A THEORY OF CREATION. 

A

REVIEW

OF

"VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF

CREATION. "

FROM THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW FOR APRIL, 1845. 

BOSTON:OTIS, BROADERS, AND COMPANY, 120 WASHINGTON STREET. 1845. 

CAMBRIDGE:METCALF AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 

A

THEORY OF CREATION. 

 _Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. _ New York: Wiley & Putnam. 1845. 12mo. Pp. 291. 

This is one of the most striking and ingenious scientific romances thatwe have ever read. The writer of it is a bold man; he has undertaken togive a hypothetical history of creation, beginning, as the title-pagessay, at the earliest period, and coming down to the present day. It isnot quite so authentic as that of Moses, nor is it written with such anair of simplicity and confidence as the narrative of the Jewishhistorian; but it is much longer, and goes into a far greater variety ofinteresting particulars. It contradicts the Jewish cosmogony in a fewparticulars, and is at variance with probability and the ordinary lawsof human reasoning in many others. But the rather liberal rules ofinterpretation, which it is now the fashion to apply to the firstchapter of Genesis, will relieve the reader from any scruples on theformer account; and as to the latter, in these days of scientificquackery, it would be quite too harsh to make any great complaint aboutsuch peccadilloes. The writer has taken up almost every questionablefact and startling hypothesis, that have been promulgated by proficientsor pretenders in science during the present century, except animalmagnetism; and for this omission we have reason to be thankful. Thenebular hypothesis, Laplace's or Compte's theory of planets _shelledoff_ from the sun, spontaneous generation, --some of these vagaries, weadmit, are of much older date than the year 1800, --the Macleay system, dogs playing dominoes, negroes born of white parents, materialism, phrenology, --he adopts them all, and makes them play an important partin his own magnificent theory, to the exclusion, in a great degree, ofthe well-accredited facts and established doctrines of science. 

We speak lightly of the author's plan, as one can hardly fail to do of ascheme so magnificent, and going apparently so far beyond the ordinarysources of information and the range of the human intellect. But theexecution of the work is of so high an order, as fairly to challengeattention and respect. The writer, who has not chosen to give his nameto the world, is evidently a man of great ingenuity and correct taste, amaster of style, a plausible, though not a profound, reasoner, andhaving quite a general, but superficial, acquaintance with the sciences. His materials are arranged with admirable method, the illustrations arecopious and interesting, the transitions are skilfully managed, and theseveral portions of the theory are so well fitted to each other, andform such a round and perfect whole, that it seems a pity to subject itto severe analysis and searching criticism. It is a very pleasanthypothesis, set forth in a most agreeable manner; and though it containsmany objectionable features, these are cautiously veiled and kept in thebackground, and the reader is seduced into accepting most of theconclusions, before he is aware of their true character and tendency. 

Before a just opinion can be formed of the correctness of the writer'sviews, it is necessary to take to pieces this skilful fabric, and tobring the parts together in a different connection and with greatersuccinctness, following out each doctrine to its inevitable, but mostremote, conclusions, so as to obtain a just idea of the position inwhich we should be placed by the acceptance of the theory as a whole. For obvious reasons, the author has not chosen to give a general summaryof his views, or to mention explicitly all the inferences that may bedrawn from them. He merely puts the reader upon the track, indicatingits general direction, and leaving it for him to find out what objectswill be encountered by the way, and where the journey will end. Wepropose to finish the work that is thus left incomplete, and to setforth the doctrine in its plainest terms. We would reduce the theory atonce to its narrowest compass and simplest expression; but at the sametime, would incorporate into it every doctrine which properly belongs toit, and follow out each hypothesis to its remote, though necessary, inferences and conclusions. To this end, it is requisite to separate, asfar as possible, the doctrines themselves from the evidence adduced insupport of them; and to consider the former as a whole, beforeproceeding, to discuss the cogency of the latter. The following may betaken as the most concise abstract that we can form of the history ofthe creation, according to this author. 

In the beginning--we use this word in a kind of preter-perfect sense--inthe _very_ beginning of things, immense portions of infinite space werefilled with finely diffused nebulous matter, heated to an intensity thatis altogether inconceivable. The particles of this "fire mist, " as it isappropriately called, were the true _primordia rerum_, --the elements ofthe universe, --the principles of all the forms of inorganic matter andall organic things. At the outset, the Creator endowed these particleswith certain qualities and capacities, and then stood aside from hiswork, as there was nothing farther for him to do. The subsequentprogress of creation is only the successive _development_, uponmechanical and necessary principles, and as fast as proper occasionswere offered, of these qualities thus made inherent in the primitiveconstitution of matter. The atoms thus marvellously endowed have goneon, without any further aid from Almighty power, to form suns, andastral systems, and planets with their satellites, and worlds tenantedby successive generations and races of vegetable and animal things. Andthis work of creation, or rather of development, is still in progressall around us, and in all its various stages, though in the portion mostdirectly exposed to the observation of man it is far advanced towardsperfection. Upon this earth, the unaided action of these atoms is stillevolving all the phenomena of generation, progress, and decay, ofvegetable and animal life, of instinct and of mind. In the abyss ofspace, it is also forming new suns, and solar systems, and worlds thatare to pass through the same stages and wonderful transformations towhich our own planet has already been subjected. All that has occurredwith respect to this earth, and the system of which it forms a part, isbut a type of what is constantly going on in the countless other systemsof stars that people the firmament. 

The first stage in the history of these fiery particles is the formationamong them, in some unaccountable way, of nuclei, or centres ofaggregation, like the bright points that are now visible in some of thenebulæ of the heavens. As soon as these centres are formed, gravity, oneof the original principles of matter, begins to act, and the atoms inall the neighbouring parts of space are attracted towards the nucleusand heaped upon it. In this manner, a central sun of vast dimensions isformed, which soon assumes a motion of rotation upon its axis from thegeneral law which gives a circular movement to all fluids that are drawntowards a common centre. The centrifugal force thus generated tends tothrow off matter from the equatorial regions of the great orb, but isrestrained by the attraction of gravitation, which would prevent anyseparation of the parts, if the sun itself did not now begin to cooldown, and consequently to shrink in size. Under this cooling process, acrust is formed upon the surface, too rigid to yield to the force ofgravity, and the parts within, continuing to shrink, separate from thisenvelope; so that there is now a central orb, revolving more rapidlyfrom its greater density and smaller diameter, and surrounded by anexterior shell, or band, like Saturn's ring, rotating at its originalspeed. As we cannot suppose that the ring would usually be of uniformthickness and strength, it eventually breaks up into fragments, thelarger of which attracts the smaller into itself, and the whole isformed by its revolving motion into an oblate spheroid circling roundthe contracted sun in the centre. In this manner, the planet Uranus wasshelled off from our sun, which originally filled the whole of the vastsphere, of which the distance from Uranus to the centre of the presentsun is but the radius. The planet itself, by the same process ofcooling, shrinking, and thus forming exterior rings, threw offsuccessively all its six satellites; and the sun, also, continuing tocontract from the loss of heat, formed another ring, and thusconstituted the planet Saturn. In this way were formed successively allthe planets and satellites of the present solar system. The originaldiameter of our earth was equal, of course, to the present diameter ofthe moon's orbit. In the case of Saturn, the two rings formed around ithappened to be of unusual homogeneity and equal thickness, so that theywere not broken up, but have preserved their primitive shape. A ring wasformed from the sun in the space between the present orbits of Mars andJupiter; but when it was broken up, the fragments did not congregateinto one, but spherified separately, so as to form the four smallerplanets which now revolve in that opening. 

 "We have no means of judging of the seniority of systems; but it is reasonable to suppose, that, among the many, some are older than ours. There is, indeed, one piece of evidence for the probability of the comparative youth of our system, altogether apart from human traditions and the geognostic appearances of the surface of our planet. This consists in a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to nearly the orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape. This matter, which sometimes appears to our naked eyes, at sunset, in the form of a cone projecting upwards in the line of the sun's path, and which bears the name of Zodiacal Light, has been thought a residuum or last remnant of the concentrating matter of our system, and thus may be supposed to indicate the comparative recentness of the principal events of our cosmogony. Supposing the surmise and inference to be correct, and they may be held as so far supported by more familiar evidence, we might with the more confidence speak of our system as not amongst the elder born of Heaven, but one whose various phenomena, physical and moral, as yet lay undeveloped, while myriads of others were fully fashioned and in complete arrangement. Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are directing our inquiries, we first find ourselves called upon to consider the globe which we inhabit as a child of the sun, elder than Venus and her younger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next, to regard our whole system as probably of recent formation in comparison with many of the stars of our firmament. We must, however, be on our guard against supposing the earth as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time. From evidence afterwards to be adduced, it will be seen that it cannot be presumed to be less than many hundreds of centuries old. "--pp. 22, 23. 

Having thus explained the _genesis_ of the solar system, we come down tothe history of our own earth, since it shelled off the ring which formedour moon. Continuing to cool down and shrink, a thin but rigid crust ofprimary rocks, still bearing marks of the intense heat to which theyhave been subjected, was formed upon its surface; and then the vapors, with which the atmosphere had been charged, were condensed, and formedseas, which covered the whole, or the greater part, of the earth'srind. The continual agitation of these waters, and their hightemperature, as they were still nearly at the boiling point, disintegrated and wore down many of these rocks, and, in the lapse ofages, deposited their remains, in thick layers of sand and mud, at thebottom of the seas. Baked by the heat from beneath, and pressed by theweight of superincumbent waters, these layers slowly hardened intostratified rocks. Forms of vegetable and animal life, though only of thelowest type, the origin of which is to be explained hereafter, now beganto appear. Some sea-plants, zoöphytes, infusory animalcules, and a fewof the molluscous tribe, all low down in the order of being, butimportant from their immense numbers and joint action, commenced theirwork of absorbing the carbonic acid with which the air was overcharged, and building up vast piers and mounds of stone from their own remains. Meanwhile, the internal fires of the earth occasionally broke throughthe rocky crust that imprisoned them, threw up liquid primitive rockthrough the rents, and distorted and tilted up the strata that had beenformed above. 

We may remark, in passing, that the chronology of the events of which wenow speak is not very accurately determined; the only thing certainabout it is, that a series of ages, so protracted that the imaginationcannot conceive their number, elapsed between the successive epochs inthe history of the earth's crust. Some of the convulsions caused by thefiery mass within threw up rock above the surface of the waters, andthus the dry land began to appear. Islands were formed, and immediatelyland-plants made their appearance, of excessive luxuriance, under thetropical temperature that still prevailed all over the globe, and begantheir office of absorbing carbon, and storing it up for future use. Land-animals as yet were not, for the excess of carbonic acid in theatmosphere rendered it incapable of supporting animal life. But therichness of this island vegetation gradually purified the air; while thedecaying plants themselves, being accumulated into vast beds and strata, and subjected, through the changes of the earth's surface, to thepressure of mighty waters, gradually formed immense deposits of coal, for the subsequent service of man. Animals of a higher grade were nowformed; fishes became abundant, and amphibious monsters, huge lizardsand other reptiles, with an imperfect apparatus of respiration, began tobreathe an atmosphere not yet fitted for birds and mammifers. 

It is not necessary to trace out the comparatively well known facts andtheories of geological science, that are incorporated into this history. It is enough, for the present purpose, to point out a few of the generalconclusions of the geologist respecting the several great changes thatthe earth's crust has undergone, and the distinct races of vegetablesand animals which have successively tenanted the earth's surface. Thesechanges and these races have borne a constant relation to each other; asthe scenes shifted, the inhabitants also changed, the latter beingalways adapted to the circumstances in which they were placed. There hasbeen a constant progress, the soil and the atmosphere becoming more andmore fitted for the support of the higher forms of life; and when allthings were thus made ready for them, these higher forms have appeared, and the lower orders of being, which formerly occupied the scene, haveentirely died out, so that their remains, entombed in the solid rock, are now the only indications of their past existence. In the era of theprimary rocks, as we have seen, there was no organization or life, asthere was nothing to support it. In the succeeding period, zoöphytes andmollusca appeared; these were followed by fishes, and then land roseabove the surface of the waters. Land-plants and animals came next, though of a low type; continually advancing orders of beings, reptiles, birds, and mammifers, suited to the improved condition of things, successively appeared, until, at the latest epoch, man entered upon thescene, the head of animated nature as at present constituted, withpowers and capacities well adapted for the full enjoyment of theaugmented riches of the earth. And the end is not yet. "The presentrace, rude and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to thepresent state of things in the world; but the external world goesthrough slow and gradual changes, which may leave it in time a muchserener field of existence. There may then be occasion for a nobler typeof humanity, which shall complete the zoölogical circle on this planet, and realize some of the dreams of the purest spirits of the presentrace. "

The question now occurs, How are we to account for the origin of_life_, both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms? The answer canreadily be given, if we follow out resolutely to their remotestconsequences the principles that have already been established. Theevolution of natural laws, the necessary action of the qualities withwhich atoms were at first endowed, has sufficed to produce this complexsystem of mutually dependent worlds, and all the successivetransformations of the earth's rind, which have fitted it for thesupport of successive races of organic beings. May not the same causeshave produced the beings themselves? The one process would seem to benot much more elaborate and intricate than the other. If the inherentqualities of matter have built up a solar system, they may have created, also, the first animalcule, the first fish, the first quadruped, and thefirst man. There has been a marked progress, in either case, from thechaotic, the rude, the imperfectly developed, up to the orderly, thecomplex, the matured forms. The first essays, the rude efforts, ofnature have gradually been perfected. The chaotic world that was firstshelled off from the sun differed not less widely from the admirablyfurnished planet we now inhabit, than does the zoöphyte, whose remainsare not split out of the rock, from man, the present head of the animaltribe. At any rate, geology informs us, that the causes, whatever theymay be, which produce life, have been long and frequently in operation. They were not exhausted in the first effort; they are probably still atwork throughout the universe. Not merely successive generations, butsuccessive races, both of plants and animals, widely distinguished fromeach other, have, at different periods, tenanted the earth's surface. Those of which we possess the fossil remains belong, almost withoutexception, to extinct species. They were crowded out of existence, as itwere, by the new forms, more perfectly organized, which came to taketheir places in the improving condition of things. This continuousagency of the life-producing causes, effecting still higher results byeach successive effort, seems to point directly to the gradual expansionand development of the qualities with which matter was first endowed. 

We actually see natural agents now at work around us, producing resultswhich counterfeit life, if they do not constitute it. Many substancescrystallize into shapes bearing a strong resemblance to vegetable forms, as in the well known chemical experiment producing the _arbor Dianæ_. The passage of the electric fluid leaves marks that are like thebranches and foliage of a tree, and the same fluid exerts a directinfluence on the germination of plants. Some of the proximate principlesof vegetable and animal bodies, such as urea and alantoin, are said tohave been produced artificially by the chemist; and in the combinationof the simple elements, such as carbon and oxygen, into these proximateprinciples, it is now acknowledged that there is no violation of theordinary laws of chemical affinity. The origin of all vegetable andanimal life, so far as it can be traced, is in germinal vesicles, orlittle cells containing granules. Such are the ova of all animals; andboth vegetable and animal tissues are entirely formed from them. Whenthe parent cells come to maturity, they burst and liberate the granules, which immediately develope themselves into new cells, thus repeating thelife of their original. Now, it has been asserted, that globules can beproduced in albumen by electricity; and _if these globules are truegerminal vesicles_, the difficult problem of producing life byartificial means is entirely solved. 

But the burden of this part of the theory rests on the evidence that hasbeen produced of late years to favor the doctrine of equivocalgeneration, or the production of living beings without the agency, either direct or indirect, of parents of the same species. Can suchbeings, _orphans_ in the strictest sense, now be produced or discovered?We have not space to repeat our author's argument on this difficultmooted question in science, nor is it necessary; he sums up the evidenceon his own side, and of course finds it satisfactory, though the weightof authority is against him. He adduces the experiments of Mr. Crosse, repeated by Mr. Weekes, who claim to have produced animalcules inconsiderable numbers, of a species before unknown, by passing a voltaiccurrent through silicate of potash, and through nitrate of copper. Theexistence of _entozoa_, or parasitic animals, found in the interior ofthe bodies of other animals, and found nowhere else, is thought tosupport the same doctrine. The question is, How came they there? Beingtoo large, either in their perfect form, or in the egg, to have passedthrough the capillary blood-vessels, how came they within the body ofanother animal, --itself but a few weeks or a few days old, or even inthe embryo stage, --unless they were created there without parentage oftheir own species?

These facts and reasonings, it is true, only go to prove, thatanimalcules, or beings of very small size, and low in the scale ofanimated existence, can be produced in this way by the inherentqualities of matter. No one will pretend, that a dog, a horse, or a mancan thus be created. How can we account for the existence of theselarger animals of a higher type, admitted to have been denizens of theearth only since the latest geological epochs, and therefore ofcomparatively recent origin? Here we come to another point in ourauthor's theory, --the transmutation of species, or the successive_development_ of higher and higher orders of being out of the speciesimmediately below them, through the accidental or natural fulfilment ofcertain conditions, in the course of a long period of years. 

Natural history teaches us, that there is quite a regular gradationamong the several tribes of vegetables and animals; though we may not beable to range all the species, as constantly advancing in a single line, there is certainly the general appearance of a scale, beginning with themost simple, and going on to the most complex forms. While the externalcharacteristics are very different, all are but variations of a singleplan, which exists as the basis of all, and is varied in each individualonly so as to accommodate it to the conditions under which theindividual is to live. The germ of a higher animal--a mammifer, forinstance--is the representative of a lower animal full-grown, like the_volvox globator_; the latter remaining in this initial stage, as ananimalcule, through its whole existence; while the former is developedout of it, by successive stages, into a quadruped, or even into a man. Similar functions are performed in different animals by very differentorgans, the gills of fishes performing the same office as the lungs ofthe mammalia; and these different organs sometimes exist, at differentperiods, according to the degree of development, in the same animal. Thus, the tadpole, so long as it continues to be a fish, breathes bygills, which disappear and give place to lungs when it becomes a frog. Similar transformations of the insect tribe are familiar to all. Imperfect or rudimentary organs are found in certain animals, as themammæ of a man; a particular organ being here developed to a certainextent, though it is not needed; but being developed a little further, it becomes useful in the next set of animals in the scale. The samepeculiarity is found among plants; the skilful gardener being ableactually to develope these rudimentary organs by supplying the requisiteconditions, and thus, as it were, to raise the plant one step in thescale. 

 "We have yet to advert to the most interesting class of facts connected with the laws of organic development. It is only in recent times that physiologists have observed that each animal passes, in the course of its germinal history, through a series of changes resembling the _permanent forms_ of the various orders of animals inferior to it in the scale. Thus, for instance, an insect, standing at the head of the articulated animals, is, in the larva state, a true annelid, or worm, the annelida being the lowest in the same class. The embryo of a crab resembles the perfect animal of the inferior order myriapoda, and passes through all the forms of transition which characterize the intermediate tribes of crustacea. The frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish with external gills and other organs, fitting it for an aquatic life, all of which are changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land animal. The mammifer only passes through still more stages, according to its higher place in the scale. Nor is man himself exempt from this law. His first form is that which is permanent in the animalcule. His organization gradually passes through conditions generally resembling a fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attains its specific maturity. At one of the last stages of his foetal career, he exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is characteristic of the perfect ape; this is suppressed, and he may then be said to take leave of the simial type, and become a true human creature. Even, as we shall see, the varieties of his race are represented in the progressive development of an individual of the highest, before we see the adult Caucasian, the highest point yet attained in the animal scale. 

 "To come to particular points of the organization. The brain of man, which exceeds that of all other animals in complexity of organization and fulness of development, is, at one early period, only 'a simple fold of nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into three parts, while a little tail-like prolongation towards the hinder parts, and which had been the first to appear, is the only representation of a spinal marrow. Now, in this state, it perfectly resembles the brain of an adult fish, thus assuming _in transitu_ the form that in the fish is permanent. In a short time, however, the structure is become more complex, the parts more distinct, the spinal marrow better marked; it is now the brain of a reptile. The change continues; by a singular motion, certain parts (_corpora quadragemina_), which had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pass towards the lower; the former is their permanent situation in fishes and reptiles, the latter in birds and mammalia. This is another advance in the scale, but more remains yet to be done. The complication of the organ increases; cavities, termed _ventricles_, are formed, which do not exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds; curiously organized parts, such as the corpora striata, are added; it is now the brain of the mammalia. Its last and final change alone seems wanting, --that which shall render it the brain of man. '"--pp. 150-152. 

Usually, it is true, each species produces only its like, --"everycreeping thing and beast of the earth" bringing forth young "_after hiskind_. " But the development of a single animal, under the ordinary law, takes place in a few weeks or days; while the development of distinctraces and species is the work of a whole creation, and is spread overcountless ages. It is reasonable to suppose, that the latter is effectedby means of a higher law, manifesting itself only at long intervals. Itsinfrequent manifestation is no argument against the regularity andnecessity of its occurrence, --against its being a law at all. The cometthat visits our system only once in five hundred years is controlled bythe same inflexible principle which causes the return of another cometonce in five years. The conditions requisite for a development moreperfect than usual, --that is, for the production of a newspecies, --instead of a new individual of the same species, may befulfilled only at long intervals; but when they are fulfilled, theresult--the more perfect development--takes place as necessarily, asmuch by the virtue of law, as the more ordinary phenomenon of thepropagation of one race. These conditions may be answered in thesuccessive stages of improvement, through which the earth and itsatmosphere pass, during the vast periods of time contemplated ingeology. In the era of the old red sand-stone, for instance, there wereno higher animals than fishes, because the atmosphere was highly chargedwith carbonic acid, and could not support respiration by lungs. When theair became purer, the gills were changed into the imperfect lungs of theamphibious tribes, such as the huge saurians and the frogs. Deprivethese latter animals, in their lower stage, of all access to the light, and they will not advance to their higher stage. Put a tadpole into aperforated box, and sink it to the bottom of a river, and the animalwill never be perfected into a frog; he will grow to an enormous size, but he will continue a tadpole. 

We see, then, the process of an "organic creation by law, " or by virtueof the inherent qualities of inorganic matter. The ordinary chemicalaffinities of different substances may draw them together into suchcompounds as albumen and fibrin, which are the proximate principles oforganic tissues. The action of electricity, heat, light, or some othermysterious imponderable agent, on these proximate principles, mayproduce globules, or germinal vesicles. These germs, multiplyingthemselves by fissiparous generation, will constitute a stock of animalsof a low type, such as a tribe of infusory animalcules. Then "thissimplest and most primitive type, under a law to which that of likeproduction is subordinate, gives birth to the type next above it, thisagain produces the next higher, and so on to the very highest, thestages of advance being in all cases very small, --namely, from onespecies only to another; so that the phenomenon has always been of asimple and modest character. " Thus, the first reptile was born from afish, the first bird was generated by a reptile, and the first mammiferhad birds for its parents. The transformations appear rather astounding, as we pass from one class to another; but the difference between thespecies, even, is often so great, that the transition appears hardlyless difficult. In what quadruped, for instance, do we find the firstancestor of the huge and sagacious elephant? What humble lizard gavebirth to those monsters of the fossil world, the plesiosaurus andmegalosaurus, thirty or forty feet in length? Man, of course, upon thistheory, is only a more perfectly developed monkey, or chimpanzee. With anod of approbation to Lord Monboddo's theory, our author observes, thatman has even the rudiments of "a caudal extremity" in the _os coccygis_. 

That the instinct of animals and the mind of man are the results ofnothing but material organization is an obvious corollary from thisdoctrine. "The difference, " says this writer, "between mind in the loweranimals and in man is a difference in degree only; it is not a specificdifference. " Mental phenomena, apparently so various and unstable inthe individual, are reduced at once to regularity, and become subject tocalculation, if considered in the mass. This shows, that, like thephenomena of the weather, they are under the presidency of natural laws. The phrenologists are the only persons who have followed the order ofnature in the study of mind; they have even determined the functions ofthe different parts of the brain. An experiment is mentioned with anewly killed animal, whose brain was taken out and its place filled withsubstances producing electric action, when the process of digestion, that had been interrupted, was instantly resumed, thus "showing theabsolute identity of the brain with a galvanic battery. " The experimentof inducing muscular action in a corpse, by applying galvanism, issufficiently well known. To borrow an illustration from Sidney Smith, itwould seem, that, if we only knew to what organs of the brain to directan electric current, an automaton, or a dead man, might be made to holdan argument, "at least as well as most country parsons. "

A person who should hear for the first time this naked exposition of thewriter's theory would be tempted at once to reject the whole, as tooextravagant and absurd to deserve further notice. But he would be muchmistaken in this conclusion. The theory is a very plausible one; it isone of the best cosmogonies that the wit of man has ever framed. It is arevival of the old atheistic hypothesis, --the Epicurean doctrine of theformation of the universe by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, --with allthe modifications and improvements that were rendered necessary by thediscoveries of modern science. We call it an atheistic theory, because, though the writer supposes that primitive matter was first endowed _bydivine power_ with its mysterious qualities and capacities, thissupposition is gratuitous and arbitrary, and only mars the simplicity ofthe scheme, and injures the consistency and coherence of the parts witheach other. We can more easily believe that these qualities arenecessarily inherent in the constitution of matter, forming a part ofits very essence, just like the properties of impenetrability andextension, than that they subsequently developed themselves by formingmyriads of intricate organizations, without further aid from the divinearchitect. If we can credit the hypothesis, that bricks and mortar cametogether of their own accord, and arranged themselves into the firsthouse meet for the habitation of man, we can very readily admit, also, that the bricks first assumed the proper shape, and mortar the propertenacity and hardness, without the intervention of human labor andskill. If there is no need of a bricklayer, we may discard also thebrick-maker. 

Putting aside, therefore, this gratuitous addition to the theory, wecome to examine the plausibility of the doctrine which assumes, thatmaterial atoms, constituted as they now are, are capable, withoutoversight or direction, of forming a universe like our own, andproducing all the animated tribes which tenant it. In all the atheisticreasoning upon this subject, and especially in the work now before us, there is a constant confusion between _what may be_, for aught we knowto the contrary, and _what is_, so far as we are able positively todetermine it from our present means of observation and experiment;between the _possibility_ that is measured only by human ignorance, andthe _probability_ that is fairly inferred by the legitimate exercise ofthe understanding. Effects have unquestionably been produced, such asthe formation of a solar system, and the production of new and perfectlydistinct orders of being, which we are wholly unable to account for bythe _present and ordinary_ operation of what are called secondarycauses. If a theorist chooses to assume, that these secondary causes, under certain conditions, which we never have seen, and never can see, realized, might produce very extraordinary results, might even fullyaccount for the wonderful effects in question, we have a right to say, in reply, that he is dealing in pure speculation and hypothesis; that, having had no experience under the conditions or postulates of histheory, he is necessarily _speaking from_ ignorance and _appealing_ toignorance; that, even if we could not point out a single difficulty, asingle false assumption, in his whole scheme and argument, it wouldstill remain a mere hypothesis, alike incapable of proof or disproof;and that, at the best, the arguments brought against it must be ofnearly the same wiredrawn, speculative, and far-fetched character withthose adduced in its support. On a mere sandbank, unsupplied either witharms or tools, the only edifice that can be built is one of sand, andsand affords the only means for its destruction. The fallacy to whichsuch speculatists constantly have resort is, that the weakness or theentire absence of all considerations against their theory constitutes apositive argument in its support. No such thing; it affords only a fairpresumption of the baseless character of the whole fabric. 

This may be made more clear by examples. If a child, who has had littleexperience of the laws of nature, and has learned nothing from books, isgravely assured by his instructor, that in a distant region of the oceanthere is an island where stones fly upward instead of downward, and menwalk on their heads instead of their feet, the young philosopher, however acute and ingenious we may suppose him to be, certainly couldnot offer one valid argument against the alleged fact. He could onlystare, and wonder, and say that it might be so _for all that he knew tothe contrary_. Just so, when the atheist tells us, that far off ininfinite space is a region, of which we can see nothing, even with ourbest telescopes, except a faint glimmer of light, floating like acloudlet in the heavens, where the primitive atoms of matter, directedby gravity alone, are slowly congregating together, and forming suns, and planets, and secondary satellites, and giving birth to suchintricate harmonies of mutually dependent and revolving worlds as thosewhich have prevailed for ages in our own system; or that, thousands ofyears ago, the same unassisted laws of matter, which we now seeproducing only such comparatively meagre and insufficient results, actually caused animalcules to be produced from pure sand, and fishes tobe created out of oysters, and birds to be generated by slimy andgrovelling reptiles, and men to be born from monkeys;--if he should tellus all this, certainly we could offer no direct confutation of thewonderful tale. In regard to alleged facts of this character, the wisestof men are, and always must be, mere children. But it would be monstrousto say, that this wild assertion derived any support from their admittedbewilderment and incapacity. This would be to attempt to found knowledgeupon ignorance. The dim analogies resting on questionable facts, thebold assumptions and slippery arguments on which such daring hypothesesmust be based, can be refuted, for the most part, only by reasoning inkind, --by arguments nearly as uncertain, it may be, as those which theyare brought to answer. We cannot _prove_ a negative; we can only showthe insufficiency of the ground on which the opposite assumption is madeto rest; and enough is done for this end, when it is made to appear, that the whole scheme is a _mere_ hypothesis. 

We make these general remarks only to relieve some readers of thisvolume from the doubt and perplexity which its perusal may have caused, solely because they were unable to detect any one glaring fallacy orinconsistency in the writer's theory. It appears plausible enough; for, though there is very little in its favor, it seems at first sight as ifthere was little or nothing to say against it. On closer scrutiny, itwill be found, perhaps, that it is disproved by a multitude ofconsiderations, any one of which would be fatal to it; as the hypothesisis of such a character, that, when a single breach is made in it, thewhole edifice must tumble. If the intervention of an extraneous cause beabsolutely necessary at any one stage or process in the creation, it mayas well be admitted in all; the principle must be given up, and thewhole purpose of the theist is answered. We shall endeavour to show thatthis hypothetical history of creation is not only faulty in every point, when viewed from the author's own ground, but, when examined in theproper direction, is absolutely unintelligible, or is in fact no historyat all. 

Let us look first at the nebular hypothesis. Certain spots and tracts inthe heavens, of a whitish color, appearing to the naked eye to benebulæ, on being examined through a telescope, instantly resolvethemselves into a multitude of distinct and perfectly formed stars. Suchis the greatest nebula of all, --the galaxy, or milky way. Other spots ofa like character, if viewed through glasses of moderate power, stillappear as nebulæ; but when seen through more perfect instruments, theyimmediately seem, like the others, to be a mere crowd of stars. Others, again, are not separated or resolved by the best telescopes; but what isthe natural inference from this fact? Surely, we infer that they aremerely crowded collections of stars, just like the others, except thatthey are too distant or too small to be seen as distinct bodies, evenwith the most powerful instruments that we possess. If telescopes of agreater range should hereafter be constructed, there is every reason tobelieve that these also will be resolved to the eye into their componentparts as stars; and in fact, if newspaper accounts may be credited, whenLord Rosse's new and magnificent telescope was first turned towards someof these spots, which had always preserved their nebulous appearancewhen examined by inferior instruments, it was immediately apparent, thatthey were composed of distinct stars. Yet the hypothesis we are nowconsidering assumes, that these remote and faintly seen nebulæ are notcrowds of stars, but primitive luminous matter, the particles of whichare slowly congregating together, and forming one new star, or several. Certainly, never was a bold theory built upon a narrower basis. It isdue, however, to the two Herschels, the chief supporters of this theory, to say, that they have always spoken of it only as a hypothesis, and byno means as an established fact in astronomical science. And, as ahypothesis, it labors under this peculiar difficulty, that it evidentlynever can be verified. It must ever remain a _mere_ guess, directlyopposed by an obvious induction from those nebulæ which are resolvableinto perfect stars. 

The fact, that one or two bright points, assumed to be centres ofaggregation, are seen in some of these nebulæ, is of no importance. If abright star be seen from this earth in the same line of vision with thenebula, it will be projected on the ground of that nebula, and willappear as a part of it, though it may be many millions of miles on thisside, and have no more connection with it than the planet Jupiter wouldhave, if it should happen to be in conjunction with the nebula, and thusappear for a short time to be projected upon its disc. 

There is one consideration of some weight, though we have never seen itadverted to, which tends directly to confute the nebular hypothesis. That faint radiance called the zodiacal light, which is seen to streamup in the form of a cone from our sun, is assumed by our author to be aresiduum of the nebulous matter belonging to our system, which has notyet been drawn into the sun, though it is on its way thither. Othershave supposed, with far more probability, that it is the sun'satmosphere, and therefore its present shape and size will neverchange, --as they never have changed, during the period in which theyhave been observed by man. But no matter; we are now reasoning upon ourauthor's hypothesis. If the zodiacal light be composed of primitivenebulous matter, it must now be comparatively thick and dense, since theprocess of aggregation has been going on for countless ages, and, in oursystem, is considered as nearly completed; just as when a sediment isforming in a tumbler full of turbid water, after the upper portion ofthe fluid has become entirely clear, there will be a stratum of waternext to the sediment more turbid than the whole was before thedeposition began. Yet this light is very faint, when seen only from thedistance of our earth; and at the boundaries of our system, from theorbit of Uranus, for instance, we cannot believe that it is visible atall. Is it likely, then, that a portion of this nebulous matter, inwhich the process of deposition has hardly begun, and which is seen froma distance so vast, that in comparison with it the whole diameter of oursolar system is but a point, would be visible from this earth? In thecase of the other nebulæ, a multitude of perfectly formed suns, unitingtheir respective beams, are seen only as a faint, whitish speck on theblue arch. And yet we are required to believe, that the luminous matterwhich will ultimately form but one sun, or perhaps two, while stillthinly diffused over an immense tract of space, the process ofaggregation having hardly commenced, is yet visible to our eyes at thisvast distance. 

 "Credat Judæus Apella; Non ego. "

We pass to the next chapter in the history, which professes to explainthe gradual formation of a solar system by a process of cooling andshrinking, to which the central orb is exposed. And here we are met by adifficulty at the outset; for the existence of comets with their veryeccentric orbits is wholly irreconcilable with the theory. At theirperihelion, many of these bodies pass within the orbit of Mercury, whilethe aphelion of some lies without the path of Uranus. Where were they, when the body of the sun filled up the whole of the vast spherecircumscribed by the orbit of the remotest planet? If we suppose thatthey are late comers, after the rest of our system was perfected, --thatthey were generated by themselves in distant regions of space, and, having strayed about, orphan-like, for a while, they accidentallycrossed our track, and were taken as adopted children into our family, another question remains to be answered. Why did they not remain intheir first position, absorb their full share of nebulous matter, begeta respectable family of planets, and take rank as chiefs of their ownclan? These comparatively anomalous bodies are great stumbling-blocksfor the _soi-disant_ historians of creation. 

Again, if an immense orb be formed, the parts of which cohere stronglyenough for the whole to turn upon its axis as one body, the process ofcooling can go on only from the surface. A crust may finally be formedthere; but we see not how the refrigeration and shrinking of theinterior parts can then go on separately, until the mass in the centrefinally becomes detached from its envelope, like a shrivelled nut fromits shell. Our earth is cooling down at this moment, unless the warmthwhich it receives from the sun exactly counterbalances the loss byradiation of internal heat. But the exterior and interior do not cool bydifferent radiations, nor is there, so far as we know, the leasttendency in the central mass to shrink separately, so as to detachitself from the surrounding crust. As deep as we can penetrate towardsthe centre, we find the heat regularly increase, --just as we mightexpect, if the only absolute loss of heat be from the surface. 

If the matter now concentrated in the sun, and that which forms theseveral planets with their secondaries, were all moulded into one mass, and then dilated so as to fill the vast sphere of which the orbit ofUranus forms a circumference, the substance would evidently be in astate of extreme tenuity and diffusion. Immense as the mass of the sunnow is, it is but a mere nut at the centre of the grand globe which weare now considering. Expanded to such vast dimensions, we cannotconceive of it as a solid spheroid turning upon its axis, but only as amass of fluid or vapor, in which a circular motion would generate onlyvortices or whirlwinds. In such an aggregation of subtile matter, nocrust could be solidified on the outer ring, and then detached from themass within; indeed, any separation of the parts under suchcircumstances is inconceivable. Even a rotary motion could not beestablished in it, except by an impulse received from without; for thereis every reason to believe, that the movement of a homogeneous fluidtowards its centre, if it could take place without disturbing causes, would be in radial lines, and not in a spiral. 

Our author brings into view all the mathematical proportions and uniformrelations which exist between the constituent bodies of the solarsystem, in order to indicate the probability of their formation from theconstant working of one material cause. Thus he remarks, that theprimary planets all move nearly in one plane, and "show a progressiveincrease of bulk and diminution of density, from the one nearest to thesun to that which is most distant. " But he passes over othercharacteristics of these bodies, equally important, which are quiteirregular, and cannot be traced to the operation of one law. Compare theperiods of rotation on their respective axes, and we find nocorrespondence, no indication that the revolving motion was imparted toall by one inflexible law. The first four planets, counting from thesun, perform their rotation in nearly the same time, namely, twenty-fourhours. But Jupiter's period is a little less, and Saturn's a littlemore, than ten hours. Again, Jupiter's axis of rotation is nearlyperpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, while that of Mars isinclined at an angle of fifty-nine degrees forty-two minutes. Anotherirregularity, still more fatal to the theory, is found in the number ofsatellites by which the respective planets are attended. Saturn hasseven, beside the two rings; Jupiter has four, Mars has none, and theearth has but one. On the single hypothesis, that our system was formedby rings successively thrown off from a central body by a process ofrefrigeration and contraction, these irregularities are inexplicable. Mars, it seems, did not shrink at all, while Jupiter cast off fourseparate rings, and the earth produced its single moon. The distances ofthese bodies from their primaries are also quite irregular; in the caseof Jupiter, the outermost of the satellites revolves at a distance whichis only twenty-seven times the radius of the primary, and the innermostis distant but six times that radius. This planet, consequently, hasshrunk to one twenty-seventh part of its original diameter, and in sodoing, has formed four moons; the earth has shrunk to one sixtieth partof its first diameter, and still has produced but one satellite. If thesame law had prevailed in the two cases, we ought to have nine or tenmoons. 

We need not analyze with any great minuteness the geological facts andhypotheses incorporated into this magnificent history of creation. Aswill be seen hereafter, the violent and sweeping transformations andconvulsions that the earth's crust has undergone directly conflict withour author's theory, and afford the strongest presumption, that anextraneous cause has frequently interfered, at different periods, torepair the desolation produced by the unassisted working of naturallaws, to bring order out of chaos, and to people the desert earth anewwith animated tribes. The only general fact of much moment, which ourauthor has drawn from the discoveries of geologists, for theconfirmation of his own hypothesis, is, according to his own account, one of the most questionable doctrines in the whole science, --one of anegative character, on which we can never rely with full assurance, tillthe researches of man have probed every fold, and examined every threadin the texture, of the earth's garment, and thus shown that no evidencecan possibly be discovered to the contrary. The alleged fact is that, inthe early formations of rock--the first pages in the history of theearth's surface--are found the remains of animals and vegetables only ofthe lowest type and most imperfect development; while, in the laterstrata, forms more and more advanced are discovered; so that there seemsto have been a constant progress along the line leading to the higherforms of organization. The testimony which goes to support thisassertion is wholly negative. The geologist reasons thus: The moreperfect organisms have not been discovered in the earlier strata;_therefore_, they do not exist in them. When, in a different connection, it suits our author's purpose to throw doubt on the very postulate whichis here admitted, he holds the following language. 

 "These, it must be owned, are less strong traces of the birds than we possess of the reptiles and other tribes; but it must be remembered, that the evidence of fossils, as to the absence of any class of animals from a certain period of the earth's history, can never be considered as more than negative. Animals, of which we find no remains in a particular formation, may, nevertheless, have lived at the time, and it may have only been from unfavorable circumstances that their remains have not been preserved for our inspection. The single circumstance of their being little liable to be carried down into seas might be the cause of their non-appearance in our quarries. "--p. 95. 

In truth, the researches of geologists are every day bringing to lightnew facts, which compel them to modify or abandon many of the positionsthey formerly held; so that a considerable portion of the science is amere quicksand of shifting theories. We need only allude to the varioussuppositions respecting the origin of drift, and to the numerousmodifications of the glacial theory. Important discoveries have beenmade within a short time, showing that certain animal tribes had theirorigin much farther back than was at first supposed. A few years ago, reptiles were believed to be the highest type of life that existedduring the era of the new red sand-stone. But Professor Hitchcock'srecent discovery in this stone of the footprints of gigantic birds hasadded a higher class to the zoölogy of the period; and within a fewmonths, in the same red sand-stone of the Connecticut valley, tracks oftwo or three species of quadrupeds have been found, some of them beingprobably mammifers of a lower grade. It is true, no fossil remains ofthese animals have been brought to light; but this want only renders thediscovery more significant for our present purpose. It shows thatcertain animals must have lived at the period in question, though theirremains have not yet been found; and from the greater age of the rocksthen formed, and the consequent greater number of convulsions of theearth's surface to which they have been subjected, these remains mayhave entirely disappeared. It is a curious fact, also, that the animalremains of that period, which have come down to us, belong to genera soconstituted, that their bodies might well survive, if we may so speak, the shocks which would have destroyed every trace of some more delicate, or more finely organized, beings. We find remains of the flint-shieldedanimalcules, the hard-shelled mollusca, and the cartilaginous fishes;but the bodies of mammalia, birds, and even the higher species offishes, some of which we may suppose to have been more tender andcorruptible, have utterly perished. Here and there, an individual oftheir number left the print of its foot on the sand, which subsequentlyhardened into rock, and brought down to our times a faint vestige of itspast existence. 

We are not attempting to impugn the credit of geological science ingeneral, which would be a wholly futile task. The multitude of factsrespecting the present constitution of the earth's crust, recently madeknown by laborers in this department, are among the most curious andmost pregnant discoveries of modern times. But when we come to theformation of theories respecting the past history of the earth, in orderto account for the phenomena at present visible on its surface, we areevidently afloat on a sea of conjecture, each hypothesis being validonly till a more plausible one is proposed, --which happens veryfrequently, --or till it is effectually disproved by some new discoveryin the rocky strata. A fertile imagination and a bold face are among themost striking traits of our more daring geologists. Grant to one of thischaracter a few modest postulates, --give him certain millions of years, a sufficient number of earthquakes, a whole battery of volcanoes, a fewocean deluges, and the rise and fall of half a dozen continents, --and hewill frame a theory off-hand, which will account for the most perplexingphenomena. Our author is certainly entitled to take his place at thevery head of this class of speculatists. 

In accounting for the work of creation by the natural and unassisteddevelopment of the inherent qualities of brute matter, the greatdifficulty is found at the first link in the chain of animated being. How can we explain the commencement of _life_? We must have a clear ideaof the whole scope of this problem, before we can make any attempt atits solution. Life, then, is _not_ mere organization, though mostmaterialists, philosophers, like our author, willingly confound the twothings; to hear them reason, one would almost suppose that there was nodifference between a dead man and a living one. Organization issubservient to life, ministers to it, manifests it, --supports it, if youplease, --but does not constitute it. He must be a bolder man than weare, who will undertake to say _what it is_; but we can very safelydeclare _what it is not_; and in any particular form or aggregation ofmatter, whether organic or inorganic, we can give a shrewd guess as toits presence or absence. It may be said, that we beg the question byassuming that organization is not life; it may be so; but it is quitetoo much to allow the materialist quietly to take the opposite doctrinefor granted. He must know the full extent of his task, --that it isnecessary for him not only to construct the machine, but actually to setit in motion, so that it shall afterwards run on of its own accord. Itis very easy to frame a partial definition of life, by merely describingone or two of its characteristic functions; and then, because someaction can be detected between the particles of brute matter, whichresembles the exercise of these functions, boldly to declare that thewhole mystery is solved. Thus it is said, that life is nothing but theaccretion of similar substances, or the addition of like unto like; andas this occurs in crystallization, which is confessedly a phenomenon ofinorganic matter, therefore there is no fundamental difference betweenthe properties of living and dead substances. We deny the firstproposition; nutrition is not the only characteristic of life, and thenutritive process, whether in vegetables or animals, is not mereaccretion, but assimilation. It has been said, though the assertion isby no means fully proved, that assimilation is only a finer kind ofchemistry, the constituent principles being brought together only bytheir natural affinities. Even if this were true, if the stomach and thedigestive apparatus were only a well furnished chemical laboratory, fitfor conducting the most delicate experiments, the great difficulty wouldstill remain. The question might yet be asked, Where is the chemist? Andthis is the fundamental question, which the materialists never attemptto answer, but quietly evade. 

The difference between an inorganic and an organic body has beenexplained by Coleridge clearly enough for our purpose. In the former, --asheaf of corn, for instance, --the whole is nothing more than acollection of the individual parts; in the latter, --an animal, --thewhole is the effect of, or results from, the parts. In the latter case, the whole is every thing, and the parts are comparatively nothing. Oneof the great effects of life is to keep the parts in subjection to thewhole, making them contribute to its support and growth, and thusmaintaining the unity of the system. The stomach digests, the lungsinhale air, the heart beats, and the blood circulates; and as the jointeffect, or as the common supporter, --it matters not which, --of theseoperations, _life_ continues, and the animated being is a unit; it hasnot merely virtual, but essential unity. The reciprocal action of therespiratory, circulating, and nervous systems is absolutely necessary tolife. The animal dies, and this unity, this subservience of the parts tothe whole, immediately ceases. In the functions of the living body, itmay be that the ordinary laws of chemistry are preserved, and that theelements of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen combine and separate accordingto their ordinary affinities, and in no unusual proportions. But afterdeath, at any rate, quite a different set of chemical laws come intoplay, and produce a result which is the very opposite of that beforeeffected. There is no longer any unanimity or coöperation; instead ofsustaining or building up the animal tissues, the affinities now inoperation tear down, destroy, and resolve them into their ultimateelements, --each part following out its own law of destruction orresolution, irrespectively of the others. 

 "There is in living organic matter a principle constantly in action, the operations of which are in accordance with a rational plan, so that the individual parts which it creates in the body are adapted to the design of the whole; and this it is which distinguishes organism. Kant says, 'The cause of the particular mode of existence of each part of a living body resides in the whole, while in dead masses each part contains this cause within itself. ' This explains why a mere part separated from an organized whole generally does not continue to live; why, in fact, an organized body appears to be one and indivisible. And since the different parts of an organized body are heterogeneous members of one whole, and essential to its perfect state, the trunk cannot live after the loss of one of these parts. "--_Müller's Physiology_, Vol. I. , p. 19. 

The apparent exceptions to this statement--as in the case of thepolypes, which multiply by fissiparous generation, or by spontaneousdivision of their bodies into parts, each part becoming a perfectanimal--are only apparent. These creatures, which are low down in thescale of being, exemplify what Mr. Owen calls "the law of vegetative orirrelative repetition, " as they have many organs performing the samefunction, and not related to each other by combination for theperformance of a higher function. Thus, a Polygastrian has manyassimilative sacs, each performing the office of a stomach irrespectiveof the rest. In the insect tribe, the respiratory function, instead ofbeing performed by one set of lungs for the whole body, is carried onthrough a series of minute and highly ramified tubes, which traverseevery part of the body, and open to the air by a great number oforifices. In some instances, both respiration and digestion seem to takeplace over the whole surface of the body; for Trembley found at leastone case, in which the animal digested its food equally well, after ithad been turned inside out. A number of similar parts being repeated ineach segment of the individual, the body can be divided, and the severalportions, each still containing some of all the organs essential to thewhole, will continue to live separately. The severed parts will evencontinue to grow, and to develope other organs convenient for individualexistence. But most animals, especially the more perfect, do notconstitute an aggregate of similar parts united by one trunk, andtherefore propagation by division is in them impossible. The ovum, whenseparated from the parent, is an entire animal only _potentially_;during its development, the essential parts which constitute the_actual_ whole are produced. In the case of the polyps, we have only tosuppose that the ovum remains connected with the parent being, till all, or nearly all, its essential parts are produced. It is then shed not asa mere ovum, but as an animal nearly or wholly complete. 

Now, all the instances adduced by our author, to show similarity ofaction in the organic and the inorganic world, are irrelevant. Theanalogies are not merely imperfect; they are no analogies at all. Crystals increase by the aggregation of new particles on the externalsurfaces of the parts already formed; there is no consentaneousoperation of the parts on the whole. The molecules of crystals arehomogeneous throughout, and the several aggregates of these moleculesare independent of each other; while organized bodies are composed ofparts perfectly dissimilar from each other, but all of which conspire toone end. "The growth of organized bodies, " says Müller, "takes place inall particles of their substance at the same time, while the increase ofthe mass in inorganic bodies is produced by external apposition. "Frostwork on the windows may resemble vegetable _forms_; but it has noresemblance whatever to vegetable _life_. Electricity may counterfeitthe _action of life_, for a moment, on a particular limb, by causing themuscles to twitch; but it does not counterfeit _life itself_, by causingall the parts again to contribute to the sustentation of the whole. AFrench chemist, by electric action, may have produced _globules_ inalbumen; there is nothing very wonderful in that; any one may blowbubbles in a viscid fluid. The resemblance between these globules andproper germinal vesicles amounts to nothing more than similarity ofoutward shape; there is no more real resemblance between them thanbetween the oval lump of chalk which farmers sometimes put into a hen'snest, in order to deceive poor Dame Partlet, and the real egg which thehen deposits by the side of it. Certainly, the imponderable agents, heat, light, and electricity, are in some mysterious way _connectedwith_ life, so as to contribute to its support; there is nothing more inthis assertion than in the familiar proposition, that a seed willgerminate only under the proper conditions of soil and climate; butthat these agents, acting on inorganic matter, ever _create_ or_commence_ life is a pure hypothesis, not supported even by the shadowof a fact. 

Having thus shown how weak are the general considerations in favor ofthe theory, that animated beings may be created out of inorganic matterby mere natural laws, we should proceed to consider the direct evidenceadduced to prove that life has actually been produced in this way. Herethe whole question is opened respecting the alleged instances ofequivocal generation, and we have neither space nor ability to discussthem at length. Those who are curious respecting the question may find abrief summary of the evidence on both sides in a former number of thisJournal. [1] We can mention only a few facts and arguments, which showthe extreme improbability of the doctrine supported by our author and afew other theorists. 

In the first place, it is remarkable, that all the races of animatedbeings, which are entirely within the range of our powers ofobservation, --which have such a size and locality that we can study andaccurately determine their organization and habits, --are unquestionablyproduced from parents of their own kind. Only the minute microscopicanimals are now supposed to be generated spontaneously; and this allegedfact rests not on direct proof, but only on our inability in certaincases to trace the process of their production in the ordinary way. Asmany of these animals, in their perfect state, are not more than thetwelve thousandth part of an inch in diameter, it is not much to bewondered at, that we should not be able in all cases to discover theirova, or to follow these ova through all their stages of development intothe complete being. It is farther remarkable, that these animalcules, when once produced, whether by spontaneous or natural generation, areall found to be provided with the organs or requisite means forcontinuing their species, and, in fact, for multiplying their numberfrom themselves with astonishing rapidity. As they certainly havechildren, it seems reasonable to suppose, according to the analogy ofall the higher animated tribes, that they also had parents. The ancientssupposed, that the worms and insects which appear in decaying organicmatter were generated there by the decomposition of the substance, without the previous agency of individuals of the same stock. Everyschoolboy is acquainted with Virgil's mode of obtaining a new swarm ofbees from the decaying carcass of a heifer. Subsequent researches, madewith more care, and perhaps with better instruments of observation, haveentirely disproved the hypothesis, and show that the maggots wereproduced in every case from eggs deposited by flies or other insects, and were afterwards themselves developed into the state of perfectinsects. Then it seems reasonable to believe, that the improvedobservations of future times will clear up the only remainingdifficulty, and show how the infusory animalcules also are generatedfrom beings of their own kind. 

These minute creatures are prolific to a degree that transcends allcalculation; and they exist, either in the egg or maturely developed, ininconceivable numbers. A single wheel-animalcule, _Hydatina senta_, which was watched for more than eighteen days, and which lives stilllonger, is capable of a fourfold increase in twenty-four or thirtyhours; a rate of propagation which would afford in ten days a million ofbeings. From their tenacity of life, extraordinary powers ofreproduction, and incalculable numbers, their united influence may besaid to be far more important, in all the great operations of nature, than that of the larger and more perfectly developed organisms. Theyswarm in all the seas, and play an important part in choking up harboursand forming great deposits at the mouths of rivers. The remains of thosewhich have perished form great beds and strata in the crust of theearth. The silicious stone, called Tripoli, is entirely composed of suchremains; at Bilin, in Bohemia, there is one stratum of this substance, fourteen feet thick, one cubic inch of which is estimated to containforty-one thousand millions of individuals. Their extreme tenacity oflife is evinced by the fact, that many of them may be entirelydesiccated, and preserved in pure sand for several years, after which, on the application of a drop of water, they may be restored to life. Inthis dried state, M. Doyère exposed some of them to a heat equal to thatof boiling water, and afterwards revived them; though, in an activestate, if subjected to a much lower temperature, they perish. If, then, the fully developed and mature can resist such powerful extraneouscauses of destruction, how much more must the ova possess the power ofenduring them without losing their latent life! The following extractfrom Professor Owen's Lectures shows the bearing of these facts upon thequestion of equivocal generation. 

 "The act of oviparous generation, that sending forth of countless ova through the fatal laceration or dissolution of the parent's body, is most commonly observed in the well-fed _Polygastria_, which crowd together as their little ocean evaporates; and thus each leaves, by the last act of its life, the means of perpetuating and diffusing its species by thousands of fertile germs. When the once thickly tenanted pool is dried up, and its bottom converted into a layer of dust, these inconceivably minute and light ova will be raised with the dust by the first puff of wind, diffused through the atmosphere, and may there remain long suspended; forming, perhaps, their share of the particles which we see flickering in the sunbeam, ready to fall into any collection of water, beaten down by every summer shower into the streams or pools which receive or may be formed by such showers, and, by virtue of their tenacity of life, ready to develope themselves wherever they may find the requisite conditions for their existence. 

 "The possibility, or, rather, the high probability, that such is the design of the oviparous generation of the _Infusoria_, and such the common mode of the diffusion of their ova, renders the hypothesis of equivocal generation, which has been so frequently invoked to explain their origin in new-formed natural or artificial infusions, quite gratuitous. If organs of generation might, at first sight, seem superfluous in creatures propagating their kind by gemmation and spontaneous fission, equivocal generation is surely still less required to explain the origin of beings so richly provided with the ordinary and recognized modes of propagation. "--pp. 31, 32. 

Recent accounts show, that the dust collected from the atmosphere atsea, many miles from land, generally contains some of these driedanimalcules and their ova. Many of these germs can be developed only inparticular localities, or under certain conditions which are rarelyfulfilled. Consequently, if there were but few of them, the speciesmight perish, because those few might not find their appropriate home. But such an accident is guarded against by the vast multiplication ofthese germs and their wide dispersion; for, unlike all the higher tribesof beings except man, the same species is often found in all regions ofthe globe. Very few, in comparison with the whole number, may find aproper _nidus_; but these few then propagate with such marvellousrapidity, as fully to replenish, if not to increase, the original stock. Thus they have been enabled, as species, to survive even thosedestroying causes which exterminated all the higher forms of animals. Several species still exist, which were in being at the time of thecretaceous formation, though all the other animated races belonging tothat period have perished. "These animalcules, " says Ehrenberg, "constitute a chain, which, though in the individual it be microscopic, yet in the mass is a mighty one, connecting the organic life of distantages of the earth. "

In view of facts like these, we may surely say, that the existence ofthe infusory animalcules, and even of the entozoa, is conceivable, supposing they could only have been produced by parents of their ownkind, and without having recourse to the anomalous and hypotheticaldoctrine of equivocal generation. We may not be able to trace their lineof parentage, for our imperfect vision cannot follow the motes whichplay in the sunbeam, nor track them from their birth-place to theirfinal home. But we know that they must be deposited in every layer ofdust that falls from the atmosphere, that they must be inhaled withevery breath which an animal draws, and be swallowed with every morseland drop of its food. The experiments which seem to prove that livingbeings may be produced from pure inorganic matter are all explicable onthe supposition, that adequate precautions were not taken to excludeevery animal and germ capable of development from the substancesexperimented upon, and from the air which was admitted into theapparatus. On this ground, the experiments of Crosse and Weekes, citedby our author, have been quite generally rejected by scientific men, ashardly deserving of notice. We learn that the former was "discouraged bythe reception of his experiments, " and "soon discontinued them";--withgood reason, for it does not appear from our author's account, that headopted any precautions at all. Mr. Weekes seems to have been a littlemore cautious, and the consequence was, that he did not observe anyappearance of life among the substances experimented upon for "elevenmonths, " at the end of which time we may reasonably suppose, that hisprecautions ceased to have perfect effect. The only experiment, in whichadequate means to guard against causes of error were taken, was that ofProfessor Schulze, of Berlin, which had a contrary result. We extractMr. Owen's account of it. 

 "He filled a glass flask half full of distilled water, in which were various animal and vegetable substances: he then closed it with a good cork, through which were passed two glass tubes, bent at right angles, the whole being air-tight: it was next placed in a sand bath, and heated until the water boiled violently. While the watery vapor was escaping by the glass tubes, the Professor fastened at each end an apparatus which chemists employ for collecting carbonic acid: that at the one end was filled with concentrated sulphuric acid, and the other with a solution of potash. By means of the boiling heat, it is to be presumed that every thing living, and all germs in the flask or in the tubes were destroyed; whilst all access was cut off by the sulphuric acid on the one side, and by the potash on the other. The apparatus was then exposed to the influence of summer light and heat; at the same time, there was placed near it an open vessel, with the same substances that had been introduced into the flask, and also after having subjected them to a boiling temperature. In order to renew constantly the air within the flask, the experimenter sucked with his mouth several times a day the open end of the apparatus, filled with the solution of potash, by which process the air entered his mouth from the flask through the caustic liquid, and the atmospheric air from without entered the flask through the sulphuric acid. The air was of course not at all altered in its composition by passing through the sulphuric acid in the flask; but all the portions of living matter, or of matter capable of becoming animated, were taken up by the sulphuric acid and destroyed. From the 28th of May until the beginning of August, Professor Schulze continued uninterruptedly the renewal of the air in the flask, without being able, by the aid of the microscope, to discover any living animal or vegetable substance; although, during the whole of the time, observations were made almost daily on the edge of the liquid; and when, at last, the Professor separated the different parts of the apparatus, he could not find in the whole liquid the slightest trace of _Infusoria_ or _Confervæ_, or of mould; but all three presented themselves in great abundance a few days after he had left the flask standing open. The vessel which he placed near the apparatus contained on the following day _Vibriones_ and _Monads_, to which were soon added larger Polygastric _Infusoria_, and afterwards _Rotifera_. "--pp. 32, 33. 

For readers who are not familiar with these subjects, it may be well tomention, that the weight of authority is decidedly against this doctrineof spontaneous generation. It is rejected by Müller, who ranks amongthe first physiologists of Germany; by Ehrenberg, one of the mostdistinguished microscopists in the world; and by Owen, who stands at thehead of the school of comparative anatomy in England, if not in Europe. The remark made by Cuvier, more than thirty years ago, is still true atthe present day, that, "although the impossibility of spontaneousgeneration cannot be absolutely demonstrated, yet all the efforts ofthose physiologists who believe in the possibility of it have notsucceeded in showing us a single instance. "

Passing over, then, our author's theory of the origination of life frominorganic matter as utterly untenable, we come to the next point in hissystem, --the most chimerical of all, --the gradual development of thehigher orders of being out of those next beneath them in the scale. Itis not pretended, that there is _any known instance_ of thetransmutation of species, or of the evolution, in the ordinary way, ofany being specifically different from its parents. The same animal, indeed, may pass through different grades of development; but thesechanges affect only the individual, not the race. The progeny of thisanimal must begin at the same point where its parent did, and runprecisely the same cycle. The tadpole becomes a frog, but the young ofthat frog are tadpoles; the worm becomes a winged insect, but the eggsof that insect are hatched into nothing but worms. These changes in thelife of the individual, like the successive periods of the embryoticstate, of infancy, and manhood in the human being, are perfectlyconsistent with persistence of type in the race, and do not indicateeven the possibility that a new species may be developed out of an oldone. On the contrary, the germ must be considered as _potentially_equivalent to the whole future being, for it is invariably developedinto that being. If there be any one fact unquestionably established byobservation, it is that each species invariably produces its like. "Allthe phenomena, " says Müller, "at present observed in the animal kingdom, seem to prove that the species were originally created distinct, andindependent of each other. There is no remote possibility of one speciesbeing produced from another. "

The doctrine of our author, then, is confessedly a pure hypothesis, and, as such, it might be summarily dismissed into the region of cloud-landand dreams, where it had its origin. The burden of proof is upon him, and as he has failed to produce a single instance in which his theory isexemplified, he may be rightfully debarred the privilege of discussion. But waiving this point, if we look into the grounds of his conjecture, we find bold assumptions more than once substituted for the plainstatement of facts, which would destroy every shade of credibility inhis doctrine. True, there is an appearance, both in the animal andvegetable kingdoms, of an ascending scale of being, from simplyorganized forms and imperfect developments up to the complexarrangements and nice adaptations of the advanced tribes. But theprogress is not regular, nor are the intervals of constant length. Theline is often broken and doubled, and, in fact, the individuals are farmore naturally arranged in a number of parallel lines, beginningsuccessively at a somewhat lower point, than in a single series. Man, ofcourse, is placed at the head of the animal tribes; but the intervalwhich separates him from the chimpanzee cannot easily be cleared at onebound. He forms but one genus, and that genus is the only one of itsorder. But even if the line of gradation were single and perfect, thefact would be of no service to the hypothesis we are now considering;for the interval between two species most nearly allied to each otherseems to be quite as impassable as the broadest gulf of separation. 

The point chiefly relied upon to show the credibility of this doctrineis the fact, according to our author, that the higher animals passthrough a series of changes resembling the permanent forms of the lowertribes. The first form of man himself "is that which is permanent in theanimalcule"; and thence he comes to resemble successively a fish, areptile, a bird, and the lower mammifers, before he attains his specificmaturity. It is held, then, that a premature birth from an animal of ahigher kind might have instituted a new race of a lower type; and that abirth unusually delayed, permitting an embryo to be still fartheradvanced in the line of organization, might have created a new speciesof a higher order than the parent. Here, every thing depends on the_absolute identity_ of the germs of all animals, in the lower stages oftheir growth. General resemblances and analogies are of no weightwhatever; the essential internal organization of the ova of differentspecies must be the same; otherwise, however ripened into a maturebeing, whether the birth be advanced or postponed, the individual muststill belong to its parents' species, of which it possesses thedistinctive peculiarity. Now, this point of _the identity of germs is amere assumption_; not only is it destitute of proof, --the whole evidenceis against it. There is a degree of outward resemblance, but there is nosameness. When we trace the origin of life back to the remotest point towhich our powers of observation extend, when we come to microscopicvesicles that can be discerned only by the highest magnifiers, generalsimilarity of outward shape is all that can be predicated of them. Thespecific differences lie below this general resemblance of outward form;we cannot discern them, but we _know_ that they must exist, and thatthey are _essential_ differences, for each one of these vesicles isinvariably developed, if at all, into an individual of the species towhich its parent belongs. The germinal vesicles of a tree and aquadruped are somewhat alike, outwardly; so, to the hen's eyes, there isno difference between her own eggs and the duck's eggs which thefarmer's wife has put into her nest. But when she has hatched her brood, part of them are found to be web-footed, and these, to her greatastonishment and distress, immediately take to the water. Our authorcommits the same blunder as the poor hen. This want of consciousnessthat he has got to the end of his tether, this inability to believe thatany difference can exist where he is not able to see it, though it isinvariably indicated by future consequent differences of the moststriking nature, is perfectly characteristic of the rash theorist inscience. 

The assertion, that man's "first form _is_ that which is permanent inthe animalcule, "--even if we do not look to the potentiality ofdevelopment into a higher being, which experience shows to exist in thehuman germ, but not in the infusorial, --is a positive misstatement. Thelowest monad has a mouth and means for propagating its kind, which donot belong to the primitive ovum of any higher animal. About thesucceeding stages in the growth of the embryo our author's language ismore cautious. He only says, that they _resemble_, or _typify_, some ofthe lower orders of being; and this is virtually admitting a specificdifference, and giving up his own theory for all the conditionsposterior to that of the germ. The brain and heart of the embryosuccessively _resemble_ the corresponding organs in a fish, a reptile, abird, and a quadruped; but they are not identical, _even in outwardappearance_, with those organs. Of course, if arrested at any stage ofits growth, and prematurely born, the embryo would not be one of thelower animals, but only something resembling it in outward shape; andconversely, if it were possible for the birth of a bird to be delayedtill it had reached a higher stage of development in the same line inwhich it was proceeding, it would not become a quadruped, but it wouldbe an anomalous creature somewhat like one. Consequently, no one speciesnow on the earth can have been evolved out of any other existing race;because the germs of any two, at a very early stage in their history, according to our author's own confession, are specifically unlike. 

To avoid this difficulty, he is driven to a further supposition, stillmore gratuitous and improbable; namely, that the germ destined to becomeone of a different race from its parents, having advanced along itsusual line of development so far as that line coincides with the onebelonging to the new species, there diverges, and follows a differentpath up to the period of its birth into a new creature; that is, theembryo of a reptile, having grown for a certain time as if it were to bea reptile, suddenly turns aside, like a young man changing his mindabout the choice of a profession, and for the rest of its foetal lifefollows the proper line of progress in order to be developed into abird. This is mere dreaming, and reminds one only of the wonderfultransformations effected by enchantment in an Arabian tale. We mightjust as plausibly suppose, that the reptile, after it became mature, wassuddenly transformed into a bird, as that it underwent this changebefore it was hatched. All the evidence attainable goes to show, thatthe law of development is as immutable before as after birth, theseveral stages of progress succeeding each other in a constant order, and affecting the individual only, not the race. A young monkey is nomore likely to be transmuted into a man than an old one; nor is such ametamorphosis at all more probable in the course of its foetal life. 

The view we have now obtained of the specific differences betweendistinct races of being at separate periods of their existence isprecisely what might have been anticipated from the law of gradualdevelopment, which holds throughout the organic kingdoms. Between twomature animals, these differences are perfectly obvious and wellmarked. As we go a step back in their history, the distinction becomes alittle more obscure; two worms may resemble each other very closely, though the two winged insects subsequently produced from them may bevery unlike. Receding still farther, some of these specific differencesmay entirely disappear, the organs or parts which should exhibit thembeing not yet developed. And when we come to the primitive germs, sominute as to be visible only through the microscope, no outwarddistinction, perhaps, is any longer perceptible, and the radicaldifference of their internal organization is indicated only by the fact, to be verified by subsequent observation, that the two are invariablydeveloped into perfectly distinct animals, belonging respectively to thesame races with their parents. A theorist, whose whole system is basedupon the invariable operation of natural agencies, cannot reasonablyobject to this conclusion. 

That our statements in the course of this argument may not appear of thesame questionable character as those advanced by our author, we willfortify them with a few brief citations from a work of suchunquestionable authority as the Lectures of Professor Owen. 

 "No doubt the minute infusoria, which seem to have their development arrested at the first or nearest stage from the primitive cell formation, offer close and striking analogies to the primitive cells out of which the higher animals and all their tissues are developed; but the very [first] step which the infusoria take beyond the primitive cell stage invests them with a specific character as independent and distinct in its nature as that of the highest and most complicated organisms. No mere organic cell, destined for ulterior changes in a living organization, has a mouth armed with teeth, or provided with long tentacula; I will not lay stress on the alimentary canal and appended stomachs, which many still regard as 'sub judice'; but the endowment of distinct organs of generation, for propagating their kind by fertile ova, raises the polygastric infusoria much above the mere organic cell. "--pp. 25, 26. 

 "In comparing the several stages in the very interesting development of the _cyanæa aurita_ to the infusoria and polypes, it must be understood that such comparisons are warranted only by a similarity of outward form, and of the instruments of locomotion and prehension. The essential internal organization of the persistent lower forms of the _zoöphyta_ is entirely wanting in the transitory states of the higher ones. A progress through the inferior groups is sketched out, but no actual transmutation of species is effected. The young medusa, before it attains its destined condition of maturity, successively resembles, but never becomes, a polygastrian, a rotifer, and a bryozoon. "--p. 112. 

 "Thus every animal in the course of its development typifies or represents some of the permanent forms of animals inferior to itself; but it does not represent all the inferior forms, nor acquire the organization of any of the forms which it transitorily represents. Had the animal kingdom formed, as was once supposed, a single and continuous chain of being, progressively ascending from the monad to the man, unity of organization might then have been demonstrated to the extent in which the theory has been maintained by the disciples of the Geoffroyan school. "--p. 370. 

If these similarities of structure in the germ had any bearing on thesubject, they would indicate the possibility only of retrogression inthe scale. Of course, the immature ovum, arrested in its development, could not form a more perfect being than its parent. There is nopretence that the embryo, at any stage of its progress, images an animalof a higher grade than its own family. Then what aid do thesesimilarities of structure afford to the theory, that all the higherorganisms have been evolved by successive steps out of the lowest monad?At the best, you have only shown, that a _retreat_ is possible; you havestill to point out any likelihood, even the remotest, of an _advance_ inthe scale of being. There is no fact whatever to confirm thesupposition, that birth may possibly be delayed till the animal bedeveloped into one of a higher species; and the law of immature birthsseems to be, that, if the offspring escapes at all--for there is greatrisk consequent on such an accident, --it becomes as perfect as itsprogenitors. Nature seems to guard the distinctions between the severalraces with peculiar care; so far as we know, monsters either do notsurvive their birth, or are incapable of continuing their kind, or inthe course of a single generation are reunited to the original family. 

To say that these laws, distinct and invariable as far as theobservation of man has extended, may possibly have been superseded inthe lapse of ages by a higher principle, manifesting itself only atlong intervals, is again to have recourse to a blank hypothesis, incapable alike of proof or disproof, and unsupported by the faintestintimations from the world of experience. To build up a theory in thisway is not to account for the work of creation by the natural agenciesand inherent qualities of matter, _as at present observable_, but to flyoff to the wild supposition, that matter and life were more richlyendowed ages ago than they are in our own day. You affirm, that thishigher principle of development did not override the inferior laws atthe earlier periods in time's history, because, in the infancy of theuniverse, the conditions were wanting which are requisite for itsmanifestation, --because the earth was not ready, the atmosphere was notpurified, for the nobler races of being. Very well; but these conditionsare answered _now_. All things are ready at the present day for theinnate energies of matter to put forth their utmost strength. Why do notfishes generate reptiles, and birds produce mammifers, _now_? Ah! but"the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in greatabundance, we could only expect to find the life-originating power atwork in some very special and extraordinary circumstances. " It seems, then, that these inherent qualities of matter, once supposed to beblind, absolute, and invariable in their operation, are really veryjudicious and reasonable; they suit the supply to the demand, andactually cease working when the market is likely to be overstocked. Theresults of such "_natural_ agencies" as these are very like the effectsproduced by the volitions of a wise and thinking being. 

It happens that we are not obliged to grant to our author an indefinitelapse of ages for the sake of bringing all his higher principles intoaction. One of the latest events in the geological history of the earthwas a great submersion of the land, by which "terrestrial animal lifewas extensively, if not universally, destroyed"; so that the creation ofthe species now in being--at least, all the higher species--was "acomparatively recent event, and one posterior, generally speaking, toall the great natural transactions chronicled by geology. " Science doesnot contradict, it rather confirms, that voice of revelation ortradition, which assigns about six thousand years as the period of man'sresidence upon the earth. The action of the drama, then, is restrictedwithin moderate limits as to time, and the "natural agencies" and"higher principles" must work fast in order to accomplish their taskwithin the prescribed period. One condition for the creation of a newand permanent species, belonging to any of the higher orders, seems tohave escaped our author's notice; at least two individuals, a male and afemale, must have been evolved out of the next lower race, before thenew species could continue its kind. Apply these considerations to thecreation of man, who, according to our author's Scripture, was born of amonkey. To suppose, that, at the first trial, an Adam and an Eve wereborn near each other, so that they might have a chance of meeting in thecourse of their lives, would look too much like the operation ofintelligence and design. On the theory of an organic creation by law, asthe monkey race is spread over large regions of the globe, we mustsuppose that many of each sex were produced, and died childless, beforeany Adam was happy enough to find an Eve. Then, at no very distantperiod, within a few thousand years, the birth of a man from an animalof a lower type was no very strange event. Probably it occurred sooften, that the monkeys themselves ceased to be astonished at it. Andyet, this tribe of animals, with all the benefit of large experience, with increased numbers, and with all the requisite conditions fulfilledat least as perfectly as they were at the earlier period of theirhistory, have not succeeded, in the three or four thousand years duringwhich they have been subject to the observation of intelligent beings, in producing even a decent semblance of a man. 

With the exposure of this crowning absurdity, we must close our directexamination of this "History of Creation. " We have not room to considersome of the appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of theessential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of theimmaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with theatheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimatechildren. But they have already been refuted so often and soconclusively, that any revival of them at the present day is hardlydeserving of notice. If we should stop here, then, it may fairly be leftto the judgment of our readers, whether we have not fulfilled the pledgegiven at the outset, by showing that this theory is faulty at everypoint, even when viewed from the author's own ground. The proposal of itis no new thing. In one or another form, varying in particulars, butagreeing in substance, it has been before the world ever since the daysof Democritus, and more especially of his follower, Epicurus. Lucretiusclothed it in sonorous and majestic verse, for it is a theme fittedabove all others to excite the fancy, and to receive the richestembellishments from the imagination. Modern authors have promulgated itagain and again, with little other change than what was requisite toadapt it to recent improvements in science, and to engraft upon it someof their own favorite hypotheses and fancies. The version of it by theFrench naturalist Lamarck was the latest and the most in vogue, till theappearance of the present volume. So frequently has it been confuted, that the revival of it at this late period seems little more than aharmless exercise of ingenuity, a poetical and scientific dream, and oneneed hardly take the pains to expose its assumptions and fallacies. Theviolent suppositions which it involves only remind one of the remarkquoted from Pascal on a former page, that "unbelievers are the mostcredulous persons in the world. " If set forth only as a novel andpleasing fancy, it may be classed with other ingenious fictions, thatare published without a thought of deception. But if seriously proposed, it can be fitly characterized only by borrowing the homely but energeticlanguage of Dr. Bentley. 

 "And now that I have finished all the parts which I proposed to discourse of, I will conclude all with a short application to the atheists. And I would advise them, as a friend, to leave off this dabbling and smattering in philosophy, this shuffling and cutting with atoms. It never succeeded well with them, and they always come off with the loss. Their old master, Epicurus, seems to have had his brains so muddled and confounded with them, that he scarce ever kept in the right way; though the main maxim of his philosophy was to trust to his senses, and follow his nose. I will not take notice of his doting conceit, that the sun and moon are no bigger than they appear to the eye, a foot or half a yard over; and that the stars are no larger than so many glow-worms. But let us see how he manages his atoms, those almighty tools that do every thing of themselves, without the help of a workman. When the atoms, says he, _descend_ in infinite space (very ingeniously spoken, to make high and low in infinity), they do not fall plumb down, but decline a little from the perpendicular, either obliquely or in a curve; and this declination, says he, from the direct line is the cause of our liberty of will. But, I say, this declination of atoms in their descent was itself either necessary or voluntary. If it was necessary, how then could that necessity ever beget liberty? If it was voluntary, then atoms had that power of volition before; and what becomes then of the Epicurean doctrine of the fortuitous productions of worlds? The whole business is contradiction and ridiculous nonsense. "--_Bentley's Works_, Vol. III. , pp. 47, 48. 

Custom and convenience lead us to speak of the "laws" of nature, and ofthe "powers and forces" of brute matter; and few persons, in adoptingthese phrases, are aware that they are using a figure of speech. Yetnothing is more certain than that all the researches of science have notbeen able to point out with certainty a single active cause apart fromthe operation of mind. We discern nothing but regularity and similarityof sequences; and the attribution of these effects to some occultqualities in the atoms or molecules in which they are manifested iswholly hypothetical, and even, when closely examined, is inconceivable. For this reason we affirm, that the theory of our author, professing toaccount for the whole work of creation "by the operation of law, " is notonly unsound and baseless in its particulars, but, when scrutinized as awhole, is absolutely unintelligible. _He attempts to account for astring of hypothetical effects, such as spontaneous generation and thetransmutation of species, by a series of hypothetical and inconceivablecauses, such as the energies of lifeless matter. _ Let any one conceive, if he can, of any _power_, _energy_, or _force_ inherent in a lump ofmatter, --a stone, for instance, --except this merely negative one, thatit always and necessarily remains in its present state, whether this beof rest or motion. Let him point out, if he can, the _nexus_ betweenwhat are usually denominated cause and effect in matter, --as when twobodies are drawn towards each other, if they are in opposite states ofelectricity. When he says that it is the _nature_, or _law_, of bodiesthus electrified to attract each other, he offers no explanation of thephenomenon; he only refers it to a class of other results, of a similarcharacter, previously observed. It is not pretended, that all or any ofthese results, formerly known, are more intelligible or explicable thanthe one in question. But the latter is classed with them, because, fromtheir general similarity, from their taking place under the sameoutward circumstances, it is reasonably supposed that _one_ cause, whatever it may be, is common to them all. And this is the wholebusiness of the student of nature, to place together results which areso similar, that we may attribute them to a common cause, withoutassuming to know what that cause is. The sole office of science is thetheory, not of causation, but of classification. It is all reducible tonatural history, the essence of which consists in arrangement. 

We are not attempting to perplex a plain matter of science byintroducing into its discussion a metaphysical subtilty. The principlehere contended for is one of the first dictates of the inductivephilosophy, and as such it has been frankly acknowledged and acted uponby all the great improvers of science in modern days. When Newtondiscovered that the planets circle round the sun in the same manner inwhich a stone thrown by the hand describes a curve before reaching theearth, he may be said to have _explained_ the former phenomenon bybringing it into the same class with certain results which have longbeen familiar to us. But the explanation was only relative, notabsolute. The latter phenomenon is, in reality, no more explicable thanthe former; he did not pretend to know the _cause_ of the stone'sfalling to the ground, any more than of the revolution of the planets. It was something to be able to arrange these apparently heterogeneousresults in the same class, and gravity was a convenient name to apply tothe whole. But the supposition, that gravity was an occult cause, inherent in matter, he earnestly repelled, and declared that it was"inconceivable. "[2] Franklin showed, that a thunder-cloud and thecharged conductor of an electrical machine manifested the samephenomena, and might therefore be classed together; sparks were obtainedfrom both, Leyden jars were charged from them, other bodies wereattracted and repelled in a similar way, so that it was reasonable tobelieve that the same agency was acting in both cases. What this agencywas he did not even guess. The _cause_ of electric action, whether inthe excited cloud, or the excited tube, was just as obscure as ever. Chemists observed, that different substances, when brought into closecontact, sometimes remained distinct, and sometimes united with eachother in various but regular proportions; and these capacities ofcoalescing with one class of bodies, and of remaining unaffected byanother, are called chemical "affinities. " This is a convenientgeneralization, and has properly received a specific name; though thecommon appellation throws no light on the _cause_ of the phenomena, which remains an impenetrable secret. To say that certain action is_caused_ by the operation of chemical affinities is only to arrange itwith a large class of other observed appearances, equally obscure as totheir origin and essential character. 

Let us go a step further, and suppose that the progress of discovery hasmade known certain facts lying behind the phenomena in question, towhich they may all be referred. Let us suppose, that all bodies whichgravitate towards each other are found to be embosomed in a subtile, ambient fluid, which connects them, as it were, into one system; thatthe positive and negative states of electricity are resolvable into thepresence of two fluids standing in certain relations to each other; andthat substances show chemical affinity for each other only when they arein opposite electrical conditions. Still, we have only advanced a stepin the generalization, and the real, efficient _cause_ of theappearances is still hidden from us by an impenetrable veil. Gravitationis now referred to the communication of motion by impulse; electricity, to the combination and separation of different fluids; affinity, to theattraction or repulsion of these fluids. The latter classes of phenomenaare more general, but not a whit more explicable, than the former. Wehave now fewer causes to seek for, but not one of these few has beendiscovered. When we have resolved electricity or gravitation into thepresence of an elastic medium, it is a mere figure of speech to say, that we have discovered the _cause_ of the electric phenomena or ofgravity. That is just as far off as ever; for we have yet to discoverthe principle whence flow _necessarily_ all the phenomena observable influids. It is the sole end and the highest ambition of science todiscover as many as possible of the relationships which bind factstogether, and thus to carry the generalization to the farthest point. Its office is not to discover causes, but to generalize effects. Theinvestigation of real causes is quite given up, as a hopelessundertaking. 

Observe, now, how all the phraseology employed in speaking of thesesuccessive generalizations of science is borrowed from the action ofmind. The word _action_ itself has no real significance, except whenapplied to the _doings_ of an intelligent agent; we cannot speak of thedoings of matter, as we could if the word _action_ were applicable to itin any other than a figurative sense. Again, in speaking of thesimilarity of facts and the regularity of sequences, we refer them to a_law_ of nature, just as if they were sentient beings acting under thewill of a sovereign. Parts of pure matter--the chemical elements, forinstance--do not _act_ at all; being brute and inert, it is only by astrong metaphor that they are said to be subject to law. Again, weattribute _force_, _power_, &c. , to the primitive particles of matter, and speak of their natural _agencies_. Just so, we talk of _tone_ incoloring, and of a _heavy_ or _light_ sound; though, of course, in theirproper significance, tone belongs only to sound, and heaviness togravitating bodies. These modes of speech are proper enough, if theirfigurative character be kept in view; but it is a little too bad, when awhole scientific theory is made to rest upon a metaphor as its solesupport. _Agency_ is the employment of one intelligent being to act foranother; _force_ and _power_ are applicable only to will; they arecharacteristic of volition. It is a violent trope to apply either ofthese words to senseless matter. Chemical _affinities_ are spoken of, asif material elements were united by family ties, and manifested choice, and affection or aversion. 

An obvious corollary from these remarks is, that all _causation_ is anexertion of mind, and is only figuratively applied to matter. Itnecessarily implies power, will, and action. An efficient cause--we arenot speaking now of a mere antecedent--is that which is necessarilyfollowed by the effect, so that, if it were known, the effect might bepredicted antecedently to all experience. Cicero describes it withphilosophical accuracy. "_Causa ea est, quæ id efficit, cujus estcausa. _ _Non sic causa intelligi debet, ut quod cuique antecedat, id eicausa sit; sed quod cuique_ EFFICIENTER _antecedat. Causis enimefficientibus quamque rem cognitis, posse denique sciri quid futurumesset. _" Now, in the world of matter, we discover nothing butantecedents and consequents; the former are the mere signs, not thecauses, of the latter; no necessary connection--no connection at all, except sequence in time--can be discerned between them. Consequently, from an examination of the former, we could not determine _a priori_, that they must be followed by the latter, or by any other resultwhatever. Our knowledge here, if knowledge it can be called, is whollyempirical, or founded on experience. As we have seen, it is absurd tosay, that one atom of matter literally _acts_ on another. On the otherhand, in the world of mind, we are directly conscious of action, andeven of causation. All mental exertion is true action; everydetermination of the will implies _effort_, or the direction and use ofpower. The result to be accomplished is preconsidered, or meditated, andtherefore is known _a priori_, or before experience; the volitionsucceeds, which is a true effort, or a power in action; and this, _ifthe power be sufficient_, is _necessarily_ followed by the effect. Volition is a true cause; but in a finite mind it is not always an_adequate_ cause. If I will to shut my eyes, the effect immediatelyfollows as a necessary consequence. But if I will to stop the beating ofmy heart, or to move a paralyzed limb, the effect does not follow, because the power exerted is inadequate to the end proposed. The actionof the will is still _causative_, but it is _insufficient_. 

It was from overlooking the distinction here made, that Hume, Kant, andother metaphysicians were led to deny all knowledge of causation even inthe action of mind. They confounded sufficiency with efficiency, andsupposed, because the power did not always accomplish the end proposed, that it did not tend towards it, or exert any effect upon it. As thesufficiency of the volition can only be known _a posteriori_, or afterexperience, they imagined that there could be no cause but that which isinfinite, or one which is invariably followed by the whole effectcontemplated. They overlooked the fact, that, in the consciousness of_effort_, --as in the attempt to control the action of mind, to commandthe attention, &c. , --we have direct and full evidence of _power inaction_, which is necessarily causal in its nature. The mental _nisus_is true force, exerted with a foreknowledge of the effect to beproduced, and necessarily followed by a result, --a partial one it maybe, --but one which is a true effect, whether it answers the wholeintention, or not. Here, then, we discern that necessary connectionbetween two events, that absolute efficient agency, which was vainlysought in the world of matter. 

If these considerations are well founded, the whole framework of whatare called "secondary causes" falls to pieces. The laws of nature areonly a figure of speech; the powers and active inherent properties ofmaterial atoms are mere fictions. Mind alone is active; matter is whollypassive and inert. There is no such thing as what we usually call thecourse of nature; it is nothing but the will of God producing certaineffects in a constant and uniform manner; which mode of action, however, being perfectly arbitrary, is as easy to be altered at any time as to bepreserved. All events, all changes, in the external world, from theleast even unto the greatest, are attributable to his will and power, which, being infinite, is always and necessarily adequate to the endproposed. The laws of motion, gravitation, affinity, and the like, areonly expressions of the regularity and continuity of one infinite cause. The order of nature is the effect of divine wisdom, its stability is theresult of divine beneficence. 

 "Estne Dei sedes nisi terra, et pontus, et aer, Et coelum, et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra? Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris. "

It may be asked, if divine power, instead of operating immediatelythroughout the universe, might not have endowed material atoms at theoutset with certain properties and energies, the gradual evolution ofwhich in after ages would produce all the phenomena of nature, withoutthe necessity of his incessant presence, agency, and control. Certainly, we may not put bounds to omnipotence; though we may assert of a givenhypothesis respecting its exercise, that it is inconceivable, orinvolves wholly incongruous ideas. The necessary attributes of matter, according to our conception of it, are extension, figure, impenetrability, and inertness; the properties of mind are thought, sensation, activity, and will. These attributes are essential, notarbitrary or contingent; for they make up our whole idea of thesubstances in which they inhere. We can no more suppose them to beinterchangeable, than we can literally attribute dimensions to an odor, or capacity to a sound. To speak of an extended thought, an impenetrablesensation, an inert activity, is to talk nonsense; it is equally absurdto attribute thought to extension, sensation to figure, activity toinertness, [3] or causal agency to matter. True, mind may be superaddedto matter, without being confounded with it, and without any exchange ofproperties. And in fact, this is the only conceivable form of thehypothesis now before us; namely, the theory of the ancientmetaphysicians, that every particle of matter and every aggregate of itis accompanied, or animated, by a distinct mind. "_Ea quoque [sidera]rectissime et animantia esse, et sentire atque intelligere, dicantur. _"If this be a more intelligible and plausible supposition than that ofone infinite mind, pervading the universe, and producing all physicalchanges by its irresistible power, the materialist is welcome to thebenefit of it. 

As respects the manner in which all physical effects are produced by thedirect action of the Deity, we are not bound to offer any explanation, as the subject confessedly transcends the limit of the human faculties. It is enough for us, that the supposition is the only conceivable one, the only mode of accounting for the phenomena of the material world. Butas man is made in the image of his Creator, in the union for a time ofhis spirit with his corporeal frame we may find at least an intelligibleillustration of the connection of God with the universe. Discarding theword _mind_, as the fruitful source of vague speculation and error, letus look for a moment at that of which it is a mere synonyme, --at the manhimself. The sentient, thinking being, which I call _self_, is anabsolute unit. Duality or complexity cannot be predicated of it in anyintelligible sense. Personality is indivisible; _I_ am _one_. This beingis capable of acting in different ways; and for convenience of speechand classification, these modes of action have been arranged as theresults of different faculties; though, in truth, it is no more properto attribute to the person distinct powers and organs for comparison, memory, and judgment, than to give to the body separately a walkingfaculty, a lifting faculty, a jumping faculty, and so on. In the onecase, these faculties are but different aspects of mental power; in theother, but different applications of muscular strength. Of course, thecomplex material frame, with its numberless adaptations andarrangements, in which this being is lodged, is truly foreign from theman himself, having a kind of connection with him, in reality, but onedegree more intimate than that of his clothes. The body is the curiouslycontrived machine through which the man communicates with the materialworld. The eye is but his instrument to see with, the ear is his trumpetfor communicating sound to him, the leg is his steed, and the arm hissoldier. Many of these instruments and parts may be removed, or becomeunfit for use, without impairing, in the slightest degree, his distinctpersonality and intelligence. The particles of all of them are in astate of constant flux and renovation, so that man changes his body onlya little more frequently than he does his coat. His whole corporealframe is connected with him but for a while, and is then thrown aside, like an old garment, for which he has no farther use. 

But during the period of its existence, how close and intimate inappearance is this union with the body! Sensation extends to every partof it, every fibre is instinct with life, and the direction of the willis absolute and immediate over every muscle and joint, as if the wholefabric and its tenant were one homogeneous system. The will tires not ofits supremacy, and is not wearied with the number of volitions requiredof it to keep every joint in action, and every organ performing itsproper function. It would not delegate the control of the fingers to aninferior power, nor contrive mechanical or automatic means for movingthe extremities. Within its sphere, it is sole sovereign, and is notperplexed with the variety and constant succession of its duties, extending to every part of the complex structure of which it is theanimating and directing spirit. Sensation is not cumbered with themultitude of impressions it receives, nor is the fineness of perceptiondulled by repeated exercise. The sharpness of its edge rather improvesby use, and we become more heedful of its lightest intimations. Is itirreverent, then, to suppose that this union of body and soul shadowsforth the connection between the material universe and the Infinite One?How else, indeed, can we attach any meaning to the attributes ofomnipresence and omnipotence? The unity of action, the regularity ofantecedence and consequence in outward events, which we commonlydesignate by the lame metaphor of _law_, then become the fittingexpression of the consistent doings of an all-wise Being, in whom thereis no variableness, neither shadow of turning. The Creator, then, is nolonger banished from his creation, nor is the latter an orphan, or adeserted child. It is not a great machine, that was wound up at thebeginning, and has continued to run on ever since, without aid ordirection from its artificer. As well might we conceive of the body of aman moving about, and performing all its appropriate functions, withoutthe principle of life, or the indwelling of an immortal soul. Theuniverse is not lifeless or soulless. It is informed by God's spirit, pervaded by his power, moved by his wisdom, directed by his beneficence, controlled by his justice. 

 "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. "

The harmony of physical and moral laws is not a mere fancy, nor a forcedanalogy; they are both expressions of the same will, manifestations ofthe same spirit. 

The objection, that it is beneath the dignity of the Almighty--[Greek:autourgein hapanta]--to put his hand to every thing--is founded on afalse analogy, as is seen by the form in which Aristotle states it. "Ifit befit not the state and majesty of Xerxes, the great king of Persia, that he should stoop to do all the meanest offices himself, much lesscan this be thought suitable for God. " The two cases do not correspondin the very feature essential to the argument. An earthly potentate, unable to execute with his own hand all the affairs of which he hascontrol, is obliged to delegate the larger portion of them to hisservants; selecting the lightest part for himself, he gratifies hispride by calling it also the noblest, though the distinction isfactitious, there being no real difference, in point of honor ordignity, between them. Omnipotence needs no minister, and is notexhausted or wearied by the cares of a universe. Power in action is moretruly sublime than power in repose; and surely it is not derogatory todivine energy to sustain and continue that which it was certainly notbeneath divine wisdom to create and appoint. Rightly considered, toguide the falling of a leaf from a tree is an office as worthy ofomnipotence, as the creation of a world. "Are not two sparrows sold fora farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without yourFather. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. "

Equally lame is the oft-repeated comparison of the universe to a machineof man's device, which is considered the more perfect the less mendingor interposition it requires. A machine is a labor-saving contrivance, fitted to supply the weakness and deficiencies of him who uses it. Wherethe want does not exist, it is absurd to suppose the creation of theremedy. Human conceptions of the Deity are for ever at fault in imputingto him the errors and deficiencies which belong to our own limitedfaculties and dependent condition. Hence the idea of the Epicureans, that sublime indifference and unbroken repose are the only states ofbeing worthy of the gods. Viewed in the light of true philosophy, noless than of Christianity, how base and grovelling does this conceptionappear! The sublime description of the pagan poet becomes the fittingexpression and defence of the very theory it was designed tocontrovert:--

 "Nam (proh sancta Deûm tranquillâ pectora pace, Quæ placidum degunt ævum, vitamque serenam!) Quis regere immensi summam, quis habere profundi Indu manu validas potis est moderanter habenas? Quis pariter coelos omneis convertere? et omneis Ignibus ætheriis terras suffire feraceis? Omnibus inque locis esse omni tempore presto? Nubibus ut tenebras faciat, coelique serena Concutiat sonitu? tum fulmina mittat, et ædeis Sæpe suas disturbet?"

Returning to the theory of our author, may we not now characterize it asat once unfounded in its details, inconceivable in its operation, andvulgar and mechanical in its design? Considered in their proper aspect, and by the light of a sound philosophy, whatever well accredited factsor legitimate deductions he has gleaned from the whole field of modernscience afford the most striking evidence and illustration of that viewof creation which is directly at variance with his own hypothesis. Hehas, in fact, exposed the insufficiency of what are called organic ormechanical laws to supply the losses, and bridge over the interruptions, that have occurred in the world's history. Geology has rendered atleast one signal service to the cause of natural religion, byeffectually doing away with the old atheistic objection, that, for aughtwe know, the present constitution of things never had a beginning, buthas gone on for ever renewing itself in an endless series ofgenerations. Science now tells us distinctly, that time was when "theearth was without form and void, " no animated thing appearing "upon theface of the deep"; that afterwards, "the waters were gathered togetherunto one place, and the dry land appeared. " Then "the earth broughtforth grass, and herb yielding seed _after his kind_, and the treeyielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind. " Next wasfulfilled the command, "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the movingcreature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in theopen firmament of heaven. " Then appeared "the beast of the earth afterhis kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepethupon the earth after his kind. " Last of all, "God created man in his ownimage, male and female created he them. " We are not merely quotingScripture; we are repeating the facts positively affirmed by thegeologists, and incorporated by our author into his "history"--asauthentic leaves taken from the "stone book"--_in the same order_ inwhich they are narrated in the first chapter of Genesis. The coincidencein the order of succession is certainly remarkable. 

Geology farther informs us, that, at different times, all the animatedtribes which had peopled the earth's surface passed away, or becameextinct, and were replaced by new species of different organization andcharacteristics; and probably at many other periods, as well as onoccasions of some great catastrophe in the earth's crust, races whollyunlike any that had preceded them were introduced, from time to time, asnew inhabitants of the globe. Here, then, was an absolute necessity forthe continuous operation of an intelligent creative power, apart fromthe blind mechanical laws, which, at the utmost, could only allow eachspecies, once introduced, to continue its kind. The marvellousadaptations of these new races to the altered conditions of the earth'ssurface when they appeared, then, become additional proofs of the wisdomand constant oversight of a designing Creator. They came not till allthings were ready; they appeared when the extinction of former tribeshad left a gap for them in the scale of being. The gradual developmentof what are called the powers of nature, --or, to speak moreintelligibly, the successive improvements in the habitations intendedfor higher and higher races of animated life, --and the similarity ofplan on which these races were organized, the scheme being preserved inall its essential features through countless generations, show unity ofdesign, and prove that the works of creation, however separated in time, must be attributed to _one_ intelligent author. The same conclusionfollows almost irresistibly from the gradations at present observableboth in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so that all the races may bearranged, not indeed in a linear series, but in families or groups, bearing analogous relations to each other, and showing a generalprogress from the more simple to the more complex forms. Surely, thesefacts, so clearly explained by our author, instead of sustaining thecorpuscular philosophy, directly militate with it, and afford the mostsatisfactory proof of the doctrine of the theist, and the theory ofcontinuous divine agency. We have hardly ever met with a book thatfurnished more complete materials for its own refutation. 

After all, the question is a very simple one. We have only to decidewhether it is more likely, that the complex system of things in themidst of which we live, --the beautiful harmonies between the organic andinorganic world, the nice arrangements and curious adaptations thatobtain in each, the simplicity and uniformity of the general plan towhich the vast multitude of details may be reduced, --was built up, andis now sustained, by one all-wise and all-powerful Being, or byparticles of brute matter, acting of themselves, without direction, interference, or control. We cannot now say, that possibly the systemnever had a beginning, but has always existed under the form in which itnow appears to us; geology has disproved _that_ supposition mosteffectually. Choose ye, then, between mind and matter, between anintelligent being and a stone, for the parentage and support of thiswonderful system. For our own part, we will adopt the conclusion of oneof the most eloquent of those old pagan philosophers, on whose eyes thelight of immediate revelation never dawned:--"_Hic ego non mirer essequemquam, qui sibi persuadeat, corpora quædam solida atque individua viet gravitate ferri, mundumque effici ornatissimum et pulcherrimum excorum corporum concursione fortuitâ? Quòd si mundum efficere potestconcursus atomorum, cur porticum, cur templum, cur domum, cur urbem nonpotest, quæ sunt minus operosa, et multò quidem faciliora? Certè itatemerè de mundo effutiunt, ut mihi quidem nunquam hunc admirabilemcoeli ornatum, qui locus est proximus, suspexisse videantur. _"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _N. A. Review_, Vol. LVI. , pp. 339-351. ]

[Footnote 2: "It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operateupon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must, ifgravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innategravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential tomatter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a_vacuum_, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through whichtheir action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me sogreat an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophicalmatters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravitymust be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certainlaws. "--_Newton's letter in Bentley's Works_, Vol. III. , pp. 211, 212. ]

[Footnote 3: And yet, so strong is the propensity to metaphor, thatscientific men talk of the _vis inertiæ_ as a true force, though theideas expressed by the two Latin words are certainly incongruous. Themistake here arises from confounding inertness, or resistance toforce, --a merely negative idea, --with the true force which is necessaryto overcome it; or rather, since force can only be measured by itsresults, and must always be adequate to the effect produced, inquirershave adopted the convenient hypothesis of two antagonistic forces, notalways recollecting that one of them is merely passive. ]