with the
great difference between them?
Or go to Germany, and imagine the bones of the dinotherium to start out of
the soil, and become clothed with flesh and instinct with life. You have
before you a quadruped eighteen feet in length, and of proportional
height, much larger than the elephant, and with curved tusks reaching two
or three feet below its lower jaw, while no other living animal would be
found there larger than the ox, or the horse--mere pygmies by the side of
such a monster, and evidently unfit to be his contemporaries.
Again. Let the megatherium be brought back to life on the pampas of South
America, and you have an animal twelve feet long and eight feet high, with
proportions perfectly colossal. Its fore feet were a yard long, its thigh
bone three times thicker than that of the elephant, its width across the
haunches five feet, its spinal marrow a foot in diameter, and its tail,
where it was inserted into the body, two feet in diameter. What a giant in
comparison with the sloth, the anteater, and the armadillo, to which it
was allied by anatomical structure!
Still more unequal in size, as compared with living batrachians, was the
labyrinthidon, once common in England and Germany, if, indeed, the tracks
on sandstone were made by that animal. It was, in fact, a frog as large as
an ox, and perhaps as large as an elephant. Think of such animals swarming
in our morasses at the present day!
But coming back from Europe, and turning our thoughts to the animals that
trod along the shores of the estuary that once washed the base of Mount
Holyoke, in New England, we shall encounter an animal, probably of the
batrachian family, of more gigantic proportions. It was the _Otozoum
Moodii_, a biped, with feet twenty inches long, more than twice the size
of those of the labyrinthidon; yet its tracks on the imperishable
sandstone show that such a giant once trod upon the muddy shore of that
ancient estuary.
Along that same shore, also, enormous struthious birds moved in flocks,
making strides from three to five feet long, with feet eighteen inches
long, lifting their heads, it may be, from twelve to eighteen feet above
the ground, surpassing, as it appears, even the gigantic dinornis of New
Zealand, now that the feet of the latter have been discovered. I refer to
the _Brontozoum giganteum_, whose tracks are so common on the new red
sandstone of the Connecticut valley. What dwarfs are we in comparison, who
now consider ourselves lords of that valley!
Still more remarkable for peculiarities of structure was the tribe of
saurians, which were once so numerous in the northern parts of Europe and
America. The ichthyosaurus, a carnivorous marine reptile, sometimes thirty
feet long, had the snout of a porpoise, the teeth of a crocodile, the head
of a lizard, the vertebrae of a fish, the sternum of an ornithorhynchus,
and the paddles of a whale. Those paddles, corresponding to the fins of a
fish, or the web feet of water birds, were composed, each of them, of more
than one hundred bones. In short, we find in this animal a combination of
mechanical contrivances, which are now found among three distinct classes
of the animal kingdom. Its eye, also, having an orbital cavity, in one
species, of fourteen inches in its longest diameter, was proportionally
larger than that of any living animal.
The plesiosaurus had the general structure of the ichthyosaurus; but its
neck was nearly as long as its whole body--longer, in proportion to its
size, than even that of the swan.
The iguanodon was an herbivorous terrestrial reptile that formerly
inhabited England. It approaches nearest in structure to the iguana, a
reptile four or five feet long, inhabiting the marine parts of this
continent. Yet the iguanodon was thirty feet long, with a thigh six feet,
and a body fourteen feet in circumference. What an alarm would it now
produce, to have such a monster start into life in the forests of England,
where no analogous animal could be found more than half a foot in length!
Surely this must have been one of the fabulous monsters of antiquity.
Still more heteroclitic and unlike existing nature was the pterodactyle, a
small lizard, contemporary with the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus. At one
time anatomists regarded it as a bird, at another as a bat, and finally as
a reptile, having the head and neck of a bird, the body and tail of a
quadruped, the wings of a bat, and the teeth of a saurian reptile. With
its wings it could fly or swim; it could walk on two feet or four; with
its claws it could climb or creep. "Thus," says Dr. Buckland, "like
Milton's fiend, all qualified for all services, and all elements, the
pterodactyle was a fit companion for the kindred reptiles that swarmed in
the seas, or crawled on the shores of a turbulent planet."
"The fiend,
O'er bog, or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."
Now, when the details of such facts are brought before us, it is very
natural to feel that it is the history of monsters, and that the
Centaurs, the Gorgons, and Chimeras of the ancients, are no more unlike
existing animals than these resurrections from the rocks. But further
examination rectifies our mistake, and we recognize them as parts of one
great system. All the peculiarities of size, and structure, and form,
which we meet, we find to be only wise and benevolent adaptations to the
different circumstances in which animals have been placed. The gigantic
size of many of them, compared with existing races, may be explained by
the tropical, or even ultra tropical character of the climate; and not a
single anomaly of structure and form can be pointed out, which did not
contribute to the convenience and happiness of the species, in the
circumstances in which they were placed. It is our ignorance and narrow
views alone that give any of them the aspect of monsters. Listen to the
opinion of Sir Charles Bell, one of the ablest of modern anatomists. "The
animals of the antediluvian world," says he, "were not monsters; there is
no _lusus_, or extravagance. Hideous as they appear to us, and like the
phantoms of a dream, they were adapted to the condition of the earth when
they existed." "Judging by these indications of the habits of the animals,
we acquire a knowledge of the condition of the earth during their period
of existence; that it was suited at one time to the scaly tribe of the
lacertae, with languid motion; at another, to animals of higher
organization, with more varied and lively habits; and, finally, we learn
that, at any period previous to man's creation, the surface of the earth
would have been unsuitable to him."--_Bridgewater Treatise_, pp. 35 and
31.
A similar view is given of this subject by England's geological poet,
(Rev. Mr. Wilks,) in whose playful verses we find more of true science and
just inference than in many a ponderous tome of grave prose. In one of
his poems he says,--
"Seamy coal,
Limestone, or oolite, and other sections,
Give us strange tidings of our old connections;
Our arborescent ferns, of climate torrid,
With unknown shapes of names and natures horrid;
Strange ichthyosaurus, or iguanodon,
With many more I cannot verse upon,--
Lost species and lost genera; some whose bias
Is chalk, marl, sandstone, gravel, or blue lias;
Birds, beasts, fish, insects, reptiles; fresh, marine,
Perfect as yesterday among us seen
In rock or cave; 'tis passing strange to me
How such incongruous mixture e'er could be.
And yet no medley was it: each its station
Once occupied in wise and meet location.
God is a God of order, though to scan
His works may pose the feeble powers of man."
The facts and reasonings which have now been presented will sustain the
following important inferences:--
_In the first place, we learn that the notions which have so widely
prevailed, in ancient and modern times, respecting a chaos, are without
foundation._
Among all heathen nations of antiquity, the belief in a primeval chaos was
almost universal; and from the heathen philosophers it was transmitted to
the Christian world, and incorporated with the Mosaic cosmogony. It is
not, indeed, easy to ascertain what is the precise idea which has been
attached to a chaos. It is generally described, however, as "a confused
assemblage of elements," "an unformed and undigested mass of heterogeneous
matter;" not, of course, subject to those laws which now govern it, and
which have arranged it all in beautiful order, even if we leave out of
the account vegetable and animal organization. Now, I have attempted to
show that there never was a period on the globe when these laws, with the
exception of the organic, did not operate as they now do. Nay, the
geologist, when he examines the oldest rocks, finds the results of these
laws at the supposed period when chaos reigned; that is, in the earliest
times of our planet. And what are these results? The most splendid
crystallizations which nature furnishes. The emerald, the topaz, the
sapphire, and other kindred gems, were elaborated during the supposed
chaotic state of the globe; for no earlier products have yet been
discovered than these most perfect illustrations of crystallographical,
chemical, and electrical laws. If, indeed, any should say, that by a chaos
they mean only that state of the world when no animals or plants
existed,--in other words, when no organic laws had been established,--to
such a chaos I have no objection. And this is the chaos described in the
Bible, where it is said that, before the creation of animals and plants,
the earth was _without form and void_. The _tohu vau bohu_ of Moses, which
is thus translated in our English Bible, means, simply and literally,
_invisible and unfurnished_--_invisible_, both because the ocean covered
the present land, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and
_unfurnished_, because as yet no organic natures had been called into
existence. This is the meaning which the old Jewish writers, as Philo and
Josephus, attached to these words; and they have been followed by some of
the ablest modern commentators. "It is wonderful," says Rosenmuller the
elder, "that so many interpreters could have persuaded themselves that it
was possible to detect a chaos in the words [Hebrew]. That notion
unquestionably derived its origin from the fictions of the Greek and Latin
poets, which were transferred by those interpreters to Moses. If we
follow the practice of the language, the Hebrew phrase has this
signification: _The earth was waste and desert_, or, as others prefer,
_empty and vacuous_; that is, _uncultured and unfurnished_ with those
things with which the Creator afterwards adorned it."--_Antiquiss. Tell.
Hist._ p. 19-23.
Upon the whole, there is no evidence whatever, either in nature or
revelation, that the earth has ever been in a state corresponding to the
common notions of a chaos; while, on the other hand, there is strong proof
that the present laws of nature have been in operation from the beginning.
These laws have varied in the intensity of their action, and we have
strong reason to believe that organic laws did not always exist; but none
of these laws have ever been suspended, to leave the elements to mix in
wild disorder in a formless mass. It is high time that religion was freed
from the indescribable incubus of a chaos.
_Finally, the most important conclusion to which the mind is conducted by
this subject is, that the present and past conditions of this world are
only parts of one and the same great system of infinite wisdom and
benevolence._
We have seen that the same wise and benevolent laws, organic and
inorganic, have always controlled, as they now control, this lower world.
It is true we find modified conditions of the globe in its past history;
but they were always the foreseen result of the same laws, and in harmony
with the same great plan. And the modifications of organic structure,
which were great in the successive economies, were always in perfect
correspondence with the earth's physical changes. Nowhere do we meet with
conflicting plans; but throughout all nature, from the earliest zoophyte
and sea-weed of the silurian rocks to the young animals and plants that
came into existence to-day, and from the choice gems that were produced
when the earth was without form and void, to the crystals which are now
forming in the chemist's laboratory, one golden chain of harmony links all
together, and identifies all as the work of the same infinite mind.
"In all the numerous examples of design which we have selected from the
various animal and vegetable remains that occur in a fossil state," says
Dr. Buckland, "there is such a never-failing identity in the fundamental
principles of their construction, and such uniform adoption of analogous
means to produce various ends, with so much only of departure from one
common type of mechanism as was requisite to adapt each instrument to its
own especial function, and to fit each species to its peculiar place and
office in the scale of created beings, that we can scarcely fail to
acknowledge in all these facts a demonstration of the unity of the
intelligence in which such transcendent harmony originated; and we may
almost dare to assert that neither atheism nor polytheism would ever have
found acceptance in the world, had the evidences of high intelligence and
unity of design which have been disclosed by modern discoveries in
physical science been fully known to the authors or the abetters of
systems to which they are so diametrically opposed. It is the same
handwriting that we read, the same system and contrivance that we trace,
the same unity of object and relation to final causes which we see
maintained throughout, and constantly proclaiming the unity of the great
divine original."--_Bridgewater Treatise_, p. 584.
"The earth, from her deep foundations, unites with the celestial orbs,
that roll throughout boundless space, to declare the glory and show forth
the praise of their common Author and Preserver; and the voice of natural
religion accords harmoniously with the testimonies of revelation, in
ascribing the origin of the universe to the will of one eternal and
dominant intelligence, the almighty Lord and supreme First Cause of all
things that subsist; _the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, before the
mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made,
God from everlasting and without end_."--_Bridgewater Treatise_, p. 596.
LECTURE IX.
THE HYPOTHESIS OF CREATION BY LAW.