on from point to point of the universe by a chain of triangles, so Geology steps from epoch to epoch of the earth's history by a chain of mechanical and organical laws. If the one depends on the axioms of geometry, the other depends on the axioms of causation.

But

in truth, in such speculations, Geology has an immeasurable superiority. She has the command of an implement, in addition to all that Astronomy can use; and one, for the purpose of such speculations, adapted far beyond any astronomical element of discovery. She has, for one of her studies,-one of her means of dealing with her problems,-the knowledge of life, animal and vegetable. Vital organisation is a subject of attention which has, in modern times, been forced upon her. It is now one of the main parts of her discipline. The geologist must study the traces of life in every form-must learn to decipher its faintest indications and its fullest development. On the question, then, whether there be, in this or that quarter, evidence of life, he can speak with the confidence derived from familiar knowledge; while the astronomer, to whom such studies are utterly foreign, because he has no facts which bear upon them, can offer, on such questions, only the loosest and most arbitrary conjectures, which, as we have had to remark, have been rebuked by eminent men as being altogether inconsistent with the acknowledged maxims of his science." *

Before we proceed to state the singular and suggestive argument derived from this splendid science,† we may apprise the reader that Dr Whewell's primary object is to show, that even supposing the other bodies of the universe to resemble the earth, so far as to seem, by their materials, forms, and motions, no less fitted than she is to be the abodes of life, yet that, knowing what we know of Man, we can believe the earth to be tenanted by a race who are the special objects of God's care." The grounds for entertaining, or rather impugning, that supposition he subsequently deals with after his own fashion in Chapters VII., VIII., IX., X.; but the two with which we are at present concerned are the

* Essay, pp. 193, 194.

fifth and sixth, respectively entitled, as we intimated in our last Number, "Geology," and "The Argument from Geology."

The exact object at which this leading section of the Essay is aimed is, in the Essayist's words, this:-"A complete reply to the difficulty which astronomical discoveries appeared to place in the way of religion:-the difficulty of the opinion that Man, occupying this speck of earth but as an atom in the universe, surrounded by millions of other globes larger, and to all appearance nobler, than that which he inhabits, should be the object of the peculiar care and guardianship of the favour and government of the Creator of All, in the way in which religion teaches us that he is."§

What is that "complete reply? The following passage contains a key to the entire speculation of the Essayist, and deserves a thoughtful perusal :

"That the scale of man's insignificance is of the same order in reference to time as to space. That Man-the Human Race from its origin till now-has occupied but an atom of time as he has occupied but an atom of space." "If the earth,

If

as the habitation of Man, is a speck in the midst of an infinity of space, the Earth, as the habitation of Man, is also a speck at the end of an infinity of time. If we are as nothing in the surrounding unieternity; or rather in the elapsed organic verse, we are as nothing in the elapsed antiquity during which the Earth has existed, and been the abode of life. Man is but one small family in the midst of innumerable possible households, he is also but one small family, the successor of innumerable tribes of animals, not possible only, but actual. If the planets may be the seats of life, we know that the seas, which have given birth to our mountains, were so. If the stars may have hundreds of systems of tenanted planets rolling round them, we know that the secondary group of rocks does contain hundreds of tenanted beds, witnessing of as many systems of organic creation. If the Nebula may be planetary systems in

Ibid., chap. vii., § 1, p. 206.

§ lbid., chap. vi., § 27, p. 190.

the course of formation, we know that the primary and transition rocks either show us the earth in the course of forma

tion, as the future seat of life, or exhibit such life as already begun.

"How far that which Astronomy thus asserts as possible, is probable-what is the value of these possibilities of life in distant regions of the universe, we shall hereafter consider; but in what Geology asserts, the case is clear. It is no possibility, but a certainty. No one will now doubt that shells and skeletons, trunks and leaves, prove animal and vegetable life to have existed. Even, therefore, if Astronomy could demonstrate all that her most fanciful disciples assume, Geology would still have a complete right to claim an equal hearing-to insist on having her analogies regarded. She would have a right to answer the questions of Astronomy, when she asks, How can believe this? And to have her answer accepted."

*

we

We regret that our space prevents our laying before the reader the masterly and deeply interesting epitome of geological discoveries contained in these two chapters. The stupendous series of these revelations may be thus briefly indicated:-That countless tribes of animals tenanted the earth for countless ages before Man's advent; that former ocean-beds now constitute the centres of our loftiest

mountains, as the results of changes gradual, successive, and long continued; that these vast masses of sedimentary strata present themselves to our notice in a strangely disordered state; that each of these rocky layers contains a vast profusion of the remains of marine animals, intermingled with a great series of fresh-water and land animals and plants endlessly varied-all these being different, not only in species, but in kind!-and each of these separate beds must have lasted as long, or perhaps longer, than that during which the dry land has had its present form.

The careful prosecution of their researches has forced on the minds of geologists and naturalists "the general impression that, as we descend in this long staircase of natural steps, we are brought in view of a state of the earth in which life was scantily mani

* Essay, pp. 191, 192. § Ibid., p. 154.

fested, so as to be near its earliest stages."†

In the opinion of the most eminent geologists, some of these epochs of organic transition were also those of mechanical violence, on a vast and wonderful scale-as it were, a vast series of successive periods of alternate violence and repose. The general nature of such change is vividly sketched by the Essayist, in a passage to which we must refer the reader. When, continues the Essayist, we find strata bearing evidence of such a mode of deposit, and piled up to the height of thousands and tens of thousands of feet, we are naturally led to regard them as the production of myriads of years; and to add new myriads, as often as we are brought to new masses of strata of the like kind; and again to interpolate new periods of the same order, to allow for the transition from one group to another. §

The best geologists and naturalists are utterly at fault, in attempting to account for the successive introduction

of these numerous new species, at these immense intervals of time, except by referring them to the exercise of a series of distinct Acts of Creation. The chimerical notion of some natural cause effecting a transmutation of one series of organic forms into another, has been long exploded, as totally destitute of proof: and "the doctrine of the successive CREATION of species," says the Essayist," remains firmly established among geologists."|| There is nothing known of the cosmical conditions of our globe, to contradict the terrestrial evidence for its life, says Dr Whewell: and then vast antiquity as the seat of organic proceeds thus, in a passage which is well worth the reader's attention,

and has excited the ire of Sir David Brewster :

"If, for the sake of giving definiteness to our notions, we were to assume that the numbers which express the antiquity of condition of the earth; the tertiary period these four periods-the present organic of geologists which preceded that; the secondary period which was anterior to that; and the primary period which preceded the secondary-were on the same

scale as the numbers which express these four magnitudes :-The magnitude of the earth; that of the solar system compared with the earth; the distance of the nearest fixed stars compared with the solar system; and the distance of the most remote nebulæ compared with the nearest fixed stars,-there is, in the evidence which geological science offers,

nothing to contradict such an assumption. And as the infinite extent which we necessarily ascribe to space allows us to find room, without any mental difficulty, for the vast distances which astronomy reveals, and even leaves us rather embarrassed with the infinite extent which lies beyond our furthest explorations; so the infinite duration which we, in like manner, necessarily ascribe to past time, makes it easy for us, so far as our powers of intellect are concerned, to go millions of millions of years backwards, in order to trace the beginning of the earth's existence-the first step of terrestrial creation."

To return, however, to the course of the argument. We hear the oppressed observer asking, as he reascends this "long staircase of natural steps" which had brought time down to the mystic origin of animal existence; his eye dimmed with its efforts to "decipher," in the picturesque language of Sir David Brewster," downwards, the pale and perishing alphabet of the Chronology of Life" WHERE, ALL THIS WHILE, WAS MAN?

Were Europe at this moment to be submerged beneath the ocean, or placed under a vast rocky stratum, what countless proofs would present themselves to the exploring eyes of remote future geologists, of the existence of both Man and his handiwork!-of his own skeleton, of the products of his ingenuity and power, and the various implements and instruments with which he had effected them!

The rudest conceivable work of human art would carry us to any extent backward, but it is not to be found! Man's existence and history incontestably belong to the existing condition of the earth; and the Essayist now addresses himself to the two following propositions:

First, That the existence and his tory of man are facts of an Entirely Different Order from any which ex

More Worlds than One, p. 52.

isted in any of the previous states of the earth.

Secondly, That his history has occupied a series of years which, compared with geological periods, may be regarded as very brief and limited.

Here opens the "Argument from Geology"-and with it Chapter VI.

That the existence of man upon the earth is an event of an order quite different from any previous part of the earth's history; and that there is no transition from animals to MAN, in even his most degraded, barbarian, and brutish condition, the Essayist demonstrates, with affecting eloquence, No doubt there are kinds of animals and with great argumentative power. very intelligent and sagacious, and exceedingly disposed and adapted to companionship with man; but by elevating the intelligence of the brute, we do not make it become that of the man; nor by making man barbarous, do we make him cease to be man. He has a capacity, not for becoming sagacious, but rational, -or rather he has a capacity for PROGRESS, in virtue of his being rational.

After adverting to Language, as an awful and mysterious evidence of his exalted endowments, and felicitously distinguishing instinct from reason, the Essayist observes that we need not be disturbed in our conclusions by observing the condition of savage and uncultivated tribes, ancient or modern-the Scythians and Barbarians, the Australians and Negroes. The history of man, in the earliest times, is as truly a history of a wonderful, intellectual, social, political, spiritual creature, as it is at present.† The savage and ignorant state is not the state of nature out of which civilised life has everywhere emerged: their savage condition is one rather of civilisation degraded and lost, than of civilisation incipient and prospective. And even were it to be assumed to be otherwise, that man, naturally savage, had a tendency to become civilised, that TENDENCY is an endowment no less wonderful than those endowments which civilisation exhibits.

When, however, we know not only

+ Essay, p. 188.