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INDICATIONS

OF

THE CREATOR.

BY

WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D.,

w

MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF MORAL
PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

V

PHILADELPHIA:

CAREY AND HART.
1845.

C. SHERMAN, PRINTER,
19 ST. JAMES STREET.

CONTENTS.

Dedication, ---------- v

Preface, - - - - vii

ASTRONOMY.

The Copernican System, ------.-13

The Nebular Hypothesis, - - - - - - - 14

PHYSIOLOGY.

Recognition of Final Causes in Physiology, 21
The Plans of Animal Forms, - ---.--22

Use of Final Causes in Physiology, ------ 25

Question of the Transmutation of Species, ... 35

Hypothesis of Progressive Tendencies, 37

GEOLOGY.

The Question of Creation as related to Science, ... 39

IV CONTENTS.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY.

The Idea of Final Causes, 43

PAL^TIOLOGY.

Nature of Palcetiology, 54

Doctrine of Catastrophes and of Uniformity, 57

Relation of Tradition to Palsetiology, 65

Of the Conception of a First Cause, 77

Of the Supreme Cause, 82

DEDICATION.

TO

WILLIAM SMYTH, Esquire,

PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

My dear Professor Smyth,

I know that you have always felt a peculiar interest in the
contemplation of Indications of the Creator, drawn from the Crea-
tion in which we live, and from the Philosophy which we are led
to frame concerning it : and I think that you will be pleased to see
a contribution to this train of thought offered at the present mo-
ment. It will be a gratification to me, if, in publishing it, I am
allowed to inscribe it to you.

One who, like myself, has for many years enjoyed your friend-
ship, and witnessed your influence in this University, may well
rejoice at having an opportunity of offering an open tribute of
admiration and regard to the virtues and kindly affections by which
we have so long profited ; and of expressing his gratitude for the
pleasure and instruction you have so long diffused among us. And
I am happy to be able to add that, now, the wider public also has,
in your published Lectures, the means of judging of our obligations
to you. All may there see that you have, throughout your labours,
been zealous and consistent in inculcating those principles of jus-
tice and mutual forbearance, of moral purpose in political designs,
and moderation in political action, which, so far as they prevail,

1*

VI DEDICATION.

make the world of human history a more visible representation of
the will of its Divine Ruler.

That you may long enjoy the recollection of these your past
benefits to us, and of our gratitude to you, is the cordial wish and
prayer of,

My dear Professor Smyth,

Your affectionate Friend,

W. WHEWELL.

Trinity College, Cambridge,
February 14, 1845.

PREFACE.

The following Extracts are now published from a persuasion
that they may be interesting to many persons who would be un-
likely to read the larger works from which they are taken. The
Philosophy of the Sciences is necessarily a series of somewhat
abstruse dissertations, and is likely to be acceptable only to thought-
ful students. The History of Science is a subject of a more popu-
lar character, yet when the history is carried through all the
epochs of all the material sciences, probably but few will accom-
pany the historian through a plan so extensive. But lessons of
Natural Theology always find a large class of willing readers,
when there is any thing of novelty in their form. The reflections
which the following pages contain, being those which result from
a review of the whole progress of science, and of the principles and
processes which have been concerned in that progress, necessarily
differ in many respects from those of other writers on Natural
Theology.

Perhaps, also, there may be some recommendation of these
Indications of the Creator in their being the result of researches
and reasonings undertaken with no purpose of bringing such indi-
cations into view, but with objects of quite another kind. For
when an author writes with a theological conclusion set before
him from the first, as that to which he must conduct his argument,
there may arise a suspicion of a defect of candour and comprehen-
siveness in what he writes. It may be supposed that he will strain
or evade any thing that points away from his predetermined end.
But a narrative of the whole History of Science, and an analysis
of the processes by which sciences have been formed, are under-
takings too large, and their course too rigidly determined by their
plan, to allow them to be drawn aside by partial and irrelevant
considerations. The passages now extracted as having a Theo-

Vlll PREFACE.

logical bearing will be seen, on reference, to flow naturally from
the trains of thought with which they are combined in the original
works.

The main points to which these extracts refer are the Indications
of Design in the Creator, and of a Supernatural Origin of the
World ; and, as connected with this latter point, the consistency of
the Inductive with the Revealed History of the World. I have
not attempted to combine the Extracts into a system, but have given
them in the order in which they occur in the original works. I
have added a short extract from another work, on the subject of the
Nebular Hypothesis, bearing on the same questions.

The questions which belong to Natural Theology are, in sub-
stance, the same from age to age ; but they change their aspect
with every advance or supposed advance in the Inductive Sciences.
I have (p. 53) endeavoured to show the assertion to be quite base-
less, that, as science advances, final causes recede before it, and
disappear one after the other. I have also, I trust, made it appear,
by a survey of the whole history of one great science, Physiology,
that in that science the Doctrine of Final Causes has been not only
consistent with the successive steps of discovery, but has been the
great instrument of every step of discovery from Galen to Cuvier.

I have further attempted to explain that the modern doctrine of
Unity of Plan in different kinds of animals does not at all neces-
sarily contradict the Doctrine of Final Causes : that Morphology
is not necessarily inconsistent with Teleology, But I have also
had to show that, in modern times, the two doctrines have been put
in opposition to each other. The Morphologists have declared, on
the ground of their peculiar views, that they could not allow them-
selves to ascribe to the Creator any intention, (p. 28.) And pro-
bably an impression as if the evidence of Design in the Creator
were obscured and weakened, is generally produced by the first
aspect of morphological doctrines, in minds eager for new views,
and yet led, by their own want of the discoverer's power, to borrow
their new views from others.

I have already ventured to express an opinion* that Inductive
Minds, those which have been able to discover Laws of Nature,
have also commonly been ready to believe in an Intelligent Author
of Nature ; while Deductive Minds, those which have employed

* Bridgewater Treatise, Book iii. Ch. v. and vi.

PREFACE. IX

themselves in tracing the consequences of Laws discovered by
others, have been willing to rest in Laws, without looking beyond
to an Author of Laws. I have taken the liberty also (p. 33) to
apply this remark to the case of the opposition between Teleology
and Morphology ; and have remarked that Cuvier, the great Zoo-
logical Discoverer of our time, was a firm believer in Creative
Design, notwithstanding the arguments of the Morphologists who
controverted such doctrines. I have, in the following pages, so
fully discussed this subject, that it would be superfluous to add any
thing here, if it were not that, as I have already said, morphologi-
cal views have a peculiar tendency to appear unfavourable to the
belief of final causes, in minds to which they are new.

But as morphological views, when they are first presented, ap-
pear to some persons to dim the brightness of those proofs of Crea-
tive Design with which we are familiar; so, on the other hand,
when a newly discovered instance of Creative Design is first made
known to us by the zoological discoverer, it is impossible for most
persons not to see in it a clear and strong indication of an Intelli-
gent Creator ; however much this conviction may afterwards be
obscured and confused by morphological generalities of expression.
I have given an example of such a new evidence of design, in Mr.
Owen's discoveries with regard to the process of suckling of the
kangaroo (p. 47). I do not think any one, becoming acquainted
for the first time with the provisions for this purpose, as described
by Mr. Owen, can help receiving the conviction which Mr. Owen
expresses, that this is an "irrefragable evidence of creative fore-
thought."

Mr. Owen, in this as in many other parts of his writings, is an
instance, in addition to those which I have previously adduced, of
the teleological turn of the Inductive Mind. It would be going too
far to say, conversely, that those whose minds are not inductive
have a bias towards morphology. But yet this would not be too
much to say, if morphology were very loosely understood. We
should not be surprised at the morphologist coming to conclusions
very different from those of the teleological discoverer, if that unity
of plan which the morphologists assert, be made to consist in re-
semblances of the most heterogeneous and fantastical kind ; if, for
instance, plants were supposed to be analogous to the branching
forms of crystallization; or trees growing out of the ground to the
electrical brush : if some animals were supposed to fall in with the

X PREFACE.

supposed unity of plan because they have abundant tail, and orna-
ments for the head in the form of tufts, crests, or horns, while others
occupy an analogous position to these because they are of a soft
and sluggish character and abundantly edible: if, again, we have
a part of a classification in which some animals are placed because
they have been denounced as impure, with other animals because
they are wild and striped, and others because they have spines and
prickles : if, finally, notions of moral judgments and of symbolism
are introduced into natural history, and we are told of classes of
animals which are symbolically types of evil. Morphology, pur-
sued with such habits of mind, cannot, we should suppose from all
the analogy which the history of science lends us, lead to any solid
truth, either in natural history or in philosophy.

There is one morphological doctrine of modern times which has
attracted much notice, in consequence of its being imagined to
offer a solution of the great difficulty of the uniformitarian theory
in geology, namely, the appearance of new species and classes of
animals as we proceed from the earlier to the later formations.
The morphological doctrine of which I speak is, that the kinds of
animals may be arranged in a series ascending from lower to
higher : and that each animal of a higher kind, in the progress of
its embryo state, passes through states which are the final condition
of the lower kind. The application of this morphological doctrine
to geological difficulty is this : that the higher kinds of animals
came later, and were developed from the lower kinds, which came
earlier in the series, by new peculiar conditions, operating upon
the embryo, and carrying it to a higher stage. Now in the appa-
rent simplicity of this doctrine, thus enunciated in general terms,
we have that which recommends it to those who accept such doc-
trines in their general shape. But the zoologist and the geologist,
who can test its general assertions by the special facts with which
their researches have made them acquainted, know that the facts
do not agree with this doctrine. Without going into detail on this
subject, I venture to offer the following remarks.

It is not at all agreed among eminent physiologists,* that animals
can be arranged in a series ascending from lower to J uglier, such
that each animal of a higher kind in its embryo state passes through
the successive stages of the lower kinds ; the characters of these

* I make these remarks on the authority of a physiological friend.

PREFACE. XI

stages being (in the asserted doctrine) taken from the brain and
the heart, and man being the highest point of the series. For such
physiologists assert, that the brain of the human embryo does not
resemble, at any period, however early, the brain of any Mollusk
or of any Articulate, which are two of the lower stages. It never
passes through a stage comparable or analogous to a permanent
condition of the same organ in any Invertebrate Animal. And in
like manner the spinal cord in the human vertebras at no period
agrees with the corresponding part of the lower kinds of animals.
The moment it becomes visible in the human embryo, it is entirely
dorsal in position ; while in Mollusks and Articulates a great part,
or nearly the whole is ventral. The same is true of the heart, or
centre of the vascular system, which has always a different relative
position to the great nervous centre in the Human Embryo from
what it has in any Articulate Animal, and in most Mollusks.

Again ; the order of lower and higher stages of developement of
the human embryo, does not agree with the successive stages of
animal life at successive periods of the earth's history as disclosed
by geology. For even if we were to admit, what has not been
proved, that the lowest kind of animal developement, which has
been termed polygastric monads, exist in the earliest fossiliferous
rocks, these rocks also manifest the higher types of Echinodermal,
Articulate, and Molluscous Animals; while the human germ, com-
mencing with a form and vital properties analogous to those of the
monad, passes from the monad stage at once to the Vertebrate, and
never enters or typifies the Radiate, the Articulate, or the Mollusc-
ous series of organic forms : whereas these forms of Invertebrates
have preceded the Vertebrate forms on the earth's surface accord-
ing to the best evidence disclosed by geology.

Moreover in the Vertebrate, as well as in the Invertebrate part
of the animal series, the asserted order fails. It has been pointed
out by others,* that in order to produce the asserted accordance
between the order of zoological developement and geological suc-
cession, geological facts are misrepresented in the most flagrant
manner. For Vertebrate animals do exist in the Silurian rocks,
from which the asserted law excludes them. Again ; if we are
to have a geological period eminently characterized by Saurians,
it must be that of the lias and oolites, and not that of the new red

* Parker's Magazine, Feb. 1845, p. 102.

Xll PREFACE.

sandstone, as asserted in the hypothetical scheme ; while one of the
Saurians which most approaches the mammalian character, has
recently been found in a formation below those in which the more
ordinary Saurian forms occur. Again; birds, which the new law
places in the oolitic group, have left their traces on the earlier
formation of the new red sandstone. The new law finds geological
epochs corresponding to some of the orders of quadrupeds, namely
the rodents, ruminants, digitigrades, and quadrumans ; but it gives
no place to the other orders, which might claim one with equal
reason, pachyderms, marsupials, plantigrades and edentates. Fi-
nally, the law requires the monkey to be placed in the newer
tertiarks ; whereas their remains have been found in the older
tertiaries of France, India, and England.

Further, the doctrine of the developement of the kinds of animals
from one kind to another by the influence of external conditions, is
contrary to the conclusions of the most esteemed physiologists, as is
stated in the following pages. This doctrine is coupled with the
assertion of the origin of living beings without an egg or other
living parent. This assertion is at variance with the latest and
most careful, as well as with all preceding experiments, of eminent
physiologists.* And the tenet that any animal can be advanced to
a higher stage by a period of gestation prolonged beyond the usual
time, is contrary to all fact. The advancement of the vital organs
to more perfect stages of developement requires the stimulus of
respiration and muscular action, for which birth is essential. Under
these conditions, the organs of animals have been developed beyond
their usual state ; but, as is stated in the following pages, never to
a stage beyond that which characterizes the species.

I have hitherto spoken in general terms of the stages of animal
organization, meaning by that, such stages as fish, lizard, bird,
beast. And I have spoken as if there were, in the question before
us, no difficulty, except that of advancing from one of these stages
to another. But in fact there have been and are existing on the
earth many kinds of fish, many kinds of saurians, many of birds,
many of beasts. These have the most various forms and habits,
with an internal organization of each, which, though wonderful, is
in a great measure intelligible, when considered as designed for
the animal's support and preservation according to its habits. But

* Owen's Lectures, 1843, p. 33.

FREFACU. Xlll

to arrange all these kinds of animals, that is, the whole animal
creation, in a series, as successive stages of one line of develope-
ments, or of any ramified line ; and to make the form and the habits
of each the result of the stage of developement at which the ani-
mal has arrived ; is a mode of speculating which is the opposite
of that which all successful zoological speculation has followed, and
may be expected to lead to opposite results.

The same imperfection in the evidence would be found, if we
were to examine, in other subjects as well as in zoology, the as-
serted law of the identity of the stages of natural developement of
the faculties, ascending from beast to man, with the probable his-
tory of mankind. For instance, the view of the speech of man as
of the same nature with the signs by which animals express their
feelings and purposes, is a view which leaves out of sight the es-
sential character of language. For the essential nature of language
consists, not in its expressing particular feelings and purposes, but
in its expressing thoughts and things in a general manner. Words
express abstract thoughts, each of which may be applied to innu-
merable particular objects; and Human Reason can deal with
thoughts so abstracted, and by means of them, can express Truth,
which it is her peculiar privilege to contemplate. There are, in
animals, no germs of this power of abstraction, this apprehension
of abstract and general Truth. The Instinct of animals cannot
become the Reason of man, by any process of developement. We
cannot unfold the mind of a spider or a bee into the mind of a
geometer.

On the other subjects to which the Extracts refer, it does not
appear necessary to add any thing to what is there said. The
opinions there expressed have been for some time before the world ;
and are such as, I trust, can give just offence to no one.

Trinity College, Cambridge,
February 14, 1845.

EXTRACTS,

ETC.

ASTRONOMY.

THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.

[About k. d. 1500, Copernicus had satisfied himself of the truth
of the Heliocentric Theory, according to which the planets, and the
earth as one of them, revolve round the sun as the centre of their
motions. His book De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium was
published in 1543, the year of his death. In 1610 Galileo, having
invented a telescope, discovered Jupiter's satellites and the moon*
like phases of Venus; and these discoveries supplied additional
arguments for the truth of the Copernican system. This system
Galileo afterwards defended in his writings, which were on that
account condemned as heretical by the Inquisition.]

* The doctrines promulgated by Copernicus excited no visible
alarm among the theologians of his own time ; we may assign as a
reason for this, that those who were disposed to assert the sway of
authority in all matters of belief, had not yet been roused and ruffled
by the aggressions of innovators in philosophy and religion, as they
soon afterwards were. Probably, also, we ought to take into account
the different temper and circumstances of the ultramontane and
Italian learned men. The latter, living under the immediate
shadow of the papal chair, were necessarily less bold in their specu-
lations, and less open in their promulgation of any opinions which
might have a taint of heresy. This influence operated less strongly
in Poland and Germany ; and we find no evidence which leads us
to deny to these countries the glory of having received the Coper-
nican system of the world, from the first, with satisfaction, and
without bigoted opposition. The great religious reform which had
its rise in Germany about the time of the promulgation of the
Copernican system, showed sufficiently that that was the land where
opinions would assert their freedom; and where authority could
not, with prudence, urge superfluous claims.

But in Italy the church entertained the persuasion that her

* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book v. Chap, iii, Sect. 4.

2

14 ASTRONOMY.

authority could not be upheld at all, without maintaining it to be
supreme on all points. The spirit of dogmatism of the middle ages
had descended upon the ecclesiastical institutions of the seventeenth
century ; and in consistency with that spirit, it was criminal to
disturb received doctrines, or to separate philosophy from religion.
The tenet of the earth being at rest in the centre of the universe,
was not only a part of the established school-philosophy, but was
also, it was conceived, sanctioned by Scripture. The Copernican
system, therefore, so far as it came into view, was looked at with
suspicion and aversion. But though this system is afterwards, in
the official condemnation of it, spoken of as " entertained by many,''
it never came under the notice of the spiritual judges in any con-
spicuous manner, till it had been illustrated by Galileo's discoveries,
and recommended by his writings.

The story of the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition, for
asserting the motion of the earth, and of his formal renunciation of
this doctrine in the presence of his judges, has been so often told,
that I need not here repeat the details. It rather belongs to our
purpose to consider what lessons may be gathered from it with re-
gard to the progress of science.

One reflection which occurs is, that both Galileo's behaviour and
that of his judges, appear to disclose some Italian traits of character.
The assumption of supreme authority in all matters of opinion, an
assumption unsuited to the powers and condition of man, had led,
it would seem, to a kind of artificial state of compromise, in which
men's published opinions were treated as a point of decorum only,
the truth being left out of consideration. Thus Galileo seems to
have expected that the flimsiest veil of professed submission in his
belief would enable his arguments in favour of the Copernican doc-
trine to pass unvisited ; and the inquisitors were satisfied with a
renunciation which they could not believe to be sincere. This
artificial state, again, was probably one occasion of the furtive mode
of insinuating his doctrines, so much employed by Galileo, which
some of his historians admire as subtle irony, and others blame as
insincerity. Nor do we see any thing to lead us to believe that
Galileo was not at all times ready to make such submissions as the
spiritual tribunals required; although undoubtedly he was also very
desirous of promoting the cause of what he conceived to be philoso-
phical truth. The same absence of earnestness appears on the other
side, in the courtesy and indulgence with which, as is now almost
universally allowed, Galileo was treated throughout the course of
the proceedings against him. For his being confined in the dun-
geons of the Inquisition, as his lot has sometimes been described,
appears to have consisted principally in his being placed under some
slight restrictions, first, in the house of Nicolini, the ambassador of
his own sovereign, the Duke of Tuscany, and afterwards in the
country-seat of Archbishop Piccolomini, one of his own warmest
friends. It appears to be not going too far to suppose that the ex-
travagant assumptions of the church of Rome, which it was impos-
sible sincerely to allow, and necessary to evade by artifice, generated

THE COTERNICAN SYSTEM. 15

in the philosophers of Italy an acuteness and subtlety, but also a
suppleness and servility very different from the vigorous indepen-
dent habits of thought of Germany and England.

But there remains something more to be attended to in the case
of Galileo; for though the See of Rome might exaggerate the
claims of religious authority, there is a question of no small real
difficulty, which the progress of science often brings into notice, as
it did then. The revelation on which our religion is founded, seems
to declare, or to take for granted, opinions on points on which science
also gives her decision; and we then come to this dilemma, — that
doctrines, established by a scientific use of reason, may seem to
contradict the declarations of revelation according to our view of its
meaning; — and yet, that we cannot, in consistency with our reli-
gious views, make reason a judge of the truth of revealed doctrines.
\n the case of astronomy, on which Galileo was called in question,
the general sense of cultivated and sober-minded men has long ago
drawn the distinction between religious and physical tenets which
is necessary to resolve this dilemma. On this point, it is reasonably
held, that the phrases which are employed in Scripture respecting
astronomical facts, are not to be made use of to guide our scientific
opinions ; they may be supposed to answer their end if they fall in
with common notions, and are thus effectually subservient to the
moral and religious import of revelation. But the establishment of
this distinction was not accomplished without long and distressing
controversies. Nor, if we wish to include all cases in which the
same dilemma may again come into play, is it easy to lay down an
adequate canon for the purpose. For we can hardly foresee, before-
hand, what part of the past history of the universe may eventually
be found to come within the domain of science; or what bearing
the tenets, which science establishes, may have upon our view of
the providential and revealed government of the world. But with-
out attempting here to generalize on this subject, there are two re-
flections which maybe worth our notice; they are supported by
what took place in reference to astronomy on the occasion of which
we are speaking; and may, at other periods, be applicable to other
sciences.

In the first place, the meaning which any generation puts upon
the phrases of Scripture, depends, more than is at first sight sup-
posed, upon the received philosophy of the time. Hence, while
men imagine that they are contending for revelation, they are, in
fact, contending for their own interpretation of revelation, uncon-
sciously adapted to what they believe to be rationally probable.
And the new interpretation, which the new philosophy requires,
and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence done to
the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without the
dangerous results which were apprehended. When the language
of Scripture, invested with its new meaning, has become familiar
to men, it is found that the ideas which it calls up, are quite as
reconcilable as the former ones were, with the soundest religious
views. And the world then looks back with surprise at the error

16 ASTRONOMY.

of those who thought that the essence of revelation was involved in
their own arbitrary version of some collateral circumstance. At
the present day we can hardly conceive how reasonable men should
have imagined that religious reflections-on the stability of the earth,
and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve round it,
would he interfered with by its being acknowledged that this rest
and motion are apparent only.

In the next place, we may observe that those who thus adhere
tenaciously to the traditionary or arbitrary mode of understanding
Scriptural expressions of physical events, are always strongly con-
demned by succeeding generations. They are looked upon with
contempt by the world at large, who cannot enter into the obsolete
difficulties with which they encumbered themselves; and with pity
by the more considerate and serious, who know how much sagacity
and right-mindedness are requisite for the conduct of philosophers
and religious men on such occasions; but who know also how weak
and vain is the attempt, to get rid of the difficulty by merely de-
nouncing the new tenets as inconsistent with religious belief, and
by visiting the promulgators of them with severity such as the state
of opinions and institutions may allow. The prosecutors of Galileo
are still held up to the scorn and aversion of mankind ; although,
as we have seen, they did not act till it seemed that their position
compelled them to do so, and then proceeded with all the gentle-
ness and moderation which were compatible with judicial forms.

THE KEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.

[* Laplace has proved that the state of the solar system is stable:
that is, the ellipses which the planets describe will always remain
nearly circular, and the axis of revolution of the earth will never
deviate much from its present position. He has shown also that
this stability depends on the fact that the planets all move in the
same direction, in orbits of small eccentricity, and slightly inclined
to each other. He has moreover given a mathematical proof that
this fact is not accidental. Hence we may regard this arrangement
as the result of design, and as intended to secure the stability of
the system.]

t We have referred to Laplace, as a profound mathematician,
who has strongly expressed the opinion, that the arrangement by
which the stability of the solar system is secured is not the result
of chance ; that " a primitive cause has directed the planetary
motions." This author, however, having arrived, as we have done,
at this conviction, does not draw from it the conclusion which has
appeared to us so irresistible, that " the admirable arrangement of
the solar system cannot but be the work of an intelligent and most
powerful being." He quotes these expressions, which are those

* Bridgewater Treatise. Book II., chap. iii.
t lb. Book II., chap. vii.

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 17

of Newton, and points at them as instances where that great philo-
sopher had deviated from the method of true philosophy. lie him-
self proposes an hypothesis concerning the nature of the primitive
cause of which he conceives the existence to be thus probable: and
this hypothesis, on account of the facts which it attempts to com-
bine, the view of the universe which it presents, and the eminence
of the person by whom it is propounded, deserves our notice.

1. Laplace conjectures that in the original condition of the solar
system, the sun revolved upon his axis, surrounded by an atmo-
sphere which, in virtue of an excessive heat, extended far beyond
the orbits of all the planets, the planets as yet having no existence.
The heat gradually diminished, and as the solar atmosphere con-
tracted by cooling, the rapidity of its rotation increased by the
laws of rotatory motion, and an exterior zone of vapour was de-
tached from the rest, the central attraction being no longer able to
overcome the increased centrifugal force. This zone of vapour
might in some cases retain its form, as we see it in Saturn's ring;
but more usually the ring of vapour would break into several
masses, and these would generally coalesce into one mass, which
would revolve about the sun. Such portions of the solar atmo-
sphere, abandoned successively at different distances, would form
u planets in the state of vapour." These masses of vapour, it ap-
pears from mechanical considerations, would have each its rotatory
motion, and as the cooling of the vapour still went on, would each
produce a planet, which might have satellites and rings, formed
from the planet in the same manner as the planets were formed
from the atmosphere of the sun.

It may easily be conceived that all the primary motions of a
system so produced would be nearly circular, nearly in the plane
of the original equator of the solar rotation, and in the direction of
that rotation. Reasons are offered also to show that the motions of
the satellites thus produced and the motions of rotation of the
planets must be in the same direction. And thus it is held that the
hypothesis accounts for the most remarkable circumstances in the
structure of the solar system: namely, the motions of the planets
in the same direction, and almost in the same plane; the motions
of the satellites in the same direction as those of the planets; the
motions of rotation of these different bodies still in the same direc-
tion as the other motions, and in planes not much different; the
small eccentricity of the orbits of the planets, upon which condi-
tion, along with some of the preceding ones, the stability of the
system depends; and the position of the source of light and heat
in the centre of the system.

It is not necessary for the purpose, nor suitable to the plan of the
present treatise, to examine, on physical grounds, the probability of
the above hypothesis. It is proposed by its author, with great
diffidence, as* a conjecture only. We might therefore, very reason-
ably put off all discussion of the bearings of this opinion upon our
views of the government of the world, fill the opinion itself should
have assumed a less indistinct and precarious form. It can be no

2*

18 ASTRONOMY.

charge against our doctrines, that there is a difficulty in reconciling
with them arbitrary guesses and half-formed theories. We shall,
however, make a few observations upon this nebular hypothesis, as
it may he termed.

2. If we grant, for a moment, the hypothesis, it by no means
proves that the solar system was formed without the intervention
of intelligence and design. It only transfers our view of the skill
exercised, and the means employed, to another part of the work.
For, how came the sou and its atmosphere to have such materials,
such motions, such a constitution, that these consequences followed
from their primordial condition ? How came the parent vapour thus
to be capable of coherence, separation, contraction, solidification ?
How came the laws of its motion, attraction, repulsion, condensa-
tion, to be so fixed, as to lead to a beautiful and harmonious system
in the end ? How came it to be neither too fluid nor too tenacious,
to contract neither too quickly nor too slowly, for the successive
formation of the several planetary bodies'! How came that sub-
stance, which at one time was a luminous vapour, to be at a subse-
quent period, solids and fluids of many various kinds? What but
design and intelligence prepared and tempered this previously
existing element, so that it should by its natural changes produce
such an orderly system?

And if in this way we suppose a planet to be produced, what sort
of a body would it be 1 — something, it may be presumed, resembling
a large meteoric stone. How comes this mass to be covered with
motion and organization, with life and happiness? What primitive
cause stocked it with plants and animals, and produced all the vvon-
derfu and subtle contrivances which we find in their structure, all
the wide and profound mutual dependences which we trace in their
ec< nomy ? Was man, with his thought and feeling, his powers
and hopes, his will and conscience, also produced as an ultimate
result of the condensation of the solar atmosphere? Except we
allow a prior purpose and intelligence presiding over thjs material
"primitive cause," how irreconcilable is it with the evidence which
crowds in upon us on every side !

3. In the next place, we may observe concerning this hypothesis,
that it carries us back to the beginning of the present system of
things; but that it is impossible for our reason to stop at the point
thus presented to it. The sun, the earth, the planets, the moons
were brought into their present order out of a previous state, and,
as is supposed in the theory, by the natural operation of laws. But
how came that previous state to exist? We are compelled to sup-
pose that it, in like manner, was educed from a still prior state of
things; and this, again, must have been the result of a condition
prior still. Nor is it possible for us to find, in the tenets of the
nebular hypothesis, any resting-place or satisfaction for the mind.
The same reasoning faculty, which seeks for the origin of the pre-
sent system of things, and is capable of assenting to, or dissenting
from the hypothesis propounded by Laplace as an answer to this
inquiry, is necessarily led to seek, in the same manner, for the

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 19

origin of any previous system of things, out of which the present
may appear to have grow n : and must pursue this train of inquiries
unremittingly, so long as the answer which it receives describes a
mere assemblage of matter and motion ; since ii would be to contra-
dict the laws of matter and the nature of motion, to suppose such
an assemblage to be theirs* condition.

The reflection just stated, may be illustrated by the further con-
sideration of the Nebular Hypothesis. This opinion refers us, for
the origin of the solar system, to a sun surrounded with an atmo-
sphere of enormously elevated temperature, revolving and cooling.
But as we ascend to a still earlier period, what state of things are
we to suppose? — a still higher temperature, a still more diffused
atmosphere. Laplace conceives that, in its primitive state, the sun
consisted in a diffused luminosity so as to resemble those nebulas
among the fixed stars, which are seen by the aid of the telescope,
and which exhibit a nucleus, more or less brilliant, surrounded by
a cloudy brightness. "This anterior state was itself preceded by
other states, in which the nebulous matter was more and more
diffuse, the nucleus being less and less luminous. We arrive,"
Laplace says, " in this manner, at a nebulosity so diffuse that its
existence could scarcely be suspected."

" Such is," he adds, " in fact, the first state of the nebulae which
Herschel carefully observed by means of his powerful telescopes.
He traced the progress of condensation, not indeed on one nebula,
for this progress can only become perceptible to us in the course of
centuries; but in the assemblage of nebulae; much in the same
manner as in a large forest we may trace the growth of trees among
the examples of different ages which stand side by side. He saw
in the first place the nebulous matter dispersed in patches, in the
different parts of the sky. He saw in some of these patches this
matter feebly condensed round one or more faint nuclei. In other
nebulas, these nuclei were brighter in proportion to the surrounding
nebulosity ; when by a further condensation the atmosphere of each
nucleus becomes separate from the others, the result is multiple
nebulous stars, formed by brilliant nuclei very near each other, and
each surrounded by an atmosphere: sometimes the nebulous matter
condensing in a uniform manner has produced nebulous systems
which are called planetary. Finally, a still greater degree of con-
densation transforms all these nebulous systems into stars. The
nebulas, classed according to this philosophical view, indicate with
extreme probability their future transformation into stars, and the
anterior nebulous condition of the stais which now exist."

It appears then that the highest point to which this series of con-
jectures can conduct us, is M an extremely diffused nebulosity,"
attended, we may suppose, by a far higher degree of heat, than that
which, at a later period of the hypothetical process, keeps all the
materials of our earth and planets in a state of vapour. Now is it
not impossible to avoid asking, whence was this light, this heat,
this diffusion? How came the laws which such a state implies, to
be already in existence? Whether light and heat produce their

20 ASTRONOMY.

effects by means of fluid vehicles or otherwise, they have complex
and varied laws which indicate the existence of some subtle
machinery for their action. When and how was this machinery
constructed ] Whence too that enormous expansive power which
the nebulous matter is supposed to possess ] And if, as would seem
to be supposed in this doctrine, all the material ingredients of the
earth existed in this diffuse nebulosity, either in the state of vapour,
or in some state of still greater expansion, whence were they and
their properties ] how came there to be of each simple substance
which now enters into the composition of the universe, just so much
and no more? Do we not, far more than ever, require an origin of
this origin] an explanation of this explanation] Whatever may
be the merits of the opinion as a physical hypothesis, with which
we do not here meddle, can it for a moment prevent our looking
beyond the hypothesis, to a First Cause, an Intelligent Author, an
origin proceeding from free volition, not from material necessity ]

But again : let us ascend to the highest point or the hypothetical
progression : let us suppose the nebulosity diffused throughout all
space, so that its course of running into patches is not yet begun.
How are we to suppose it distributed] Is it equably diffused in
every part] clearly not; for if it were, what should cause it to
gather into masses, so various in size, form and arrangement] The
separation of the nebulous matter into distinct nebulae implies
necessarily some original inequality of distribution ; some deter-
mining circumstances in its primitive condition. Whence were
these circumstances 1 this inequality ] we are still compelled to seek
some ulterior agency and power.

Why must the primeval condition be one of change at all ] Why
should not the nebulous matter be equably diffused throughout
space, and continue for ever in its state of equable diffusion, as it
must do, from the absence of all cause to determine the time and
manner of its separation] why should this nebulous matter grow
cooler and cooler ] why should it not retain for ever the same degree
of heat, whatever heat be ] If heat be a fluid, if to cool be to part
with its fluid, as many philosophers suppose, what becomes of the
fluid heat of the nebulous matter, as the matter cools down] Into
what unoccupied region does it rind its way]

Innumerable questions of the same kind might be asked, and the
conclusion to be drawn is, that every new physical theory which
we include in our view of the universe, involves us in new diffi-
culties and perplexities, if we try to erect it into an ultimate and
final account of the existence and arrangement of the world in which
we live. With the evidence of such theories, considered as scien-
tific generalizations of ascertained facts, with their claims to a place
in our natural philosophy, we have here nothing to do. But if they
are put forwards as a disclosure of the ultimate cause of that which
occurs, and as superseding the necessity of looking further or
higher ; if they claim a place in our Natural Theology, as well as
our Natural Philosophy; we conceive that their pretensions will
not bear a moment's examination.

RECOGNITION OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 21

Leaving- then to other persons and to future ages to decide upon
the scientific merits of the nebular hypothesis, we conceive that
the final fate of this opinion cannot, in sound reason, affect at all
the view which we have been endeavouring to illustrate; — the
view of the universe as the work of a wise and good Creator. Let
it be supposed that the point to which this hypothesis leads us is
the ultimate point of physical science; that the farthest glimpse
we can obtain of the material universe by our natural faculties,
shows it to us occupied by a boundless abyss of luminous matter;
still we ask, hojv space came to be thus occupied, how matter
came to be thus luminous'? If we establish by physical proofs,
that the first fact which can be traced in the history of the world
is that "there was light;" we shall still be led, even by our natural
reason, to suppose that before this could occur, "God said, Let there
be light."

PHYSIOLOGY.

RECOGNITION OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY.

* There is one idea which the researches of the physiologist and
the anatomist so constantly force upon him, that he cannot help as-
suming it as one of the guides of his speculations; I mean, the idea
of a purpose, or, as it is called in Aristotelian phrase, ajinal cause,
in the arrangements of the animal frame. It is impossible to doubt
that the motive nerves run along the limbs, in order that they may
convey to the muscles the impulses of the will ; and that the
muscles are attached to the bones, in order that they may move
and support them. This conviction prevails so steadily among
anatomists, that even when the use of any part is altogether un-
known, it is still taken for granted that it has some use. The de-
velopement of this conviction, — of a purpose in the parts of animals,
— of a function to which each portion of the organization is sub-
servient,— contributed greatly to the progress of physiology; for it
constantly urged men forwards in their researches respecting each
organ, till some definite view of its purpose was obtained. The
assumption of hypothetical final causes in physics may have been,
as Bacon asserts it to have been, prejudicial to science; but the
assumption of unknown final causes in physiology, has given rise
to the science. The two branches of speculation, Physics and
Physiology, were equally led, by every new phenomenon, to ask
their question, " Why? Cut, in the former case, " why" meant
44 through what cause?" in the latter, "for what end?" And
(bough it may be possible to introduce into physiology the doctrine
of efficient causes, such a step can never obliterate the obligations
which the science owes to the pervading conception of a purpose
contained in all organization.

* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book xvii. Chap. i. Sect. 2.

22 PHYSIOLOGY.

This conception makes its appearance very early. Indeed, with-
out any special study of our structure, the thought, that we are
fearfully aud wonderfully made, forces itself upon men, with a
mysterious impressi veness, as a suggestion of our Maker. In this
bearing, the thought is developed to a considerable extent in the
well-known passage in Xenophon's Conversations of Socrates. Nor
did it ever lose its hold on sober-minded and instructed men. The
Epicureans, indeed, held that the eye was not made for seeing, nor
the ear for hearing ; and Asclepiades, whom we have already men-
tioned as an impudent pretender, adopted this wiy dogma. Such
assertions required no labour. " It is easy," says Galen, " for
people like Asclepiades, when they come to any difficulty, to say
that nature has worked to no purpose." The great anatomist him-
self pursues his subject in a very different temper. In a well-
known passage, he breaks out into an enthusiastic scorn of the
folly of the atheistical notions. " Try," he says, " if you can ima-
gine a shoe made with half the skill which appears in the skin of
the foot." Some one had spoken of a structure of the human body
which he would have preferred to that which it now has. " See,"
Galen exclaims, after pointing out the absurdity of the imaginary
scheme, "see what brutishness there is in this wish. But if I
were to spend more words on such cattle, reasonable men might
blame me for desecrating my work, which I regard as a religious
hymn in honour of the Creator."

THE PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS.

*Animals were divided by Lamarck into vertebrate and inverte-
brate; and the general analogies of all vertebrate animals are
easily made manifest. But with regard to other animals, the point
is far from clear. Cuvier was the first to give a really philoso-
phical view of the animal world in reference to the plan on which
each animal is constructed. There are,f he says, four such plans ;
— four forms on which animals appear to have been modelled ; and
of which the ulterior divisions, with whatever titles naturalists
have decorated them, are only very slight modifications, founded
on the developement or addition of some parts which do not produce
any essential change in the plan.

The four great branches of the animal world are the vertebrata,
mollusca, articulata, radiata ; and the differences of these are so
important that a slight explanation of them may be permitted.

The vertebrata are those animals which (as man and other suck-
lers, birds, fishes, lizards, frogs, serpents,) have a back-bone and a
skull with lateral appendages, within which the viscera are in-
cluded, and to which the muscles are attached.

The mollusca, or soft animals, have no bony skeleton ; the
muscles are attached to the skin, which often includes stony plates

* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book xvii. Chap. vii. Sect. 2, 3.
t Regne Animal, p. 57.

PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS. 23

called shell?; such molluscs are shell-fish, others are cuttle-fish,
and many pulpy sea-animals.

The arliculata consist of Crustacea, (lobsters, &c.,) insects,
spiders, and annulose worms, which, like the other classes of this
branch, consist of a head and a number of successive portions of
the body jointed together, whence the name.

Finally, the radiata include the animals known under the name
of zoophytes. In the preceding three branches, the organs of
motion and of sense were distributed symmetrically on the two
sides of an axis, so that the animal has a right and a left side. In
the radiata the similar members radiate from the axis in a circular
manner, like the petals of a regular flower.

The whole value of such a classification cannot be understood
without explaining its use in enabling us to give general descrip-
tions, and general laws of the animal functions, of the classes
which it includes; but in the present part of our work our business
is to exhibit it as an exemplification of the reduction of animals to
laws of symmetry. The bipartite symmetry of the form of verte-
brate and articulate animals is obvious; and the reduction of the
various forms of such animals to a common type has been effected,
by attention to their anatomy, in a manner which has satisfied
those who have best studied the subject. The molluscs, especially
those in which the head disappears, as oysters, or those which are
rolled into a spiral, as snails, have a less obvious symmetry, but
here also we can apply certain general types. And the symmetry
of the radiated zoophytes is of a nature quite different from all the
rest, and approaching, as we have suggested, to the kind of sym-
metry found in plants. Some naturalists have doubted whether*
these zoophytes are not referrible to two types (acrita or polypes,
and true radiata), rather than to one.

Supposing this great step in Zoology, of which we have given an
account, — the reduction of all animals to four types or plans, — to be
quite secure, we are then led to ask whether any further advance
is possible; — whether several of these types can be referred to one
common form by any wider effort of generalization. On this ques-
tion there has been a considerable difference of opinion. Geoftroy
Saint-Hilaire,f who had previously endeavoured to show that all
vertebrate animals were constructed so exactly upon the same plan
as to preserve the strictest analogy of parts in respect to their oste-
ology, thought to extend this unity of plan by demonstrating, that
the hard parts of crustaces and insects are still only modifications
of the skeleton of higher animals, and that therefore the type of
vertebrata must be made to include them also : — the segments of
the articulata are held to be strictly analogous to the vertebra} of
the higher animals, and thus the former live within their vertebral
column in the same manner as the latter live without it. Attempts
have even been made to reduce molluscous and vertebrate animals
to a community of type, as we shall see shortly.

* Brit. Assoc. Rep. iv. 227. t Mr. Jenyns, ibid, iv, 150,

24 PHYSIOLOGY.

Another application of the principle, according to which creatures
the most different are developements of the same original type, may
be discerned* in the doctrine, that the embryo of the higher forms
of animal life passes by gradations through those forms which are
permanent in inferior animals. Thus, according to this view, the
human foetus assumes successively, the plan of the zoophyte, the
wTorrn, the fish, the turtle, the bird, the beast. But it has been well
observed, that " in theseanalogies we look in vain for the precision
which can alone support the inference that has been deduced;"!
and that at each step, the higher embryo and the lower animal
which it is supposed to resemble, differ in having each different or-
gans suited to their respective destinations.

Cuvierf never assented to this view, nor to the attempts to refer
the different divisions of his system to a common type. " He could
not admit," says his biographer, " that the lungs or gills of the ver-
tebrates are in the same connexion as the branchiae of molluscs and
crustaces, which in the one are situated at the base of the feet, or
fixed on the feet themselves, and in the other often on the back or
about the arms. He did not admit the analogy between the skele-
ton of the vertebrates and the skin of the articulates; he could not
believe that the tenia and the sepia were constructed on the same
plan; that there was a similarity of composition between the bird
and the echinus, the whale and the snail; in spite of the skill with
which some persons sought gradually to efface their discrepancies."

Whether it may be possible to establish, among the four great
divisions of the "Animal Kingdom," some analogies of a higher
order than those which prevail within each division, I do not pre-
tend to conjecture. If this can be done, it is clear that it must be
bv comparing the tvpes of these divisions under their most general
forms: and Thus Cuvier's arrangement, so far as it is itself rightly
founded on the unity of composition of each branch, is the surest
step to the discovery of a unity pervading and uniting these
branches. But though those who generalize surely, and those who
generalize rapidly, may travel in the same direction, they soon
separate so widely, that* they appear to move from each other. The
partisans of a universal "unity of composition" of animals, accused
Cuvier of being too inert in following the progress of physiological
and zoological Science. Borrowing their illustration from the poli-
tical parties of the times, they asserted that he belonged to the
science of the resistance, not to the science of the movement. Such
a charge is highly honourable to him; for no one acquainted with
the history of zoology can doubt that he had a great share in the
impulse by which the M movement" was occasioned ; or that he
himself made a large advance with it; and it was because he was
so poised by the vast mass of his knowledge, so temperate in his
love of doubtful generalizations, that he was not swept on in the
wilder part of the stream. To such a charge, moderate reformers,

* Dr. Clark, Brit. Assoc. Report, iv. 113. f Dr. Clark, p. 114.

t Laurillard, Elog. de Cuvier, p. 66.

USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 25

who appreciate the value of the good which exists, though they try
to make it better, and who know the knowledge, tboughtfulness,
and caution, which are needful in such a task, are naturally ex-
posed. For us, who can only decide on such a subject by the gene-
ral analogies of the history of science, it may suffice to say, that it
appears doubtful whether the fundamental conceptions of affinity,
analogy, transition, and developement, have yet been fixed in the
minds of physiologists with sufficient firmness and clearness, or
unfolded with sufficient consistency and generality, to make it likely
that any great additional step of this kind can for some time be made.

USE OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY.

Doctrine of Unity of Plan, — We have repeatedly seen, in the
course of our historical view of physiology, that those who have
studied the structure of animals and plants, have had a conviction
forced upon them, that the organs are constructed and combined in
subservience to the life and functions of the whole. The parts have
a purpose, as well as a law ; — we can trace final causes, as well as
laws of causation. This principle is peculiar to physiology ; and it
might naturally be expected that, in the progress of the science, it
would come under special consideration. This accordingly has
happened ; and the principle has been drawn into a prominent posi-
tion by the struggle of two antagonist schools of physiologists. On
the one hand, it has been maintained that this doctrine of final
causes is altogether unphilosophical, and requires to be replaced by
a more comprehensive and profound principle: on the other hand,
it is asserted that the doctrine is not only true, but that, in our own
time, it has been fixed and developed so as to become the instru-
ment of some of the most important discoveries which have been
made. Of the views of these two schools we must endeavour to
give some account.

The disciples of the former of the two schools express their tenets
by the phrases unity of plan, unity of composition ; and the more
detailed developement of these doctrines has been termed the Theory
of Analogues, by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who claims this theory as
his own creation. According to this theory, the structure and func-
tions of animals are to be studied by the guide of their analogy
only ; our attention is to be turned, nut to the fitness of the organi-
zation for any end of life or action, but to its resemblance to other
organizations by which it is gradually derived from the original
type.

According to the rival view of this subject, we must not assume,
and cannot establish, that the plan of all animals is the same, or
their composition similar. The existence of a single and universal
system of analogies in the construction of all animals is entirely
unproved, and therefore cannot be made our guide in the study of
their properties. On the other hand, the plan of the animal, the

3

26 PHYSIOLOGY.

purpose of its organization in the support of its life, the necessity of
the functions to its existence, are truths which are irresistibly ap-
parent, and which may therefore be safely taken as the bases of our
reasonings. This view has been put forwards as the doctrine of
the conditions of existence : it may also be described as the princi-
ple of a purpose in organization ; the structure being considered
as having the function for its end. We must say a few words on
each of these views.

It had been pointed out by Cuvier, as we have seen in the last
chapter, that the animal kingdom may be divided into four great
branches ; in each of which the plan of the animal is different,
namely, vertebrata, articulata, mollusea, radiata. Now the ques-
tion naturally occurs, is there really no resemblance of construction
in these different classes ] It was maintained by some, that there
is such a resemblance. In 1820,* M. Audouin, a young naturalist
of Paris, endeavoured to fill up the chasm which separates insects
from other animals; and by examining carefully the portions which
compose the solid frame-work of insects, and following them through
their various transformations in different classes, he conceived that
he found relations of position and function, and often of number and
form, which might be compared with the relations of the parts of
the skeleton in vertebrate animals. He thought that the first seg-
ment of an insect, the head,f represents one of the three vertebrae
which, according to Spix and others, compose the vertebrate head :
the second segment of the insects, (the prothorax of Audouin,) is,
according to M. GeofTroy, the second vertebra of the head of the
vertebrata, and so on. Upon this speculation CuvierJ does not give
any decided opinion; observing only, that even if false, it leads to
active thought and useful research.

But when an attempt was further made to identify the plan of
another branch of the animal world, the mollusea, with that of the
vertebrata, the radical opposition between such views and those of
Cuvier, broke out into an animated controversy.

Two French anatomists, MM. Laurencetand Meyranx, presented
to the Academy of Sciences, in 1830, a Memoir containing their
views on the organization of molluscous animals ; and on the sepia
or cuttle-fish in particular, as one of the most complete examples of
such animals. These creatures, indeed, though thus placed in the
same division with shell-fish of the most defective organization and
obscure structure, are far from being scantily organized. They
have a brain, \ often eyes, and these, in the animals of this class,
{cephalopoda) are more complicated than in any vertebrates ;|| they
have sometimes ears, salivary glands, multiple stomachs, a consi-
derable liver, a bile, a complete double circulation provided with
auricles and ventricles ; in short, their vital activity is vigorous,
and their senses are distinct.

* Cuv. Hist. Sc. Nat. iii. 422. t Ibid. 437. I Ibid. 441.
§ Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire denies this. Principes de Phil. Zoologique
discutes en 1830, p. 68. || Ibid. p. 55.

USE OP FINAL CAUSES. 27

But still, though this organization, in the abundance and diversity
of its parts, approaches that of vertebrate animals, it had not been
considered as composed in the same manner, or arranged in the
same order. Cuvier had always maintained that the plan of mol-
luscs is not a continuation of the plan of vertebrates.

MM. Laurcncet and Meyranx, on the contrary, conceived that
the sepia might be reduced to the type of a vertebrate creature, by
considering* the back-bone of the latter bent double backwards, so
as to bring the root of the tail to the nape of the neck ; the parts
thus brought into contact being supposed to coalesce. By this
mode of conception, these anatomists held that the viscera were
placed in the same connexion as in the vertebrate type, and the
functions exercised in an analogous manner.

To decide on the reality of the analogy thus asserted, clearly be-
longed to the jurisdiction of the most eminent anatomists and phy-
siologists. The Memoir was committed to GeofFroy Saint-Hilaire
and Latreille, two eminent zoologists, in order to be reported on.
Their report was extremely favourable ; and went almost to the
length of adopting the views of the authors.

Cuvier expressed some dissatisfaction with this report on its being
read ;* and a short time afterwards,! represented GeofFroy Saint-
Hilaire as having asserted that the new views of Laurencet and
Meyranx refuted completely the notion of the great interval which
exists between molluscous and vertebrate animals. Geoffroy pro-
tested against such an interpretation of his expressions; but it soon
appeared, by the controversial character which the discussions on
this and several other subjects assumed, that a real opposition of
opinions was in action.

Without attempting to explain the exact views of GeofFroy, (we
may, perhaps, venture to say that they are hardly yet generally
understood with sufficient distinctness to justify the mere historian
of science in attempting such an explanation,) their general ten-
dency may be sufficiently collected from what has been said ; and
from the phrases in which his views are conveyed. } The principle
of connexions, the elective affinities of organic elements, theequili-
brization of organs ; — such are the designations of the leading
doctrines which are unfolded in the preliminary discourse of his
Anatomical Philosophy. Elective affinities of organic elements are
the forces by which the vital structures and varied forms of living
things are produced ; and the principles of connexion and equili-
brium of these forces in the various parts of the organization, pre-
scribe limits and conditions to the variety and developement of such
forms.

The character and tendency of this philosophy will be, I think,
much more clear, if we consider what it excludes and denies. It
rejects altogether all conception of a plan and purposes in the
organs of animals, as a principle which has determined their forms,
or can be of use in directing our reasonings, " I take care," says

* Phil. Zool. p. 6. 1 Ibid. p. 50. id. p.

28 PHYSIOLOGY.

Geoffroy,* " not to ascribe to God any intention." And when Cuvier
speaks of the combination of organs in such order that they may
be in consistence with the part which the animal has to play in
nature; his rival rejoins,t " I know nothing of animals which have
to play a part in nature." Such a notion is, he holds, unphiloso-
phical and dangerous. It is an abuse of final causes which makes
the cause to be engendered by the effect. And to illustrate still
further his own view, he says, "I have read concerning fishes, that
because they Jive in a medium which resists more than air, their
motive forces are calculated so as to give them the power of pro-
gression under those circumstances. By this mode of reasoning,
you would say of a man who makes use of crutches, that he was
originally destined to the misfortune of having a leg paralyzed or
amputated."

How far this doctrine of unity in the plan in animals is admis-
sible or probable in physiology when kept within proper limits, that
is, when not put in opposition to the doctrine of a purpose involved
in the plan of animals, I do not pretend even to conjecture. The
question is one which appears to be at present deeply occupying
the minds of the most learned and profound physiologists; and
such persons alone, adding to their knowledge and zeal, judicial
sagacity and impartiality, can tell us what is the general tendency
of the best researches on this subject. J But when the anatomist
expresses such opinions, and defends them by such illustrations as
those which I have just quoted, \ we perceive that he quits the
entrenchments of his superior science, in which he might have
remained unassailable so long as the question was a professional
one; and the discussion is open to those who possess no peculiar
knowledge of anatomy. We shall, therefore, venture to say a few
words upon it.

Estimate of this Doctrine. — It has been so often repeated, and
so generally allowed in modern times, that iinal causes ought not
to be made our guides in natural philosophy, that a prejudice has
been established against the introduction of any views to which
this designation can be applied, into physical speculations. Yet, in
fact, the assumption of an end or purpose in the structure of
organized beings, appears to be an intellectual habit which no
efforts can cast off. It has prevailed from the earliest to the latest

* " Je me garde de preter a Dieu aucune intention." Phil. Zool. p, 10.

t " Je ne connais point d'animal qui doive jouer un role dans la
nature," p. 65.

I So far as this doctrine is generally accepted among the best physio-
logists, we cannot doubt the propriety of Meckel's remarks, (Compara-
rative Anatomy, 1821, Pref. p. xi.) that it cannot be truly asserted either
to be new, or to be peculiarly due to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

§ It is hardly worth while answering such illustrations, but I may re-
mark, that the one quoted above, irrelevant and unbecoming as it is, tells
altogether against its author. The fact that the wooden leg is of the
same length as the other, proves, and would satisfy the most incredulous
man, that it was intended for walking.

USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 29

ages of zoological research ; appears to be fastened upon us alike
by our ignorance and our knowledge; and has been formally ac-
cepted by so many great anatomists, that we cannot feel any
scruple in believing the rejection of it to be a superstition of a
false philosophy, and a result of the exaggeration of other principles
which are supposed capable of superseding its use. And the doc-
trine of unity of plan of all animals, and the other principles asso-
ciated with this doctrine, so far as they exclude the conviction of
an intelligible scheme and a discoverable end, in the organization
of animals, appear to be utterly erroneous. I will offer a few
reasons for an opinion which may appear presumptuous in a writer
who has only a general knowledge of the subject.

1. In the first place, it appears to me that the argumentation on
the case in question, the sepia, does by no means turn out to the ad-
vantage of the new hypothesis. The arguments in support of the
hypothetical view of the structure of this mollusc were, that by
this view the relative position of the parts was explained, and con-
formations which had appeared altogether anomalous, were reduced
to rule; for example, the beak, which had been supposed to be in a
position the reverse of all other beaks, was shown, by the assumed
posture, to have its upper mandible longer than the lower, and thus
to be regularly placed. " But," says Cuvier,* " supposing the pos-
ture, in order that the side on which the funnel of the sepia is
folded should be the back of the animal, considered as similar to a
vertebrate, the brain with regard to the beak, and the oesophagus
with regard to the liver, should have positions corresponding to
those in vertebrates ; but the positions of these organs are exactly
contrary to hypothesis. How, then, can you say," he asks, " that
the cephalopods and vertebrates have identity of composition, unity
of composition, without using words in a sense entirely different
from their common meaning]"

This argument appears to be exactly of the kind on which the
value of the hypothesis must depend. f It is, therefore, interesting
to see the reply made to it by the theorist. It is this: "I admit
the facts here stated, but I deny that they lead to the notion of a
different sort of animal composition. Molluscous animals had been
placed too high in the zoological scale; but if they are only the
embryos of its lower stages, if they are only beings in which far
fewer organs come into play, it does not follow that the organs

* G. S. H. Phil. Zool, p. 70.

t I do not dwell on other arguments which were employed. It was
given as a circumstance suggesting the supposed posture of the type,
that in this way the back was coloured, and the belly was white. On
this Cuvier observes, (Phil. Zool. p. 39, 68.) " I must say, that I do not
know any naturalist so ignorant as to suppose that the back is deter-
mined by its dark colour, or even by its position when the animal is in
motion ; they all know that the badger has a black belly and a white
back ; that an infinity of other animals, especially among insects, are in
the same case ; and that many fishes swim on their side, or with their
belly upwards."

- 3*

30 PHYSIOLOGY.

are destitute of the relations which the power of successive
generations may demand. The organ A will be in an unusual
relation with the organ C, if B has not been produced ; — if a
stoppage of the developement has fallen upon this latter organ,
and has thus prevented its production. And thus," he says, " we
see how we may have different arrangements, and diverse construc-
tions as they appear to the eye."

It seems to me that such a concession as this entirely destroys
the theory which it attempts to defend ; for what arrangement does
the principle of unity of composition exclude, if it admits unusual,
that is, various arrangements of some organs, accompanied by the
total absence of others'? Or how does this differ from Cuvier's
mode of stating the conclusion, except in the introduction of certain
arbitrary hypotheses of developement and stoppage. ** I reduce the
facts," Cuvier says, " to their true expression, by saying that cepha-
lopods have several organs which are common to them and verte-
brates, and which discharge the same offices ; but that these organs
are in them differently distributed, and often constructed in a
different manner; and they are accompanied by several other
organs which vertebrates have not; while these on the other hand
have several which are wanting in cephalopods."

We shall see afterwards the general principles which Cuvier
himself considered as the best guides in these reasonings. But I
will first add a few words on the disposition of the school now
under consideration, to reject all assumption of an end.

2. That the parts of the bodies of animals are made in order to
discharge their respective offices, is a conviction which we cannot
believe to be otherwise than an irremovable principle of the philo-
sophy of organization, when we see the manner in which it has
constantly forced itself upon the minds of zoologists and anatomists in
all ages; not only as an inference, but as a guide whose indications
they could not help following. I have already noticed expressions
of this conviction in some of the principal persons who occur in the
history of physiology, as Galen and Harvey. I might add many
more, but I will content myself with adducing a contemporary of
Geoffroy's, whose testimony is the more remarkable, because he
obviously shares with his countryman in the common prejudice
against the use of final causes. " I consider," he says, in speaking
of the provisions for the reproduction of animals,* " with the great
Bacon, the philosophy of final causes as sterile ; but I have else-
where acknowledged that it was very difficult for the most cautious
man never to have recourse to them in his explanations." After
the survey which we have had to take of the history of physiology,
we cannot but see that the assumption of final causes in this branch
of science is so far from being sterile, that it has had a large share
in every discovery which is included in the existing mass of real
knowledge. The use of every organ has been discovered by start-
ing from the assumption that it must have some use. The doctrine
of the circulation of the blood was, as we have seen, clearly and

* Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et#& Morale de PEJomme, i. 299.

USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 31

professedly due to the persuasion of a purpose in the circulatory
apparatus. The study of comparative anatomy is the study of the
adaptation of animal structures to their purposes. And we shall
soon have to show that this conception of final causes has, in our
own times, been so far from barren, that it has, in the hands of
Cuvicr and others, enabled us to become intimately acquainted with
vast departments of zoology to which we have no other mode of
access. It has placed before us in a complete state, animals, of
which, for thousands of years, only a few fragments have existed,
and which differ widely from all existing animals; and it has given
birth, or at least has given the greatest part of its importance and
interest, to a science which forms one of the brightest parts of the
modern progress of knowledge. It is, therefore, very far from
being a vague and empty assertion, when we say that final causes
are a real and indestructible element in zoological philosophy; and
that the exclusion of them, as attempted by the school of which
we speak, is a fundamental and most mischievous error.

3. Thus, though the physiologist may persuade himself that he
ought not to refer to final causes, we find that, practically, he cannot
help it; and that the event shows that his practical habit is right
and well-founded. But he may still cling to the speculative diffi-
culties and doubts in which such subjects may be involved by a
priori considerations. He may say, as Saint-Hi laire does say,* " I
ascribe no intention to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers of my
reason. I observe facts merely, and go no further. ] only pretend
to the character of the historian of what is" "I cannot make
nature an intelligent being who does nothing in vain, who acts by
the shortest mode, who does all for the best."

I am not going- to enter at any length into this subject, which,
thus considered, is metaphysical and theological, rather than phy-
siological. If any one maintain, as some have maintained, that no
manifestation of means apparently used for ends in nature, can
prove the existence of design in the Author of nature, this is not
the place to refute such an opinion in its general form. But I
think it may be worth while to show, that even those who incline
to such an opinion, still cannot resist the necessity which compels
men to assume, in organized beings, the existence of an end.

Among: the philosophers who have referred our conviction of the
being of God to our moral nature, and have denied the possibility
of demonstration on mere physical grounds, Kant is perhaps the
most eminent. Yet he has asserted the reality of such a principle
of physiology as we are now maintaining in the most emphatic
monner. Indeed, this assumption of an end makes his very defini-
tion of an organized being. " An organized product of nature is
that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means."f And
this, he says, is a universal and necessary maxim. He adds, u It is
well known that the anatomisers of plants and animals, in order to
investigate their structure, and to obtain an insight into the grounds

* Phil. Zool. p. 10. t Urthcilskraft, p. 296.

32 PHYSIOLOGY.

why and to what end such parts, why such a situation and con-
nexion of the parts, and exactly such an internal form, come before
them, assume, as indispensably necessary, this maxim, that in such
a creature nothing is in vain, and proceed upon it in the same way
in which in general natural philosophy we proceed upon the prin-
ciple that nothing happens by chance. In fact, they can as little
free themselves from this teleological principle as from the general
physical one; for as, on omitting the latter, no experience would
be possible, so on omitting the former principle, no clue could exist
for the observation of a kind of natural objects which can be con-
sidered teleologically under the conception of natural ends."

Even if the reader should not follow the reasoning of this cele-
brated philosopher, he will still have no difficulty in seeing that he
asserts, in the most distinct manner, that which is denied by the
author whom we have before quoted, the propriety and necessity of
assuming the existence of an end as our guide in the study of ani-
mal organization.

4. It appears to me, therefore, that whether we judge from the
arguments, the results, the practice of physiologists, their specula-
tive opinions, or those of the philosophers of a wider field, we are
led to the same conviction, that in the organized world we may
and must adopt the belief, that organization exists for its purpose,
and that the apprehension of the purpose may guide us in seeing
the meaning of the organization. And I now proceed to show how
this principle has been brought into additional clearness and use by
Cuvier.

In doing this, I may, perhaps, be allowed to make a reflection of
a kind somewhat different from the preceding remarks, though
suggested by them. In another work,* I endeavoured to show
that those who have been discoverers in science have generally
had minds, the disposition of which was to believe in an intelligent
Maker of the universe; and that the scientific speculations which
produced an opposite tendency, were generally those which, though
they might deal familiarly with known physical truths, and conjec-
ture boldly with regard to the unknown, did not add to the number
of solid generalizations. In order to judge whether this remark is
distinctively applicable in the case now considered, I should have
to estimate Cuvier in comparison with other physiologists of his
time, which I do not presume to do. But I may observe, that he is
allowed by all to have established, on an indestructible basis, many
of the most important generalizations which zoology now contains;
and the principal defect which his critics have pointed out, has
been, that he did not generalize still more widely and boldly. It
appears, therefore, that he cannot but be placed among the great
discoverers in the studies which he pursued ; and this being the
case, those who look with pleasure on the tendency of the thoughts
of the greatest men to an Intelligence far higher than their own,

* Bridgewater Treatise, Book iii. Chap. vii. and viii. On Inductive
Habits of Thought, and On Deductive Habits of Thought.

USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 33

must be gratified to find that he was an example of this tendency;
and that the acknowledgment of a creative purpose, as well as a
creative power, not only entered into his belief, but made an indis-
pensable and prominent part of his philosophy.

Doctrine of Final Causes. — We have now to describe more in
detail the doctrine which Cuvier maintained in opposition to such
opinions as we have been speaking of; and which, in his way of
applying it, we look upon as a material advance in physiological
knowledge, and therefore give to it a distinct place in our history.
"Zoology has," he says,* in the outset of his Regne Animal, "a
principle of reasoning which is peculiar to it, and which it employs
with advantage on many occasions : this is the principle of the con-
ditions of existence, vulgarly called the principle of final causes.
As nothing can exist if it do not combine all the conditions which
render its existence possible, the different parts of each being must
be co-ordinated in such a manner as to render the total being pos-
sible, not only in itself, but in its relations to those which surround
it ; and the analysis of these conditions often leads to general laws
as clearly demonstrated as those which result from calculation or
from experience."

This is the enunciation of his leading principle in general terms.
To our ascribing it to him, some may object, on the ground of its
being self-evident in its nature,f and having been very anciently
applied. But to this we reply, that the principle must be considered
as a real discovery, in the hands of him who first shows how to make
it an instrument of other discoveries. It is true in other cases as
well as in this, that some vague apprehension of true general prin-
ciples, such as a priori considerations can supply, has long preceded
the knowledge of them as real and verified laws. In such a way it
was seen, before Newton, that the motions of the planets must
result from attraction ; and before Dufay and Franklin, it was held
that electrical actions must result from a fluid. Cuvier's merit con-
sisted, not in seeing that an animal cannot exist without combining
all the conditions of its existence; but in perceiving that this truth
may be taken as a guide in our researches concerning animals; —
that the mode of their existence may be collected from one part of
their structure, and then applied to interpret or detect another part.
He went on the supposition not only that animal forms have some
plan, some purpose, but that they have an intelligible plan, a dis-
coverable purpose. He proceeded in his investigations like the
decipherer of a manuscript, who makes out his alphabet from one
part of the context, and then applies it to read the rest. The proof
that his principle was something very different from an identical
proposition, is to be found in the fact, that it enabled him to under-
stand and arrange the structures of animals with unprecedented
clearness and completeness of order ; and to restore the forms of the
extinct animals which are found in the rocks of the earth, in a

* Regnc An. p. 6. t Swainson, Study of Nat. Hist. p. 85.

34 PHYSIOLOGY.

manner which has been universally assented to as irresistibly con-
vincing*. These results cannot flow from a trifling or barren prin-
ciple; and they show us that if we are disposed to form such a
judgment of Cuvier's doctrine, it must be because we do not fully
apprehend its import.

To illustrate this, we need only quote the statement which he
makes, and the uses to which he applies it. Thus in the Introduc-
tion to his great work on " Fossil Remains," he says, " Every orga-
nized being forms an entire system of its own, all the parts of which
mutually correspond, and concur to produce a certain definite pur-
pose by reciprocal reaction, or by combining to the same end. Hence
none of these separate parts can change their forms, without a cor-
responding change in the other parts of the same animal; and con-
sequently each of these parts, taken separately, indicates all the
other parts to which it has belonged. Thus, if the viscera of an
animal are so organized as only to be fitted for the digestion of
recent flesh, it is also requisite that the jaws should be so con-
structed as to fit them for devouring prey ; the claws must be con-
structed for seizing and tearing it in pieces ; the teeth for cutting
and dividing its flesh; the entire system of the limbs or organs of
motion for pursuing and overtaking it; and the organs of sense for
discovering it at a distance. Nature must also have endowed the
brain of the animal with instincts sufficient for concealing itself, and
for laying plans to catch its necessary victims."* By such consi-
derations he has been able to reconstruct the whole of many animals
of which parts only were given ; — a positive result, which shows
both the reality and the value of the truth on which he wrought.

Another great example, equally showing the immense importance
of this principle in Cuvier's hands, is the reform which, by means
of it, he introduced into the classification of animals. Here again
we may quote the view he himself has givenf of the character of
his own improvements. In studying the physiology of the natural
classes of vertebrate animals, he found, he says, " in the respective
quantity of their respiration, the reason of the quantity of their
motion, and consequently of the kind of locomotion. This, again,
furnishes the reason for the forms of their skeletons and muscles;
and the energy of their senses, and the force of their digestion, are
in a necessary proportion to the same quantity. Thus a division
which had till then been established, like that of vegetables, only
upon observation, was found to rest upon causes appreciable, and
applicable to other cases." Accordingly, he applied this view to
invertebrates; — examined the modifications which take place in
their organs of circulation, respiration, and sensation ; and having
calculated the necessary results of these modifications, he deduced
from it a new division of those animals, in which they are arranged
according to their true relations.

Such have been some of the results of the principle of the con-
ditions of existence, as applied by its great assertor.

* Theory of the Earth, p. 90. t Hist. S. C. Nat i, 293.

TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 35

It is clear, indeed, that such a principle could acquire its practical
value only in the hands of a person intimately acquainted with ana-
tomical details, with the functions of the organs, and with their
variety in different animals. It is only by means of such nutriment
that the embryo truth could be developed into a vast tree of science.
But it is not the less clear, that Cuvier's immense knowledge and
great powers of thought led to their results, only by being employed
under the guidance of this master-principle : and, therefore, we may
justly consider it as the distinctive feature of his speculations, and
follow it with a gratified eye, as the thread of gold which runs
through, connects, and enriches his zoological researches: — gives
them a deeper interest and a higher value than can belong to any
view of the organical sciences, in which the very essence of organi-
zation is kept out of view.

The real philosopher, who knows that all the kinds of truth are
intimately connected, and that all the best hopes and encourage-
ments which are granted to our nature must be consistent with
truth, will be satisfied and confirmed, rather than surprised and dis-
turbed, thus to find the natural sciences leading him to the borders
of a higher region. To him it will appear natural and reasonable,
that, after journeying so long among the beautiful and orderly laws
by which the universe is governed, we find ourselves at last
approaching to a source of order and law, and intellectual beauty :
— that, after venturing into the region of life and feeling and will,
we are led to believe the fountain of life and will, not to be itself
unintelligent and dead, but to be a living mind, a power which aims
as well as acts. To us this doctrine appears like the natural cadence
of the tones to which we have so long been listening; and without
such a final strain our ears would have been left craving and un-
satisfied. We have been lingering long amid the harmonies of law
and symmetry, constancy and developement ; and these notes,
though their music was sweet and deep, must too often have sounded
to the ear of our moral nature, as vague and unmeaning melodies,
floating in the air around us, but conveying no definite thought,
moulded into no intelligible announcement. But one passage which
we have again and again caught by snatches, though sometimes
interrupted and lost, at last swells in our ears full, clear, and
decided; and the religious "Hymn in honour of the Creator," to
which Galen so gladly lent his voice, and in which the best physi-
ologists of succeeding times have ever joined, is filled into a richer
and deeper harmony by the greatest philosophers of these later
days, and will roll on hereafter, the "perpetual song" of the temple
of science.

QUESTION OF THE TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES.

* Besides the fortunes of individual plants and animals, of which
the geologist has traces brought under his notice, there is another

* Hist. Ind. Sc. Book xviii. Chap. vi. Sect. 2, 3, 4.

36 PHYSIOLOGY.

class of question?, of great interest, but of great difficulty ; — the for-
tunes of each species. In what manner do species which were not,
begin to be] as geology teaches us that they many times have
done ; and, as even our own reasonings convince us they must have
done, at least in the case of the species among which we live.

We here obviously place before us, as a subject of research, the
creation of living things; — a subject shrouded in mystery, and not
to be approached without reverence. But though we may conceive,
that, on this subject, we are not to seek our belief from science
alone, we shall rind, it is asserted, within the limits of allowable
and unavoidable speculation, many curious and important problems
which may well employ our physiological skill. For example, we
may ask : — how we are to recognise the species which were origi-
nally created distinct? — whether the population of the earth at one
geological epoch could pass to the form which it has at a succeeding
period,. by the agency of natural causes alone! — and if not, what
other account we can give of the succession which we find to have
taken place]

The most remarkable point in the attempts to answer these and
the like questions, is the controversy between the advocates and the
opponents of the doctrine of the transmutation of species. This
question is, even from its mere physiological import, one of great
interest; and the interest is much enhanced by our geological re-
searches, which again bring the quQstion before us in a striking-
form, and on a gigantic scale. We shall, therefore, briefly state
the point at issue.

We see that animals and plants may, by the influence of breeding,
and of external agents operating upon their constitution, be greatly
modified, so as to give rise to varieties and races different from what
before existed. How different, for instances, is one kind and breed
of dog from another! The question, then, is, whether organized
beings can, by the mere working of natural causes, pass from the
type of one species to that of another] whether the wolf may, by
domestication, become the dog] whether the ourang-Outang may,
by the power of external circumstances, be brought within the cir-
cle of the human species] And the dilemma in which we are
placed is this; — that if species are not thus interchangeable, we
must suppose the fluctuations of which each species is capable, and
which are apparently indefinite, to be bounded by rigorous limits;
whereas, if we allow such a transmutation of species, we abandon
that belief in the adaptation of the structure of every creature to its
destined mode of being, which not only most persons would give up
with repugnance, but which, as we have seen, has constantly and
irresistibly impressed itself on the minds of the best na-turalists, as
the true view of the order of the world.

The question, of the limited or unlimited extent of the modifica-
tions of animals and plants, has received full and careful considera-
tion from eminent physiologists: and in their opinions we find, I
think, an indisputable preponderance to that decision which rejects
the transmutation of species, and which excepts the former side of

PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES. 37

the dilemma ; namely, that the changes of which each species is
susceptible, though difficult to define in words, are limited in fact.
It is extremely interesting and satisfactory thus to receive an an-
swer in which we can confide, to inquiries seemingly so wide and
bold as those which this subject involves. I refer to Mr. Lyell,
Dr. Prichard, Mr. Lawrencerand others, for the history of the dis-
cussion, and for the grounds of the decision; and I shall quote very
briefly the main points and conclusions to which the inquiry has
led.*

It may be considered, then, as determined by the over-balance of
physiological authority, that there is a capacity in all species to ac-
commodate themselves, to a certain extent, to a change of external
circumstances; this extent varying greatly according to the species.
There may thus arise changes of appearance or structure, and some
of these changes are transmissible to the offspring: but the muta-
tions thus superinduced are governed by constant laws, and confined
within certain limits. Indefinite divergence from the original type
is not possible; and the extreme limit of possible variation may
usually be reached in a short period of time: in short, species have
a real existence in nature, and a transmutation from one to another
does not exist.

Thus, for example, Cuvier rernarks,f that notwithstanding all the
differences of size, appearance, and habits, which we find in the
dogs of various races and- countries, and though we have (in the
Egyptian mummies) skeletons of this animal as it existed three
thousand years ago, the relation of the bones to each other remains
essentially the same; and, with all the varieties of their shape and
size, there are characters which resist all the influences both of
external nature, of human intercourse, and of time.

HYPOTHESIS OF PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES.

Within certain limits, however, as we have said, external cir-
cumstances produce changes in the forms of organized beings. The
causes of change, and the laws and limits of their effects, as they
obtain in the existing state of the organic creation, are in the
highest decree interesting. And, as has been already intimated,
the knowledge thus obtained has been applied with a view to ex-
plain the origin of the existing population of the world, and the
succession of its past conditions. But those who have attempted
such an explanation, have found it necessary to assume certain ad-
ditional laws, in order to enable themselves to deduce, from the
tenet of the transmutability of the species of organized beings, such
a state of things as we see about us, and such a succession of states
as is evidenced by geological researches. And here, again, we are
brought to questions of which we must seek the answers from the
most° profound physiologists. Now referring, as before, to those
which appear to be the best authorities, it is found that these addi-

* Lyell, B. ii. c. iv. t Ossem. Foss. Disc. Prel. p. 61.

39 PHYSIOLOGY.

tional positive laws are still more inadmissible than the primary
assumption of indefinite capacity of change. For example, in order
to account, on this hypothesis, for the seeming adaptation of the en-
dowments of animals to their wants, it is held that the endowments
are the result of the wants; — that the swiftness of the antelope, the
claws and teeth of the lion, the trunk of the elephant, the long neck
of the giraffe, have been produced by a certain plastic character in
the constitution of animals, operated upon, for a long course of ages,
by the attempts which these animals made to attain objects which
their previous organization did not place within their reach. In
this way, it is maintained that the most striking attributes of ani-
mals, those which apparently imply most clearly the providing skill
of their Creator, have been brought forth by the long-repeated ef-
forts of the creatures to attain the object of their desires; thus
animals with the highest endowments have been gradually de-
veloped from ancestral forms of the most limited organization : thus
fish, birds, and beasts, have grown from small gelatinous bodies,
" petits corps gelatineux," possessing some obscure principle of life,
and the capacity of developement ; and thus man himself, with all
his intellectual and moral, as well as physical privileges, has been
derived from some creature of 'the ape or baboon tribe, urged by a
constant tendency to improve, or at least to alter his condition.

As we have said, in order to arrive, even hypothetically, at this
result, it is necessary to assume, besides a mere capacity for change,
other positivejand active principles, some "of which we may notice.
Thus, we must have, as the direct productions of nature on this
hypothesis, certain monads or rough draughts, the primary rudi-
ments of plants and animals. .y We must have, in these, a constant
tendency to progressive improvement, to the attainment of higher
powers and faculties than they possess ; which tendency is again
perpetually modified and controlled by the force of external cir-
cumstances. And in order to account for the simultaneous ex-
istence of animals in every stage of this imaginary progress, we
must suppose that nature is compelled to be constantly producing
those elementary beings, from which all animals are successively
developed.

I need not stay to point out how extremely arbitrary every part
of this scheme is ; and how complex its machinery would be, even
if it did account for the facts. It may be sufficient to observe,
as others have done,* that the capacity of change, and of being in-
fluenced by external circumstances, such as we really find it in
nature, and therefore such as in science we must represent it, is a
tendency, not to improve, but to deteriorate. When species are
modified by external causes, they usually degenerate, and do not
advance. And there is no instance of a species acquiring an en-
tirely new sense, faculty, or organ, in addition to, or in the place of,
what it had before.

Not only, then, is the doctrine of the transmutation of species

* Lyell, Book iii. Chap. i. p. 413.

CREATION A3 RELATED TO SCIENCE. 89

in itself disproved by the best physiological reasonings, but the
additional assumptions which are requisite, to enable its advocates
to apply it to the explanation of the geological and other phenomena
of the earth, are altogether gratuitous and fantastical.

Such is the judgment to which we are led by the examination of
the discussions which have taken place on this subject. Yet in
certain speculations, occasioned by the discovery of the Sivatherium,
a new fossil animal from the Sub-Himalaya mountains of India,
M. GeorTroy Saint-Hilaire speaks of the belief in the immutability
of species as a conviction which is fading away from men's minds.
He speaks too of the termination of the age of Cuvier, " la cloture
du siecle de Cuvier," and of the commencement of a better zoolo-
gical philosophy.* But though he expresses himself with great
animation, I do not perceive that he adduces, in support of his
peculiar opinions, any arguments in addition to those which he
urged during the lifetime of Cuvier. And the readerf may recollect
that the consideration of that controversy led us to very different
anticipations from his, respecting the probable future progress of
physiology. The discovery of the Sivatherium supplies no particle
of proof to the hypothesis, that the existing species of animals are
descended from extinct creatures which are specifically distinct :
and we cannot act more wisely than in listening to the advice of
that eminent naturalist, M. de Blainville.J " Against this hypo-
thesis, which up to the present time, I regard as purely gratuitous,
and likely to turn geologists out of the sound and excellent road in
which they now are, I willingly raise my voice, with the most
absolute conviction of being in the right."

GEOLOGY.

THE QUESTION OF CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE.

§The study of geology opens to us the spectacle of many groups
of species which have, in the course of the earth's history, succeeded
each other at vast intervals of time; one set of animals and plants
disappearing, as it would seem, from the face of our planet, and
others, which did not before exist, becoming the only occupants of
the globe. And the dilemma then presents itself to us anew : —
either we must accept the doctrine of the transmutation of species,
and must suppose that the organized species of one geological epoch
were transmuted into those of another by some long-continued
agency of natural causes ; or else, we must believe in many suc-
cessive acts of creation and extinction of species, out of the common

* Compte Rendu dc l'Acad. des Sc. 1837, No. 3, p. 81.

t See p. <28. X Compte Rendu, 1837, No. 5, p. 168.

§ Hist. Ind. Sc. Book xviii. Chap. vi. Sect. 5.

40 GEOLOGY.

course of nature ; acts which, therefore, we may properly call
miraculous.

But since we reject the production of new species by means of
external influence, do we then, it may be asked, accept the other
side of the dilemma which we have stated ; and admit a series of
creations of species, by some power beyond that which we trace in
the ordinary course of nature]

To this question, the history and analogy of science, I conceive,
teach us to reply as follows : — All palaetiological sciences, all
speculations which attempt to ascend from the present to the
remote past, by the chain of causation, do also, by an inevitable
consequence, urge us to look for the beginning of the state of
things which we thus contemplate; but in none of these cases
have men been able, by the aid of science, to arrive at a beginning
which is homogeneous with the known course of events. The
first origin of language, of civilization, of law and government,
cannot be clearly made out by reasoning and research ; and just as
little, we may expect, will a knowledge of the origin of the exist-
ing and extinct species of plants and animals, be the result of phy-
siological and geological investigation.

But, though philosophers have never yet demonstrated, and per-
haps never will be able to demonstrate, what was that primitive
state of things in the social and material worlds, from which the
progressive state took its first departure ; they can still, in all the
lines of research to which we have referred, go very far back ; —
determine many of the remote circumstances of the past sequence
of events ; — ascend to a point which, from our position at least,
seems to be near the origin ; — and exclude many suppositions
respecting the origin itself. Whether, by the light of reason alone,
men will ever be able to do more than this, it is difficult to say. It
is, I think, no irrational opinion, even on grounds of philosophical
analogy alone, that in all those sciences which look back and seek
a beginning of things, we may be unable to arrive at a consistent
and definite belief, without having recourse to other grounds of
truth, as well as to historical research and scientific reasoning.
When our thoughts would apprehend steadily the creation of things,
wTe find that we are obliged to summon up other ideas than those
which regulate the pursuit of scientific truths; — to call in other
powers than those to which we refer natural events : it cannot,
then, be considered as very surprising, if, in this part of our inquiry,
we are compelled to look for other than the ordinary evidence of
science.

Geology, forming one of the palsetiologieai class of sciences,
which trace back the history of the earth and its inhabitants on
philosophical grounds, is thus associated with a number of other
kinds of research, which are concerned about language, law, art,
and consequently about the internal faculties of man, his thoughts,
his social habits, his conception of right, his love of beauty.
Geology being thus brought into the atmosphere of moral and
mental speculations, it may be expected that her investigations of

CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 41

the probable past will share an influence common to them ; and
that she will not be allowed to point to an origin of her own, a
merely physical beginning- of things; but that, as she approaches
towards such a goal, she will be led to see that it is the origin of
many trains of events, the point of convergence of many lines. It
may be, that instead of being allowed to travel up to this focus of
being, we are only able to estimate its place and nature, and to
form of it such a judgment as this ; — that it is not only the source
of mere vegetable and animal life, but also of rational and social
life, language and arts, law and order ; in short, of all the pro-
gressive tendencies by which the highest principles of the intel-
lectual and moral world have been and are developed, as well as
of the succession of organic forms, which we find scattered, dead
or living, over the earth.

This reflection concerning the natural scientific view of creation,
it will be observed, has not been sought for from a wish to arrive
at such conclusions; but it has flowed spontaneously from the
manner in which we have had to introduce geology into our classi-
fication of the sciences : and this classification was framed from an
unbiassed consideration of the general analogies and guiding ideas
of the various portions of our knowledge. Such remarks as we
have made may on this account be considered more worthy of
attention.

But such a train of thought must be pursued with caution.
Although it may not be possible to arrive at a right conviction
respecting the origin of the world, without having recourse to other
than physical considerations, and to other than geological evidence,
yet extraneous considerations, and extraneous evidence, respecting
the nature of the beginning of things, must never be allowed to
influence our physics or our geology. Our geological dynamics,
like our astronomical dynamics, may be inadequate to carry us back
to an origin of that state of things of which it explains the pro-
gress, but this deficiency must be supplied, not by adding super-
natural to natural geological dynamics, but by accepting, in their
proper place, the views supplied by a portion of knowledge of a
different character and order. If we include in theology the
speculations to which we have recourse for this purpose, we must
exclude them from geology. The two sciences may conspire, not
by having any part in common, but because, though widely diverse
in their lines, both point to a mysterious and invisible origin of the
world.

All that which claims our assent on those higher grounds of
which theology takes cognizance, must claim such assent as is
consistent with those grounds ; that is, it must require belief in
respect of all that bears upon the highest relations of our being,
those on which depend our duties and our hopes. Doctrines of this
kind may and must be conveyed and maintained, by means of in-
formation concerning the past history of man, and his social and
material, as well as moral and spiritual fortunes. He who believes
hat a Providence has ruled the affairs of mankind, will also believe

4*

42 GEOLOGY.

that a Providence has governed the material world. But any lan-
guage in which the narrative of this government of the material
world can be conveyed, must necessarily be very imperfect and
inappropriate; being expressed in terms of those ideas which have
been selected by men, in order to describe the appearances and
relations of created things as they affect one another. In all cases,
therefore, where we have to attempt to interpret such a narrative,
we must feel that we are extremely liable to err ; and most of all,
when our interpretation refers to those material objects and opera-
tions which are most foreign to the main purpose of a history of
providence. If we have to consider a communication containing
a view of such a government of the world, imparted to us, as we
may suppose, in order to point out the right direction for our feel-
ings of trust, and reverence, and hope, towards the Governor of the
world, we may expect that we shall be in no danger of collecting
from our authority erroneous notions with regard to the power, and
wisdom, and goodness of His government ; or with respect to our
own place, duties, and prospects, and the history of our race, so far
as our duties and prospects are concerned. But that we should
rightly understand the detail of all events in the history of man, or
of the skies, or of the earth, which are narrated for the purpose of
thus giving a right direction to our minds, is by no means equally
certain ; and I do not think it would be too much to say, that an
immunity from perplexity and error, in such matters, is, on general
grounds, very improbable. It cannot then surprise us to find, that
parts of such narrations which seem to refer to occurrences like
those of which astronomers and geologists have attempted to de-
termine the laws, have given rise to many interpretations, all in-
consistent with one another, and most of them at variance with the
best established principles of astronomy and geology.

It may be urged, that all truths must be consistent with all other
truths, and that therefore the results of true geology or astronomy
cannot be irreconcilable with the statements of true theology.
And this universal consistency of truth with itself must be assented
to; but it by no means follows that we must be able to obtain a full
insight into the nature and manner of such a consistency. Such
an insight would only be possible if we could obtain a clear view
of that central body of truth, the source of the principles which
appear in the separate lines of speculation. To expect that we
should see clearly how the providential government of the world
is consistent with the unvarying laws by which its motions and
developernents are regulated, is to expect to understand thoroughly
the laws of motion, of developement, and of providence ; it is to
expect that we may ascend from geology and astronomy to the
creative and legislative centre, from which proceeded earth and
stars; and then descend again into the moral and spiritual world,
because its source and centre are the same as those of the material
creation. It is to say that reason, whether finite or infinite, must
be consistent with itself; and that, therefore, the finite must be
able to comprehend the infinite, to travel from any one province of

IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 43

the moral and material universe to any other, to trace their bearing,
and to connect their boundaries.

One of the advantages of the study of the history and nature of
science in which we are now engaged is, that it warns us of the
hopeless and presumptuous character of such attempts to under-
stand the government of the world by the aid of science, without
throwing any discredit upon the reality of our knowledge; — that
while it shows how solid and certain each science is, so long as it
refers its own facts to its own ideas, it confines each science within
its own limits, and condemns it as empty and helpless, when it
pronounces upon those subjects which are extraneous to it. The
error of persons who should seek a geological narrative in theolo-
gical records, would be rather in the search itself than in their
interpretation of what they might find ; and in like manner the
error of those who would conclude against a supernatural begin-
ning, or a providential direction of the world, upon geological or
physiological reasonings, would be, that they had expected those
sciences alone to place the origin or the government of the world
in its proper light.

Though these observations apply generally to all the palaetiolo-
gical sciences, they may be permitted here, because they have an
especial bearing upon some of the difficulties which have embar-
rassed the progress of geological speculation ; and though such
difficulties are, I trust, nearly gone by, it is important for us to see
them in their true bearing.

From what has been said, it follows that geology and astronomy
are, of themselves, incapable of giving us any distinct and satis-
factory account of the origin of the universe, or of its parts. We
need not wonder, then, at any particular instance of this incapa-
city ; as for example, that of which we have been speaking, the
impossibility of accounting by any natural means for the produc-
tion of all the successive tribes of plants and animals which have
peopled the world in the various stages of its progress, as geology
teaches us. That they were, like our own animal and vegetable
contemporaries, profoundly adapted to the condition in which they
were placed, we have ample reason to believe; but when we in-
quire whence they came into this our world, geology is silent.
The mystery of creation is not within the range of her legitimate
territory ; she says nothing, but she points upwards.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY.

THE IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES.

*1. By an examination of those notions which enter into all our
reasonings and judgments on living tilings, it appears that we con-

* Miiller, Elem., p. 18.

44 BIOLOGY.

ceive animal life as a vortex or cycle of moving matter in which
the form of the vortex determines the motions, and these motions
again support the form of the vortex: the stationary parts circulate
the fluids, and the fluids nourish the permanent parts. Each por-
tion ministers to the others, each depends upon the other. The
parts make up the whole, but the existence of the whole is essen-
tial to the preservation of the parts. But parts existing under such
conditions are organs, and the whole is organized. This is the
fundamental conception of organization. " Organized beings,"
says the physiologist,* " are composed of a number of essential and
mutually dependent parts." " An organized product of nature,"
says the great metaphysician,! " is that in which all the parts are
mutually ends and means."

2. It will be observed that we do not content ourselves with say-
ing that in such a whole, all the parts are mutually dependent.
This might be true even of a mechanical structure; it would be
easy to imagine a framework in which each part should be neces-
sary to the support of each of the others; for example, an arch of
several stones. But in such a structure the parts have no proper-
ties which they derive from the whole. They are beams or stones
when separate; they are no more when joined. But the same is
not the case in an organized whole. The limb of an animal sepa-
rated from the body, loses the properties of a limb and soon ceases
to retain even its form.

3. Nor do we content ourselves with saying that the parts are
mutually causes and effects. This is the case in machinery. In
a clock, the pendulum by means of the escapement causes the de-
scent of the weight, the weight by the same escapement keeps up
the motion of the pendulum. But things of this kind may happen
by accident. Stones slide from a rock down the side of a hill and
cause it to be smooth ; the smoothness of the slope causes stones
still to slide. Yet no one would call such a slide an organized
system. The system is organized, when the effects which take
place among the parts are essential to our conception of the whole ;
when the whole would not be a whole, nor the parts, parts, except
these effects were produced ; when the effects not only happen in
fact, but are included in the idea of the object; when they are not
only seen, but foreseen ; not only expected, but intended : in short
when, instead of being causes and effects, they are ends and means,
as they are termed in the above definition.

Thus we necessarily include, in our Idea of Organization, the
notion of an end, a purpose, a design ; or, to use another phrase
which has been peculiarly appropriated in this case, a Final Cause.
This idea of a Final Cause is an essential condition in order to the
pursuing our researches respecting organized bodies.

4. This Idea of Final Cause is not deduced from the phenomena
by reasoning, but is assumed as the only condition under which we
can reason on such subjects at all. We do not deduce the Idea of

* Kant, Urtheilskrafl, p. 296. t Phil. Ind. Sc. Book ix. Chap. vi.

IDEA OF FINAL CAUSE8. 45

Space, or Time, or efficient Cause, from the phenomena about us,
but necessarily look at phenomena as subordinate to these Ideas
from the beginning' of our reasoning". It is true, our ideas of rela-
tions of Space, and Time, and Force, may become much more clear
by our familiarizing ourselves with particular phenomena ; but still,
the Fundamental Ideas are not generated, but unfolded; not ex-
tracted from the external world, but evolved from the world within.
In like manner, in the contemplation of organic structures, we
consider each part as subservient to some use, and we cannot study
the structure as organic without such a conception. This notion
of adaptation, — this Idea of an End, — may become much more
clear and impressive by seeing it exemplified in particular cases.
But still, though suggested and evoked by special cases, it is not
furnished by them. If it be not supplied by the mind itself, it can
never be logically deduced from the phenomena. It is not a por-
tion of the facts which we study, but it is a principle which con-
nects, includes, and renders them intelligible; as our other Funda-
mental Ideas do the classes of facts to which they respectively
apply.

5. This has already been confirmed by reference to fact; in the
History of Physiology, I have shown that those who studied the
structure of animals w7ere irresistibly led to the conviction that the
parts of this structure have each its end or purpose ; — that each
member and organ not merely produces a certain effect or answers
a certain use, but is so framed as to impress us with the persuasion
that it was constructed for that use: — that it was intended to pro-
duce the effect. It was there seen that this persuasion was re-
peatedly expressed in the most emphatic manner by Galen; — that
it directed the researches and led to the discoveries of Harvey ; —
that it has always been dwelt upon as a favourite contemplation,
and followed as a certain guide, by the best anatomists; and that
it is inculcated by the physiologists of the profoundest views and
most extensive knowledge of our own time. All these persons have
deemed it a most certain and important principle of physiology, that
in every organized structure, plant or animal, each intelligible part
h.as its allotted office : — each organ is designed for its appropriate
function : — that nature, in these cases, produces nothing in vain :
that, in short, each portion of the whole arrangement has its final
cause; an end to which it is adapted, and in this end, the reason
that it is where and what it is.

6. This notion of Design in organized bodies must, I say, be sup-
plied by the student of organization out of his own mind : a truth
which will become clearer if we attend to the most conspicuous and
acknowledged instances of design. The structure of the eye, in
which the parts are curiously adjusted so as to produce a distinct
image on the retina, as in an optical instrument; — the trochlear
muscle of the eye, in which the tendon passes round a support and
turns back, like a rope round a pull y ; — the prospective contrivances
for the preservation of animals, provided long before they are wanted,
as the milk of the mother, the teeth of the child, the eyes and lungs

46 BIOLOGY.

of the foetus: — these arrangements, and innumerable others, call up
in us a persuasion that Design has entered into the plan of animal
form and progress. And if we bring in our minds this conception
of Design, nothing can more fully square with and fit it, than such
instances as these. But if we did not already possess the Idea of
Design ; — if we had not had our notion of mechanical contrivance
awakened by inspection of optical instruments, or pulleys, or in some
other way ; — if we had never been conscious ourselves of providing
for the future; — if this were the case, we could not recognise con-
trivance and prospectiveness in such instances as we have referred to.
The facts are, indeed, admirably in accordance with these concep-
tions, when the two are brought together: but the facts and the
conceptions come together from different quarters — from without
and from within.

7. We may further illustrate this point by referring to the rela-
tions of travellers who tell us that when consummate examples of
human mechanical contrivance have been set before savages, they
have appeared incapable of apprehending them as proofs of design.
This shows that in such cases the Idea of Design had not been de-
veloped in the minds of the people who were thus unintelligent:
but it no more proves that such an idea does not naturally and
necessarily arise, in the progress of men's minds, than the confused
manner in which the same savages apprehend the relations of space,
or number, or cause, proves that these ideas do not naturally belong
to their intellects. All men have these ideas ; and it is because
they cannot help referring their sensations to such ideas, that they
apprehend the world as existing in time and space, and as a series
of causes and effects. It would be very erroneous to say that the
belief of such truths is obtained by logical reasoning from facts.
And in like manner we cannot logically deduce design from the
contemplation of organic structures ; although it is impossible for
us, when the facts are clearly before us, not to find a reference to
design operating in our minds.

8. Again; the evidence of the doctrine of Final Causes as a fun-
damental principle of Biology may be obscured and weakened in
some minds by the constant habit of viewing this doctrine with
suspicion as unphilosophical and at variance with morphology. By
cherishing such views it is probable that many persons, physiologists
and others, have gradually brought themselves to suppose that
many or most of the arrangements which are familiarly adduced as
instances of design may be accounted for, or explained away ; — that
there is a certain degree of prejudice and narrowness of comprehen-
sion in that lively admiration of the adaptation of means to ends
which common minds derive from the spectacle of organic arrange-
ments. And yet, even in persons accustomed to these views, the
strong and natural influence of the Idea of a Final Cause, the spon-
taneous recognition of the relation of means to an end as the as-
sumption which makes organic arrangements intelligible, breaks
forth when we bring before them a new case, with regard to which
their genuine convictions have not yet been modified by their

IDEA OP FINAL CAUSES. 47

intellectual habits. I will offer, as an example which may serve to
illustrate this, the discoveries recently made with regard to the
process of suckling of the kangaroo. In the case of this, as of other
pouched animals, the young animal is removed, while very small
and imperfectly formed, from the womb to the pouch, in which the
teats are, and is there placed with its lips against one of the nipples.
But the young animal taken altogether is not so large as the nipple,
and is therefore incapable of sucking after the manner of common
mammals. Here is a difficulty: how is it overcome? — By an ap-
propriate contrivance : the nipple, which in common mammals is
not furnished with any muscle, is in the kangaroo provided with a
powerful extrusory muscle by which the mother can inject the milk
into the mouth of her offspring. And again; in order to give at-
tachment to this muscle there is a bone which is not found in ani-
mals of other kinds. But this mode of solving the problem of suckling
so small a creature introduces another difficulty. If the milk is
injected into the mouth of the young one, without any action of its
own muscles, what is to prevent the fluid entering the windpipe
and producing suffocation 1 How is this danger avoided 1 — By ano-
ther appropriate contrivance: there is a funnel in the back of the
throat by which the air-passage is completely separated from the
passage for nutriment, and the injected milk passes in a divided
stream on each side of the larynx to the oesophagus.* And as if to
show that this apparatus is really formed with a view to the wants
of the young one, the structure alters in the course of the animal's
growth ; and the funnel, no longer needed, is modified and disappears.
With regard to this and similar examples, the remark which I
would urge is this : — that no one, however prejudiced or unphilo-
sophical he may in general deem the reference to Final Causes,
can, at the first impression, help regarding this curious system of
arrangement as the means to an end. So contemplated, it becomes
significant, intelligible, admirable: without such a principle, it is
an unmeaning complexity, a collection of contradictions, producing
an almost impossible result by a portentous conflict of chances. The
parts of this apparatus cannot have produced one another; one part
is in the mother; another part in the young one: without their
harmony they could not be effective ; but nothing except design
can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work
together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention
when the facts first come before us. Perhaps there may hereafter
be physiologists who, tracing the gradual developement of the parts
of which we have spoken, and the analogies which connect them
with the structures of other animals, may think that this develope-
ment, these analogies, account for the conformation we have de-
scribed; and may hence think lightly of the explanation derived
from the reference to Final Causes. Yet surely it is clear, on a
calm consideration of the subject, that the latter explanation is not
disturbed by the former ; and that the observer's first impression,

* Mr. Owen, in Phil. Trans., 1834, p. 348.

48 BIOLOGY.

that this is " an irrefragable evidence of creative foresight,1'* can
never be obliterated, however much it may be obscured in the
minds of those who confuse this view by mixing it with others which
are utterly heterogeneous to it, and therefore cannot be contra-
dictory.

9. I have elsewheref remarked how physiologists, who thus look
with suspicion and dislike upon the introduction of Final Causes
into physiology, have still been unable to exclude from their specu-
lations causes of this kind. Thus Cabanis says,J "I regard with
the great Bacon, the philosophy of Final Causes as sterile ; but I
have elsewhere acknowledged that it was very difficult for the
most cautious man never to have recourse to them in his explana-
tions." Accordingly, lie says, " The partisans of Final Causes
nowhere find arguments so strong in favour of their way of looking
at nature as in the laws which preside and the circumstances of all
kinds which concur in the reproduction of living races. In no case
do the means employed appear so clearly relative to the end."
And it would be easy to find similar acknowledgments, express or
virtual, in other writers of the same kind. Thus Bichat, after
noting the difference between the organic sensibility by which the
organs are made to perform their offices, and the animal sensibility
of which the nervous centre is the seat, says,§ " No doubt it will
be asked, why" — that is, as we shall see, for what end — " the
organs of internal life have received from nature an inferior degree
of sensibility only, and why they do not transmit to the brain the
impressions which they receive, while all the acts of the animal
life imply this transmission'? The reason is simply this, that all
the phenomena which establish our connexions with surrounding
objects ought to he, and are in fact, under the influence of the
will; while all those which serve for the purpose of assimilation
only, escape, and ought indeed to escape, such influence." The
reason here assigned is the Final Cause; which, as Bichat justly
says, we cannot help asking for.

10. Again ; I may quote from the writer last mentioned another
remark, which shows that in the organical sciences, and in them
alone, the Idea of forces as Means acting to an End, is inevitably
assumed and acknowledged as of supreme authority. In Biology
alone, observes Bichat,|| have we to contemplate the state of dis-
ease. " Physiology is to the movements of living bodies, what
astronomy, dynamics, hydraulics, &c, are to those of inert matter:
but these latter sciences have no branches which correspond to
them as pathology corresponds to physiology. For the same reason
all notion of a medicament is repugnant to the physical sciences.
A medicament has for its object to bring the properties of the

* Mr. Owen, in Phil. Trans., 1834, p. 349.

f Bridgewater Treatise, p. 352.

X Rapports de Physique et du Moral, i. 299.

§ Life and Death, (trans.) p. 32.

H Anatomie Generale, i. liij.

IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES.* 49

system back to their natural type; but the physical properties
never depart from this type, and have no need to be brought back
to it: and thus there is nothing in the physical sciences which
holds the place of therapeutick in physiology. " Or, as we might
express it otherwise, of inert forces we have no conception of what
they ought to do, except what they do. The forces of gravity,
elasticity, affinity, never act in a diseased manner; we never con-
ceive them as failing in their purpose; for we do not conceive
them as having- any purpose which is answered by one mode of
their action rather than another. But with organical forces the
case is different; they are necessarily conceived as acting for the
preservation and developement of the system in which they reside.
If they do not do this, they fail, they are deranged, diseased. They
have for their object to conform the living being to a certain type ;
and if they cause or allow it to deviate from this type, their action
is distorted, morbid, contrary to the ends of nature. And thus this
conception of organized beings as susceptible of disease, implies
the recognition of a state of health, and of the organs and the vital
forces as means for preserving this normal condition. The state of
health and of perpetual developement is necessarily contemplated as
the Final Cause of the processes and powers with which the dif-
ferent parts of plants and animals are endowed.

11. This idea of a Final Cause is applicable as a fundamental
and regulative idea to our speculations concerning organized crea-
tures only. That there is a purpose in many other parts of the
creation, we find abundant reason to believe from the arrange-
ments and laws which prevail around us. But this persuasion is
not to be allowed to regulate and direct our reasonings with re-
gard to inorganic matter, of which conception the relation of
means and end forms no essential part. In mere Physics, Final
Causes, as Bacon has observed, are not to be admitted as a prin-
ciple of reasoning. But in the organical sciences, the assumption
of design and purpose in every part of every whole, that is, the
pervading idea of Final Cause, is the basis of sound reasoning and
the source of true doctrine.

12. The Idea of Final Cause, of end, purpose, design, intention,
is altogether different from the Idea of Cause, as efficient cause,
which we formerly had to consider ; and on this account the use of
the word Cause in this phrase has been objected to. If the idea
be clearly entertained and steadily applied, the word is a question
of subordinate importance. The term Final Cause has been long
familiarly used, and appears not likely to lead to confusion.

13. The consideration of Final Causes, both in physiology and
in other subjects, has at all times attracted much attention, in con-
sequence of its bearing upon the belief of an Intelligent Author of
the Universe. I do not intend, in this place, to pursue the subject
far in this view : but there is one antithesis of opinion, already
noticed in speaking of Physiology, on which I will again make a
few remarks.*

* See p. 25.
5

50 • BIOLOGY.

It has appeared to some persons that the mere aspect of order
and symmetry in .the works of nature — the contemplation of com-
prehensive and consistent law — is sufficient to lead us to the con-
ception of a design and intelligence producing the order and carry-
ing into effect the law. Without here attempting to decide whe-
ther this is true, we may discern, after what has heen said, that
the conception of design, arrived at in this manner, is altogether
different from that idea of design which is suggested to us by
organized bodies, and which we describe as the doctrine of Final
Causes. The regular form of a crystal, whatever beautiful sym-
metry it may exhibit, whatever general laws it may exemplify,
does not prove design in the same manner in which design is
proved by the provisions for the preservation and growth of the
seeds of plants, and of the young of animals. The law of universal
gravitation, however wide and simple, does not impress us with
the belief of a purpose, as does that propensity by which the two
sexes of each animal are brought together. If it could be shown
that trie symmetrical structure of a flower results from laws of the
same kind as those which determine the regular forms of crystals,
or the motions of the planets, the discovery might be very striking
and important, but it would not at all come under our idea of Final
Cause.

14. Accordingly there have been, in modern times, two different
schools of physiologists, the one proceeding upon the idea of Final
Causes, the other school seeking in the realm of organized bodies
wide laws and analogies from which that idea is excluded. All the
great biologists of preceding times, and some of the greatest of
modern times, have belonged to the former school ; and especially
Cuvier, who may be considered as the head of it. It was solely by
the assiduous application of this principle of Final Cause, as he
himself constantly declared, that he was enabled to make the dis-
coveries which have rendered his name so illustrious, and which
contain a far larger portion of important anatomical and biological
truth than it ever before fell to the lot of one man to contribute to
the science.

15. The opinions which have been put in opposition to the prin-
ciple of Final Causes have, for the most part, been stated vaguely
and ambiguously. Among the most definite of such principles, is
that which, in the History of the subject, 1 have termed the Prin-
ciple of metamorphosed and developed Symmetry, upon which has
been founded the science of Morphology.

The reality and importance of this principle are not to be denied
by us : we have shown how they are proved by its application in
various sciences, and especially in botany. But those advocates of
this principle who have placed it in antithesis to the doctrine of
Final Causes, have by this means done far more injustice to their
own favourite doctrine than damage to the one which they opposed.
The adaptation of the bones of the skeleton to the muscles, the
provision of fulcrums, projecting processes, channels, so that the
motions and forces shall be such as the needs of life require, cannot

IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 51

possibly become less striking and convincing, from any discovery
of general analogies of one animal frame with another, or of laws
connecting the developement of different parts. Whenever such
laws are discovered, we can only consider them as the means of
producing that adaptation which we so much admire. Our convic-
tion that the Artist works intelligently, is not destroyed, though it
may be modified and transferred, when we obtain a sight of his
tools. Our discovery of laws cannot contradict our persuasion of
ends; our Morphology cannot prejudice our Teleology.

16. The irresistible and constant apprehension of a purpose in
the forms and functions of animals has introduced into the writings
of speculators on these subjects various forms of expression, more
or less precise, more or less figurative ; as, that animals are framed
with a view to the part which they have to play ; — that nature does
nothing in vain ; that she employs the best means for her ends ;
and the like. However metaphorical or inexact any of these
phrases may be in particular, yet taken altogether, they convey,
clearly and definitely enough to preclude any serious error, a prin-
ciple of the most profound reality and of the highest importance in
the organical sciences. But some adherents of the morphological
school of which I have spoken reject, and even ridicule, all such
modes of expression. " I know nothing," says M. GeorTroy Saint-
Hilaire, " of animals which have to play a part in nature. I cannot
make of nature an intelligent being who does nothing in vain;
who acts by the shortest mode ; who does all for the best." The
philosophers of this school, therefore, do not, it would seem, feel
any of the admiration which is irresistibly excited in all the rest of
mankind at the contemplation of the various and wonderful adapta-
tions for the preservation, the enjoyment, the continuation of the
creatures which people the globe ; — at the survey of the mechanical
contrivances, the chemical agencies, the prospective arrangements,
the compensations, the minute adaptations, the comprehensive in-
terdependencies, which zoology and physiology have brought into
view, more and more, the further their researches have been carried.
Yet the clear and deep-seated conviction of the reality of these
provisions, which the study of anatomy produces in its most pro-
found and accurate cultivators, cannot be shaken by any objections
to the metaphors or terms in which this conviction is clothed. In
regard to the idea of a purpose in organization, as in regard to any
other idea, we cannot fully express our meaning by phrases borrowed
from any extraneous source ; but that impossibility arises precisely
from the circumstance of its being a fundamental idea which is
inevitably assumed in our representation of each special fact. The
same objection has been made to the idea of mechanical force, on
account of its being often expressed in metaphorical language; for
writers have spoken of an energy, effort, or solicitation to motion ;
and bodies have been said to be animated by a force. Such lan-
guage, it has been urged, implies volition, and the act of animated
beings. But the idea of force as distinct from mere motion, — as
the cause of motion, or of tendency to motion, — is not on that

52 BIOLOGY.

account less real. We endeavour in vain to conduct our mechanical
reasonings without the aid of this idea, and must express it as we
can. Just as little can we reason concerning organized beings
without assuming that each part has its function, each function its
purpose ; and so far as our phrases imply this, they will not mislead
us, however inexact, or however figurative they be.

17. The doctrine of a purpose in organization has been sometimes
called the doctrine of the Conditions of Existence ; and has been
stated as teaching that each animal must be so framed as to contain
in its structure the conditions which its existence requires. When
expressed in this manner, it has given rise to the objection, that it
merely offers an identical proposition ; since no animal can exist
without such conditions. But in reality, such expressions as those
just quoted give an inadequate statement of the Principle of a Final
Cause. For we discover in innumerable cases, arrangements in an
animal, of which we see, indeed, that they are subservient to its
well being; but the nature of which we never should have been
able at all to conjecture, from considering what was necessary to
its existence, and which strike us, no less by their unexpectedness
than by their adaptation: so far are they from being presented by
any perceptible necessity. Who would venture to say that the
trochlear muscle, or the power of articulate speech, must occur in
man, because they are the necessary conditions of his existence]
When, indeed, the general scheme and mode of being of an animal
are known, the expert and profound anatomist can reason concern-
ing the proportions and form of its various parts and organs, and
prove in some measure what their relations must be. We can
assert, with Cuvier, that certain forms of the viscera require certain
forms of the teeth, certain forms of the limbs, certain powers of the
senses. But in all this, the functions of self-nutrition and digestion
are supposed already existing as ends : and it being taken for
granted, as the only conceivable basis of reasoning, that the organs
are means to these ends, we may discover what modifications of
these organs are necessarily related to and connected with each
other. Instead of terming this rule of speculation merely "the
principle of the conditions of existence," we might term it " the
principle of the conditions of organs as means adapted to animal
existence as their end" And how far this principle is from being
a mere barren truism, the extraordinary discoveries made by the
great assertor of the principle, and universally assented to by natu-
ralists, abundantly prove. The vast extinct creation which is
recalled to life in Cuvier's great work, the Ossemens Fossiles,
cannot be the consequence of a mere identical proposition.

18. It has been objected, also, that the doctrine of Final Causes
supposes us to be acquainted with the intentions of the Creator ;
which, it is insinuated, is a most presumptuous and irrational basis
for our reasonings. But there can be nothing presumptuous or irra-
tional in reasoning on that basis, which if we reject, we cannot
reason at all. If men really can discern, and cannot help discern-
ing, a design in certain portions of the works of creation, this per-

IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 53

ception is the soundest and most satisfactory ground for the convic-
tions to which it leads. The Ideas which we necessarily employ
in the contemplation of the world around us, afford us the only
natural means of forming any conception of the Creator and
Governor of the Universe ; and if we are by such means enabled to
elevate our thoughts, however inadequately, towards Him, where
is the presumption of doing sol or rather, where is the wisdom of
refusing to open our minds to contemplations so animating and ele-
vating, and yet so entirely convincing 7 We possess the ideas of
time and space, under which all the objects of the universe present
themselves to us ; and in virtue of these ideas thus possessed, we
believe the Creator to be eternal and omnipotent. When we find
that we, in like manner, possess the idea of a Design in Creation,
and that with regard to ourselves, and creatures more or less
resembling ourselves, we cannot but contemplate their constitution
under this idea, we cannot abstain from ascribing to the Creator the
infinite profundity and extent of design to which all these special
instances belong as parts of a whole.

19. I have here considered Design as manifest in organization
only : for in that field of speculation it is forced upon us as contained
in all the phenomena, and as the only mode of our understanding
them. The existence of Final Causes has often been pointed out
in other portions of the creation; — -'in the apparent adaptations of
the various parts of the earth and of the solar system to each other
and to organized beings. In these provinces of speculation, how-
ever, the principle of Final Causes is no longer the basis and guide,
but the sequel and result of our physical reasonings. If in looking
at the universe, we follow the widest analogies of which we obtain
a view, we see, however dimly, reason to believe that all its laws
are adapted to each other, and intended to work together for the
benefit of its organic population, and for the general welfare of its
rational tenants. On this subject, however, not immediately in-
cluded in the principle of Final Causes as here stated, I shall not
dwell. I will only make this remark : that the assertion appears
to be quite unfounded, that as science advances from point to point,
Final Causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other.
The principle of design changes its mode of application indeed, but
it loses none of its force. We no longer consider particular facts
as produced by special interpositions, but we consider design as
exhibited in the establishment and adjustment of the laws by which
particular facts are produced. We do not look upon each particular
cloud as brought near us that it may drop fatness on our fields, but
the general adaptation of the laws of heat, and air, and moisture, to
the promotion of vegetation, does not become doubtful. We do not
consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the tribes of
plants and animals, because we find that, instead of revolving round
the earth as an attendant, the earth along with other planets revolves
round him. We are rather, by the discovery of the general laws
of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivance, of
more comprehensive adjustments. Final Causes, if thev appear

■ 5*

54 PAL^TIOLOGY.

driven further from us by such an extension of our views, embrace
us only with a vaster and more majestic circuit : instead of a few
threads connecting some detached objects, they become a stupen-
dous network, which is wound round and round the universal
frame of things.

PAL^TIOLOGY.

NATURE OF PALiETIOLOGY.

*1. The class of Sciences which I designate as Palsetiological
are those in which the object is to ascend from the present state of
things to a more ancient condition, from which the present is
derived by intelligible causes. As conspicuous examples of this
class we may take Geology, Glossology or Comparative Philology,
and Comparative Archaeology. These provinces of knowledge
might perhaps be intelligibly described as Histories ; the History of
the Earth, — the History of Languages, — the History of Arts. But
these phrases would not fully describe the sciences we have in
view; for the object to which we now suppose their investigations
to be directed is not merely to ascertain what the series of events
has been, as in the common forms of History, but also how it has
been brought about. These sciences are to treat of causes as well
as of effects. Such researches might be termed philosophical
history ; or, in order to mark more distinctly that the causes of
events are the leading object of attention, etiological history. But
since it will be more convenient to describe this class of sciences by
a single appellation, I have taken the liberty of proposing to call
themf Palcetiological Sciences.

While Paleontology describes the beings which have lived in
former ages without investigating their causes, and JEttiology
treats of causes without distinguishing historical from mechanical
causation ; Pal&tiology is a combination of the two sciences ; ex-
ploring by means of the second the phenomena presented by the
first. The portions of knowledge which I include in this term are
palaBontological aetiological sciences.

2. All these sciences are connected by this bond ; — that they all
endeavour to ascend to a past state, by considering what is the pre-
sent state of things, and what are the causes of change. Geology
examines the existing appearances of the materials which form the

* Phil. Ind. S. C. Book x. Chap. i.

t A philological writer, in a very interesting work, (Mr. Donaldson,
in his New Cratylus, p. 12,) expresses his dislike of this word, and sug-
gests that I must mean palce.cetiological. I think the word is more likely
to obtain currency in the more compact and euphonious form in which
I have used it. It has been adopted by Mr. Winning, in his Manual of
Comparative Philology.

NATURE OF PAL-ETIOLOGY. 55

earth, infers from them previous conditions, and speculates con-
cerning the forces by which one condition has been made to suc-
ceed another. Another science, cultivated with great zeal and
success in modern times, compares the languages of different coun-
tries and nations, and by an examination of their materials and
structure, endeavours to determine their descent from one another:
this science has been termed Comparative Philology or Ethnogra-
phy ; and by the French, Linguislique, a word which we might
imitate in order to have a single name for the science, but the
Greek derivative Glossology appears to be more convenient in its
form. The progress of the Arts (Architecture and the like); how
one stage of their culture produced another; and how far we can
trace their maturest and most complete condition to their earliest
form in various nations; — are problems of great interest belonging
to another subject, which we may for the present term Compara-
tive Archaeology. I have already noticed, in the History,* how
the researches into the origin of natural objects, and those relating
to works of art, pass by slight gradations into each other; how the
examination of the changes which have affected an ancient temple
or fortress, harbour or river, may concern alike the geologist and
the antiquary. Cuvier's assertion that the geologist is an antiquary
of a new order, is perfectly correct, for both are palsetiologists.

3. We are very far from having exhausted, by this enumeration,
the class of sciences which are thus connected. We may easily
point out many other subjects of speculation of the same kind.
As we may look back towards the first condition of our planet, we
may in like manner turn our thoughts towards the first condition
of the solar system, and try whether we can discern any traces of
an order of things antecedent to that which is now established ;
and if we find, as some great mathematicians have conceived, in-
dications of an earlier state in which the planets were not yet
gathered into their present forms, we have, in the pursuit of this
train of research, a palaetiological portion of Astronomy. Again,
as we may inquire how languages, and how man, have been dif-
fused over the earth's surface from place to place, we may make
the like inquiry with regard to the races of plants and animals,
founding our inferences upon the existing geographical distribution
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms: and thus the Geography
of Plants and of Animals also becomes a portion of Palaetiology.
Again, as we can in some measure trace the progress of Arts from
nation to nation and from age to age, we can also pursue a similar
investigation with respect to the progress of Mythology, of Poetry,
of Government, of Law. Thus the philosophical history of the
human race, viewed with reference to these subjects, if it can give
rise to knowledge so exact as to be properly called Science, will
supply sciences belonging to the class I am now to consider.

4. It is not an arbitrary and useless proceeding to construct such
a class of sciences. For wide and various as their subjects are, it

* Hist. Ind. Sci. iii., 482.

56 PAL.ETIOLOGY.

will be found that they have all certain principles, maxims, and
rules of procedure in common; and thus may reflect light upon
each other by being treated of together. Indeed it will, I trust,
appear, that we may by such a juxtaposition of different specula-
tions, obtain most salutary lessons. And questions, which, when
viewed as they first present themselves under the aspect of a spe-
cial science, disturb and alarm men's minds, may perhaps be con-
templated more calmly, as well as more clearly, when they are
considered as general problems of palsetiology.

5. It will at once occur to the reader that, if we include in the
circuit of our classification such subjects as have been mentioned,
— politics and law, mythology and poetry, — we are travelling very
far beyond the material sciences within whose limits we at the out-
set proposed to confine our discussion of principles. But we shall
remain faithful to our original plan; and for that purpose shall con-
fine ourselves in this work to those palsetiological sciences which
deal with material things. It is true, that the general principles
and maxims which regulate these sciences apply also to investiga-
tions of a parallel kind respecting the products which result from
man's imaginative and social endowments. But although there
may be a similarity in the general form of such portions of know-
ledge, their materials are so different from those with which we
have been hitherto dealing, that we cannot hope to take them into
our present account with any profit. Language, Government,
Law, Poetry, Art, embrace a number of peculiar Fundamental
Ideas, hitherto not touched upon in the disquisitions in which we
have been engaged ; and most of them involved in far greater per-
plexity and ambiguity, the subject of controversies far more vehe-
ment, than the Ideas we have hitherto been examining. We must
therefore avoid resting any part of our philosophy upon sciences,
or supposed sciences, which treat of such subjects. To attend to
this caution, is the only way in which we can secure the advan-
tage we proposed to ourselves at the outset, of taking, as the basis
of our speculations, none but systems of undisputed truths, clearly
understood and expressed.* We have already said that we must,
knowingly and voluntarily, resign that livelier and warmer interest
which doctrines on subjects of Polity or Art possess, and content
ourselves with the cold truths of the material sciences, in order
that we may avoid having the very foundations of our philosophy
involved in controversy, doubt, and obscurity.

6. We may remark, however, that the necessity of rejecting
from our survey a large portion of the researches which the gene-
ral notion of Palsetiology includes, suggests one consideration which
adds to the interest of our task. We began our inquiry with the
trust that any sound views which we should be able to obtain re-
specting the nature of truth in the physical sciences, and the mode
of discovering it, must also tend to throw light upon the nature
and prospects of knowledge of all other kinds; — must be useful to

* See Phil. Ind. Sci. Vol. i. p. 8.

DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 57

us in moral, political, and philological researches. We stated this
as a confident anticipation; and the evidence of the justice of our
belief already begins to appear. We have seen that biology leads
us to psychology, if we choose to follow the path ; and thus the
passage from the material to the immaterial has already unfolded
itself at one point; and we now perceive that there are several
large provinces of speculation which concern subjects belonging to
man's immaterial nature, and which are governed by the same laws
as sciences altogether physical. It is not our business here to
dwell on the prospects which our philosophy thus opens to our con-
templation; but we may allow ourselves, in this last stage of our
pilgrimage among the foundations of the physical sciences, to be
cheered and animated by the ray that thus beams upon us, however
dimly, from a higher and brighter region.

But in our reasonings and examples we shall mainly confine our-
selves to the physical sciences ; and for the most part to Geology,
which in the History I have put forwards as the best representative
of the Palsetiological Sciences.

DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES AND OF UNIFORMITY.

1. Doctrine of Catastrophes. — The attempts to frame a theory of
the earth have brought into view two completely opposite opinions:
— one, which represents the course of nature as uniform through
all ages, the causes which produce change having had the same
intensity in former times which they have at the present day; — the
other opinion, which sees in the present condition of things evi-
dences of catastrophes ; changes of a more sweeping kind, and pro-
duced by more powerful agencies than those which occur in recent
times. Geologists who held the latter opinion, maintained that the
forces which have elevated the Alps or the Andes to their present
height could not have been any forces which are now in action :
they pointed to vast masses of strata hundreds of miles long, thou-
sands of feet thick, thrown into highly-inclined positions, fractured,
dislocated, crushed : they remarked that upon the shattered edges
of such strata they found enormous accumulations of fragments and
rubbish, rounded by the action of water, so as to denote ages of vio-
lent aqueous action : they conceived that they saw instances in
which whole mountains of rock in a state of igneous fusion, must
have burst the earth's crust from below : they found that in the
course of the revolutions by which one stratum of rock was placed
upon another, the whole collection of animal species which tenanted
the earth and the seas had been removed, and a new set of living
things introduced in its place : finally, they found above all the
strata vast masses of sand and gravel containing bones of animals,
and apparently the work of a mighty deluge. With all these proofs
before their eyes they thought it impossible not to judge that the
agents of change by which the world was urged from one condition
to another till it reached its present state, must have been more
violent, more powerful, than any which we see at work around us.

58 PAL^TIOLOGY.

They conceived that the evidence of M catastrophes" was irre-
sistible.

2. Doctrine of Uniformity. — I need not here repeat the narra-
tive (given in the History*) of the process by which this formi-
dable array of proofs was, in the minds of some eminent geologists,
weakened, and at last overcome. This was done by showing that
the sudden breaks in the succession of strata were apparent only,
the discontinuity of the series which occurred in one country being
removed by terms interposed in another locality : by urging that
the total effect produced by existing causes, taking into account the
accumulated result of long period?, is far greater than a casual
speculator would think possible : by making it appear that there are
in many parts of the world evidences of a slow and imperceptible
rising of the land since it was the habitation of now existing spe-
cies: by proving that it is not universally true that the strata sepa-
rated in time by supposed catastrophes contain distinct species of
animals : by pointing out the limited fields of the supposed diluvial
action : and finally, by remarking that though the creation of spe-
cies is a mystery, the extinction of them is going on in our own
day. Hypotheses were suggested, too, by which it was conceived
that the change of climate might be explained, which, as the con-
sideration of the fossil remains seemed to show, must have taken
place between the ancient and the modern times. In this manner
the whole evidence of catastrophes was explained away: the notion
of a series of paroxysms of violence in the causes of change was
represented as a delusion arising from our contemplating short
periods only in the action of present causes: length of time was
called in to take the place of intensity of force: and it was declared
that geology need not despair of accounting for the revolutions of
the earth, as astronomy accounts for the revolutions of the heavens,
by the universal action of causes which are close at hand to us,
operating through time and space without variation or decay.

An antagonism of opinions, somewhat of the same kind as this,
will be found to manifest itself in the other Palsetiological Sciences
as well as in Geology ; and it will be instructive to endeavour to
balance these opposite doctrines. I will mention some of the con-
siderations which bear upon the subject

3. Is Uniformity probable a priori? — The doctrine of Uniformity
in the course of nature has sometimes been represented by its ad-
herents as possessing a great degree of a priori probability. It is
highly unphilosophical, it has been urged, to assume that the causes
of the geological events of former times were of a different kind
from causes now in action, if causes of this latter kind can in any
way be made to explain the facts. The analogy of all other sciences
compels us, it was said, to explain phenomena by known, not by
unknown, causes. And on these grounds the geological teacher
recommendedf "an earnest and patient endeavour to reconcile the
indications of former change with the evidence of gradual mutations
now in progress."

* Hist. Ind. Sci., in. 612. t Lyell, B. iv. c. i. p. 328.

i

DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 59

But on this we may remark, that if by known causes we mean
causes acting with the same intensity which they have during his-
torical times, the restriction is altogether arbitrary and groundless.
Let it be granted, for instance, that many parts of the earth's sur-
face are now undergoing an imperceptible rise. Jt is not pretended
that the rate of this elevation is rigorously uniform ; what, then,
are the limits of its velocity? Why may it not increase so as to
assume that character of violence which we may term a catastrophe
with reference to all changes hitherto recorded? Why may not
the rate of elevation be such that we may conceive the strata to
assume suddenly a position nearly vertical ? and is it, in fact, easy
to conceive a position of strata nearly vertical, a position which
occurs so frequently, to be gradually assumed? In cases where
the strata are nearly vertical, as in the Isle of Wight, and hundreds
of other places, or where they are actually inverted, as sometimes
occurs, are not the causes which have produced the effect as truly
known causes, as those which have raised the coasts where we
trace the former beach in an elevated terrace ? If the latter case
proves slow elevation, does not the former case prove rapid eleva-
tion? In neither case have we any measure of the time employed
in the change ; but does not the very nature of the results enable
us to discern, that if one was gradual, the other was comparatively
sudden ?

The causes which are now elevating a portion of Scandinavia
can be called known causes, only because we know the effect. Are
not the causes which have elevated the Alps and the Andes known
causes in the same sense? We know nothing in either case which
confines the intensity of the force within any limit, or prescribes to
it any law of uniformity. Why, then, should we make a merit of
cramping our speculations by such assumptions? Whether the
causes of change do act uniformly ; — whether they oscillate only
within narrow limits; — whether their intensity in former times was
nearly the same as it now is ; — these are precisely the questions
which we wish Nature to answer to us impartially and truly : where
is then the wisdom of" an earnest and patient endeavour" to secure
an affirmative reply ?

Thus I conceive that the assertion of an a priori claim to proba-
bility and philosophical spirit in favour of the doctrine of uniformity,
is quite untenable. We must learn from an examination of all the
facts, and not from any assumption of our own, whether the course
of nature be uniform. The limit of intensity being really unknown,
catastrophes are just as probable as uniformity. If a volcano may
repose for a thousand years, and then break out and destroy a city ;
why may not another volcano repose for ten thousand years, and
then destroy a continent; or if a continent, why not the whole
habitable surface of the earth ?

4. Cycle of Uniformity indefinite. — But this argument may be
put in another form. When it is said that the course of nature is
uniform, the assertion is not intended to exclude certain smaller
variations of violence and rest, such as we have just spoken of;—

60 PAL.&TIOLOGY.

alternations of activity and repose in volcanos ; or earthquakes,
deluges, and storms, interposed in a more tranquil state of things.
With regard to such occurrences, terrible as they appear at the
time, they may not much afreet the average rate of change ; there
may be a cycle, though an irregular one, of rapid and slow change ;
and if such cycles go on succeeding each other, we may still call
the order of nature uniform, notwithstanding the periods of violence
which it involves. The maximum and minimum intensities of the
forces of mutation alternate with one another ; and we may esti-
mate the average course of nature as that which corresponds to
something between the two extremes.

But if we thus attempt to maintain the uniformity of nature by
representing it as a series of cycles, we find that we cannot dis-
cover, in this conception, any solid ground for excluding catas-
trophes. What is the length of that cycle the repetition of which
constitutes uniformity 1 What interval from the maximum to the
minimum does it admit of? We may take for our cycle a hundred
or a thousand years, but evidently such a proceeding is altogether
arbitrary. We may mark our cycles by the greatest known
paroxysms of volcanic and terremotive agency, but this procedure
is no less indefinite and inconclusive than the other.

But further; since the cycle in which violence and repose alter-
nate is thus indefinite in its length and in its range of activity,
what ground have we for assuming more than one such cycle, ex-
tending from the origin of things to the present time 1 Why may
we not suppose the maximum force of the causes of change to have
taken place at the earliest period, and the tendency towards the
minimum to have gone on ever since? Or instead of only one
cycle, there may have been several, but of such length that our
historical period forms a portion only of the last ; — the feeblest
portion of the latest cycle. And thus violence and repose may
alternate upon a scale of time and intensity so large, that man's
experience supplies no evidence enabling him to estimate the
amount. The course of things is uniform, to an intelligence which
can embrace the succession of several cycles, but it is catastrophic
to the contemplation of man, whose survey can grasp a part only of
one cycle. And thus the hypothesis of uniformity, since it cannot
exclude degrees of change, nor limit the range of these degrees,
nor define the interval of their recurrence, cannot possess any essen-
tial simplicity which, previous to inquiry, gives it a claim upon our
assent superior to that of the opposite catastrophic hypothesis.

5. Uniformitarian Arguments are Negative only. — There is an
opposite tendency in the mode of maintaining the catastrophist and
the uniformitarian opinions, which depends upon their fundamental
principles, and shows itself in all the controversies between them.
The Catastrophist is affirmative, the Uniformitarian is negative in his
assertions : the former is constantly attempting to construct a theory ;
the latter delights in demolishing all theories. The one is constantly
bringing fresh evidence of some great past event, or series of events,
of a striking and definite kind ; his antagonist is at every step explain-

DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 61

ing away the evidence, and showing that it proves nothing. One
geologist adduces his proofs of a vast universal deluge; but another
endeavours to show that the proofs do not establish either the
universality or the vastness of such an event. The inclined broken
edges of a certain formation covered with their own fragments
beneath superjacent horizontal deposits are at one time supposed
to prove a catastrophic breaking up of the earlier strata; but this
opinion is controverted by showing that the same formations, when
pursued into other countries, exhibit a uniform gradation from the
lower to the upper, with no trace of violence. Extensive and lofty
elevations of the coast, continents of igneous rock, at first appear
to indicate operations far more gigantic than those which now
occur ; but attempts are soon made to show that time only is want-
ing to enable the present age to rival the past in the production of
such changes. Each new fact adduced by the catastrophist is at
first striking and apparently convincing; but as it becomes familiar,
it strikes the imagination less powerfully ; and the uniformitarian,
constantly labouring to produce some imitation of it by the machinery
which he has so well studied, at last in every case seems to himself
to succeed, so far as to destroy the effect of his opponent's evidence.
This is so with regard to more remote, as well as with regard to
immediate evidences of change. When it is ascertained that in
every part of the earth's crust the temperature increases as we
descend below the surface, at first this fact seems to indicate a
central heat : and a central heat naturally suggests an earlier state
of the mass, in which it was incandescent, and from which it is
now cooling. But this original incandescence of the g\obe of the
earth is manifestly an entire violation of the present course of
things ; it belongs to the catastrophist view, and the advocates of
uniformity have to explain it away. Accordingly, one of them
holds that this increase of heat in descending below the surface
may very possibly not go on all the way to the centre. The heat
which increases at first as we descend, may, he conceives, after-
wards decrease ; and he suggests causes which may have produced
such a succession of hotter and colder shells within the mass of the
earth. I have mentioned this suggestion in the History of Geology ;
and have given my reasons for believing it altogether untenable.*
Other persons also, desirous of reconciling this subterraneous heat
with the tenet of uniformity, have offered another suggestion : —
that the warmth or incandescence of the interior parts of the earth
does not arise out of an originally hot condition from which it is
gradually cooling, but results from chemical action constantly going
on among the materials of the earth's substance. And thus new
attempts arc perpetually making, to escape from the cogency of
the reasonings which send us towards an original state of things
different from the present. Those who theorize concerning an
origin go on building up the fabric of their speculations, while
those who think such theories unphilosophical, ever and anon dig

* Hist. Ind. Sci. iii. 562, and note.
6

62 FAL^TilOLOGY.

away the foundation of this structure. As we have already said,
the uniformitarian's doctrines are a collection of negatives.

This is so entirely the case, that J.he uniformitarian would for the
most part shrink from maintaining as positive tenets the explana-
tions which he so willingly uses as instruments of controversy. He
puts forward his suggestions as difficulties, but he will not stand by
them as doctrines. And this is in accordance with his general
tendency ; for any of his hypotheses, if insisted upon as positive
theories, would be found inconsistent with the assertion of uni-
formity. For example, the nebular hypothesis appears to give to
the history of the heavens an aspect which obliterates all special
acts of creation, for, according to that hypothesis, new planetary
systems are constantly forming ; but when asserted as the origin of
our own solar system, it brings with it an original incandescence,
and an origin of the organic world. And if, instead of using the
chemical theory of subterraneous heat to neutralize the evidence of
original incandescence, we assert it as a positive tenet, we can no
longer maintain the infinite past duration of the earth ; for chemical
forces, as well as mechanical, tend to equilibrium ; and that con-
dition once attained, their efficacy ceases. Chemical affinities tend
to form new compounds; and though, when many and various ele-
ments are mingled together, the play of synthesis and analysis may
go on for a long time, it must at last end. If, for instance, a large
portion of the earth's mass were originally pure potassium, we can
imagine violent igneous action to goon so long as any part remained
unoxidized ; but when the oxidation of the whole has once taken
place, this action must be at an end ; for there is in the hypothesis
no agency which can reproduce the deoxidized metal. Thus a
perpetual motion is impossible in chemistry, as it is in mechanics;
and a theory of constant change continued through infinite time, is
untenable when asserted upon chemical, no less than upon mechani-
cal principles. And thus the scepticism of the uniformitarian is of
force only so long as it is employed against the dogmatism of the
catastrophist. When the doubts are erected into dogmas, they are
no longer consistent with the tenet of uniformity. When the ne-
gations become affirmations, the negation of an origin vanishes also.
6. Uniformity in the Organic World. — In speaking of the violent
and sudden changes which constitute catastrophes, our thoughts
naturally turn at first to great mechanical and physical effects; —
ruptures and displacements of strata; extensive submersions and
emersions of land ; rapid changes of temperature. But the catas-
trophes which we have to consider in geology affect the organic as
well as the inorganic world. The sudden extinction of one collec-
tion of species, and the introduction of another in their place, is a
catastrophe, even if unaccompanied by mechanical violence. Ac-
cordingly, the antagonism of the catastrophist and uniformitarian
school has showm itself in this department of the subject, as well as
in the other. When geologists had first discovered that the suc-
cessive strata are each distinguished by appropriate organic fossils,
they assumed at once that each of these collections of living things
belonged to a separate creation. But this conclusion^ as I have

DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 63

already said, Mr. Lyell has attempted to invalidate, by proving that
in the existing order of thing-?, some species become extinct; and
by suggesting it as possible, that in the same order it may be true
that new species arc from time to time produced, even in the pre-
sent course of nature. And in this, as in the other part of the sub-
ject, he calls in the aid of vast periods of time, in order that the
violence of the changes may be softened down : and he appears
disposed to believe that the actual extinction and creation of species
may be so slow as to excite no more notice than it has hitherto
obtained ; and yet may be rapid enough, considering the immensity
of geological periods, to produce such a succession of different col-
lections of species as we find in the strata of the earth's surface.

7. Origin of the present Organic World. — The last great event
in the history of the vegetable and animal kingdoms was that by
which their various tribes were placed in their present seats. And
we may form various hypotheses with regard to the sudden or gra-
dual manner in which we may suppose this distribution to have
taken place. We may assume that at the beginning of the present
order of things, a stock of each species was placed in the vegetable
or animal province to which it belongs, by some cause out of the
common order of nature; or we may take a uniformitarian view of
the subject, and suppose that the provinces of the organic world
derived their population from some anterior state of things by the
operation of natural causes.

Nothing has been pointed out in the existing order of things
which has any analogy or resemblance, of any valid kind, to that
creative energy which must be exerted in the production of a new
species. And to assume the introduction of new species as
a part of the order of nature, without pointing out any natural
fact with which such an event can be classed, would be to reject
creation by an arbitrary act. Hence, even on natural grounds,
the most intelligible view of the history of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms seems to be, that each period which is marked by a dis-
tinct collection of species forms a cycle; and that at the beginning
of each such cycle a creative power was exerted, of a kind to which
there was nothing at all analogous in the succeeding part of the
same cycle. If it be urged that in some cases the same species, or
the same genus, runs through two geological formations, which
must, on other grounds, be referred to different cycles of creative
energy, we may reply that the creation of many new species does
not imply the extinction of all the old ones.

Thus we are led by our reasonings to this view, that the present
order of things was commenced by an act of creative power entirely
different to any agency which has been exerted since. None of the
influences which have modified the present races of animals and
plants since they were placpd in their habitations on the earth's
surface can have had any efficacy in producing them at first. We
are necessarily driven to assume, as the beginning of the present
cycle of organic nature, an event not included in the course of
nature. And we may remark that this necessity is the more cogent,
precisely because other cycles have preceded the present.

64 PALJET10L0GY.

8. Nebular Origin of the Solar System. — If we attempt to apply
the same antithesis of opinion (the doctrines of catastrophe and
uniformity), to the other subjects of palsetiological science, we shall
be led to similar conclusions. Thus if we turn our attention to
astronomical palsetiology, we perceive that the nebular hypothesis
lias a uniformitarian tendency. According to this hypothesis the
formation of this our system of sun, planets, and satellites, was a
process of the same kind as those which are still going on in the
heavens. One after another, nebula? condense into separate masses,
which begin to revolve about each other by mechanical necessity,
and form systems of which our solar system is a finished example.
But we may remark, that the uniformitarian doctrine on this subject
rests on most unstable foundations. We have as yet only very
vague and imperfect reasonings to show that by such condensation a
material system such as ours could result; and the introduction of
organized beings into such a material system is utterly out of the
reach of our philosophy. Here again, therefore, we are led to
regard the present order of the world as pointing towards an origin
altogether of a different kind from any thing which our material
science can grasp.

9. Origin of Languages. — We may venture to say that we
should be led to the same conclusion once more, if we were to
take into our consideration those palaBtiological sciences which are
beyond the domain of matter; for instance, the history of languages.
We may explain many of the differences and changes which we
become acquainted with, by referring to the action of causes of
change which still operate. But what glossologist will venture to
declare that the efficacy of such causes has been uniform ; that the
influences which mould a language, or make one language differ
from others*pf the same stock, operated formerly with no more
efficacy than they exercise now. " Where," as has elsewhere
been asked, " do we now find a language in the process of forma-
tion, unfolding itself in inflexions, terminations, changes of vowels
by grammatical relations, such as characterise the oldest known
languages]" Again, as another proof how little the history of
languages suggests to the philosophical glossologist the persuasion
of a uniform action of the causes of change, I may refer to the
conjecture or*Dr. Prichard, that the varieties of language produced
by the separation of one stock into several, have been greater and
greater as we go backwards in history: — that* the formation of
sister dialects from a common language, (as the Scandinavian,
German, and Saxon dialects from the Teutonic, or the Gaelic,
Erse and Welsh from the Celtic,) belongs to the first millennium
before the Christian era; while the formation of cognate languages
of the same family, as the Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and Gothic, must
be placed at least two thousand years before that era; and at a still
earlier period took place the separation of the great families them-
selves, the Indo-European, Semitic, and others, in which it is now

* Researches, ii. 224.

RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 65

difficult to trace the features of a common origin. No hypothesis
except one of this kind will explain the existence of the families,
groups, and dialects of languages, which we find in existence. Yet
this is an entirely different view from that which the hypothesis of
the uniform progress of change would give. And thus in the
earliest stages of man's career, the revolutions of language must
have been, even by the evidence of the theoretical history of
language itself, of an order altogether different from any which
have taken place within the recent history of man. And we may
add, that as the early stages of the progress of language must have
been widely different from those later ones of which we can in
some measure trace the natural causes, we cannot place the origin
of language in any point of view in which it comes under the
jurisdiction of natural causation at all.

10. No Natural Origin discoverable. — We are thus led by a
survey of several of the palsetiological sciences to a confirmation
of the principle formerly asserted,* That in no palsetiological
science has man been able to arrive at a beginning which is homo-
geneous with the known course of events. We can in such
sciences often go very far back; — determine many of the remote
circumstances of the past series of events; — ascend to a point
which seems to be near the origin ; — and limit the hypothesis re-
specting the origin itself: — but philosophers never have demon-
strated, and, so far as we can judge, probably never will be able to
demonstrate, what was that primitive state of things from which
the progressive course of the world took its first departure. In all
these paths of research, when we travel far backwards, the aspect
of the earlier portions becomes very different from that of the ad-
vanced part on which we now stand ; but in all cases the path is
loit in obscurity as it is traced backwards towards its starting
osdnt: — it becomes not only invisible, but unimaginable; it is not
only an interruption, but an abyss, which interposes itself between
us and any intelligible beginning of things.

RELATION OF TRADITION TO PALiETIOLOGY.

1. Importance of Tradition. — Since the Palsetiological Sciences
have it lor their business to study the train of past events produced
by natural causes down to the present time, the knowledge con-
cerning such events which is supplied by the remembrance and
records of man, in whatever form, must have an important bearing
upon these sciences. All changes in the condition and extent of
land and sea, which have taken place within man's observation, all
effects of deluges, sea-waves, rivers, springs, volcanos, earthquakes,
and the like, which come within the reach of human history, have
a strong interest for the palaetiologist. Nor is he less concerned in
all recorded instances of the modification of the forms and habits
of plants and animals, by the operations of man, or by transfer

* Hist. Ind. Sci., iii. 581.
6*

66 PAL^rriOLOGY.

from one land to another. And when we come to the Palaetiology
of Language, of Art, of Civilization, we find our subject still more
closely connected with history ; for in truth these are historical, no
less than palsetiologieal investigations. But, confining ourselves at
present to the material sciences, we may observe that though the
importance of the information which tradition gives us, in the
sciences 'now under our consideration, as, for instance, geology, has
long been tacitly recognised ; yet it is only recently that geologists
have employed themselves in collecting their historical facts upon
such a scale and with such comprehensive views as are required
by the interest and use of collections of this kind. The Essay of
Von Hoff,* On the Natural Alterations in the Surface of the
Earth which are proved by Tradition, was the work which first
opened the eyes of geologists to the extent and importance of this
kind of investigation. Since that time the same path of research
has been pursued with great perseverance by others, especially by
Mr. Lyell ; and is now justly considered as an essential portion of
geology.

2. Connexion of Tradition and Science. — Events which we
might naturally expect to have some bearing on geology, are re-
corded in the historical writings which, even on mere human
grounds, have the strongest claim to our respect as records of the
early history of the world, and are confirmed by the traditions of
various nations all over the globe, namely, the formation of the
earth and its population, and a subsequent deluge. It has been
made a matter of controversy how the narrative of these events is
to be understood, so as to make it agree with the facts which an
examination of the earth's surface and of its vegetable and animal
population discloses to us. Such controversies, when they are
considered as merely archaeological, may occur in any of the palee-
tiological sciences. We may have to compare and to reconcile
the evidence of existing phenomena with that of historical tradi-
tion. But under some circumstances this process of conciliation
may assume an interest of another kind, on which we will make a
few remarks.

3. Natural and Providential History of the World. — We may
contemplate the existence of man upon the earth, his origin and
his progress, in the same manner as we contemplate the existence
of any other race of animals ; namely, in a purely palsetiological
view. We may consider how far our knowledge of laws of causation
enables us to explain his diffusion and migration, his differences and
resemblances, his actions and works. And this is the view of man
as a member of the natural course of things.

But man, at the same time the contemplator and the subject of
his own contemplation, endowed with faculties and powers which
make him a being of a different nature from other animals, cannot
help regarding his own actions and enjoyments, his recollections
and his hopes, under an aspect quite different from any that we

* Vol. i. 1822 ; Vol. ii. 1824.

RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 67

have yet had presented to us. We have been endeavouring to
place in a clear light the Fundamental Ideas, such as that of Cause,
on which depends our knowledge of the natural course of things.
But there are other Ideas to which man necessarily refers his
actions ; he is led by his nature, not only to consider his own
actions, and those of his fellow-men, as springing out of this or
that cause, leading to this or that material result ; but also as good
or bad, as what they ought or ought not to be. lie has Ideas of
moral relations as well as those Ideas of material relations with
which we have hitherto been occupied. He is a moral as well as
a natural agent.

Contemplating himself and the world around him by the light of
his Moral Ideas, man is led to the conviction that his moral faculties
were bestowed upon him by design and for a purpose ; that he is
the subject of a moral government ; that the course of the world
is directed by the Power which governs it, to the unfolding and
perfecting of man's moral nature; that this guidance may be
traced in the career of individuals and of the world; that there is
a providential as well as a natural course of things.

Yet this view is beset by no small difficulties. The full develope-
ment of man's moral faculties ; — the perfection of his nature up to
the measure of his own ideas; — the adaptation of his moral being
to an ultimate destination, by its transit through a world full of
moral evil, in which each has his share ; — are effects for which the
economy of the world appears to contain no adequate provision.
Man, though aware of his moral nature, and ready to believe in an
ultimate destination of purity and blessedness, is too feeble to resist
the temptation of evil, and to restore his purity when once lost.
He cannot but look for some confirmation of that providential order
which he has begun to believe; some provision for those deficiencies
in his moral condition which he has begun to feel.

He looks at the history of the world, and he finds that at a certain
period it offers to him the promise of what he seeks. When the
natural powers of man had been developed to their full extent, and
were beginning to exhibit symptoms of decay ; when the intel-
lectual progress of the world appeared to have reached its limit,
without supplying man's moral needs; we find the great Epoch in
the Providential history of the world. We find the announcement
of a Dispensation by which man's deficiencies shall be supplied and
his aspirations fulfilled : we find a provision for the purification, the
support, and the ultimate beatification of those who use the provided
means. And thus the providential course of the world becomes
consistent and intelligible.

4. The Sacred Narrative. — But with the new Dispensation, we
receive, not only on account of its own scheme and history, but
also a written narrative of the providential course of the world
from the earliest times, and even from its first creation. This
narrative is recognised and authorized by the new dispensation,
and accredited by some of the same evidences as the dispensation
itself. That the existence of such a sacred narrative should be a

68 PALiETIOLOGY.

part of the providential order of things, cannot but appear natural ;
but naturally also, the study of it leads to some difficulties.

The Sacred Narrative in some of its earliest portions speaks of
natural objects and occurrences respecting them. In the very
beginning of the course of the world, we may readily believe (in-
deed, as we have seen in the last chapter, our scientific researches
lead us to believe) that such occurrences were very different from
any thing which now takes place ; — different to an extent and in a
manner which we cannot estimate. Now the narrative must speak
of objects and occurrences in the words and phrases which have
derived their meaning from their application to the existing natural
state of things. When applied to an initial supernatural state
therefore, these words and phrases cannot help being to us obscure
and mysterious, perhaps ambiguous and seemingly contradictory.

5. Difficulties in interpreting the Sacred Narrative. — The
moral and providential relations of man's condition are so much
more important to him than mere natural relations, that at first we
may well suppose he will accept the Sacred Narrative, as not only
unquestionable in its true import, but also as a guide in his views
even of mere natural relations. He will try to modify the concep-
tions which he entertains of objects and their properties, so that
the Sacred Narrative of the supernatural condition shall retain the
first meaning which he had put upon it in virtue of his own habits
in the usage of language.

But man is so constituted that he cannot persist in this procedure.
The powers and tendencies of his intellect are such that he cannot
help trying to attain true conceptions of objects and their properties
by the study of things themselves. For instance, when he at first
read of a firmament dividing the waters above from the waters
below, he perhaps conceived a transparent floor in the skies, on
which the superior waters rested which descended in rain; but as
his observations and his reasonings satisfied him that such a floor
could not exist, he became willing to allow (as St. Augustin
allowed) that the waters above the firmament are in a state of
vapour. And in like manner in other subjects, men, as their views
of nature become more distinct and precise, modified, so far as it
was necessary for consistency's sake, their first rude interpretations
of the Sacred Narrative ; so that, without in any degree losing its
import as a view of the providential course of the world, it should
be so conceived as not to contradict what they knew of the natural
order of things.

But this accommodation was not always made without painful
struggles and angry controversies. When men had conceived the
occurrences of ihe Sacred Narrative in a particular manner, they
could not readily and willingly adopt a new mode of conception ;
and they resisted all attempts to recommend it to them, as attacks
upon the sacredness of the Narrative. They had clothed their
belief of the workings of Providence in certain images ; and they
clung to those images with the persuasion that without them their
belief could not subsist. Thus they imagined to themselves that

RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 69

the earth was a flat floor, solidly and broadly laid for the con-
venience of man, and they felt as if the kindness of Providence
was disparaged, when it was maintained that the earth was a globe
held together only by the mutual attraction of its parts.

The most memorable instance of a struggle of this kind is to be
found in the circumstances which attended the introduction of the
Heliocentric Theory of Copernicus to general acceptance. On
this controversy I have already made some remarks in the History
of Science,* and have attempted to draw from it some lessons
which may he useful to us when any similar conflict of opinions
may occur. I will here add a few reflections with a similar view.
6. Such difficulties inevitable. — In the first place, I remark that
such modifications of the current interpretation of the words of
Scripture appear to be an inevitable consequence of the progressive
character of Natural Science. Science is constantly teaching us to
describe known facts in new language, but the language of Scrip-
ture is always the same. And not only so, but the language of
Scripture is necessarily adapted to the common state of man's intel-
lectual developement, in which he is supposed not to be possessed
of science. Hence the phrases used by Scripture are precisely
those which science soon teaches man to consider as inaccurate.
Yet they are not on that account the less fitted for their proper pur-
pose : for if any terms had been used, adapted to a more advanced
state of knowledge, they must have been unintelligible among those
to whom the Scripture was first addressed. If the Jews had been
told that water existed in the clouds in small drops, they would
have marvelled that it did not constantly descend ; and to have ex-
plained the reason of this, would have been to teach Atmology in
the sacred writings. If they had read in their Scripture that the
earth was a sphere, when it appeared to be a plain, they would only
have been disturbed in their thoughts, or driven to some wild and
baseless imaginations by a declaration to them so strange. If the
Divine Speaker, instead of saying that he would set his bow in the
clouds, had been made to declare that he would give to water the
property of refracting different colours at different angles, how
utterly unmeaning to the hearers would the words have been ! And in
these cases, the expressions, being unintelligible, startling, and
bewildering, would have been such as tended to unfit the Sacred
Narrative for its place in the providential dispensation of the world.
Accordingly, in the great controversy which took place in Gali-
leo's time between the defenders of the then customary interpreta-
tions of Scripture, and the assertors of the Copernican system of the
universe, when the innovators were upbraided with maintaining
opinions contrary to Scripture, they replied that Scripture was not
intended to teach men astronomy, and that it expressed the acts of
divine power in images which were suited to the ideas of unscien-
tific men. To speak of the rising and setting and travelling of the
sun, of the fixity and of the foundations of the earth, was to use the

* Hist. Ind. Sci. i., 401.

70 PALiETIOLOGY.

only language which would have made the Sacred Narrative intel-
ligible. To extract from these and the like expressions doctrines
of science, was, they declared, in the highest degree unjustifiable;
and such a course could lead, they held, to no result but a weaken-
ing of the authority of Scripture in proportion as its credit was
identified with that of these modes of applying it. And this judg-
ment has since been generally assented to by those who most
reverence and value the study of the designs of Providence as well
as that of the works of nature.

7. Science tells us nothing concerning Creation. — Other appa-
rent difficulties arise from the accounts given in the Scripture of
the first origin of the world in which we live: for example, light is
represented as created before the sun. With regard to difficulties
of this kind, it appears that we may derive some instruction from the
result to which we were led in the last chapter; — namely, that in
the sciences which trace the progress of natural occurrences, we
can in no case go back to an origin, but in every instance appear to
find ourselves separated from it by a state of things, and an order of
events, of a kind altogether different from those which come under
our experience. The thread of induction respecting the natural
course of the world snaps in our fingers, when we try to ascertain
where its beginning is. Since, then, science can teach us nothing-
positive respecting the beginning of things, she can neither contra-
dict nor confirm what is taught by Scripture on that subject; and
thus, as it is unworthy timidity to fear contradiction, so is it un-
grounded presumption to look for confirmation in such cases. The
providential history of the world has its own beginning, and its own
evidence; and we can only render the system insecure, by making
it lean on our material sciences. If any one were to suggest that
the nebular hypothesis countenances the Scripture history of the
formation of this system, by showing how the luminous matter of
the sun might exist previous to the sun itself, we should act wisely
in rejecting such an attempt to weave together these two hetero-
geneous threads; — the one a part of a providential scheme, the
other a fragment of physical speculation.

We shall best learn those lessons of the true philosophy of science
which it is our object to collect, by attending to portions of science
which have gone through such crises as we are now considering;
nor is it requisite, for this purpose, to bring forwards any subjects
which are still under discussion. It may, however, be mentioned
that such maxims as we are now endeavouring to establish, and the
one before us in particular, bear with a peculiar force upon those
Palsetiological Sciences of which wTe have been treating in the
present Book.

8. Scientific views, when familiar, do not disturb the authority of
Scripture. — There is another reflection which may serve to con-
sole and encourage us in the painful struggles which thus take
place, between those who maintain interpretations of Scripture
already prevalent and those who contend for such new ones as the
new discoveries of science require. It is this; — that though the

RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 71

now opinion is rented by one party as something destructive of the
credit of Scripture and the reverence which is its due, yet, in fact,
when the new interpretation lias been generally established and
incorporated with men's current thoughts, it ceases to disturb their
views of the authority of the Scripture or of the truth of its teach-
ing. When the language of Scripture, invested with its new
meaning, has become familiar to men, it is found that the ideas which
it calls up are quite as reconcilable as the former ones were with
the most entire acceptance of the providential dispensation. And
when this has been found to be the case, all cultivated persons look
back with surprise at the mistake of those who thought that the
essence of the revelation was involved in their own arbitrary version
of some collateral circumstance in the revealed narrative. At the
present day, we can hardly conceive how reasonable men could
ever have imagined that religious reflections on the stability of the
earth, and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve round
it, would be interfered with by an acknowledgment that this rest
and motion are apparent only.* And thus the authority of revela-
tion is not shaken by any changes introduced by the progress of
science in the mode of interpreting expressions which describe
physical objects and occurrences; provided the new interpretation
is admitted at a proper season, and in a proper spirit; so as to
soften, as much as possible, both the public controversies and the
private scruples which almost inevitably accompany such an altera-
tion.

9. When should old interpretations be given up ? — But the ques-
tion then occurs, What is the proper season for a religious and
enlightened commentator to make such a change in the current
interpretation of sacred Scripture] At what period ought the
established exposition of a passage to be given up, and a new mode
of understanding the passage, such as is, or seems to be, required
by new discoveries respecting the laws of nature, accepted in its
place ] It is plain, that to introduce such an alteration lightly and
hastily would be a procedure fraught with inconvenience; for if the
change were made in such a manner, it might be afterwards dis-
covered that it had been adopted without sufficient reason, and that
it was necessary to reinstate the old exposition. And the minds of
the readers of Scripture, always to a certain extent and for a time
disturbed by the subversion of their long-established notions, would
be distressed without any need, and might be seriously unsettled.
While, on the other hand, a too protracted and obstinate resistance
to the innovation, on the part of the scriptural expositors, would tend
to identify, at least in the minds of many, the authority of the Scrip-
ture with the truth of the exposition ; and therefore would bring
discredit upon the revealed word, when the established interpreta-
tion was finally proved to be untenable.

A rule on this subject, propounded by some of the most enlight-
ened dignitaries of the Roman Catholic church, on the occasion of

* I have here borrowed a sentence or two from my own History.

72 PAL^TIOLOGY.

the great Copernican controversy begun by Galileo, seems well
worthy of our attention. The following was the opinion given by
Cardinal Bellarmine at the time: — "When a demonstration shall
be found to establish the earth's motion, it will be proper to inter-
pret the sacred Scriptures otherwise than they have hitherto been
interpreted in those passages where mention is made of the stabi-
lity of the earth and movement of the heavens." This appears to
be a judicious and reasonable maxim for such cases in general.
So long as the supposed scientific discovery is doubtful, the expo-
sition of the meaning of Scripture given by commentators of es-
tablished credit is not wantonly to be disturbed ; but when a sci-
entific theory, irreconcilable with this ancient interpretation, is
clearly proved, we must give up the interpretation, and seek some
new mode of understanding the passage in question, by means of
which it may be consistent with what we know; for if it be not,
our conception of the things so described is no longer consistent
with itself.

It may be said that this rule is indefinite, for who shall decide
when a new theory is completely demonstrated, and the old inter-
pretation become untenable 1 But to this we may reply, that if the
rule be assented to, its application will not be very difficult. For
when men have admitted as a general rule, that the current inter-
pretations of scriptural expressions respecting natural objects and
events may possibly require, and in some cases certainly will re-
quire, to be abandoned, and new ones admitted, they will hardly
allow themselves to contend for such interpretations as if they
were essential parts of revelation ; and will look upon the change
of exposition, whether it come sooner or later, without alarm or
anger. And when men lend themselves to the progress of truth
in this spirit, it is not of any material importance at what period a
new and satisfactory interpretation of the scriptural difficulty is
found ; since a scientific exactness in our apprehension of the
meaning of such passages as are now referred to is very far from
being essential to our full acceptance of revelation.

10. In what Spirit should the Change be accepted ? — Still these
revolutions in scriptural interpretation must always have in them
something which distresses and disturbs religious communities.
And such uneasy feelings will take a different shape, according as
the community acknowledges or rejects a paramount interpretative
authority in its religious leaders. In the case in which the inter-
pretation of the Church is binding upon all its members, the more
placid minds rest in peace upon the ancient exposition, till the spi-
ritual authorities announce that the time for the adoption of a new
view has arrived ; but in these circumstances, the more stirring
and inquisitive minds, which cannot refrain from the pursuit of
new truths and exact conceptions, are led to opinions which, being
contrary to those of the Church, are held to be sinful. On the
other hand, if the religious constitution of the community allow
and encourage each man to study and interpret for himself the
Sacred Writings, we are met by evils of another kind. In this

RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 73

case, although, by the unforced influence of admired commentators,
there may prevail a general agreement in the usual interpretation
of difficult passages, yet as each reader of the Scripture looks upon
the sense which he has adopted as being his own interpretation, he
maintains it, not with the tranquil acquiescence of one who has
deposited his judgment in the hands of his church, but with the
keenness and strenuousness of self-love. In such a state of things,
though no judicial severities can be employed against the innova-
tors, there may arise more angry controversies than in the other
case.

It is impossible to overlook the lesson which here offers itself,
that it is in the highest degree unwise in the friends of religion,
whether individuals or communities, unnecessarily to embark their
credit in expositions of Scripture on matters which appertain to
natural science. By delivering physical doctrines as the teaching
of revelation, religion may lose much, but cannot gain any thing.
This maxim of practical wisdom has often been urged by Christian
writers. Thus St. Augustin says:* "In obscure matters and
things far removed from our senses, if we read any thing, even in
the divine Scripture, which may produce diverse opinions without
damaging the faith which we cherish, let us not rush headlong by
positive assertion to either the one opinion or the other ; lest, when
a more thorough discussion has shown the opinion which we had
adopted to be false, our faith may fall with it: and we should be
found contending, not for the doctrine of the sacred Scriptures, but
for our own ; endeavouring to make our doctrine to be that of the
Scriptures, instead of taking the doctrine of the Scriptures to be
ours." And in nearly the same spirit, at the time of the Coperni-
can controversy, it was thought proper to append to the work of
Copernicus a postil, to say that the work was written to account
for the phenomena, and that people must not run on blindly and
condemn either of the opposite opinions. Even when the Inquisi-
tion, in 1616, thought itself compelled to pronounce a decision upon
this subject, the verdict was delivered in very moderate language ;
— that " the doctrine of the earth's motion appeared to be contrary
to Scripture:" and yet, moderate as this expression is, it has been
blamed by judicious members of the Ro*nan church as deciding a
point such as religious authorities ought not to pretend to decide;
and has brought upon that church no ordinary weight of general
condemnation. Kepler pointed out, in his lively manner, the im-
prudence of employing the force of religious authorities on such
subjects : Acies dolabrce in ferrum illisa, postea nee in lignum
valet amplius. Capiat hoc cujus interest. " If you will try to
chop iron, the axe becomes unable to cut even wood."

11. In what Spirit should the Change be urged? — But while
we thus endeavour to show in what manner the interpreters of
Scripture may most safely and most properly accept the discoveries
of science, we must not forget that there may be errors committed

* Lib. i. de Genesi, cap. xviii.

7

74 PAL^TIOLOGY.

on the other side also; and that men of science, in bringing for-
ward views which may for a time disturb the minds of lovers of
Scripture, should consider themselves as bound by strict rules of
candour, moderation, and prudence. Intentionally to make their
supposed discoveries a means of discrediting, contradicting, or
slighting the sacred Scriptures, or the authority of religion, is in
them unpardonable. As men who make the science of Truth the
business of their lives, and are persuaded of her genuine supe-
riority, and certain of her ultimate triumph, they are peculiarly
bound to urge her claims in a calm and temperate spirit; not for-
getting that there are other kinds of truth besides that which they
peculiarly study. They may properly reject authority in matters
of science ; but they are to leave it its proper office in matters of
religion. I may here again quote Kepler's expressions : " In Theo-
logy we balance authorities, in Philosophy we weigh reasons. A
holy man was Lactantius who denied that the earth was round ; a
holy man was Augustin, who granted the rotundity, but denied
the antipodes ; a holy thing to me is the Inquisition, which allows
the smallness of the earth, but denies its motion; but more holy to
me is Truth ; and hence I prove, from philosophy, that the earth
is round, and inhabited on every side, of small size, and in motion
among the stars, — and this I do with no disrespect to the Doctors."
I the more willingly quote such a passage from Kepler, because
the entire ingenuousness and sincere piety of his character does
not allow us to suspect in him any thing of hypocrisy or latent
irony. That similar professions of respect may be made ironically,
we have a noted example in the celebrated Introduction to Gali-
leo's Dialogue on the Copernican System; probably the part
which was most offensive to the authorities. "Some years ago,"
he begins, "a wholesome edict was promulgated at Rome, which,
in order to check the perilous scandals of the present age, imposed
silence upon the Pythagorean opinion of the mobility of the earth.
There were not wanting," he proceeds, " persons who rashly as-
serted that this decree was the result, not of a judicious inquiry,
but of passion ill-informed ; and complaints were heard that coun-
sellors, utterly unacquainted with astronomical observation, ought
not to be allowed, with thejr sudden prohibitions, to clip the wings
of speculative intellects. At the hearing of rash lamentations
like these, my zeal could not keep silence." And he then goes on
to say, that he wishes, in his Dialogue, to show that the subject
had been fully examined at Rome. Here the irony is quite trans-
parent, and the sarcasm glaringly obvious. I think we may ven-
ture to say that this is not the temper in which scientific questions
should be treated ; although by some, perhaps, the prohibition of
public discussion may be considered as justifying any evasion which
is likely to pass unpunished.

12. Duty of Mutual Forbearance. — We may add, as a further
reason for mutual forbearance in such cases, that the true interests
of both parties are the same. The man of science is concerned,
no less than any other person, in the truth and import of the divine

RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 75

dispensation ; the religious man, no less than the man of science,
is, by the nature of his intellect, incapable of believing two contra-
dictory declarations. Hence they have both alike a need for under-
standing the Scripture in some way in which it shall be consistent
with their understanding of nature. It is for their common advan-
tage to conciliate, as Kepler says, the finger and the tongue of
God, his works and his word. And they may find abundant reason
to bear with each other, even if they should adopt for this purpose
different interpretations, each finding one satisfactory to himself;
or if any one should decline employing his thoughts on such sub-
jects at all. I have elsewhere* quoted a passage from Keplerf
which appears to be written in a most suitable spirit: " I beseech
my reader that, not unmindful of the Divine goodness bestowed
upon man, he do with me praise and celebrate the wisdom of the
Creator, which I open to him from a more inward explication of the
form of the world, from a searching of causes, from a detection of
the errors of vision; and that thus, not only in the firmness and
stability of the earth may we perceive with gratitude the preserva-
tion of all living things in nature as the gift of God ; but also that
in its motion, so recondite, so admirable, we may acknowledge the
wisdom of the Creator. But whoever is too dull to receive this
science, or too weak to believe the Copernican system without
harm to his piety, him, I say, I advise that, leaving the school of
astronomy, and condemning, if so he please, any doctrines of the
philosophers, he follow his own path, and desist from this wandering
through the universe ; and that, lifting up his natural eyes, with
which alone he can see, he pour himself out from his own heart in
worship of God the Creator, being certain that he gives no less
worship to God than the astronomer, to whom God has given to see
more clearly with his inward eyes, and who, from what he has
himself discovered, both can and will glorify God."

13. Case of Galileo.'— 1 may perhaps venture here to make a
remark or two upon this subject with reference to a charge brought
against a certain portion of the History of the Inductive Sciences.
(p. 13 of this). Complaint has been madef that the character of
the Roman church, as shown in its behaviour towards Galileo, is
misrepresented in the account given of it in the History of Astro-
nomy. It is asserted that Galileo provoked the condemnation he
incurred ; first, by pertinaciously demanding the assent of the
ecclesiastical authorities to his opinion of the consistency of the
Copernican doctrine with Scripture; and afterwards by contuma-
ciously, and, as we have seen, contumeliously violating the silence
which the church enjoined upon him. It is further declared that
the statement which represents it as the habit of the Roman
church to dogmatize on points of natural science is unfounded ; as
well as the opinion that in consequence of this habit, new scientific
truths were promulgated less boldly in Italy than in other countries.

* Bridgewater Treatise, p. 314. t Com. Stell. Mart. Introd.
Dublin Review, No ix. July, 1838, p. 72.

76 TAL^TIOLOGY.

I shall reply very briefly on these subjects; for the decision of them
is by no means requisite in order to establish the doctrines to which
I have been led in the present chapter, nor, I hope, to satisfy my
reader that my views have been collected from an impartial con-
sideration of scientific history.

With regard to Galileo, I do not think it can be denied that he
obtruded his opinions upon the ecclesiastical authorities in an un-
necessary and imprudent manner. He was of an ardent character,
strongly convinced himself, and urged on still more by the convic-
tion which he produced among his disciples, and thus he became
impatient for the triumph of truth. This judgment of him has
recently been delivered by various independent authorities, and has
undoubtedly considerable foundation.* As to the question whether
authority in matters of natural science were habitually claimed by
the authorities of the Church of Rome, 1 have to allow that I cannot
produce instances which establish such a habit. We who have
been accustomed to have daily before our eyes the monition which
the Romish editors of Newton thought it necessary to prefix —
Cceterum laiis a summo Pontijice contra lelluris motum Decretis,
nos obsequi prqfitemur — were not likely to conjecture that this was
a solitary instance of the interposition of the Papal authority on
such subjects. But although it would be easy to find declarations
of heresy delivered by Romish Universities, and writers of great
authority, against tenets belonging to the natural sciences, I am
not aware that any other case can be adduced in which the Church
or the Pope can be shown to have pronounced such a sentence. I
am well contented to acknowledge this ; for I should be far more
gratified by finding myself compelled to hold up the seventeenth
century as a model for the nineteenth in this respect, than by
having to sow enmity between the admirers of the past and the
present through any disparaging contrast.f

With respect to the attempt made in my History to characterize
the intellectual habits of Italy as produced by her religious condi-
tion,— certainly it would ill become any student of the history of
science to speak slightingly of that country, always the mother of
sciences, always ready to catch the dawn and hail the rising of any
new light of knowledge. But I think our admiration of this acti-

* Besides the Dublin Review, I may quote the Edinburgh Review,
which I suppose will not be thought likely to have a bias in favour of
the exercise of ecclesiastical authority in matters of science : " Galileo
contrived to surround the truth with every variety of obstruction. The
tide of knowledge, which had hitherto advanced in peace, he crested
with angry breakers, and he involved in its surf both his friends and his
foes."— Ed. Rev. No. cxxiii. p. 126.

t I may add that the most candid of the adherents of the Church of
Rome condemn the assumption of authority in matters of science, made,
in this one instance at least, by the ecclesiastical tribunals. The author
of the Ages of Faith (Book viii. p. 248,) says, u A congregation, it is to
be lamented, declared the new system to be opposed to Scripture, and
therefore heretical."

RELATION OP TRADITION THERETO. 77

vity and acuteness of mind is by no means inconsistent with the
opinion, that new truths were promulgated more boldly beyond the
Alps, and that the subtilty of the Italian intellect loved to insinuate
what the rough German bluntly asserted. Of the decent duplicity
with which forbidden opinions were handled, the reviewer himself
gives us instances, when he boasts of the liberality with which
Copernican professors were placed in important stations by the
ecclesiastical authorities, soon after the doctrine of the motion of the
earth had been declared by the same authorities contrary to Scrip-
ture. And in the same spirit is the process of demanding from
Galileo a public and official recantation of opinions which he had
repeatedly been told by his ecclesiastical superiors he might hold
as much as he pleased. I think it is easy to believe that among
persons so little careful to reconcile public profession with private
conviction, official decorum was all that was demanded. When
Galileo had made his renunciation of the earth's motion on his
knees, he rose and said, as we are told, E pur si muove — " and
yet it does move." This is sometimes represented as the heroic
soliloquy of a mind cherishing its conviction of the truth, in spite
of persecution ; I think we may more naturally conceive it uttered
as a playful epigram in the ear of a cardinal's secretary, with a full
knowledge that it would be immediately repeated to his master.

Besides the Ideas involved in the material sciences, of which we
have already examined the principal ones, there is one Idea or
Conception which our Sciences do not indeed include, but to
which they not obscurely point ; and the importance of this Idea
will make it proper to speak of it, though this must be done very
briefly.

OF THE CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE.

1. At the end of the last chapter (p. 65), we were led to this
result, — that we cannot, in any of the Palsetiological Sciences,
ascend to a beginning which is of the same nature as the existing
cause of events, and which depends upon causes that are still in
operation. Philosophers never have demonstrated, and probably
never will be able to demonstrate, what was the original condition
of the solar system, of the earth, of the vegetable and animal
worlds, of languages, of arts. On all these subjects the course of
investigation, followed backwards as far as our materials allow us
to pursue it, ends at last in an impenetrable gloom. We strain
our eyes in vain when we try, by our natural faculties, to discern
an Origin.

2. Yet speculative men have been constantly employed in at-
tempts to arrive at that which thus seems to be placed out of their
reach. The Origin of Languages, the Origin of the present Dis-
tribution of Plants and Animals, the Origin of the Earth, have
been common subjects of diligent and persevering inquiry. Indeed
inquiries respecting such subjects have been, at least till lately,
the usual form which Palactioloirical researches have assumed.

7*

78 PALiETIOLOGY.

Cosmogony, the origin of the world, of which, in such specula-
tions, the earth was considered as a principal part, has been a
favourite study both of ancient and of modern times : and most of
the attempts at Geology previous to the present period have been
Cosmogonies or Geogonies, rather than that more genuine science
which we have endeavoured to delineate. Glossology, though now
an extensive body of solid knowledge, was mainly brought into
being by inquiries concerning the original language spoken by
men; and the nature of the first separation and diffusion of lan-
guages, the first peopling of the earth by man and by animals,
were long sought after with ardent curiosity, although of course
with reference to the authority of the Scriptures, as well as the
evidence of natural phenomena. Indeed the interest of such in-
quiries even yet is far from being extinguished. The disposition
to explore the past in the hope of finding, by the light of natural
reasoning as well as by the aid of revelation, the origin of the pre-
sent course of things, appears to be unconquerable. What was
the beginning] is a question which the human race cannot desist
from perpetually asking. And no failure in obtaining a satisfactory
answer can prevent inquisitive spirits from again and again repeat-
ing the inquiry, although the blank abyss into which it is uttered
does not even return an echo.

3. What, then, is the reason of an attempt so pertinacious yet
so fruitless 1 By what motive are we impelled thus constantly to
seek what we can never find ! Why are the error of our conjec-
tures, the futility of our reasonings, the precariousness of our in-
terpretations, over and over again proved to us in vain] Why is
it impossible for us to acquiesce in our ignorance and to relinquish
the inquiry ] Why cannot we content ourselves with examining
those links of the chain of causes which are nearest to us; — those
in which the connexion is intelligible and clear; instead of fixing
our attention upon those remote portions where we can no longer
estimate its coherence] In short, why did not men from the first
take for the subject of their speculations the Course of Nature
rather than the Origin of Things ]

To this we reply, that in doing what they have thus done, in
seeking what they have sought, men are impelled by an intel-
lectual necessity. They cannot conceive a series of connected
occurrences without a commencement; they cannot help sup-
posing a cause for the whole, as well as a cause for each part ;
they cannot be satisfied with a succession of causes without as-
suming a First Cause. Such an assumption is necessarily im-
pressed upon our minds by our contemplation of a series of causes
and effects; that there must be a First Cause, is accepted by all
intelligent reasoners as an Axiom : and like other Axioms, its
truth is necessarily implied in the Idea which it involves.

4. The evidence of this axiom may be illustrated in several
ways. In the first place, the axiom is assumed in the argument
usually offered to prove the existence of the Deity. Since, it is
said, the world now exists, and since nothing cannot produce some-

CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 79

thing, something must have existed from eternity. This Some-
thing- is the First Cause : it is God.

Now what I have to remark here is this : the conclusiveness of
this argument, as a proof of the existence of one independent, im-
mutable Deity, depends entirely upon the assumption of the axiom
above stated. The world, a series of causes and effects, exists :
therefore there must be, not only this series of causes and effects,
but also a First Cause. It will be easily seen, that without the
axiom, that in every series of causes and effects there must be a
First Cause, the reasoning is altogether inconclusive.

5. Or to put the matter otherwise : The argument for the ex-
istence of the Deity was stated thus : Something exists, therefore
something must have existed from eternity. Granted, the oppo-
nent might say ; but this something which has existed from eter-
nity, why may it not be this very series of causes and effects
which is now going on, and which appears to contain in itself no
indication of beginning or end ] And thus, without the assump-
tion of the necessity of a First Cause, the force of the argument
may be resisted.

6. But, it may be asked, how do those who have written to
prove the existence of the Deity reply to such an objection as the
one just stated ] It is natural to suppose that, on a subject so in-
teresting and so long discussed, all the obvious arguments, with
their replies, have been fully brought into view. What is the re-
sult in this case?

The principal modes of replying to the above objection, that the
series of causes and effects which now exists, may have existed
from eternity, appear to be these.

In the first place, our minds cannot be satisfied with a series of
successive, dependent, causes and effects, without something first
and independent. We pass from effect to cause, and from that to
a higher cause, in search of something on which the mind can
rest ; but if we can do nothing but repeat this process, there is no
use in it. We move our limbs, but make no advance. Our ques-
tion is not answered, but evaded. The mind cannot acquiesce in
the destiuy thus presented to it, of being referred from event to
event, from object to object, along an interminable vista of causa-
tion and time. Now this mode of stating the reply, — to say that
the mind cannot thus be satisfied, appears to be equivalent to say-
ing that the mind is conscious of a principle in virtue of which
such a view as this must be rejected; — the mind takes refuge in
the assumption of a First Cause, from an employment inconsistent
with its own nature.

7. Or again, we may avoid the objection, by putting the argument
for the existence of a Deity in this form : The series of causes and
effects which we call the world, or the course of nature, may be con-
sidered as a whole, and this whole must have a cause of its existence.
The whole collection of objects and events may be comprehended
as a single effect, and of this effect there must be a cause. This
Cause of the Universe must be superior to, and independent of the

80 PALJETIOLOGY.

special events, which, happening in time, make up the universe of
which He is the cause. He must exist and exercise causation,
before these events can begin: He must be the First Cause.

Although the argument is here somewhat modified in form, the
substance is the same as before. For the assumption that we may
consider the whole series of causes and effects as a single effect, is
equivalent to the assumption that besides partial causes, we must
have a First Cause. And thus the Idea of a First Cause, and the
axiom which asserts its necessity, are recognised in the usual ar-
gumentation on this subject.

8. This Idea of a First Cause, and the principles involved in the
Idea, have been the subject of discussion in another manner. As
we have already said, we assume as an axiom that a First Cause
must exist ; and we assert that God, the First Cause, exists eternal
and immutable, by the necessity which the axiom implies. Hence
God is said to exist necessarily ; — to be a necessarily existing
being. And when this necessary existence of God has been spoken
of, it soon began to be contemplated as a sufficient reason, and as
an absolute demonstration of His existence; without any need of
referring to the world as an effect, in order to arrive at God as the
cause. And thus men conceived that they had obtained a proof of
the existence of the Deity, a priori, from ideas, as well as a poste-
riori, from effects.

9. Thus, Thomas Aquinas employs this reasoning to prove the
eternity of God.* "Oportet ponere aliquod primum necessarium
quod est per se ipsum necessarium; et hoc est Deus, cum sit
prima causa ut dictum est: igitur Deus seternus est, cum omne
necessarium per se sit seternum." It is true that the schoolmen
never professed to be able to prove the existence of the Deity
a priori : but they made use of this conception of necessary ex-
istence in a manner which approached very near to such an attempt.
Thus Suarezf discusses the question, " Utrum aliquo modo possit
a priori demonstrari Deum esse." And resolves the question in
this manner: "Ad hunc ergo modum dicendum est: Demonstrato
a posteriori Deum esse ens necessarium et a se, ex hoc attributo
posse a priori demonstrari prsster illud non posse esse aliud ens
necessarium et a se, et consequenter demonstrari Deum esse."

But in modern times attempts were made by Descartes and
Samuel Clarke, to prove the Divine existence at once a priori,
from the conception of necessary existence ; which, it was argued,
could not subsist without actual existence. This argumentation
was acutely and severely criticised by Dr. Waterland.

10. Without dwelling upon a subject, the discussion of which
does not enter into the design of the present work, I may remark
that the question whether an a priori proof of the existence of a
First Cause be posssible, is a question concerning the nature of our
Ideas, and the evidence of the axioms which they involve, of the
same kind as many questions which we have already had to dis-

* Aquin. Cont. Gentil. Lib. i. Chap. xiv. p. 21.
t Metaphys. Tom. ii. Disp. xxix. Sect. 3. p. 28.

CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 81

cuss. Is our Conception or Idea of a First Cause gathered from
the effects we see around us? It is plain that we must answer,
here as in other cases, that the Idea is not extracted from the phe-
nomena, but assumed in order that the phenomena may become in-
telligible to the mind ; — that the Idea is a necessary one, inasmuch
as it does not depend upon observation for its evidence ; but that it
depends upon observation for its developement, since without some
observation, we cannot conceive the mind to be cognizant of the
relation of causation at all. In this respect, however, the Idea of a
First Cause is no less necessary than the ideas of Space, or Time,
or Cause in general. And whether we call the reasoning derived
from such a necessity an argument a priori or a posteriori, in either
case it possesses the genuine character of demonstration, being
founded upon axioms which command universal assent.

11. I have, however, spoken of our Conception rather than of
our Idea of a First Cause ; for the notion of a First Cause appears
to be rather a modification of the Fundamental Idea of Cause,
which was formerly discussed, than a separate and peculiar Idea.
And the Axiom, that there must be a First Cause, is recognised by
most persons as an application of the general Axiom of Causation,
that every effect must have a cause ; this latter Axiom being applied
to the world, considered in its totality, as a single effect. This
distinction, however, between an Idea and a Conception, is of no
material consequence to our argument ; provided we allow the
maxim, that there must be a First Cause, to be necessarily and
evidently true ; whether it be thought better to speak of it as an
independent Axiom, or to consider it as derived from the general
Axiom of Causation.

12. Thus we necessarily infer a First Cause, although the
Palaetiological Sciences only point towards it, and do not lead to it.
But I must observe further ; that in each of the series of events
which form the subject of Palaetiological research, the First
Cause is the same. Without here resting upon reasoning founded
upon our Conception of a First Cause, I may remark that this
identity is proved by the close connexion of all the branches of
natural science, and the way in which the causes and the events of
each are interwoven with those which belong to the others. We
must needs believe that the First Cause which produced the earth
and its atmosphere is also the Cause of the plants which clothe its
surface ; that the First Cause of the vegetable and of the animal
world are the same ; that the First Cause which produced light
produced also eyes ; that the First Cause which produced air and
organs of articulation produced also language and the faculties by
which language is rendered possible : and if those faculties, then
also all man's other faculties ; — the powers by which, as we have
said, he discerns right and wrong, and recognises a providential as
well as a natural course of things. Nor can we think otherwise
than that the Being who gave these faculties, bestowed them for
that purpose which alone is compatible with their nature : — the
purpose, namely, of guiding and elevating man in his present

82 PAL2ETI0L0GY.

career, and of preparing him for another state of being to which
they irresistibly direct his hopes. And thus, although, as we have
said, no one of the Palsetiological Sciences can be traced con-
tinuously to an origin, yet they not only each point to an origin,
but all to the same origin. Their lines are broken indeed, as they
run backwards into the early periods of the world, but yet they all
appear to converge to the same invisible point. And this point,
thus indicated by the natural course of things, can be no other than
that which is disclosed to us as the starting point of the providential
course of the world ; for we are persuaded by such reasons as have
just been hinted, that the Creator of the natural world can be no
other than the Author and Governor and Judge of the moral and
spiritual world.

13. Thus we are led, by our material sciences, and especially by
the Palaetiological class of them, to the borders of a higher region,
and to a point of view from which we have a prospect of other
provinces of knowledge, in which other faculties of man are con-
cerned besides his intellectual, other interests involved besides those
of speculation. On these it does not belong to our present plan to
dwell : but even such a brief glance as we have taken of the con-
nexion of material with moral speculations may not be useless, since
it may serve to show that the principles of truth which we are now
laboriously collecting among the results of the physical sciences,
may possibly find some application in those parts of knowledge to-
wards which men most naturally look with deeper interest and more
serious reverence.

OF THE SUPREME CAUSE.

The first Induction of a Cause does not close the business of
scientific inquiry. Behind proximate causes, there are ulterior
causes, perhaps a succession of such. Gravity is the cause of the
motions of the planets; but what is the cause of gravity] This is
a question which has occupied men's minds from the time of New-
ton to the present day. Earthquakes and volcanoes are the causes
of many geological phenomena; but what is the cause of those sub-
terraneous operations] This inquiry after ulterior causes i3 an
inevitable result from the intellectual constitution of man. He
discovers mechanical causes, but he cannot rest in them. He must
needs ask, whence it is that matter has its universal power of at-
tracting matter. He discovers polar forces: but even if these be
universal, he still desires a further insight into the cause of this
polarity. He sees, in organic structures, convincing marks of
adaptation to an end: whence, he asks, is this adaptation] He
traces in the history of the earth a chain of causes and effects ope-
rating through time : but what, he inquires, is the power which
holds the end of this chain]

Thus we are referred back from step to step, in the order of cau-
sation, in the same manner as, in the palaetiological sciences, we
were referred back in the order of time. We make discovery after

OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 83

discovery in the various regions of science; each, it may be, satis-
factory, and in itself complete, but none final. Something always
remains undone. The last question answered, the answer suggests
still another question. The strain of music from the lyre of Science
flows on, rich and sweet, full and harmonious, but never reaches a
close: no cadence is heard with which the intellectual ear can feel
satisfied.

Tn the utterance of Science, no cadence is heard withjwhich the
human mind can feel satisfied. Yet we cannot but go on listening
for and expecting a satisfactory close. The notion of a cadence
appears to be essential to our relish of the music. The idea of some
closing strain seems to lurk among our own thoughts, waiting to be
articulated in the notes which flow from the knowledge of external
nature. The idea of something ultimate in our philosophical re-
searches, something in which the mind can acquiesce, and which
will leave us no further questions to ask, of whence, and why, and
by ivhat power, seems as if it belonged to us; — as if we could not
have it withheld from us by any imperfection or incompleteness in
the actual performances of science. What is the meaning of this
conviction 7 What is the reality thus anticipated! Whither does
the developement of this Idea conduct us 7

We have already seen that a difficulty of the same kind, which
arises in the contemplation of causes and effects considered as
forming an historical series, drives us to the assumption of a First
Cause, as an Axiom to which our Idea of Causation in time neces-
sarily leads. And as we were thus guided to a First Cause in order
of Succession, the same kind of necessity directs us to a Supreme
Cause in order of Causation.

On this most weighty subject it is difficult to speak fitly; and the
present is not the proper occasion, even for most of that which may
be said. But there are one or two remarks which flow from the
general train of the contemplations we have been engaged in, and
with which this work must conclude.

We have seen how different are the kinds of cause to which we
are led by scientific researches. Mechanical Forces are insufficient
without Chemical Affinities ; Chemical agencies fail us, and we are
compelled to have recourse to Vital Poioers ; Vital Powers cannot
be merely physical, and we must believe in something hyperphysi-
cal, something of the nature of a Soul. Not only do biological
inquiries lead us to assume an animal soul, but they drive us much
further; they bring before us Perception, and Will evoked by Per-
ception. Still more, these inquiries disclose to us Ideas as the
necessary forms of Perception, in the actions of which we ourselves
are conscious. We are aware, we cannot help being aware, of our
Ideas and our Volitions as belonging to us, and thus we pass from
things to persons ; we have the idea of Personality awakened. And
the idea of Design and Purpose, of which we are conscious in our
own minds, we find reflected back to us, with a distinctness which
we cannot overlook, in all the arrangements which constitute the
frame of organized beings.

84 PAL-ETtOLOGY.

We cannot but reflect how widely diverse are the kinds of prin-
ciples thus set before us ; — by what vast strides we mount from the
lower to the higher, as we proceed through that series of causes
which the range of the sciences thus brings under our notice. Yet
we know how narrow is the range of these sciences when compared
with the whole extent of human knowledge. We cannot doubt
that on many other subjects, besides those included in physical
speculation, man has made out solid and satisfactory trains of con-
nexion;—has discovered clear and indisputable evidence of causa-
tion. It is manifest, therefore, that, if we are to attempt to ascend
to the Supreme Cause — if we are to try to frame an idea of the
Cause of all these subordinate causes; — we must conceive it as
more different from any of them, than the most diverse are from
each other ; — more elevated above the highest, than the highest is
above the lowest.

But further; — though the Supreme Cause must thus be incon-
ceivably different from all subordinate causes, and immeasurably
elevated above them all, it must still include in itself all that is
essential to each of them, by virtue of that very circumstance that
it is the Cause of their Causality. Time and space, — Infinite Time
and Infinite Space, — must be among its attributes; for we cannot
but conceive Infinite Time and Space as attributes of the Infinite
Cause of the Universe. Force and Matter must depend upon it for
their efficacy ; for we cannot conceive the activity of Force, or the
resistance of Matter, to be independent powers. But these are its
lower attributes. The Vital Powers, the Animal Soul, which are
the Causes of the actions of living things, are only the Effects of
the Supreme Cause of Life. And this Cause, even in the lowest
forms of organized bodies, and still more in those which stand higher
in the scale, involves a reference to Ends and Purposes, in short, to
manifest Final Causes. Since this is so, and since, even when we
contemplate ourselves in a view studiously narrowed, we still find
that we have Ideas, and Will, and Personality, it would render our
philosophy utterly incoherent and inconsistent with itself, to suppose
that Personality, and Ideas, and Will, and Purpose, do not belong
to the Supreme Cause from which we derive all that we have and
all that we are.

But we may go a step further ; — though, in our present field of
speculation, we confine ourselves to knowledge founded on the facts
which the external world presents to us, we cannot forget, in speak-
ing of such a theme as that to which we have thus been led, that
these are but a small, and the least significant portion of the facts
which bear upon it. We cannot fail to recollect that there are
facts belonging to the world within us, which more readily and
strongly direct our thoughts to the Supreme Cause of all things.
We can plainly discern that we have Ideas elevated above the
region of mechanical causation, of animal existence, even of mere
choice and will, which still have a clear and definite significance,
a permanent and indestructible validity. We perceive as a fact,
that we have a Conscience, judging of Right and Wrong; that we

OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 85

have Ideas of Moral Good and Evil ; that we are compelled to con-
ceive the organization of the moral world, as well as of the vital
frame, to be directed to an end and governed by a purpose. And
since the Supreme Cause is the cause of these facts, the Origin of
these Ideas, we cannot refuse to recognise Uim as not only the
Maker, but the Governor of the World ;; as not only a Creative, but
a Providential Power ; as not only a Universal Father, but an Ul-
timate Judge.

We have already passed beyond the boundary of those speculations
which we proposed to ourselves as the basis of our conclusions. Yet
we may be allowed to add one other reflection. If we find in our-
selves Ideas of Good and Evil, manifestly bestowed upon us to be
the guides of our conduct, which guides we yet find it impossible
consistently to obey ; — if we find ourselves directed, even by our
natural light, to aim at a perfection of our moral nature from which
we are constantly deviating through weakness and perverseness ; —
if, when we thus lapse and err, we can find, in the region of Human
Philosophy, no power which can efface our aberrations, or recon-
cile our actual with our ideal being, or give us any steady hope and
trust with regard to our actions, after we have thus discovered their
incongruity with their genuine standard; — if we discern that this
is our condition, how can we fail to see that it is in the highest
degree consistent with all the indications supplied by such a philo-
sophy as that of which we have been attempting to lay the founda-
tions, that the Supreme Cause, through whom man exists as a
moral being of vast capacities and infinite hopes, should have
Himself provided a Teaching for our ignorance, a Propitiation for
our sin, a Support for our weakness, a Purification and Sanctifica-
tion of our nature?

And thus, in concluding our long survey of the grounds and
structure of Science, and of the lessons which the study of it teaches
us, we find ourselves brought to a point of view in which we can
cordially sympathize, and more than sympathise, with all the loftiest
expressions of admiration and reverence and hope and trust, which
have been uttered by those who in former times have spoken of the
elevated thoughts to which the contemplation of the nature and
progress of human knowledge gives rise. We cannot only hold
with Galen, and Harvey, and all the great physiologists, that the
organs of animals give evidence of a purpose ; — not only assert with
Cuvier that this conviction of a purpose can alone enable us to un-
derstand every part of every living thing; — not only say with
Newton that " every true step made in philosophy brings us nearer
to the First Cause, and is on that account highly to be valued ;" —
and that " the business of natural philosophy is to deduce causes
from effects, till we come to the very First Cause, which certainly
is not mechanical ;" — but we can go much further, and declare,
still with Newton, that "this beautiful system could have its origin
no other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent
and powerful Being, who governs all things, not as the soul of the

8

86 PALJETIOLOGY.

world, but as the Lord of the Universe ; who is not only God, but
Lord and Governor."

When we have advanced so far, there yet remains one step. We
may recollect the prayer of one, the Master in this School of the
Philosophy of Science : " This also we humbly and earnestly beg;
— that human things may not prejudice such as are divine ; — neither
that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a
greater natural light, any thing may arise of incredulity or intellec-
tual night towards divine mysteries; but rather that by our minds,
thoroughly purged and cleansed from fancy and vanity, and yet
subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be
given unto Faith the things that are Faith's." When we are thus
prepared for a higher teaching, we may be ready to listen to a
greater than Bacon, when he says to those who have sought their
God in the material universe, 4*Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him
declare I unto you." And when we recollect how utterly inade-
quate all human language has been shown to be, to express the
nature of that Supremo Cause of the Natural, and Rational, and
Moral, and Spiritual world, to which our Philosophy points with
trembling finger and shaded eyes, we may receive, with the less
wonder but with the more reverence, the declaration which has
been vouchsafed to us :

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.

THE END.

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