The Plurality of Worlds

6. For instance, rivers do, no doubt, more or less alter, in the course of years, by natural causes. The Rhine, the Rhone, the Po, the Danube, have, certainly, during the last four thousand years, silted up their beds in level places, expanded the deltas at their mouths, changed the channels by which they enter the sea; and very probably, in their upper parts, altered the forms of their waterfalls and of their shingle beds. Yet even if we were thus to go backwards ten thousand, or twenty, or thirty thousand years, (setting aside great and violent causes of change, as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the like,) the general form and course of these rivers, and of the ranges of mountains in which they flow, would not be different from what it is now. And the same may be said of coasts and islands, seas and bays. The present geography of the earth may be, and from all the evidence which we have, must be, very ancient, according to any measures of antiquity which can apply to human affairs.

7. But yet the further examination of the materials of the earth carries us to a view beyond this. Though the general forms of the land and the waters of continents and seas, were, several thousand years ago, much the same as they now are; yet it was not always so. We have clear evidence that large tracts which are now dry ground, were formerly the bed of the ocean; and these, not tracts of the shore, where the varying warfare of sea and land is still going on, but the very central parts of great continents; the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas. For not only are the rocks of which these great mountain-chains consist, of such structure that they appear to have been formed as layers of sediment at the bottom of water; but also, these layers contain vast accumulations of shells, or impressions of shells, and other remains of marine animals. And these appearances are not few, limited, or partial. The existence of such marine remains, in the solid substance of continents and mountains, is a general, predominant, and almost universal fact, in every part of the earth. Nor is any other way of accounting for this fact admissible, than that those materials really have, at some time, formed bottoms of seas. The various other conjectures and hypotheses, which were put forward on this subject, when the amount, extent, multiplicity, and coherence of the phenomena were not yet ascertained, and when their natural history was not yet studied, cannot now be considered as worthy of the smallest regard. That many of our highest hills are formed of materials raised from the depths of ocean, is a proposition which cannot be doubted, by any one, who fairly examines the evidence which nature offers.

8. If we take this proposition only, we cannot immediately connect it with our knowledge respecting the surface of the earth in its present form. We learn that what is now land, has been sea; and we may suppose (since it is natural to assume that the bulk of the sea has not much changed) that what is now sea was formerly land. But, except we can learn something of the manner in which this change took place, we cannot make any use of our knowledge. Was the change sudden, or gradual; abrupt, or successive; brief, or long-continuing?

9. To these questions, the further study of the facts enables us to return answers with great confidence. The change or changes which produced the effects of which we have spoken—the conversion of the bottom of the ocean into the centre of our greatest continents and highest mountains,—were undoubtedly gradual, successive, and long continued. We must state very briefly the grounds on which we make this assertion.

10. The masses which form our mountain-chains, offer evidence, as I have said, that they were deposited as sediment at the bottom of a sea, and then hardened. They consist of successive layers of such sediment, making up the whole mass of the mountain. These layers are, of course, to a certain extent, a measure of the time during which the deposition of sediment took place. The thicker the mass of sediment, the more numerous and varied its beds, and the longer period must we suppose to have been requisite for its formation. Without making any attempt at accurate or definite estimation, which would be to no purpose, it is plain that a mass of sedimentary strata five thousand or ten thousand feet thick, must have required, for its deposit, a long course of years, or rather, a long course of ages.

11. But again: on further examination it is found, that we have not merely one series of sedimentary deposits, thus forming our mountains. There are a number of different series of such layers or strata, to be found in different ranges of hills, and in the same range, one series resting upon another. These different series of strata are distinguishable from one another by their general structure and appearance, besides more intimate characters, of which we shall shortly have to speak. Each such series appears to have a certain consistency of structure within itself; the layers of which it is composed being more or less parallel, but the successive series are not thus always parallel, the lower ones being often highly inclined and irregular, while the upper ones are more level and continuous: as if the lower strata had been broken up and thrown into disorder, and then a new series of strata had been deposited horizontally on their fragments. But in whatever way these different sedimentary series succeeded each other, each series must have required, as we have seen, a long period for its formation; and to estimate the length of the interval between the two series, we have, at the present stage of our exposition, no evidence.

12. But the mechanical structure of the strata, the result, as it seems, of aqueous sedimentary deposit, is not the only, nor the most important evidence, with regard to the length of time occupied by the formation of the rocky layers which now compose our mountains. As we have said, they contain shells, and other remains of creatures which live in the sea. These they contain, not in small numbers, scattered and detached, but in vast abundance, as they are found in those parts of the ocean which is most alive with them. There are the remains of oysters and other shell-fish in layers, as they live at present in the seas near our shores; of corals, in vast patches and beds, as they now occur in the waters of the Pacific; of shoals of fishes, of many different kinds, in immense abundance. Each of these beds of shells, of corals, and of fishes, must have required many years, perhaps many centuries, for the growth of the successive individuals and successive generations of which it consists: as long a time, perhaps, as the present inhabitants of the sea have lived therein: or many times longer, if there have been many such successive changes. And thus, while the present condition of the earth extends backwards to a period of vast but unknown antiquity; we have, offered to our notice, the evidence of a series of other periods, each of which, so far as we can judge, may have been as long or longer than that during which the dry land has had its present form.

13. But the most remarkable feature in the evidence is yet to come. We have spoken in general of the oysters, and corals, and fishes, which occur in the strata of our hills; as if they were creatures of the same kinds which we now designate by those names. But a more exact examination of these remains of organized beings, shows that this is not so. The tribes of animals which are found petrified in our rocks are almost all different, so far as our best natural historians can determine, from those which now live in our existing seas. They are different species; different genera. The creatures which we find thus embedded in our mountains, are not only dead as individuals, but extinct as species. They belonged, not only to a terrestrial period, but to an animal creation, which is now past away. The earth is, it seems, a domicile which has outlasted more than one race of tenants.

14. It may seem rash and presumptuous in the natural historian to pronounce thus peremptorily that certain forms of life are nowhere to be found at present, even in the unfathomable and inaccessible depths of the ocean. But even if this were so, the proposition that the earth has changed its inhabitants, since the rocks were formed, of which our hills consist, does not depend for its proof on this assumption. For in the organic bodies which our strata contain, we find remains, not only of marine animals, but of animals which inhabit the fresh waters, and the land, and of plants. And the examination of such remains having been pursued with great zeal, and with all the aids which natural history can supply, the result has been, the proofs of a vast series of different tribes of animals and plants, which have successively occupied the earth and the seas; and of which the number, variety, multiplicity, and strangeness, exceed, by far, everything which could have been previously imagined. Thus Cuvier found, in the limestone strata on which Paris stands, animals of the most curious forms, combining in the most wonderful manner the qualities of different species of existing quadrupeds. In another series of strata, the Lias, which runs as a band across England from N. E. to S. W., we have the remains of lizards, or lacertine animals, different from those which now exist, of immense size and of extraordinary structure, some approaching to the form of fishes (ichthyosaurus); others, with the neck of a serpent; others with wings, like the fabled forms of dragons. Then beyond these, that is, anterior to them in the series of time, we have the immense collection of fossil plants, which occur in the Coal Strata; the shells and corals of the Mountain Limestone; the peculiar fishes, different altogether from existing fishes, of the Old Red Sandstone; and though, as we descend lower and lower, the traces of organic life appear to be more rare and more limited in kind, yet still we have, beneath these, in slates and in beds of limestone, many fossil remains, still differing from those which occur in the higher, and therefore, newer strata.

15. We have no intention of instituting any definite calculation with regard to the periods of time which this succession of forms of organic life may have occupied. This, indeed, the boldest geological speculators have not ventured to do. But the scientific discoveries thus made, have a bearing upon the analogies of creation, quite as important as the discoveries of astronomy. And therefore we may state briefly some of the divisions of the series of terrestrial strata which have suggested themselves to geological inquirers. At the outset of such speculations, it was conceived that the lower rocks, composed of granite, slate, and the like, had existed before the earth was peopled with living things; and that these, being broken up into inclined positions, there were deposited upon them, as the sediment of superincumbent waters, strata more horizontal, containing organic remains. The former were then called Primitive or Primary, the latter, Secondary rocks. But it was soon found that this was too sweeping and peremptory a division. Rocks which had been classed as Primary, were found to contain traces of life; and hence, an intermediate class of Transition strata was spoken of. But this too was soon seen to be too narrow a scheme of arrangement, to take in the rapidly-accumulating mass of facts, organic and others, which the geological record of the earth's history disclosed. It appeared that among the fossil-bearing strata there might be discerned a long series of Formations: the term Formation being used to imply a collection of successive strata, which, taking into account all the evidence, of materials, position, relations, and organic remains, appears to have been deposited during some one epoch or period; so as to form a natural group, chronologically and physiologically distinct from the others. In this way it appeared that, taking as the highest part of the Secondary series, the beds of chalk, which, marked by characteristic fossils, run through great tracts of Europe, with other beds, of sand and clay, which generally accompany these; there was, below this Cretaceous Formation, an Oolitic Formation, still more largely diffused, and still more abundant in its peculiar organic remains. Below this, we have, in England, the New Red Sandstone Formation, which, in other countries, is accompanied by beds abundant in fossils, as the Muschelkalk of Germany. Below this again we have the Coal Formation, and the Mountain Limestone, with their peculiar fossils. Below these, we have the Old Red Sandstone or Devonian System, with its peculiar fishes and other fossils. Beneath these, occur still numerous series of distinguishable strata; which have been arranged by Sir Roderick Murchison as the members of the Silurian formation; the researches by which it was established having been carried on, in the first place, in South Wales, the ancient country of the Silures. Including the lower part of this formation, and descending still lower in order, is the Cambrian formation of Professor Sedgwick. And since the races of organic beings, as we thus descend through successive strata, seem to be fewer and fewer in their general types, till at last they disappear; these lower members of the geological series have been termed, according to their succession, Palæozoic, Protozoic, and Hypozoic or Azoic. The general impression on the minds of geologists has been, that, as we descend in this long staircase of natural steps, we are brought in view of a state of the earth in which life was scantily manifested, so as to appear to be near its earliest stages.

16. Each of these formations is of great thickness. Several of the members of each formation are hundreds, many of them thousands of feet thick. Taken altogether, they afford an astounding record of the time during which they must have been accumulating, and during which these successive groups of animals must have been brought into being, lived, and continued their kinds.

17. We must add, that over the Secondary strata there are found, in patches, generally of more limited extent, another, and of course, newer mass of strata, which have been termed Tertiary Formations. Of these, the strata, near and under Paris, lying in a hollow of the subjacent strata, and hence termed the Paris Basin, attracted prominent notice in the first place. And these are found to contain an immense quantity of remains of animals, which, being well preserved, and being subjected to a careful and scientific scrutiny by the great naturalist George Cuvier, had an eminent share in establishing in the minds of Geologists the belief of the extinct character of fossil species, and of the possibility of reconstructing, from such remains, the animals, different from those which now live, which had formerly tenanted the earth.

18. We have, in this enumeration, a series of groups of strata, each of which, speaking in a general way, has its own population of animals and plants, and is separated, by the peculiarities of these, from the groups below and above it. Each group may, in a general manner, be considered as a separate creation of animal and vegetable forms—creatures which have lived and died, as the races now existing upon the earth live and die; and of which the living existence may, and according to all appearance must, have occupied ages, and series of ages, such as have been occupied by the present living generations of the earth. This series of creations, or of successive periods of life, is, no doubt, a very striking and startling fact, very different from anything which the imagination of man, in previous stages of investigation of the earth's condition, had conceived; but still, is established by evidence so complete, drawn from an examination and knowledge of the structures of living things so exact and careful, as to leave no doubt whatever of the reality of the fact, on the minds of those who have attended to the evidence; founded, as it is, upon the analogies, offices, anatomy, and combinations of organic structures. The progress of human knowledge on this subject has been carried on and established by the same alternations of bold conjectures and felicitous confirmations of them,—of minute researches and large generalizations,—which have given reality and solidity to the other most certain portions of human knowledge. That the strata of the earth, as we descend from the highest to the lowest, are distinguished in general by characteristic or organic fossils, and that these forms of organization are different from those which now live on the earth, are truths as clearly and indisputably established in the minds of those who have the requisite knowledge of geology and natural history, as that the planets revolve round the sun, and satellites round the planets. That these epochs of creation are something quite different from anything which we now see taking place on the earth, no more disturbs the belief of those facts, which scientific explorers entertain, than the seemingly obvious difference between the nebulæ which are regarded as yet unformed planetary systems, and the solar system to which our earth belongs, disturbs the belief of astronomers, that such nebulæ, as well as our system, really exist. Indeed we may say, as we shall hereafter see, that the fact of our earth having passed through the series of periods of organic life which geologists recognize, is, hitherto, incomparably better established, than the fact that the nebulæ, or any of them, are passing through a series of changes, such as may lead to a system like ours; as some eminent astronomers in modern times have held. In this respect, the history of the world, and its place in the universe, are far more clearly learnt from geology than from astronomy.

19. But with regard to this series of Organic Creations, if, for the sake of brevity, we may call them so; we may naturally ask, in what manner, by what agencies, at what intervals, they succeeded each other on the earth? Now, do the researches of geologists give us any information on these points, which may be brought to bear upon our present speculations? If we ask these questions, we receive, from different classes of geologists, different answers. A little while ago, most geologists held, probably the greater number still hold, that the transitions from one of these periods of organic life to another, were accompanied generally by seasons of violent disruption and mutation of the surface of the earth, exceeding anything which has taken place since the surface assumed its present general form; in the same proportion as the changes of its organic population go beyond any such changes which we can discern to be at present in operation. And there were found to be changes of other kinds, which seemed to show that these epochs of organic transition had also been epochs of mechanical violence, upon a vast and wonderful scale. It appeared that, at some of these epochs at least, the strata previously deposited, as if in comparative tranquillity, had been broken, thrust up from below, or drawn or cast downwards; so that strata which must at first have been nearly level, were thrown into positions highly inclined, fractured, set on edge, contorted, even inverted. Over the broken edges of these strata, thus disturbed and fractured, were found vast accumulations of the fragments which such rude treatment might naturally produce; these fragmentary ruins being spread in beds comparatively level, over the bristling edges of the subjacent rocks, as if deposited in the fluid which had overwhelmed the previous structure; and with few or no traces of life appearing in this mass of ruins; while, in the strata which lay over them, and which appeared to have been the result of quieter times, new forms of organic life made their appearance in vast abundance. Such is, for example, the relation of the coal strata in a great part of England; broken into innumerable basins, ridges, valleys, strips, and shreds, lying in all positions; and then filled into a sort of level, by the conglomerate of the magnesian limestone, and the superincumbent red sandstone and oolites. In other cases it appeared as if there were the means of tracing, in these dislocations, the agency of igneous stony matter, which had been injected from below, so as to form mountain-chains, or the cores of such; and in which the period of the convulsion could be traced, by the strata to which the disturbance extended; those strata being supposed to have been deposited before the eruption, which were thrust upwards by it into highly-inclined positions; while those strata which, though near to these scenes of mechanical violence, were still comparatively horizontal, as they had been originally deposited, were naturally inferred to have been formed in the waters, after the catastrophe had passed away. By such reasonings as these, M. Elie de Beaumont has conceived that he can ascertain the relative ages (according to the vast and loose measurements of age which belong to this subject) of the principal ranges of mountains of the earth's surface.

20. Such estimations of age can, indeed, as we have intimated, be only of the widest and loosest kind; yet they all concur in assigning very great and gigantic periods of time, as having been occupied by the events which have formed the earth's strata, and brought them into their present position. For not only must there have been long ages employed, as we have said, while the successive generations of each group of animals lived, and died, and were entombed in the abraded fragments of the then existing earth; but the other operations which intervened between these apparently more tranquil processes, must also have occupied, it would seem, long ages at each interval. The dislocation, disruption, and contortion of the vast masses of previously existing mountains, by which their framework was broken up, and its ruins covered with beds of its own rubbish, many thousand feet thick, and gradually becoming less coarse and smoother, as the higher beds were deposited upon the lower, could hardly take place, it would seem, except in hundreds and thousands of years. And then again, all these processes of deposition, thus arranging loose masses of material into level beds, must have taken place in the bottom of deep oceans; and the beds of these oceans must have been elevated into the position of mountain ridges which they now occupy, by some mighty operation of nature, which must have been comparatively tranquil, since it has not much disturbed those more level beds; and which, therefore, must have been comparatively long continued. If we accept, as so many eminent geologists have done, this evidence of a vast series of successive periods of alternate violence and repose, we must assign to each such period a duration which cannot but be immense, compared with the periods of time with which we are commonly conversant. In the periods of comparative quiet, such as now exist on the earth's surface, and such as seem to be alone consistent with continued life and successive generation, deposits at the bottom of lakes and seas take place, it would seem, only at the rate of a few feet in a year, or perhaps, in a century. When, therefore, we find strata, bearing evidence of such a mode of deposit, and piled up to the amount of thousands and tens of thousands of feet, we are naturally led to regard them as the production of myriads of years; and to add new myriads, as often as, in the prosecution of geological research, we are brought to new masses of strata of the like kind; and again, to interpolate new periods of the same order, to allow for the transition from one such group to another.

21. Nor is there anything which need startle us, in the necessity of assuming such vast intervals of time, when we have once brought ourselves to deal with the question of the antiquity of the earth upon scientific evidence alone. For if geology thus carries us far backwards through thousands, it may be, millions of years, astronomy does not offer the smallest argument to check this regressive supposition. On the contrary, all the most subtle and profound investigations of astronomers have led them to the conviction, that the motions of the earth may have gone on, as they now go on, for an indefinite period of past time. There is no tendency to derangement in the mechanism of the solar system, so for as science has explored it. Minute inequalities in the movements exist, too small to produce any perceptible effect on the condition of the earth's surface; and even these inequalities, after growing up through long cycles of ages, to an amount barely capable of being detected by astronomical scrutiny, reach a maximum; and, diminishing by the same slow degrees by which they increased, correct themselves, and disappear. The solar system, and the earth as part of it, constitute, so for as we can discover, a Perpetual Motion.

22. There is therefore nothing, in what we know of the Cosmical conditions of our globe, to contradict the Terrestrial evidence for its vast antiquity, as the seat of organic life. If for the sake of giving definiteness to our notions, we were to assume that the numbers which express the antiquity of these four Periods;—the Present organic condition of the earth; the Tertiary Period of geologists, which preceded that; the Secondary Period, which was anterior to that; and the Primary Period which preceded the Secondary; were on the same scale as the numbers which express these four magnitudes:—the magnitude of the Earth; that of the Solar System compared with the Earth; the distance of the nearest Fixed Stars compared with the solar system; and the distance of the most remote Nebulæ compared with the nearest fixed stars; there is, in the evidence which geological science offers, nothing to contradict such an assumption.

23. And as the infinite extent which we necessarily ascribe to space, allows us to find room, without any mental difficulty, for the vast distances which astronomy reveals, and even leaves us rather embarrassed with the infinite extent which lies beyond our farthest explorations; so the infinite duration which we, in like manner, necessarily ascribe to past time, makes it easy for us, so far as our powers of intellect are concerned, to go millions of millions of years backwards, in order to trace the beginning of the earth's existence,—the first step of terrestrial creation. It is as easy for the mind of man to reason respecting a system which is billions or trillions of miles in extent, and has endured through the like number of years, or centuries, as it is to reason about a system (the earth, for instance,) which is forty million feet in extent, and has endured for a hundred thousand million of seconds, that is, a few thousand years.

24. This statement is amply sufficient for the argument which we have to found upon it; but before I proceed to do that, I will give another view which has recently been adopted by some geologists, of the mode in which the successive periods of creation, which geological research discloses to us, have passed into one another. According to this new view, we find no sufficient reason to believe that the history of the earth, as read by us in the organic and mechanical phenomena of its superficial parts, has consisted of such an alternation of periods of violence and of repose, as we have just attempted to describe. According to these theorists, strata have succeeded strata, one group of animals and plants has followed another, through a season of uniform change; with no greater paroxysm or catastrophe, it may be, than has occurred during the time that man has been an observer of the earth. It may be asked, how is this consistent with the phenomena which we have described;—with the vast masses of ruin, which mark the end of one period and the beginning of another, as is the case in passing from the coal measures of England to the superincumbent beds;—with the highly-inclined strata of the central masses, and the level beds of the upper formations which have been described as marking the mountain ranges of Europe? To these questions, a reply is furnished, we are told, by a more extensive and careful examination of the strata. It may be, that in certain localities, in certain districts, the transition, from the mountain limestone and the coal, to the superjacent sandstones and oolites, is abrupt and seemingly violent; marked by unconformable positions of the upper upon the lower strata, by beds of conglomerate, by the absence of organic remains in certain of these beds. But if we follow these very strata into other parts of the world, or even into other parts of this island, we find that this abruptness and incongruity between the lower and the higher strata disappears. Between the mountain-limestone and the red sandstone which lies over it, certain new beds are found, which fill up the incoherent interval; which offer the same evidence as the strata below and above them, of having been produced tranquilly; and which do not violently differ in position from either group. The appearance of incoherence in the series arose from the occurrence, in the region first examined, of a gap, which is here filled up,—a blank which is here supplied. Hence it is inferred, that whatever of violence and extreme disturbance is indicated by the dislocations and ruins there observed, was local and partial only; and that, at the very time when these fragmentary beds, void of organized beings, were forming in one place, there were, at the same time, going on, in another part of the earth's surface, not far removed, the processes of the life, death and imbedding of species, as tranquilly as at any other period. And the same assertion is made with regard to the more general fact, before described, of the stratigraphical constitution of mountain chains. It is asserted that the unconformable relation of the strata which compose the different parts of those chains, is a local occurrence only; and that the same strata, if followed into other regions, are found conformable to each other; or are reduced to a virtually continuous scheme, by the interpolation of other strata, which make a transition, in which no evidence of exceptional violence appears.

25. We shall not attempt (it is not at all necessary for us to do so) to decide between the doctrines of the two geological schools which thus stand in this opposition to each other. But it will be useful to our argument to state somewhat further the opinions of this latter school on one main point. We must explain the view which these geologists take of the mode of succession of one group of organized beings to another; by which, as we have said, the different successive strata are characterized. Such a phenomenon, it would at first seem, cannot be brought within the ordinary rules of the existing state of things. The species of plants and animals which inhabit the earth, do not change from age to age; they are the same in modern times, as they were in the most remote antiquity, of which we have any record. The dogs and horses, sheep and cattle, lions and wolves, eagles and swallows, corn and vines, oaks and cedars, which occupy the earth now, are not, we have the strongest reasons to believe, essentially different now from what they were in the earliest ages. At least, if one or two species have disappeared, no new species have come into existence. We cannot conceive a greater violation of the known laws of nature, than that such an event as the appearance of a new species should have occurred. Even those who hold the uniformity of the mechanical changes of the earth, and of the rate of change, from age to age, and from one geological period to another; must still, it would seem, allow that the zoological and phytological changes of which geology gives her testimony, are complete exceptions to what is now taking place. The formation of strata at the bottom of the ocean from the ruin of existing continents, may be going on at present. Even the elevation of the bed of the ocean in certain places, as a process imperceptibly slow, may be in action at this moment, as these theorists hold that it is. But still, even when the beds thus formed are elevated into mountain chains, if that should happen, in the course of myriads of years, (according to the supposition it cannot be effected in a less period,) the strata of such mountain chains will still contain only the species of such creatures as now inhabit the waters; and we shall have, even then, no succession of organic epochs, such as geology discovers in the existing mountains of the earth.

26. The answer which is made to this objection appears to me to involve a license of assumption on the part of the uniformitarian geologist, (as such theorists have been termed,) which goes quite beyond the bounds of natural philosophy: but I wish to state it; partly, in order to show that the most ingenious men, stimulated by the exigencies of a theory, which requires some hypothesis concerning the succession of species, to make it coherent and complete, have still found it impossible to bring the creation of species of plants and animals within the domain of natural science; and partly, to show how easily and readily geological theorists are led to assume periods of time, even of a higher order than those which I have ventured to suggest.

27. It must, however, be first stated, as a fact on which the assumption is founded which I have to notice, that the organic groups by which these successive strata are characterized, are not so distinct and separate, as it was convenient, for the sake of explanation, to describe them in the first instance. Although each body of strata is marked by predominant groups of genera and species, yet it is not true, that all the species of each formation disappear, when we proceed to the next. Some species and genera endure through several successive groups of strata; while others disappear, and new forms come into view, as we ascend. And thus, the change from one set of organic forms to another, as we advance in time, is made, not altogether by abrupt transitions, but in part continuously. The uniformitarian, in the case of organic, as in the case of mechanical change, obliterates or weakens the evidence of sudden and catastrophic leaps, by interposing intermediate steps, which involve, partly the phenomena of the preceding, and partly those of the subsequent condition. As he allows no universal transition from one deposit to a succeeding discrepant and unconformable deposit, so he allows no abrupt and complete transition from one collection of organic beings,—one creation, as we may call it,—to another. If creation must needs be an act out of the region of natural science, he will have it to be at least an act not exercised at distant intervals, and on peculiar occasions; but constantly going on, and producing its effects, as much at one time in the geological history of the world, as at another.

28. And this he holds, not only with regard to the geological periods which have preceded the existing condition of the earth, but also with regard to the transition from those previous periods to that in which we live. The present population of the earth is not one in which all previous forms are extinct. The past population of the earth was not one in which there are found no creatures still living. On the contrary, he finds that there exists a vast mass of strata, superior to the secondary strata, which are characterized by extinct forms, and are yet inferior to those deposits which are now going on by the agency of obvious causes. These masses of strata contain a population of creatures, partly extinct species, and partly such species as are still living on our land and in our waters. The proportion in which the old and the new species occur in such strata, is various; and the strata are so numerous, so rich in organic remains, so different from each other, and have been so well explored, that they have been classified and named according to the proportion of new and of old species which they contain. Those which contain the largest proportion of species still living, have been termed Pliocene, as containing a greater number of new or recent species. Below these, are strata which are termed Miocene, implying a smaller number of new species. Below these again, are others which have been termed Eocene, as containing few new species indeed, but yet enough to mark the dawn, the Eos, of the existing state of the organic world. These strata are, in many places, of very considerable thickness; and their number, their succession, and the great amount of extinct species which they contain, shows, in a manner which cannot be questioned, (if the evidence of geology is accepted at all,) in what a gradual manner, a portion at least, of the existing forms of organic life have taken the place of a different population previously existing on the surface of the globe.

29. And thus the uniformitarian is led to consider the facts which geology brings to light, as indicating a slow and almost imperceptible, but, upon the whole, constant series of changes, not only in the position of the earth's materials, but in its animal and vegetable population. Land becomes sea and sea becomes land; the beds of oceans are elevated into mountain regions, carrying with them the remains of their inhabitants; sheets of lava pour from volcanic vents and overwhelm the seats of life; and these, again, become fields of vegetation; or, it may be, descend to the depths of the sea, and are overgrown with groves of coral; lakes are filled with sediment, imbedding the remains of land animals, and form the museums of future zoologists; the deltas of mighty rivers become the centres of continents, and are excavated as coal-fields by men in remote ages. And yet all this time, so slow is the change, that man is unaware such changes are going on. He knows that the mountains of Scandinavia are rising out of the Baltic at the rate of a few feet in a century; he knows that the fertile slope of Etna has been growing for thousands of years by the addition of lava streams and parasitic volcanos; he knows that the delta of the Mississippi accumulates hundreds of miles of vegetable matter every generation; he knows that the shores of Europe are yielding to the sea; but all these appear to him minute items, not worth summing; infinitesimal quantities, which he cannot integrate. And so, in truth, they are, for him. His ephemeral existence does not allow him to form a just conception, in any ordinary state of mind, of the effects of this constant agency of change, working through countless thousands of years. But Time, inexhausted and unremitting, sums the series, integrates the formula of change; and thus passes, with sure though noiseless progress, from one geological epoch to another.

30. And in the meanwhile, to complete the view thus taken by the uniformitarian of the geological history of the earth, by some constant but inscrutable law, creative agency is perpetually at work, to introduce, into this progressive system of things, new species of vegetable and animal life. Organic forms, ever and ever new ones, are brought into being, and left, visible footsteps, as it were, of the progress which Time has made;—marks placed between the rocky leaves of the book of creation; by which man, when his time comes, may turn back and read the past history of his habitation. But the point for us to remark is, the immeasurable, the inconceivable length of time, if any length of time could be inconceivable, which is required of our thoughts, by this new assumption of the constant production of new species, as a law of creation. We might feel ourselves well nigh overwhelmed, when, by looking at processes which we see producing only a few feet of height or breadth or depth during the life of man, we are called upon to imagine the construction of Alps and Andes,—when we have to imagine a world made a few inches in a century. But there, at least, we had something to start from: the element of change was small, but there was an element of change: we had to expand, but we had not to originate. But in conceiving that all the myriads of successive species, which we find in the earth's strata, have come into being by a law which is now operating, we have nothing to start from. We have seen, and know of, no such change; all sober and skilful naturalists reject it, as a fact not belonging to our time. We have here to build a theory without materials;—to sum a series of which every term, so far as we know, is nothing;—to introduce into our scientific reasonings an assumption contrary to all scientific knowledge.

31. This appears to me to be the real character of the assumption of the constant creation of new species. But, as I have said, it is not my business here, to pronounce upon the value or truth of this assumption. The only use which I wish to make of it is this:—If any persons, who have adopted the geological view which I have just been explaining, should feel any interest in the speculations here offered to their notice, they must needs be (as I have no doubt they will be) even more willing than other geologists, to grant to our argument a scale of time for geological succession, corresponding in magnitude to the scale of distances which astronomy teaches us, as those which measure the relation of the universe to the earth.

This being supposed to be granted, I am prepared to proceed with my argument.

CHAPTER VI

THE ARGUMENT FROM GEOLOGY

1. I have endeavored to explain that, according to the discoveries of geologists, the masses of which the surface of the earth is composed, exhibit indisputable evidence that, at different successive periods, the land and the waters which occupy it, have been inhabited by successive races of plants and animals; which, when taken in large groups, according to the ascending or descending order of the strata, consist of species different from those above and below them. Many of these groups of species are of forms so different from any living things which now exist, as to give to the life of those ancient periods an aspect strangely diverse from that which life now displays, and to transfer us, in thought, to a creation remote in its predominant forms from that among which we live. I have shown also, that the life and successive generations of these groups of species, and the events by which the rocks which contain these remains have been brought into their present situation and condition, must have occupied immense intervals of time;—intervals so large that they deserve to be compared, in their numerical expression, with the intervals of space which separate the planets and stars from each other. It has been seen, also, that the best geologists and natural historians have not been able to devise any hypothesis to account for the successive introduction of these new species into the earth's population; except the exercise of a series of acts of creation, by which they have been brought into being; either in groups at once, or in a perpetual succession of one or a few species, which the course of long intervals of time might accumulate into groups of species. It is true, that some speculators have held that by the agency of natural causes, such as operate upon organic forms, one species might be transmuted into another; external conditions of climate, food, and the like, being supposed to conspire with internal impulses and tendencies, so as to produce this effect. This supposition is, however, on a more exact examination of the laws of animal life, found to be destitute of proof; and the doctrine of the successive creation of species remains firmly established among geologists. That the extinction of species, and of groups of species, may be accounted for by natural causes, is a proposition much more plausible, and to a certain extent, probable; for we have good reason to believe that, even within the time of human history, some few species have ceased to exist upon the earth. But whether the extinction of such vast groups of species as the ancient strata present to our notice, can be accounted for in this way, at least without assuming the occurrence of great catastrophes, which must for a time, have destroyed all forms of life in the district in which they occurred, appears to be more doubtful. The decision of these questions, however, is not essential to our purpose. What is important is, that immense numbers of tribes of animals have tenanted the earth for countless ages, before the present state of things began to be.

2. The present state of things is that to which the existence and the history of Man belong; and the remark which I now have to make is, that the existence and the history of Man are facts of an entirely different order from any which existed in any of the previous states of the earth; and that this history has occupied a series of years which, compared with geological periods, may be regarded as very brief and limited.

3. The remains of man are nowhere found in the strata which contain the records of former states of the earth. Skeletons of vast varieties of creatures have been disinterred from their rocky tombs; but these cemeteries of nature supply no portion of a human skeleton. In earlier periods of natural science, when comparative anatomy was as yet very imperfectly understood, no doubt, many fossil bones were supposed to be human bones. The remains of giants and of antediluvians were frequent in museums. But a further knowledge of anatomy has made it appear that such bones all belong to animals, of one kind or another; often, to animals utterly different, in their form and skeleton, from man. Also some bones, really human, have been found petrified in situations in which petrification has gone on in recent times, and is still going on. Human skeletons, imbedded in rocks by this process, have been found in the island of Guadaloupe, and elsewhere. But this phenomenon is easily distinguishable from the petrified bones of other animals, which are found in rocks belonging to really geological periods; and does not at all obliterate the distinction between the geological and the historical periods.

4. Indeed not bones only, but objects of art, produced by human workmanship, are found fossilized and petrified by the like processes; and these, of course, belong to the historical period. Human bones, and human works, are found in such deposits as morasses, sand-banks, lava-streams, mounds of volcanic ashes; and many of them may be of unknown, and, compared with the duration of a few generations, of very great antiquity; but such deposits are distinguishable, generally without difficulty, from the strata in which the geologist reads the records of former creations. It has been truly said, that the geologist is an Antiquary; for, like the antiquary, he traces a past condition of things in the remains and effects of it which still subsist; but it has also been truly said, at the same time, that he is an antiquary of a new Order; for the remains which he studies are those which illustrate the history of the earth, not of man. The geologist's antiquity is not that of ornaments and arms, utensils and habiliments, walls and mounds; but of species and of genera, of seas and of mountains. It is true, that the geologist may have to study the works of man, in order to trace the effects of causes which produce the results which he investigates; as when he examines the pholad-pierced pillars of Pateoli, to prove the rise and the fall of the ground on which they stand; or notes the anchoring-rings in the wall of some Roman edifice, once a maritime fort, but now a ruin remote from the sea; or when he remarks the streets in the towns of Scania, which are now below the level of the Baltic,[4 - Lyell, ii. 420. [6th Ed.]] and therefore show that the land has sunk since these pavements were laid. But in studying such objects, the geologist considers the hand of man as only one among many agencies. Man is to him only one of the natural causes of change.

5. And if, with the illustrious author to whom we have just referred,[5 - Cuvier.] we liken the fossil remains, by which the geologist determines the age of his strata, to the Medals and Coins in which the antiquary finds the record of reigns and dynasties; we must still recollect that a Coin really discloses a vast body of characteristics of man, to which there is nothing approaching in the previous condition of the world. For how much does a Coin or Medal indicate? Property; exchange; government; a standard of value; the arts of mining, assaying, coining, drawing, and sculpture; language, writing, and reckoning; historical recollections, and the wish to be remembered by future ages. All this is involved in that small human work, a Coin. If the fossil remains of animals may (as has been said) be termed Medals struck by Nature to record the epochs of her history; Medals must be said to be, not merely, like fossil remains, records of material things; they are the records of thought, purpose, society, long continued, long improved, supplied with multiplied aids and helps; they are the permanent results, in a minute compass, of a vast progress, extending through all the ramifications of human life.

6. Not a coin merely, but any, the rudest work of human art, carries us far beyond the domain of mere animal life. There is no transition from man to animals. No doubt, there are races of men very degraded, barbarous, and brutish. No doubt there are kinds of animals which are very intelligent and sagacious; and some which are exceedingly disposed to and adapted to companionship with man. But by elevating the intelligence of the brute, we do not make it become the intelligence of the man. By making man barbarous, we do not make him cease to be a man. Animals have their especial capacities, which may be carried very far, and may approach near to human sagacity, or may even go beyond it; but the capacity of man is of a different kind. It is a capacity, not for becoming sagacious, but for becoming rational; or rather it is a capacity which he has in virtue of being rational. It is a capacity of progress. In animals, however sagacious, however well trained, the progress in skill and knowledge is limited, and very narrowly limited. The creature soon reaches a boundary, beyond which it cannot pass; and even if the acquired habits be transmitted by descent to another generation, (which happens in the case of dogs and several other animals,) still the race soon comes to a stand in its accomplishments. But in man, the possible progress from generation to generation, in intelligence and knowledge, and we may also say, in power, is indefinite; or if this be doubted, it is at least so vast, that compared with animals, his capacity is infinite. And this capacity extends to all races of men its characterizing efficacy: for we have good reason to believe that there is no race of human beings who may not, by a due course of culture, continued through generations, be brought into a community of intelligence and power with the most intelligent and the most powerful races. This seems to be well established, for instance, with regard to the African negroes; so long regarded by most, by some probably regarded still, as a race inferior to Europeans. It has been found that they are abundantly capable of taking a share in the arts, literature, morality and religion of European peoples. And we cannot doubt that, in the same manner, the native Australians, or the Bushmen of the Cape of Good Hope, have human faculties and human capacities; however difficult it might be to unfold these, in one or two generations, into a form of intelligence and civilization in any considerable degree resembling our own.

7. It is not requisite for us, and it might lead to unnecessary difficulties, to fix upon any one attribute of man, as peculiarly characteristic, and distinguishing him from brutes. Yet it would not be too much to say that man is, in truth, universally and specifically characterized by the possession of Language. It will not be questioned that language, in its highest forms, is a wonderful vehicle and a striking evidence of the intelligence of man. His bodily organs can, by a few scarcely perceptible motions, shape the air into sounds which express the kinds, properties, actions and relations of things, under thousands of aspects, in forms infinitely more general and recondite than those in which they present themselves to his senses;—and he can, by means of these forms, aided by the use of his senses, explore the boundless regions of space, the far recesses of past time, the order of nature, the working of the Author of nature. This man does, by the exercise of his Reason, and by the use of Language, a necessary implement of his Reason for such purposes.

8. That language, in such a stage, is a special character of man, will not be doubted. But it may be thought, there is little resemblance between Language in this exalted degree of perfection, and the seemingly senseless gibberish of the most barbarous tribes. Such an opinion, however, might easily be carried too far. All human language has in it the elements of indefinite intellectual activity, and the germs of indefinite development. Even the rudest kind of speech, used by savages, denotes objects by their kinds, their attributes, their relations, with a degree of generality derived from the intellect, not from the senses. The generality may be very limited; the relations which the human intellect is capable of apprehending may be imperfectly conveyed. But to denote kinds and attributes and actions and relations at all, is a beginning of generalization and abstraction;—or rather, is far more than a beginning. It is the work of a faculty which can generalize and abstract; and these mental processes once begun, the field of progress which is open to them is indefinite. Undoubtedly it may happen that weak and barbarous tribes are, for many generations, so hard pressed by circumstances, and their faculties so entirely absorbed in providing for the bare wants of the poorest life, that their thoughts may never travel to anything beyond these, and their language may not be extended so as to be applicable to any other purposes. But this is not the standard condition of mankind. It is not, by such cases, that man, or that human nature, is to be judged. The normal condition of man is one of an advance beyond the mere means of subsistence, to the arts of life, and the exercise of thought in a general form. To some extent, such an advance has taken place in almost every region of the earth and in every age.

9. Perhaps we may often have a tendency to think more meanly than they deserve, of so-called barbarous tribes, and of those whose intellectual habits differ much from our own. We may be prone to regard ourselves as standing at the summit of civilization; and all other nations and ages, as not only occupying inferior positions, but positions on a slope which descends till it sinks into the nature of brutes. And yet how little does an examination of the history of mankind justify this view! The different stages of civilization, and of intellectual culture, which have prevailed among them, have had no appearance of belonging to one single series, in which the cases differed only as higher or lower. On the contrary, there have been many very different kinds of civilization, accompanied by different forms of art and of thought; showing how universally the human mind tends to such habits, and how rich it is in the modes of manifesting its innate powers. How different have been the forms of civilization among the Chinese, the Indians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Mexicans, the Peruvians! Yet in all, how much was displayed of sagacity and skill, of perseverance and progress, of mental activity and grasp, of thoughtfulness and power. Are we, in thinking of these manifestations of human capacity, to think of them as only a stage between us and brutes? or are we to think so, even of the stoical Red Indians of North America, or the energetic New Zealanders, and Caffres? And if not, why of the African Negroes, or the Australians, or the Bushmen? We may call their Language a jargon. Very probable it would, in its present form, be unable to express a great deal of what we are in the habit of putting into language. But can we refuse to believe that, with regard to matters with which they are familiar, and on occasions where they are interested, they would be to each other intelligible and clear? And if we suppose cases in which their affections and emotions are strongly excited, (and affections and emotions at least we cannot deny them,) can we not believe that they would be eloquent and impressive? Do we not know, in fact, that almost all nations which we call savage, are, on such occasions, eloquent in their own language? And since this is so, must not their language, after all, be a wonderful instrument as well as ours? Since it can convey one man's thoughts and emotions to many, clothed in the form which they assume in his mind; giving to things, it may be, an aspect quite different from that which they would have if presented to their own senses; guiding their conviction, warming their hearts, impelling their purposes;—can language, even in such cases, be otherwise than a wonderful produce of man's internal, of his mental, that is, of his peculiarly human faculties? And is not language, therefore, even in what we regard as its lowest forms, an endowment which completely separates man from animals which have no such faculty?—which cannot regard, or which cannot convey, the impressions of the individual in any such general and abstract form? Probably we should find, as those who have studied the language of savages always have found, that every such language contains a number of curious and subtle practices,—contrivances, we cannot help calling them,—for marking the relations, bearings and connections of words; contrivances quite different from those of the languages which we think of as more perfect; but yet, in the mouths of those who use such speech, answering their purpose with great precision. But without going into such details, the use of any articulate language is, as the oldest Greeks spoke of it, a special and complete distinction of man as man.

10. It would be an obscure and useless labor, to speculate upon the question whether animals have among themselves anything which can properly be called Language. That they have anything which can be termed Language, in the sense in which we here speak of it, as admitting of general expressions, abstractions, address to numbers, eloquence, is utterly at variance with any interpretation which we can put upon their proceedings. The broad distinction of Instinct and Reason, however obscure it may be, yet seems to be most simply described, by saying, that animals do not apprehend their impressions under general forms, and that man does. Resemblance, and consequent association of impressions, may often show like generalization; but yet it is different. There is, in man's mind, a germ of general thoughts, suggested by resemblances, which is evolved and fixed in language; and by the aid of such an addition to the impressions of sense, man has thousands of intellectual pathways from object to object, from effect to cause, from fact to inference. His impressions are projected on a sphere of thought of which the radii can be prolonged into the farthest regions of the universe. Animals, on the contrary, are shut up in their sphere of sensation,—passing from one impression to another by various associations, established by circumstances; but still, having access to no wider intellectual region, through which lie lines of transition purely abstract and mental. That they have their modes of communicating their impressions and associations, their affections and emotions, we know; but these modes of communication do not make a language; nor do they disturb the assignment of Language as a special character of man; nor the belief that man differs in his Kind, and we may say, using a larger phrase, in his Order, from all other creatures.

11. We may sometimes be led to assign much of the development of man's peculiar powers, to the influence of external circumstances. And that the development of those powers is so influenced, we cannot doubt; but their development only, not their existence. We have already said that savages, living a precarious and miserable life, occupied incessantly with providing for their mere bodily wants, are not likely to possess language, or any other characteristic of humanity, in any but a stunted and imperfect form. But, that manhood is debased and degraded under such adverse conditions, does not make man cease to be man. Even from such an abject race, if a child be taken and brought up among the comforts and means of development which civilized life supplies, he does not fail to show that he possesses, perhaps in an eminent degree, the powers which specially belong to man. The evidences of human tendencies, human thoughts, human capacities, human affections and sympathies, appear conspicuously, in cases in which there has been no time for external circumstances to operate in any great degree, so as to unfold any difference between the man and the brute; or in which the influence of the most general of external agencies, the impressions of several of the senses, have been intercepted. Who that sees a lively child, looking with eager and curious eyes at every object, uttering cries that express every variety of elementary human emotion in the most vivacious manner, exchanging looks and gestures, and inarticulate sounds, with his nurse, can doubt that already he possesses the germs of human feeling, thought and knowledge? that already, before he can form or understand a single articulate word, he has within him the materials of an infinite exuberance of utterance, and an impulse to find the language into which such utterance is to be moulded by the law of his human nature? And perhaps it may have happened to others, as it has to me, to know a child who had been both deaf, dumb, and blind, from a very early age. Yet she, as years went on, disclosed a perpetually growing sympathy with the other children of the family in all their actions, with which of course she could only acquaint herself by the sense of touch. She sat, dressed, walked, as they did; even imitated them in holding a book in her hand when they read, and in kneeling when they prayed. No one could look at the change which came over her sightless countenance, when a known hand touched hers, and doubt that there was a human soul within the frame. The human soul seemed not only to be there, but to have been fully developed; though the means by which it could receive such communications as generally constitute human education, were thus cut off. And such modes of communication with her companions as had been taught her, or as she had herself invented, well bore out the belief, that her mind was the constant dwelling-place, not only of human affections, but of human thoughts. So plainly does it appear that human thought is not produced or occasioned by external circumstances only; but has a special and indestructible germ in human nature.

12. I have been endeavoring to illustrate the doctrine that man's nature is different from the nature of other animals; as subsidiary to the doctrine that the Human Epoch of the earth's history is different from all the preceding Epochs. But in truth, this subsidiary proposition is not by any means necessary to my main purpose. Even if barbarous and savage tribes, even if men under unfavorable circumstances, be little better than the brutes, still no one will doubt that the most civilized races of mankind, that man under the most favorable circumstances, is far, is, indeed, immeasurably elevated above the brutes. The history of man includes not only the history of Scythians and Barbarians, Australians and Negroes, but of ancient Greeks and of modern Europeans; and therefore there can be no doubt that the period of the Earth's history, which includes the history of man, is very different indeed from any period which preceded that. To illustrate the peculiarity, the elevation, the dignity, the wonderful endowments of man, we might refer to the achievements, the recorded thoughts and actions, of the most eminent among those nations;—to their arts, their poetry, their eloquence; their philosophers, their mathematicians, their astronomers; to the acts of virtue and devotion, of patriotism, generosity, obedience, truthfulness, love, which took place among them;—to their piety, their reverence for the deity, their resignation to his will, their hope of immortality. Such characteristic traits of man as man, (which all examples of intelligence, virtue, and religion, are,) might serve to show that man is, in a sense quite different from other creatures, "fearfully and wonderfully made;" but I need not go into such details. It is sufficient for my purpose to sum up the result in the expressions which I have already used; that man is an intellectual, moral, religious, and spiritual being.

13. But the existence of man upon the earth being thus an event of an order quite different from any previous part of the earth's history, the question occurs, how long has this state of things endured? What period has elapsed since this creature, with these high powers and faculties, was placed upon the earth? How far must we go backward in time, to find the beginning of his wonderful history?—so utterly wonderful compared with anything which had previously occurred. For as to that point, we cannot feel any doubt. The wildest imagination cannot suggest that corals and madrepores, oysters and sepias, fishes and lizards, may have been rational and moral creatures; nor even those creatures which come nearer to human organization; megatheriums and mastodons, extinct deer and elephants. Undoubtedly the earth, till the existence of man, was a world of mere brute creatures. How long then has it been otherwise? How long has it been the habitation of a rational, reflective, progressive race? Can we by any evidence, geological or other, approximate to the beginning of the Human History?

14. This is a large and curious question, and one on which a precise answer may not be within our reach. But an answer not precise, an approximation, as we have suggested, may suffice for our purpose. If we can determine, in some measure, the order and scale of the period during which man has occupied the earth, the determination may serve to support the analogy which we wish to establish.

15. The geological evidence with regard to the existence of man is altogether negative. Previous to the deposits and changes which we can trace as belonging obviously to the present state of the earth's surface, and the operation of causes now existing, there is no vestige of the existence of man, or of his works. As was long ago observed,[6 - By Bishop Berkeley. See Lyell, iii. 346.] we do not find, among the shells and bones which are so abundant in the older strata, any weapons, medals, implements, structures, which speak to us of the hand of man, the workman. If we look forwards ten or twenty thousand years, and suppose the existing works of man to have been, by that time, ruined and covered up by masses of rubbish, inundations, morasses, lava-streams, earthquakes; still, when the future inhabitant of the earth digs into and explores these coverings, he will discover innumerable monuments that man existed so long ago. The materials of many of his works, and the traces of his own mind, which he stamps upon them, are as indestructible as the shells and bones which give language to the oldest work. Indeed, in many cases the oldest fossil remains are the results of objects of seemingly the most frail and perishable material;—of the most delicate and tender animal and vegetable tissues and filaments. That no such remains of textures and forms, moulded by the hand of man, are anywhere found among these, must be accepted as indisputable evidence that man did not exist, so as to be contemporary with the plants and animals thus commemorated. According to geological evidence, the race of man is a novelty upon the earth;—something which has succeeded to all the great geological changes.

16. And in this, almost all geologists are agreed. Even those who hold that, in other ways, the course of change has been uniform;—that even the introduction of man, as a new species of animal, is only an event of the same kind as myriads of like events which have occurred in the history of the earth;—still allow that the introduction of man, as a moral being, is an event entirely different from any which had taken place before; and that event is, geologically speaking, recent. The changes of which we have spoken, as studied by the geologist in connection with the works of man, the destruction of buildings on sea-coasts by the incursions of the ocean, the removal of the shore many miles away from ancient harbors, the overwhelming of cities by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions; however great when compared with the changes which take place in one or two generations; are minute and infinitesimal, when put in comparison with the changes by which ranges of mountains and continents have been brought into being, one after another, each of them filled with the remains of different organic creations.

17. Further than this, geology does not go on this question. She has no chronometer which can tell us when the first buildings were erected, when man first dwelt in cities, first used implements or arms; still less, language and reflection. Geology is compelled to give over the question to History. The external evidences of the antiquity of the species fail us, and we must have recourse to the internal. Nature can tell us so little of the age of man, that we must inquire what he can tell us himself.

18. What man can tell us of his own age—what history can say of the beginning of history—is necessarily very obscure and imperfect. We know how difficult it is to trace to its origin the History of any single Nation: how much more, the History of all Nations! We know that all such particular histories carry us back to periods of the migrations of tribes, confused mixtures of populations, perplexed and contradictory genealogies of races; and as we follow these further and further backwards, they become more and more obscure and uncertain; at least in the histories which remain to us of most nations. Still, the obscurity is not such as to lead us to the conviction that research is useless and unprofitable. It is an obscurity such as naturally arises from the lapse of time, and the complexity of the subject. The aspect of the world, however far we go back, is still historical and human; historical and human, in as high a degree, as it is at the present day. Men, as described in the records of the oldest times, are of the same nature, act with the same views, are governed by the same motives, as at present. At all points, we see thought, purpose, law, religion, progress. If we do not find a beginning, we find at least evidence that, in approaching the beginning, the condition of man does not, in any way, cease to be that of an intellectual, moral, and religious creature.

19. There are, indeed, some histories which speak to us of the beginning of man's existence upon earth; and one such history in particular, which comes to us recommended by indisputable evidence of its own great antiquity, by numerous and striking confirmations from other histories, and from facts still current, and by its connection with that religious view of man's condition, which appears to thoughtful men to be absolutely requisite to give a meaning and purpose to man's faculties and endowments. I speak, of course, of the Hebrew Scriptures. This history professes to inform us how man was placed upon the earth; and how, from one centre, the human family spread itself in various branches into all parts of the world. This genealogy of the human race is accompanied by a chronology, from which it results that the antiquity of the human race does not exceed a few thousand years. Even if we accept this history as true and authoritative, it would not be wise to be rigidly tenacious of the chronology, as to its minute exactness. For, in the first place, of three different forms in which this history appears, the chronology is different in all the three: I mean the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint versions of the Old Testament. And even if this were not so, since this chronology is put in the form of genealogies, of which many of the steps may very probably have a meaning different from the simple succession of generations in a family, (as some of them certainly have,) it would be unwise to consider ourselves bound to the exact number of years stated, in any of the three versions, or even in all. It makes no difference to our argument, nor to any, purpose in which we can suppose this narrative to have a bearing, whether we accept six thousand or ten thousand years, or even a longer period, as the interval which has now elapsed since the creation of man took place, and the peopling of the earth began.

20. And, in our speculations at least, it will be well for us to take into account the view which is given us of the antiquity of the human race, by other histories as well as by this. A satisfactory result of such an investigation would be attained if, looking at all these histories, weighing their value, interpreting their expressions fairly, discovering their sources of error, and of misrepresentation, we should find them all converge to one point; all give a consistent and harmonious view of the earliest stages of man's history; of the times and places in which he first appeared as man. If all nations of men are branches of the same family, it cannot but interest us, to find all the family traditions tending upwards towards the same quarter; indicating a divergence from the same point; exhibiting a recollection of the original domicile, or of the same original family circle.

21. To a certain extent at least, this appears to be the result of the historical investigations which have been pursued relative to this subject. A certain group of nations is brought before us by these researches which, a few thousands of years ago, were possessed of arts, and manners, and habits, and belief, which make them conspicuous, and which we can easily believe to have been contemporaneous successors of a common, though, it may be even then, remote stock. Such are the Jews, Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. The histories of these nations are connected with and confirm each other. Their languages, or most of them, have certain affinities, which glossologists, on independent grounds, have regarded as affinities implying an original connection. Their chronologies, though in many respects discrepant, are not incapable of being reduced into an harmony by very probable suppositions. Here we have a very early view of the condition of a portion of the earth as the habitation of man, and perhaps a suggestion of a condition earlier still.