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RECENT SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS 
 
'THOUGHTS ON RECENT 
 
 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS 
 
 AND THEIR RELATION TO RELIGION 
 
 STRAHAN & CO. 
 
 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
 
 1872 
 
 [All Rights reserved."]. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO. 
 
 CITY ROAD. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ^ I ""HE revelations of the hitherto unknown 
 mysteries of the great depths of the 
 ocean, disclosed by the recent deep-sea 
 soundings, and communicated by Dr. Car- 
 penter, have shown that some of the calcula- 
 tions of geologists as to the time represented 
 by certain conditions of fossils and their 
 strata are altogether erroneous ; and scientific 
 men now learn that life, which it was con- 
 fidently asserted could not exist in the dark- 
 ness of the great deep, or under its great 
 pressure, is actually abundant, and that 
 
vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Species identical with species existing in our 
 shallow seas find an existence there. That 
 we should have fallen into such errors, and 
 induction, deduction, and ratiocination (to use 
 the Mill terminology), be found in fault, is 
 not surprising, for astronomers, whose obser- 
 vations and calculations are more within the 
 range of " verification," are waiting for the 
 transit of Venus, to ascertain whether or 
 not an error of four millions of miles (a small 
 fraction indeed of the whole distance) has 
 been made in the calculation of the earth's 
 distance from the sun. The discovery of the 
 remains of pre-historic man under certain 
 circumstances in Western Europe is adduced 
 as proof of his great antiquity, and the 
 revival of the Lamarckian theory, the descent 
 of man from the ape, throws back our origin 
 to a very remote period. Some geologists of 
 
INTRODUCTION. VU 
 
 the first order afiirm, some equally eminent 
 deny, that the operations and forces of Nature 
 have been the same, and of the same magni- 
 tude and intensity, from the earliest dawn of 
 creation to our own epoch, and any numbers 
 of thousands of years, heavy '' drafts on the 
 bank of time,'' as Sir C. Lyell calls them, are 
 assumed to be the time required for the 
 accumulations of certain ' deposits, deltas of 
 rivers, gravel-beds, and the erosion of valleys 
 and gorges. To the consideration of such 
 theories and conjectures the following pages 
 are devoted, in an earnest desire for the 
 elucidation of truth, the object of true science. 
 It must, however, be observed that, inasmuch 
 as some of the theories referred to, and to 
 be considered, are founded upon deductions 
 derived for the most part from conjectures 
 with a minimum of fact to support them, and, 
 
VIU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 from the nature of the case, incapable of 
 verification, the argument must necessarily, in 
 various instances, be confined to showing that 
 the probabilities are as great on one side of 
 the question as the other. The discoveries of 
 Dr. Carpenter show the necessity of not 
 blindly concurring in scientific or so-called 
 scientific conclusions, however eminent the 
 authority which has promulgated them. The 
 views of geologists of the greatest eminence — 
 the loss of one of whom, the late Sir R. 
 Murchison, all geologists must deplore — are 
 so antagonistic on some material points, that 
 the uncertainty of the Tjera causa of cer- 
 tain geological phenomena, unfortunately in- 
 capable of actual proof, is rendered still more 
 uncertain. It will therefore, it is hoped, 
 be considered a legitimate occupation, where 
 " doctors differ," to inquire into the subject- 
 
INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 matter of their difference, as well as to 
 consider arguments as liable to error as 
 those which the deep-sea soundings have 
 detected. • 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ANTIQUITY OF MAN I 
 
 DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME .... 28 
 
 LA TINIERE .47 
 
 PRE-HISTORIC MAN 72 
 
 DARWINISM lOI 
 
 PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON DARWINISM . . . 148 
 
 THE DELUGE 243 
 
 THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 285 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 '^ I ^HE conjectures of some modern philoso- 
 phers respecting the immense antiquity 
 of the human race have been of late founded 
 upon discoveries made in various places of 
 the juxtaposition of human remains, bones, or 
 implements, with the bones of extinct fossil 
 animals, in gravel-beds or in caverns, above 
 or beneath their stalagmite floors. 
 
 Sir C. Lyell tells us * — " That man is, 
 geologically speaking, of very modern origin 
 we may assume, although we have obtained 
 satisfactory proofs that he was contemporary 
 with the mammoth and many other extinct 
 mammalia, and that he has survived con- 
 
 * "Principles of Geology," vol. ii. p. 451. 
 B 
 
SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 siderable changes in the physical geography 
 of the globe." At p. 74 is a similar statement, 
 but subject to a very important condition — 
 '' if their [i.e. the fossil remains) geological 
 position has been correctly ascertained." 
 
 Sir Charles also informs us of the immense 
 quantities of carcasses and remains of mam- 
 moths [Elephas primigenms and Rhmocerus 
 stichorinus) preserved in frozen sand or mud 
 found in Siberia ; also that Tilesius declares 
 his belief that the bones left in Northern 
 Russia exceed all the elephants now living 
 on the globe. We are also informed by Dr. 
 Wiseman ("Essays," p. 22}^) that the dogs, and 
 even some of the men of the Tungusian chief, 
 Schumakoff, fed upon the flesh of these fossil 
 creatures in 1799. We have therefore before 
 us the fact that the remains of extinct mam- 
 malia — extinct, for we know not how many 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 thousand years — may not only be found in 
 juxtaposition with human remains of the pre- 
 sent day, but are actually so completely ice- 
 preserved as to furnish food for bears, wolves, 
 &c., and for men who relish them. 
 
 It is evident that to a period of intense 
 cold — a glacial period — must be attributed 
 the destruction of those vast herds of mam- 
 moths, and that it must have been sudden in 
 its effects i§ most probable, otherwise the 
 flesh of these animals would have had time to 
 decay and perish, instead of being preserved 
 by frost, snow, or ice ; besides, had the 
 intensity of the coldness of the climate been 
 gradual, the mammoths, if endowed with the 
 sagacity of the elephant of our time, would 
 have migrated to a more genial climate. 
 
 As the rivers of Siberia rise in the south and 
 fall into the Arctic Sea, it would appear that 
 
SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 some great flood had swept away all living 
 creatures from a more genial, though still a 
 cold climate, to the northward into an arctic 
 one. How suddenly they may have been 
 frozen up, Hue, in his "Voyage dans le 
 Thibet," vol. ii. p. 219, has shown, having seen 
 a troop of fifty wild oxen encrusted in the ice, 
 their heads above the surface, their eyes 
 pecked out by eagles and ravens.* But 
 whether the elephants were in like manner 
 suddenly frozen up, or whether they waited 
 patiently for centuries to be by degrees so 
 destroyed, we have the positive fact that their 
 remains are associated with those of recent 
 animals, either in the arctic seas or on the 
 earth, and so completely preserved as to 
 supply food for men and animals many 
 thousand years after their destruction. We 
 
 * Sir Charles Lyell's ** Principles," vol. i. p. 190. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 may also conclude that some day or other a 
 knife may be found under the bones of a 
 mammoth, but we certainly could not extract 
 from its position any proof of the immense 
 antiquity of the man who made it, as is done 
 in the similar case of the flint instruments 
 found associated with mammoth bones. 
 
 The geological evidences of one or more 
 glacial periods are numerous and convincing. 
 We have also reason to believe that in the 
 times of pre-historic man a far colder climate 
 prevailed over Europe than at present ; as for 
 instance, among other reasons, the bones of 
 the reindeer are found in the South of France. 
 This state of climate would be perhaps the 
 last lingering years of a glacial period, per- 
 haps the same as that which destroyed the 
 mammoths of Siberia. But this or any other 
 glacial period would have destroyed other 
 
SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 extinct mammalia — the hippopotamus as well 
 as the mammoth and rhinoceros — and would 
 equally have enclosed them in (it might 
 almost be said) an everlasting preserving case 
 of ice, like the mammoth and rhinoceros of 
 Siberia, and would have supplied food to the 
 then living animals and prehistoric man, as 
 it did to the Tungusians. Therefore the jux- 
 taposition of the remains of men with those of 
 extinct mammalia is no proof of the contempo- 
 raneous existence of those men and mammals, 
 any more than the remains of the mammoth, 
 &c., now in the British Museum or that of 
 St. Petersburg, are proofs of our contempo- 
 raneity with the ancient mammoth or rhino- 
 ceros. Man may or may not have been 
 " contemporary with the mammoth and other 
 extinct mammalia ; " but the discovery of his 
 remains associated with theirs, on which the 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 argument for their contemporaneity is founded, 
 is no proof whatever of the fact, or the deduc- 
 tion from it, the great antiquity of prehistoric 
 man, inasmuch as those extinct mammalia 
 may have lived at a time as far removed 
 from the time when the men existed with 
 whom their remains are associated, as we 
 are from the time when the mammoth and 
 rhinoceros roamed in the forests of Siberia. 
 At the same time, as it is impossible to say 
 when these animals perished from off the 
 face of the earth, their antiquity may, after 
 all, not be so very remote, and their extinc- 
 tion may only have preceded by a short 
 time the reindeer of France or Germany, 
 the Ursiis spelceus perhaps, and other ex- 
 tinct animals now only found as fossils, and 
 which may be considered historical animals, 
 as Caesar and others have noticed their exis- 
 
8 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 tence in historic times. The curious and 
 clever sketch of a mammoth upon a bit of 
 mammoth tusk, found in the cave of the 
 Madeleine, in the Dordogne, a copy of which 
 is given in Sir J. Lubbock's " Origin of Civi- 
 lization," &c., p. 25, would certainly appear 
 to show the probable existence of the mam- 
 moth and the artist who sketched it, but it does 
 not amount to a proof of such coexistence. 
 Whole carcasses of these fossil mammoths 
 having been found in Siberia, this sketch may 
 have been taken from one such exposed car- 
 cass, as Adams might have made a drawing 
 of the entire carcass he discovered in 1803.* 
 
 From the discovery of the fossil remains of 
 extinct animals and of man's supposed con- 
 temporaneous existence. Sir John Lubbock 
 says, " The fauna of the country [in northern 
 
 Lyell's " Principles," vol. i. p. 184. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 France] must have been indeed unlike what 
 it is now. Along the banks of the river 
 ranged a savage race of hunters and fisher- 
 men, and in the forests wandered the mam- 
 moth, the two-horned rhinoceros, a species 
 of tiger, the musk ox, the reindeer, and the 
 urus." Does the presence of the bones 
 of the mammoth and rhinoceros,* mixed as 
 they must be with some human reliquiae at 
 the present day in Siberia, justify this posi- 
 tive assertion ? As well may it be said hun- 
 dreds of years hence, when present facts 
 shall have been forgotten — " The fauna of 
 Siberia must have been indeed unlike what it 
 is now. Along the banks of the rivers (Lena, 
 &c.) ranged a race of Russian hunters and 
 fishermen, and in the forests wandered the 
 mammoth, the rhinoceros, &c." 
 
 * " Pre-historic Times," p. 308. 
 
lO SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 The flint implements found in the valley 
 of the Somme, near the Reculvers, and many 
 other places in different parts of the world, 
 at considerable depths under gravel-beds, are 
 alleged as a presumption of the great antiquity 
 of our race. In the first place, it is necessary 
 to consider in what manner such gravel-beds 
 are formed. These beds consist of fragments 
 of flint, quartz, &c., some rounded and rubbed 
 smooth, but principally broken and angular, 
 and mixed with silt and sand. The effect 
 of flowing water upon stones, w^hether that 
 of a river or of the tide, is to round the edges 
 and smooth the surfaces, and form what is 
 usually called shingle — a process not requiring 
 any great length of time, as we know, by 
 finding on sea-beaches, and in rivers' beds, 
 rounded fragments of very recent glass bottles 
 and hard stoneware. But gravel-beds, unlike 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. II 
 
 shingle, are composed of a large proportion 
 of broken angular stones, much like what is 
 found in the plain of debris at the foot of a 
 glacier. Sometimes, interspersed, are found 
 large transported blocks, which may have 
 been borne along on a moving calotte of snow 
 or glacier, or floated to their present position 
 upon, or encased in, blocks of ice, or carried 
 there by violent floods, such as that of the 
 valley of Martigni. The great gravel-beds, 
 therefore, are probably due to the combined 
 or separate action of ice and floods. " Glaciers 
 cover many thousand square miles in Iceland, 
 descending from the mountains and pushing 
 far into the lowlands. This tendency of the 
 ice to encroach has very materially diminished 
 the habitable quantity of ground."* These 
 glaciers necessarily push before them great 
 
 * Mrs. Somerville's "Physical Geography," p. 192. 
 
12 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 quantities of ground and broken rock or 
 gravel. 
 
 It is supposed that, from the identity of the 
 flora and fauna of England and those of the 
 Continent, there must have been a communi- 
 cation between them. Mr. Damon, in the 
 *' Handbook of Geology of Weymouth," p. 
 152, says — "Professor E. Forbes has shown 
 that the animals and plants of living British 
 species are chiefly of Germanic types, and 
 could only have found their way hither 
 by strict communication with the Continent 
 overland. The greatest sea depth between 
 Weymouth and Cape la Hogue is 45 fathoms, 
 between Dover and Calais 30 fathoms. Sup- 
 posing the bed of the channel raised 100 ft., a 
 bar which crosses from the coast near New- 
 haven to Dieppe would be dry land." 
 
 There is also a tradition that the island 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. I3 
 
 Lomea existed somewhere in the upper part 
 of the English Channel, and also that the 
 Goodwin Sands were once an island, the 
 property of the Earl of Goodwin ; nor is there 
 any difficulty in accounting for their destruc- 
 tion, as Ave have the instance of the Scroby 
 Sand, once an island and the subject of 
 litigation, utterly destroyed in a single gale, 
 and also eight out of fifteen islands of Zealand 
 swallowed up by the sea, temp. William Rufus. 
 When the borings were made in the Goodwin 
 Sands, with a view to the erection of a light- 
 house upon it, the solid chalk was found at a 
 depth of 80 ft., a chalk ridge, the nucleus of 
 the sands. It is not improbable that this 
 ridge, like the Needles or the projecting chalk 
 pillars near Swanage, may have been con- 
 nected with the chalk cliffs of Ramsgate. 
 The degradation of this 80 ft. of chalk might 
 
14 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 be the Avork of a few years in a period of 
 intense cold as compared with degradation 
 under a temperate climate, which would be 
 the work of as many centuries. Dr. Kane has 
 shown in his " Arctic Explorations " (see p. 29) 
 how rapidly such degradation is effected in 
 the present *^' glacial period " of the Arctic 
 regions. Possibly this degradation may 
 have been assisted by some such convulsive 
 action as that which forced up the great chalk 
 cliffs at the Needles at nearly a right-angle 
 to their original position, and also possibly 
 broke the continuity of the chalk deposit 
 between the island and the opposite coast 
 near Swanage. This may in some measure 
 give a countenance to the tradition. Tradition, 
 encumbered as it may be with extravagances, 
 has probably a certain foundation of truth, 
 and although not altogether trustworthy, is 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 15 
 
 certainly as valuable as conjecture. If then 
 we suppose the channel between Dover and 
 Calais (its greatest depth being only 30 
 fathoms), closed by a connecting isthmus either 
 wholly or in part, by an island, or blocked up 
 with the ice of a glacial period, the English 
 Channel, — or La Manche, its more descriptive 
 name, — would then have been much in the 
 condition and shape of the Bay of Fundy. 
 There the tide rushes in with great violence 
 and rapidity, and is raised in some parts of 
 the bay to the height of nearly 100 ft. 
 
 At present the great Atlantic tidal wave, 
 checked by the western coast of Normandy, 
 rises there to the height of 45 ft. ; and in the 
 Bristol Channel, where it flows into the 
 estuary of the river Severn, to about 60 ft. 
 How much greater, therefore, would be the 
 rise and fall of the tide in the funnel-shaped 
 
l6 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 English Channel, if it were closed, like the 
 Bay of Fundy, at its extremity between 
 Dover and Calais, by an isthmus, by ice, or 
 if it were much reduced in width by an 
 island. The rise of the North Sea flood-tide 
 would also, but perhaps in a minor degree, 
 be greatly increased. During the glacial 
 period, therefore, the tides rising to a much 
 higher level than at present, would have 
 drifted icebergs or floes not only up and 
 down the Channel, but also up and down 
 the rivers and estuaries falling into it, such 
 as the river Somme ; at one time heaping up, 
 at another throwing down, masses of gravel, 
 into which they had converted the shingle 
 or rolled stones of the rivers, and bearing 
 with them the bones, with or without the 
 frozen flesh, of ancient fossil animals, as the 
 Siberian fossil mammoths must now be 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 17 
 
 floated, ice-borne, up and down the rivers of 
 Siberia. Now supposing a mitigated glacial 
 period, or rather a very cold climate, the 
 termination of that period in which man and 
 the reindeer existed on the banks of the 
 river Somme, and suppose these men to have 
 made their flint instruments on its banks. 
 We * must infer that considerable floods in- 
 vaded the river from the melting of the snow, 
 &CC. ; and we know that rivers, protected even 
 by art, will, under such circumstances, destroy 
 their sides or embankments, washing every- 
 thing on the surface away into the bottom 
 of the stream. The flints, knives, &c., would 
 then be found at the bottom of the river, 
 and, subsequently, floods or travelling ice- 
 floes would operate to bury them at any 
 depth beneath where they were originally 
 deposited. 
 
 C 
 
l8 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 An illustration of this method of accounting 
 for the discovery of the buried remains of 
 human art is afforded by Mr. J. Ferguson, 
 ^ who says in a paper on the recent changes 
 in the delta of the Ganges : — " From these 
 data it will be perceived how fallacious any 
 conclusions must be which are drawn from 
 borings in the strata of deltas, and indenta- 
 tions formed from local superficial deposits. 
 I myself have seen the bricks which formed 
 the foundation of a house I had built carried 
 away and strewed along the bottom of a 
 river at a depth of 30 or 40 ft. below the 
 level of the country. Since then the river 
 has passed on, and a new village now 
 stands on the spot where my bungalow 
 stood, but 40 ft. above its ruins ; and 
 any one who chooses to dig on the spot 
 may find my reliquiae there, and form what 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 19 
 
 theory he likes as to the antiquity of my 
 age/'* 
 
 This treatment of the mystery may likewise 
 account for the absence of human bonesy to- 
 gether with the flint implements, as we may 
 easily conceive the submersion of these imple- 
 ments without inferring that of the manufac- 
 turers — a fate they would as easily have 
 avoided as the tenants of Mr. Ferguson's 
 house. Thus there does not seem any rea- 
 sonable proof of the antiquity of man to be 
 derived from the discovery of flint implements 
 at the bottom of, or at any depth in, drift or 
 gravel-beds associated or not at such depths 
 with fossils of extinct animals. Nor does the 
 depth at which these implements are found 
 give us any reliable measure of their antiquity. 
 
 * "Biblical Antiquity cf Man," Rev. S. Lucas, F.G.S., 
 p. 240. 
 
20 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 as that which was originally on the surface 
 may have been washed far away and buried 
 deep below its original position. 
 
 Many a fine merchant-ship has been swal- 
 lowed up in the quicksands of the Hooghly. 
 In scarcely more than forty-eight hours a 
 vessel of 800 tons has entirely disappeared, 
 leaving a hollow instead of a sand-bank as 
 would be supposed. To what depth such a 
 ship sinks into the earth it is impossible to 
 say, but the very least that could be suggested 
 would be some 40 or 50 ft. The depth, 
 therefore, of the sepulture of such a ship and 
 any of its contents, would be no measure of 
 their antiquity, if at some future period the 
 Hooghly should shift its bed, and some 
 philosopher should dig and find them. Or, 
 if some hundred years hence, no record or 
 tradition of the great earthquake of Lisbon of 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 21 
 
 1755 were preserved, and that on sinking 
 a well or mine near the spot where many 
 hundred persons crowding for safety were 
 swallowed up, there should be found their 
 remains, yet their depth below the surface 
 would afford no measure of their antiquity. 
 In Asia, Italy, South America, and many 
 other parts of the world, such calamities are 
 recorded. How many more must there have 
 been which are not recorded ! We may 
 therefore find remains of animals of man or of 
 his works in strata of any period, possibly, 
 and not improbably, without any concomitant 
 evidence of the earthquake which placed 
 them there. I have been informed that a 
 philosopher, very liberal with millions of 
 years, found the relics of a wine or beer-bottle 
 imbedded in gravel many feet in depth. To 
 the great rise of tide may be attributed many 
 
22 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 of the raised beaches on our coasts, without 
 having recourse to suppositions of upheavals 
 of the earth's crust, local or general. And 
 this rise of tide, combined with the wearing 
 and grinding of icebergs and floes, may- 
 explain more rationally the wearing away 
 of hard rocky cliffs, such as is seen near 
 Dartmouth and elsewhere, than by assigning 
 it, as I have heard ex cathedra in a lecture, to 
 the action of the waves, the eroding action of 
 which is considerably checked, if not pre- 
 vented, by the growth of sea-weed, or by 
 mussels, limpets, and other shell-fish. In the 
 same way the rocks in the bed of a river are 
 commonly protected from abrasion by some 
 kind or other of a slimy lichen. 
 
 Nor does the discovery of human remains of 
 any kind with fossils in caverns under thick 
 beds of stalagmite afford any proof of the 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 23 
 
 antiquity of our race. For it is evident that if 
 bears, — who delight in caverns, — wolves, and 
 other animals, are now feeding upon ancient 
 ice-preserved mammoths, and no doubt they 
 drag portions of them into caverns, if caverns 
 there be, on the river Lena and other Siberian 
 rivers, we may fairly presume, looking back 
 to ancient times, that the carnivora of those 
 days did the same with the ice-preserved 
 animals of the same or some previous glacial 
 period. Parts of them may have been washed 
 or dragged in in a frozen state, not only with 
 the integuments, but even with the flesh entire, 
 and thus the presence of the two joints of the 
 bear's leg of the Brixham cave is accounted 
 for without any necessity for inferring the 
 co-existence of the bear with the makers of 
 the flint knives found in the same cavern, or 
 in immediate contact with its remains. 
 
24 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 If we further consider the greater rise of 
 tide before suggested, and the denuding 
 effects of calottes or plains of moving snow 
 and glaciers streaming down through the 
 valleys of Brixham, and Kent's cavern, besides 
 the action of floods, we have every reason to 
 assume that the bottoms of those valleys once 
 stood at a much higher level than at present, 
 so as to admit of currents of water passing 
 through these caverns, not to mention streams 
 from melted snow through the now silted-up 
 swallow-holes on the surface, which cuttings 
 expose to view, otherwise concealed from our 
 view by the stalactitic formation on the roof of 
 the caverns. The absence of human .bones 
 from so many of these caverns is accounted, 
 or rather apologized, for by the analogous 
 absence of any such remains at the bottom of 
 the now desiccated Haarlem lake, although 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 25 
 
 battles were fought on its waters. Bodies of 
 men and animals after a certain number of 
 days become inflated with the gases of putre- 
 faction and rise to the surface. The bodies of 
 the victims of the battles on the shallow lake 
 would have been drifted, after rising to the 
 surface, to its shores, and if not then decayed 
 or buried, as they probably would be, the 
 bones would be found there, and not in the 
 bottom of the lake. Sunken ships, cannon- 
 balls, &c., are not found, probably because 
 they have sunk too deep into the bottom of 
 the lake ; and as some of these relics of the 
 battles, which must be there, may hereafter be 
 discovered, they will afford additional proof 
 that the depth of the burial of any work of 
 man is no measure of his antiquity. A shovel 
 and hammer which were lost in the first 
 inspection of the bottom of the Thames by the 
 
26 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 diving-bell for the construction of the tunnel, 
 were afterwards found buried 1 8 ft. below the 
 surface of the river's bed.* 
 
 The absence of human bones in the culti- 
 vated bottom of the Haarlem lake, affords no 
 suggestive explanation of their absence from 
 the caverns. But a thick floor of stalagmite 
 covers some of these remains of fossil animals 
 associated with flint and other implements. 
 Surely it is as easy to suppose that the men 
 who made these implements may have used 
 these ancient ice-preserved animals for food, as 
 did the Tungusian chef and his followers ; or, 
 inasmuch as the thickness of the stalagmite is 
 the growth of time, that thickness a few 
 thousand years ago must have been very 
 much less than now, and an accidental blow, 
 or the fall of a heavy block of stone from the 
 
 * Lucas's " Biblical Antiquity of Man," p. 234. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 27 
 
 roof of the cavern, may have made a hole 
 through which the implements might fall or 
 be washed under the bed of stalagmite. Even 
 where a second stalagmite floor may have 
 been formed from the accidental closing or 
 desertion of the cavern, the same circum- 
 stances may cause us to marvel at the 
 associated remains of the works of man and 
 of fossil animals, but by no means allows us 
 to adduce this association as a proof of man's 
 co-existence with extinct fossil animals, and 
 of his great antiquity. 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 
 
 'nr^HE immense periods of time — millions of 
 years — constantly assumed as necessary 
 to account for denudations, accretions of de- 
 posit, &c., appear in many cases unneces- 
 sarily heavy " drafts on the bank of time." 
 Sir Roderick Murchison* has shown the 
 fallacy of the arguments which attribute the 
 denudation of the valley of the Wealden to 
 denuding operations lasting, according to 
 Darwin, some 300,000,000 years. It is as- 
 sumed in these calculations that the degra- 
 dation proceeded at the same rate as at 
 the present day, i.e. under exactly the same 
 
 * Murchison's " Siluria," p. 493. 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 29 
 
 circumstances of climate, temperature, &c., 
 during enormous periods of time. But it is 
 universally acknowledged by all geologists 
 that we have satisfactory evidence of the 
 existence of a glacial period, if not of several, 
 and its effect in the rapid denudation of 
 cliffs, probably of a harder substance than 
 chalk, is abundantly proved by Dr. Kane 
 in his "Arctic Explorations" (vol. ii. p. 22^,). 
 "As we travelled with our empty sledges 
 along a sort of broken track or road which 
 led under the cliffs, I realised very forcibly 
 the influence of the coming summer upon 
 the rocks above us. They were just released 
 from the frost which had bound them so long 
 and so closely, and were rolling down the 
 slopes of the debris with the din of a battle- 
 field, absolutely clogging the ice-belt at the 
 foot. Here and there too a large sheet of 
 
30 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 earth and rocks would leave its bed at once, 
 and gathering mass as it travelled, move 
 downward like a cataract of ruins. The dogs 
 were terrified by the clamour, and could hardly 
 be driven on till it intermitted. But it is not 
 in the season of thaws only that these won- 
 derful geological changes take place. Large 
 rocks are projected in the fall, by the water 
 freezing in the crevices, like the Mons Meg 
 cannon-balls.'' We have no right to assume 
 that the valley of the Wealden, twenty miles 
 wide, was one continuous mass of chalk from 
 cliff to cliff. Nor can we be sure that earth- 
 quakes or landslips may not have contributed 
 to facilitate the work of denudation in the 
 course of a few centuries. Who, contem- 
 plating the present city of Lisbon, would 
 venture to assert, without knowledge of the 
 fact, that such a fearful earthquake as that 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 3I 
 
 of 1755 had well-nigh destroyed it? And 
 what do we know of the periodical alterna- 
 tion of earthquakes in ancient times, when 
 we know so little of it in even modern his- 
 torical times, though we see their effects in 
 the vast rending of mountains in various 
 parts of the world ? 
 
 Mr. J. W. Tayler,* describing the fiords of 
 Greenland, says, " The lofty mountains, 
 rugged, precipitous, and barren, with patches 
 of ice (projections from the great interior 
 glaciers), and snow unmelted by the summer's 
 sun ; with valleys half filled up by enormous 
 angular blocks of stones detached from the 
 sides of the steep mountains by the alternate 
 frosts and thaws ; the solitude, and the almost 
 total absence of life, animal and vege- 
 
 ♦ Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Jan. zS 
 and Feb. 21, 1861. 
 
32 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 table, make up a picture of indescribable 
 desolation." 
 
 The valleys which open into some of the 
 fiords of Norway, now rich with vegetation, 
 show unmistakably that at some former 
 time they presented the same appearance as 
 the valleys of Greenland. They were in 
 the same manner half filled up with an 
 immense heap of fragments of rock and de- 
 tritus, the remains of which are visible, more 
 or less, in many a valley. That of the valley 
 at the end of the Eid Fiord, one of the 
 branches of the Hardanger Fiord, is grandly 
 conspicuous, now intersected by a river, and 
 divided into terraces, probably due to the 
 action of water, and the glacier which once 
 ground over it, leaving moraines and a tent- 
 like mound on its upper surface, and the 
 neighbouring rocks striated and furrowed by 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 33 
 
 the ice. The terraces formed in these valleys 
 are attributed by some geologists to the action 
 of the sea, rather than to the action of ice 
 and torrent. The terraces, however, on the 
 banks of the river Wye, near the spot where 
 Sir R. Murchison first laid his finger on the 
 Silurian formation, cannot certainly be at- 
 tributed to the action of the sea, and they 
 have a strong family likeness to the terraces 
 in Norway and elsewhere. We have, there- 
 fore, ample reason for the supposition that 
 the valley of the Wealden had its share of 
 this violent action. 
 
 Sir Co Lyell estimated the time required 
 for the accumulation of the mud, &c., form- 
 ing the delta deposits of the Mississippi at 
 about 67,000 years, and founded these esti- 
 mates upon calculations and experiments 
 relating to the quantity of sediment con- 
 
 D 
 
34 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 tained in the water in 1866, and an assumed 
 average depth of the fluviatile formation. 
 So that this estimate is founded on the 
 assumption that the average annual amount 
 of deposit was the same during a vast period 
 of time. But there must have been a time 
 when the level of the river was below instead 
 of above the surrounding country, the banks 
 of the river, now about 15 ft. above it, having 
 been the gradual work of the river itself by 
 the deposits left and arrested by vegeta- 
 tion at every rise or overflow in times of 
 floods. Of necessity, therefore, the wash- 
 ings of the surrounding country must have 
 poured into the river a far greater amount 
 of mud, sand, and silt, than now, and a still 
 greater amount when the earth was bare of 
 vegetation and forests, for it is to be pre- 
 sumed forests and vegetation had a begin- 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 35 
 
 ning. When we add to this the effects of a 
 glacial period and the enormous floods which 
 every thaw must have produced, as we see 
 in nearly every valley in Norway, and even 
 in many others of England and of Scotland, 
 surely the calculations made from the amount 
 of deposit at> the present time cannot give a 
 fair average estimate of the time required 
 for the formation of the delta. Sir C. Lyell 
 gives a sketch of the ravine near Milledge- 
 ville, Georgia ("Principles," p. 344), excavated 
 in twenty years 55 ft. deep and 180 ft. 
 broad, and says, "When travelling in Georgia 
 and Alabama, in 1846, I saw in both these 
 States the commencement of hundreds of 
 valleys in places where the native forest had 
 recently been removed." We have direct 
 evidence, therefore, of the effects of the ab- 
 sence of forests. The contents of these 
 
36 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 valleys must have been washed away some- 
 where, either into rivers or lakes, and add to 
 their deltas to an extent far greater than 
 when the native forest existed. The proba- 
 bility, therefore, of similar effects should be 
 taken into consideration in all these calcu- 
 lations ; there may be other effects, such as 
 quantities of blown sand from a parched sur- 
 face. It does not seem true philosophy to 
 found any argument upon so uncertain a basis. 
 The same may be said of the delta of the 
 Ganges, and of the calculations as to the 
 number of centuries required for its forma- 
 tion. Mr. Ferguson's estimate is a period 
 of 5,000 years, while Colonel Strachey sug- 
 gests 13,000. To the other difficulties in 
 making anything like a trustworthy, even 
 approximate, estimate of these accumulations 
 of river deposits, an additional unknown 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 37 
 
 quantity, resulting from possible elevations 
 and depressions, such as that of the *' sunk 
 country " of the Mississippi, must be taken 
 into consideration. 
 
 What dependence can be placed on the 
 calculations made of the time required for 
 the recession of the cataract of Niagara r 
 Mr. Bakewell, from information given him 
 by the first settler who had lived there forty 
 years, supposes that recession to have pro- 
 ceeded at the rate of 3 ft. per annum. Sir 
 C. LyelJ came to the conclusion that '' the 
 average of i ft. a year would be a much 
 more probable conjecture." He tells us "that 
 that part of the chasm which has been the 
 work of the last hundred and fifty years re- 
 sembles, in depth, width, and character, the 
 rest of the gorge which extends seven miles 
 below." The depth and character would 
 
38 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 naturally be the same at whatever rate the 
 recession proceeded ; but the largest cataract 
 — that is, the ividth at the falls — is "more 
 than a third of a mile, or 586 yards 2 ft. 
 broad," not to mention the smaller one of 
 600 ft. ; whereas the rest of the ravine " varies 
 from 200 or 400 yards in w^idth from cliff to 
 cliff." One would therefore conclude that 
 from this difference between the width at the 
 falls, no less than from nearly 400 and 200 
 yards, the work of the last hundred and 
 fifty years can scarcely be said to resemble 
 in width the work which cut through the 
 ravine. I think that part of it where the 
 whirlpool rages, and where once apparently 
 the river seems to have fallen over, is also 
 wider than the rest of the ravine. It cannot 
 be called a far-fetched supposition to attribute 
 the origin of the ravine to a fissure caused 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 39 
 
 by a subterranean n\ovement, such as that of 
 181 1-12 in the sunk country near New Madrid, 
 some few thousand or hundred years ago — a 
 fissure on a larger scale than those described 
 by Sir Charles in his " Second Visit to North 
 America," vol. ii. p. 235:— "I traced two of 
 them (fissures) continuously for more than 
 half a mile I might easily have mis- 
 taken them for artificial trenches if my com- 
 panion had not known them within his recol- 
 lection as deep as wells." The river, with 
 the help of the severe winters of the climate, 
 especially in a glacial period, which Professor 
 Charles Martins [Rcvuc dcs Daix Mondcs, 
 1867) supposes may have prevailed in the 
 time of man on earth, would have made short 
 work of cutting out the ravine (see p. 42), and 
 the process would be slower in proportion as 
 the water increased the width of the ravine. 
 
40 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 But it is said that the horizontality of the 
 strata at both sides of the ravine is so per- 
 fect that there are no signs of an upheaval 
 which would destroy the horizontality. If 
 indeed the horizontality is so perfect and the 
 strata not " inclined at so slight an angle that 
 they would be termed, in ordinary geological 
 language, horizontal,"* it does not follow that 
 the horizontality destroyed by an upheaval 
 may not have been restored gradually by a 
 slow subsidence while the river was perform- 
 ing its task of widening its path. Such up- 
 heavals and subsidences are very commonly 
 conjectured to account for many a geological 
 phenomenon. The immense period of sixty- 
 seven thousand years as the duration of the 
 work of the river, from the cataract to Lake 
 Ontario and its corollary, the great antiquity 
 
 * "■ Principles of Geology," vol. i. p. ii8. 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME, , 4I 
 
 of the present crust of the earth, may be a 
 great mistake. Sir C, Lyell, anticipating the 
 above suggestion as to an original rent or 
 fissure subsequently enlarged by the action of 
 the river, such rents, be it remembered, being 
 common in every rocky country, says : — 
 "There is no ground for supposing that the 
 excavation was assisted by an original rent in 
 the rocks, because there is no fissure at pre- 
 sent in the limestone at the falls, where the 
 moving waters alone have the power to cut 
 their way backwards/' * This seems any- 
 thing but a valid objection. The moving 
 waters would " cut their way backwards " 
 not only at the end of the fissure, but at the 
 sides adjacent to it, and thus the head of the 
 rent may long since have been obliterated by 
 the water and winter's ice and frost ; for their 
 * Lyell's ''• Travels in North America," p. 31. 
 
42 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 effect, together with the constant humidity 
 from the spray, in the destruction of the rock, 
 would tend to enlarge the head of the fissure 
 to a greater degree than the rest of the ravine. 
 Or the rent may have had two heads, divided 
 by the higher ground of which the island 
 formed a part of it, as much of that may also 
 have been cut away, and thus we may account 
 for the fall on the American as on the Cana- 
 dian side. The very bird's-eye view of the 
 river given in the "Principles," vol. i. p. 338, 
 shows two lateral or transverse rents or fis- 
 sures on either side of the ravine ; an " ori- 
 ginal rent in the rocks " is therefore not 
 improbable, to say the least. But, rent or no 
 rent, if the Simeto in the course of two cen- 
 turies has eroded a passage from fifty to 
 several hundred feet wide, and in some parts 
 40 or 50 ft. deep, the rock moreover cut 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 43 
 
 through consisting of a homogeneous mass of 
 hard blue rock, as Sir Charles tells us [ibid, 
 P- 357)j the Niagara River, without such rent, 
 may have cut its way through the softer rock 
 of its channel in a comparatively short time, 
 assisted by a glacial period, and a climate of 
 far greater severity than that of Sicily. Sir 
 R. Murchison ("Siluria," p. 496) *' dissents from 
 those who would account for the production 
 of all valleys and gorges by the action of the 
 water that has flowed in them." This in- 
 stance of Niagara may be fairly considered 
 one of the cases of rivers in which, as he sayvS, 
 they " simply flow in the gorges prepared for 
 them by previous geological disturbance " 
 (p. 498, ibid.). 
 
 Any one seeing the vast terraces heaped up 
 hundreds of feet high in the valleys of the 
 Norwegian fiords, with, in some instances, 
 
44 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 the remains on the highest level of ancient 
 moraines and tent - like mounds, the exact 
 counterparts of those at the foot of recent 
 glaciers, or, to come nearer home, ancient 
 terraces composed of drift and boulders, evi- 
 dently brought dov^n by the violent action of 
 ice or v^ater, or both, far above the level of the 
 present river-banks, which may be observed 
 more or less in many a mountain and many a 
 lowland valley in Great Britain, will scarcely 
 be persuaded to believe that the forces which 
 heaped up these vast masses were not greater 
 and more violent than those which are now 
 in operation in the same regions, and that, 
 consequently, though there may have been a 
 gradual diminution in the force and rapidity 
 of denuding agencies of all kinds as age 
 succeeded age, any calculations founded upon 
 the basis of the annual rate of deposit at the 
 
DRAFTS ON THE BANK OF TIME. 45 
 
 present day cannot fail to be deceptive.* To 
 compare great things with small, the Rhine- 
 land of the present day, with its terraces 
 above terraces, the handiwork of man, substi- 
 tuting for the sterile rock bright and luxuriant 
 vineyards, seems to resemble the great work 
 of the Creator, who, before vegetation was 
 in existence, prepared the earth for its pro- 
 duction and the living creatures it was to 
 sustain, and changed the arid rock, by denu- 
 dation and disintegration, into the vast gar- 
 den of earth — a process which, once com- 
 
 * " On several mountains I visited, stones exposed to the 
 atmosphere were crumbling. On Mount Cunningham I had 
 satisfactory proof of it. Small mounds of stone, that have 
 evidently crumbled off the larger mountains, may be seen lying 
 at the base. The winters are doing their levelling work and 
 doing it rapidly."— Captain Hall's Life with the Esquimau Xy 
 
 P-35- 
 
46 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 pleted, would appear to require, like the 
 Rhinelander's vineyard, only occasional and 
 trifling restoration as compared with the first 
 efforts. 
 
LA TINIERE. 
 
 A NOTHER "heavy draft upon the bank 
 of time" is drawn by Sir J. Lubbock, 
 from the observ^ations of Mr. Morlot on the 
 cone of gravel and alluvium built up by the 
 torrent of the Tiniere near Villeneuve. A 
 railway cutting exposed three layers of vege- 
 table soil, each of which must at one time 
 have formed the surface of the cone. The first 
 ancient surface, 4 to 6 in. thick, containing 
 tiles and a Roman coin, occurred at a depth 
 of about 4 ft. below the present surface. The 
 second layer, 6 in. thick, at a depth of 10 ft., 
 contained fragments of unglazed pottery and a 
 
48 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 pair of tweezers in bronze. The third layer, 
 6 to 7 in. thick, 19 ft. below the present 
 surface, contained rude pottery in fragments, 
 charcoal, broken bones, and a human skeleton 
 with a small, round, very thick skull. Taking 
 the Roman period of the first layer at sixteen 
 to eighteen centuries, from the measure of 
 that layer from the surface, he deduces the 
 time required for the deposition of the whole 
 cone at about eleven thousand years.* Further 
 on, at p. 324, he estimates, on the same data, 
 an antiquity of " more than a hundred thousand 
 years " for another cone above, about twelve 
 times as large, formed when the Lake of 
 Geneva stood at a higher level. 
 
 The calculation appears to be an erroneous 
 one, or greatly exaggerated. The average 
 annual rate of deposit during the Roman 
 
 * Sir J. Lubbock's *' Pre-historic Times," p. 317, &:c. 
 
LA TINIERE. 
 
 49 
 
 period is by no means to be taken as a fair 
 estimate of the previous average annual rate. 
 For even supposing during these thousands 
 of years the same amount of rainfall, cold, 
 &c., in proportion as the torrent enlarged its 
 bed, by the wearing away of the sides of the 
 ravine at every flood on the melting of the 
 winter's snow, so in proportion the violence 
 of the flood and its power of carrying down 
 gravel and alluvium would be diminished, 
 as the flood-waters of a torrent in a confined 
 space necessarily rush down with greater 
 impetuosity than in an open space. In some 
 confirmation of this view, it may be observed 
 that the deposit between the Roman layer of 
 soil and the one below it appears to be 4 ft. 
 thick, the layer below this again about 6 ft., 
 and the lowest layer 9 ft. thick, showing that 
 a larger quantity of gravel and alluvium was 
 
 E 
 
50 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 deposited in the earlier periods. But the 
 
 layers of vegetable mould seem to indicate 
 
 periods of repose, and the large transported 
 
 blocks found in the alluvium are evidence of 
 
 the violent action of a raging torrent, when 
 
 probably these layers were considerably 
 
 denuded ; and although it may have taken 
 
 sixteen to eighteen hundred years to throw 
 
 up the cone since the time when the Romans 
 
 cultivated the surface, it is surely more 
 
 probable that when the ravine was narrower, 
 
 as it must have been in the earlier periods, 
 
 the amount of alluvium brought down in 
 
 the earlier periods would have been greater, 
 
 and deposited in less time. For the same 
 
 reason the cone above, twelve times as large, 
 
 would also have required proportionately less 
 
 time for its deposition. If to this we add the 
 
 effects of a glacial period, we may calculate 
 
LA TIN I ERE. 
 
 51 
 
 upon a deposition of far greater rapidity. In 
 fact all these calculations of immense periods 
 of time, founded upon causes now in operation 
 or upon the present conditions of the surface, 
 are of very questionable value, especially when 
 we consider the violent action which results 
 from a period or periods of intense cold, 
 which we have reason to think may have 
 reached the times of pre-historic man in the 
 West of Europe. 
 
 In addition to the experience we have of 
 the very rapid rate at which deposits of 
 alluvium may be formed at every return of 
 the summer's heat in the arctic regions, 
 we have also evidence of another extraordi- 
 narily expeditious mode of forming these 
 deposits where vegetation is absent, observed 
 by ]\Ir. Collins.* 
 
 ♦ " Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce," p. 395. 
 
52 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 " Here we stopped. . . . The guides called 
 
 my attention to the clouds, which were now 
 
 approaching the pass. Just above it towered 
 
 an enormously high peak ; and when the 
 
 cloud reached the peak it immediately seemed 
 
 to dissolve into smoke, and a peculiar subdued 
 
 roar reached our ears. In a very few minutes 
 
 a white line showed the water tearing down 
 
 the mountain to join the stream, a hundred 
 
 yards from which we were camped ; and 
 
 presently, with ever-increasing roar, the body 
 
 of water forced its way past us. As the 
 
 torrent rushed down the valley, it tore up the 
 
 bed of the original stream, excavating a deep 
 
 channel for itself, some 30 ft. deep and 
 
 50 ft. wide, with banks formed of earth and 
 
 stones as if piled up by navvies. In less than 
 
 an hour all was still again and the stream 
 
 running quietly at the bottom of its enlarged 
 
LA TINIERE. 53 
 
 bed In an hour, however, I reached 
 
 the pass, and to my amazement found that 
 the peak had been reduced into a huge mound, 
 shorn of two - thirds of its height, while 
 both the eastern and western slopes of the 
 mountain were torn up and strewn with 
 the debris in the shape of boulders and 
 stones." 
 
 Here we have direct evidence of violent 
 action and extraordinary excavating power, 
 under special circumstances. We find " banks 
 formed of earth and stones " thrown up in 
 former days by our rivers ; but this violent 
 action has long ceased, and the beds of all 
 rivers seem now to retain almost the same 
 depth from year to year, the diluvium of the 
 flood -waters being levelled and gradually 
 carried to the sea during the absence of 
 floods. 
 
54 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 The reckless destruction of the forests in 
 the time of anarchy in France has been the 
 cause of the destruction of much valuable 
 land, by the washing down of the surface 
 of the bared hillsides on the plains below. 
 
 These partial instances show that before 
 vegetation grew on the mountains and hills, 
 a far greater amount of alluvium must 
 have been washed down from hills and 
 mountain-sides, and their valleys and gorges, 
 than in these days. Vegetation now covers 
 nearly every mountain-side, and the degra- 
 dation of mountains is as a general rule 
 arrested. 
 
 We are surely justified in assuming that 
 some of these masses of alluvium of the 
 Tiniere, and of so many other valleys and 
 rivers, are — like the groovings and scratchings 
 of the rocks, the results of which form part of 
 
LA TINIERE. 55 
 
 these masses — due either to the absence of 
 vegetation or to a glacial period ; and there- 
 fore, if we confine ourselves to the supposition 
 that the upper cone was the product of that 
 period, and perhaps many years after it, until 
 the naked mountains had produced or re- 
 produced their conservative vegetation, which 
 the glacial period had destroyed, can any 
 reliable estimate be formed of the time re- 
 quired for its deposition by any calculations 
 derived from the eighteen hundred or two 
 thousand years' accumulation since the Roman 
 period? The hundred thousand years of Sir 
 J. Lubbock seems a most unreasonable con- 
 jecture. 
 
 Even assuming that the formation of any 
 part of the lower cone were independent of 
 any action due to the glacial period, we 
 are not justified in estimating the time of 
 
56 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 formation of the earlier and lower from that 
 of the upper part. 
 
 It was commonly said at Naples that the 
 surface of a lava stream, which of course 
 utterly destroys everything beneath it, would 
 become fit for cultivation in about sixty years. 
 The layers of vegetable mould in the cone 
 must have required probably a lesser period 
 of time. The existence of the three distinct 
 layers of vegetable mould would seem to 
 show that there were three periods of rest, 
 at which the torrent for some cause or other 
 ceased to pour down its alluvium, or dis- 
 continued the heaping up of the cone during 
 those periods. It is therefore not improbable 
 that these layers of mould were covered, not 
 gradually, but by the violent action of the 
 torrent, leaving the rate of progress of the 
 construction of the cone still more difficult to 
 
LA TINIERE. 57 
 
 ascertain. As a rule, one would conjecture 
 that the rate of the deposition of detritus 
 and alluvium in every river, great or small — 
 the Nile, Mississippi, or the Tiniere, — must 
 decrease in proportion as the width of their 
 beds are increased. To this must be added 
 an exceptional increase by a lowered tempera- 
 ture, which we may be certain was the case 
 at some remote period, and the more rapid 
 denudation of the soil in the absence of 
 vegetation. 
 
 It does not follow as a matter of course 
 that the skull found in the lowest layer of 
 vegetable mould belongs to the period of its 
 accumulation. 
 
 M. Boucher de Perthes, vol. i. p. 190-3, 
 says, "De ces trois morceaux (haches en 
 pierre) du plus beau poli et d'une parfaite 
 conservation, deux sont en silex gris blente 
 
58 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 et I'autre en jade vert. lis etaient ensemble 
 dans ce sable bleu, a 7 metres environ de la 
 superficie et a 2J metres audessous du niveau 
 
 de la Somme A 6 metres environ de 
 
 I'endroit ou etaient les haches, mais moins 
 profondement, un ouvrier deterra une petite 
 statuette en ivoire, de la hauteur de 8 
 centimetres, d'un assez bon travail, repre- 
 sentant un homme tenant une palme et une 
 sorte de gril ; c' etaient probablement un Saint- 
 Laurent. Cette figurine, qui paraissait pro- 
 venir des remblais, appartenait au Moyen 
 Age. Je ne le cite ici que comme renseigne- 
 ment." If we were unable to assign a period 
 to this statuette, we might be led into the 
 error of supposing it to belong to a far earlier 
 period. Mr. Ferguson's house, before referred 
 to (p. 18), furnishes an additional commentary 
 on the antiquity of buried remains. 
 
LA TINIERE. 
 
 59 
 
 Much has been made of the discovery of 
 the Engis skull in a cave as a proof of a 
 different race of men of a degraded type, and 
 of course of great antiquity, but, according 
 to Louis Figuier, M. Gratiolet produced the 
 skull of a modern idiot closely resembling the 
 Engis skull. An extraordinarily-shaped skull 
 was found with Roman remains in the ruins 
 of Uriconium. Had it been found in a cave 
 by itself, the discovery of another race of 
 man might as well have been proclaimed, as 
 in the case of the Engis skull. 
 
 Mr. P. O. Cunningham, in the "Natural 
 History of the Straits of Magellan," p. 179, 
 remarks on seeing two Fuegians, one 
 "hideously ugly," the other with "decidedly 
 good features." " Travellers, I suspect, often 
 draw erroneous conclusions as to the type of 
 face which prevails in a tribe or nation, from 
 
6o SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 having only seen a few representations of it, 
 and the same, no doubt, holds good with 
 regard to the examination of isolated examples 
 of crania." 
 
 To enter fully into the geological convul- 
 sionist and uniformitarian dispute would be 
 beyond the scope of this work. Sir R. 
 Murchison's twentieth chapter of " Siluria " 
 will satisfy most readers of the reasonableness 
 of his views, and he has an advantage over 
 most geologists, in that some of his theoretic 
 views and predictions have been borne out by 
 facts. It seems, however, that our entire 
 ignorance of the workings of nature under 
 circumstances of which we have no experience, 
 makes our conjectures or deductions of very 
 doubtful value. When a vast portion of the 
 earth's surface was under water, as in the 
 Silurian epoch — when tremendous masses and 
 
LA TINIERE. 6l 
 
 veins of molten granite or plutonic rock 
 penetrated the strata of the primary and 
 secondary, scarcely at all in the early tertiar}^, 
 and none whatever in the more recent periods 
 — when vast masses of metamorphic rock were 
 elaborated and of limestone crystallised — 
 when we find " that there is a great difference 
 in the mineral character, generally, between 
 the igneous rocks of the older periods of the 
 world and those at present formed, few will 
 doubt."* We have evidence of a different 
 condition of things in the earlier elaborations 
 of the crust of the earth, which would 
 assuredly lead to the conclusion that we are 
 not justified in assuming that the course of 
 Nature's operations has been the same in the 
 recent as in the earlier periods of the earth's 
 physical history. 
 
 *_De la'Beche's " Geological Manual," p. 136. 
 
62 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 It may indeed be a considerable matter of 
 doubt whether it is necessary to assume such 
 very enormous periods of time for the forma- 
 tion even of mountain masses of stratified 
 rock. In the Silurian series, which Sir R. 
 Murchison has shown to cover vast tracts in 
 almost every part of the earth, we find trilo- 
 bites and other fossil mollusks in strata 
 separated by immense masses of other but 
 lifeless strata of the same kind. If the deposit 
 of mud, now converted into slaty rock, had 
 been gradual, and proceeding at the rate of 
 a fraction of an inch per annum, one w^ould 
 suppose that fossils would be found succeeding 
 one another continuously ; but this not being 
 the case, it may be conjectured that great 
 masses of the mud were thrown down from 
 time to time in quantities sufficient to destroy 
 all life, followed by periods of comparative 
 
LA TINIERE. 6;^ 
 
 repose when life would appear, again to be 
 followed by other destroying floods of mud, 
 either by the action of rivers if dry land was 
 then in existence, or if not, by subaqueous 
 mud volcanoes or other submarine action, for 
 we are utterly ignorant of Nature's working in 
 the great abysses of the ocean. 
 
 The same may be said of the Red Sandstone, 
 old and new, throughout enormous thick- 
 nesses of which no traces of life are found at 
 all. For instance, "The sandstones (of the 
 Vindhyan series of strata in the central 
 provinces of India) are false-bedded and 
 beautifully rippled on their surfaces, each 
 successive bed, often for hundreds of feet in 
 thickness, showing its own ripple-marked 
 surface. Nor is there anything in their 
 mineralised condition to suggest the chance of 
 subsequent obliteration of organic remains. 
 
64 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 had they ever become embedded or become 
 fossilised. Yet no success has hitherto re- 
 warded our most careful searching for such 
 traces of early existence." * 
 
 These long lifeless periods would, one must 
 suppose, interfere largely with " progressive 
 development by natural selection." 
 
 Sir William Denison f says that, sailing 
 along the coast of India from Mangalore to 
 Cannanore, they were nearly poisoned by the 
 smell of the sea. " At Cannanore I was told 
 that this was always the case after the south- 
 west monsoon. The quantity of fresh water 
 poured into the sea from a long line of coast, 
 upon which from 120 to 180 inches of rain fall 
 in three months, is the mode of accounting for 
 
 * '• Gazetteer of the Central Provinces of India," by C. Grant. 
 Introduction, p. xxix. 
 
 t "Varieties of Vice-regal Life," vol ii. p. 135. 
 
LA TINIERE. 65 
 
 this ; the sea becomes nearly fresh water, the 
 salt-water fish are killed, as also the sea-weed, 
 and the water, under the action of a tropical 
 sun, becomes very offensive till it is mixed 
 with the general body of sea-water and 
 resumes its saltness. We saw thousands of 
 dead fish floating on the sea, and the shore 
 was covered with them." It may be con- 
 cluded that much mud is brought down also 
 with the rain, and that the shellfish share the 
 fate of the fish. Here, therefore, we have one 
 mode of accounting for the great beds of 
 shells, &c., found buried in ancient strata. 
 Sir William Denison repeated this disagree- 
 able experience the following year. " We 
 found the sea as offensive off Beypore and 
 along the west coast as it was last year off 
 Cannanore." * 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 202. 
 F 
 
66 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Year after year, therefore, the south-western 
 monsoon must be forming beds of shells. See. 
 Storms or currents on the coast may indeed 
 wash away much of the deposit of the 
 monsoon, but some relics would surely be 
 left at the bottom of the sea, and others 
 washed up upon the beach. In the Silurian 
 strata, and in the Red Sandstone especially, 
 there are great intervals without any traces of 
 life. Was this the result of a continuous flow 
 of rain, a continuous monsoon, which pre- 
 vented the return of life ? If such a conjecture 
 be correct, there is good reason for supposing 
 a much more rapid accumulation than any of 
 those going on at the present day. 
 
 I wish I had reason to believe in the calcu- 
 lations which have been made in reference to 
 the annual rate of deposits of mud, sand, or 
 silt, which have formed the great Silurian and 
 
LA TINIERE. 
 
 67 
 
 Other deposits. I have a covered reservoir 
 of about 7 ft. diameter, with an average 
 flow of apparently clear water into it, of 
 about three-quarters of an inch, constantlv 
 filled by a stream flowing over a Silurian 
 formation. This stream has, in the course of 
 one year of a dry season, left a pure deposit 
 of nearly 4 in. of impalpable mud in the 
 bottom of the reservoir, and much more in 
 a wet season, guarded though it be, as far as 
 possible, from the admission of anything but 
 what is held in suspension by the water. I 
 cannot, unfortunately, therefore look forward 
 to the accumulation of Ard or some such 
 suggested minute fraction of an inch of mud 
 during subsequent years, and if my reservoir 
 could be transformed into an ocean into 
 which one or more proportionally large 
 rivers or submarine mud volcanoes poured 
 
68 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 their floods continually, I might fairly expect 
 an annual amount of deposit far exceeding 
 that in my reservoir. 
 
 The warping of land is an artificial mode of 
 accumulating alluvial strata, and may be 
 considered analogous to the similar opera- 
 tions of Nature in the deposition of the grea 
 masses which now form mountains of slaty 
 rock such as the Silurian. Each flood-tide 
 flows over the land and deposits the mud held 
 in suspension by the water, but it is necessary 
 to allow the water to return to the river, on 
 the ebb, to prevent the silting up of the 
 drains. A portion, therefore, of the mud in 
 suspension, must be carried away. The 
 average amount of deposit appears to be 
 about 2 ft. in three years. Sir Charles Lyell 
 says, " By repeating this operation, which is 
 called * warping,' for two or three years, 
 
LA TINIERE. 69 
 
 considerable tracts have been raised, in the 
 estuary of the Humber, to the height of about 
 6 ft."* Warping would not certainly be 
 worth the outlay if the accumulation were 
 only 8-3-rd of an inch annually, nor have we any 
 reason to suppose that Nature's warping was 
 so slow, or that her deposits were not only 
 equal to, but perhaps far greater, than those 
 which are the result of our warpings, the 
 layers only reduced in thickness by the 
 superincumbent pressure ; and yet we find 
 layers, apparently little consolidated, con- 
 taining the most perfect casts of shells, and 
 shells also, unaffected altogether by pressure, 
 beneath masses of lifeless strata in a more 
 consolidated state. 
 
 The Persian Gulf affords one instance of 
 the rapid growth of deltas and the accumu- 
 
 • "Principles," &c., vol. i. p. 570. 
 
70 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 lation of strata, which certainly shows that 
 the calculations derived from present annual 
 increase and the result, immense periods of 
 time required for their formation, may be 
 wholly erroneous. " It is certain that the 
 alluvium at the head of the Persian Gulf now 
 grows with extraordinary rapidity, and not 
 improbable that the gro^vth may have been 
 more raj^id than it is at present. Accurate 
 observations have shown that the present 
 rate of increase amounted to a mile each 
 seventy years, while it is the opinion of those 
 best qualified to judge, that the average 
 progress during the historic period has been 
 as much as a mile in every thirty years."* 
 
 Sir R. Murchison says, "That the former 
 physical agencies were of the same nature 
 
 * " The Five Great Monarchies of the World," by G. Raw- 
 linson, vol. i. p. 5. 
 
LA TINIERE. 71 
 
 as those which now prevail, we simply assert, 
 on the evidence of fracture, dislocation, meta- 
 morphism, and inversion of the strata, and 
 also on that of vast and clean-swept denuda- 
 tions, that these agencies were from time 
 to time infinitely more energetic than in 
 existing nature," &c.* 
 
 From the foregoing observations, it is 
 submitted that the conjectures of immense 
 periods of time, to account for the accumula- 
 tions of strata and other deposits, may be 
 immense exaggerations, and are of very 
 doubtful value in the interpretation of the 
 geological record. 
 
 " Siluria," p. 490. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 
 
 'T^HE date of the beginning of authentic, or 
 quasi-authentic, history, varying greatly 
 in different regions of the earth, the term 
 *' pre-historic " must bear a very different 
 signification in different parts of the world — 
 a very great antiquity in some of them, a 
 comparatively recent period in others. Setting 
 aside the sacred character of the Old Testa- 
 ment, we have in it a history the truth of 
 which has been proved wherever proof could 
 be found ; but accurate chronological deduc- 
 tions cannot be made from it, partly on 
 account of the varieties as to figures in the 
 different versions (and no wonder, consider- 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 
 
 73 
 
 ing the extreme antiquity of the book and 
 the liability to error in transcription of the 
 Hebrew notation of figures), partly on account 
 of the genealogies being evidently in some 
 cases those of particular races and not of 
 individuals, besides our ignorance of the 
 manner in which they were traced. A re- 
 markable instance of this is seen in the 
 Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, which 
 are so different, and must have been perfectly 
 intelligible to the readers of them in the 
 first ages of Christianity, or surely would 
 have been explained to prevent any question 
 of their truth. 
 
 " Kennicott has fully shown how frequent 
 in the Masoretic text are the mistakes in 
 numerals by letters, some of which from their 
 close resemblance are easily mistaken one 
 for the other," and in a note at foot of the 
 
74 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 page, *' Kennicott adverts to another method 
 of expressing numerals, viz., by short perpen- 
 dicular strokes for the units, another mark 
 ioT Jivc, and then similar perpendicular strokes 
 for the hundreds. He thinks that the mistakes 
 in the numerals may have arisen, many from 
 this method of notation, some from the words 
 written at length, and some as above men- 
 tioned from the letters used as numerals." 
 See also the note at same page referring to 
 Mr. Layard's discovery of some bowls among 
 the ruins of Babylon, with inscriptions written 
 in the old Hebrew character, in which certain 
 numeral letters cannot be distinguished from 
 one another.* 
 
 The words or affix which we translate " son 
 of," means often the grandson or descendant. 
 Even in the Greek Testament the Jews say 
 
 * Lord A. Harvey, "On the Genealogies of our Lord," p. 222. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 75 
 
 " Abraham is our father," and " he also is 
 the son of Abraham/' The " Genealogies " also 
 speak of nations or races as descendants, from 
 which it is clear that no certain chronology 
 is deducible from the chronologies. It may- 
 be as well to remark, in the words of Dr. 
 Pusey in a letter to the Times of Nov. i6, 
 1870, — "That even assuming the higher an- 
 tiquity of man, the truth of Holy Scripture 
 is in no way concerned with these theories ; 
 that those who hold that antiquity should 
 not allege it as contradicting Holy Scripture, 
 nor allege Holy Scripture as contradicting 
 it, 3ince Holy Scripture, fairly interpreted, 
 said nothing definitely on the subject." 
 
 The Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese histories 
 may possibly go back with some degree of 
 accuracy to an early period of the world, 
 about 2000 years B.C., but beyond that they 
 
76 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 are clearly mythical dreams. All these 
 histories apply to Eastern nations, but what 
 is the commencement of the historic era in 
 the West of Europe? We have, in fact, 
 nothing of any authentic value dating from 
 before a few hundred years B.C. Even the 
 early period of Roman History, 753 B.C., is 
 involved in doubt; and Greek History, if a 
 little earlier (ist Olympiad, 776 B.C.), has the 
 additional disadvantage of being the produce 
 of the more fertile than truthful brains of the 
 mendacious Greek. The historic age of all 
 Western and Northern Europe beyond Italy 
 is still more recent, and it is with pre-historic 
 man of these parts of Europe which we have 
 to deal. The historic age of America is 
 scarcely four hundred years old. It appears, 
 however (taking a general view), that civilisa- 
 tion in the earlier days of the world's history 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 77 
 
 has proceeded from the warmer zones of the 
 earth, and this holds good even in America 
 — Mexico, Yucatan, and Peru having been 
 there the centres of American civilisation, 
 that is, if civilisation is to be measured by the 
 splendour of architectural monuments. That 
 this civilisation in Western Europe came 
 from the Eastward, will hardly be questioned, 
 and that it spread gradually from Asia, West- 
 ward, the traditions of the Greeks, of the 
 migration of Atys and others, render very 
 probable. Micali, in his '' Italia avanti li 
 Romani," has endeavoured, but without much 
 success, to trace back the origin of Italian 
 races before the Romans. The names alone 
 of some of them remain, the Sicani, supposed 
 to have been driven into Sicily ; the Umbrians, 
 and other tribes ; and the Etruscans, whose 
 language is still absolutely dead, unless Sir 
 
78 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 W. Betham's Celtic derivation is to be 
 credited; but in many of the monuments, 
 pottery, tomb-paintings, &c., the Greeks have 
 left their mark, in the pottery especially, on 
 which are found Greek inscriptions and Greek 
 Homeric subjects. A disgusting worship, almost 
 identical with that practised in India to this 
 day, seen in a tomb-painting of Tuscany, 
 indicates an Eastern derivation. The wave 
 of population seems certainly to have pro- 
 ceeded from the warmer regions of Asia to 
 Western Europe. The migrations, then, 
 from the Eastward of more civilised races 
 than the earlier settlers they came to sup- 
 plant, better armed, and better organised, 
 would drive out or reduce the latter to 
 slavery. The tribes so driven out in a desti- 
 tute condition, or the escaped slaves, would, 
 like the wretched slaves of the Southern 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 79 
 
 United States, who took refuge in miserable 
 swamps out of reach of their masters, have fled 
 across the Alps into Switzerland or France, 
 and been compelled for their subsistence to 
 make use of the simplest tools which came 
 to their hand, such as flint and bone instru- 
 ments, just as the most civilised race of 
 modern Europe would be compelled to do 
 if cast away in a state of destitution. These 
 tribes, or, in their beginnings, a few indivi- 
 duals, fathers of tribes, may be the pre-historic 
 men of Western Europe. These, again, may 
 have had their victories over others ; and by 
 the process of expulsion, as it may be called, 
 by internecine quarrels, for w^hich the climate 
 of Gaul seems so favourable, or by emigra- 
 tion, have gradually spread into the northern 
 regions of Europe, Great Britain, &c., as the 
 wretched Esquimaux appear, according to 
 
8o SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Egede, to have been driven to the arctic 
 regions from more genial climates. Csesar 
 seems to have found the British a nation 
 in a very barbarous condition, notwithstand- 
 ing the advantages they must have derived 
 from the Phoenicians, and perhaps Greeks, 
 who visited their shores. No doubt a tribe, 
 having learnt the use of bronze for their 
 weapons, would probably soon master and 
 destroy the tribe confined to instruments of 
 stone or wood. 
 
 This method of accounting for pre-historic 
 men of the West and North, though a con- 
 jecture, has at least the advantage of bearing 
 some degree of analogy with what we know 
 of historic man ; for we find the Celtic races, 
 the British, for example, driven Westward 
 into the mountains of Wales by the Romans, 
 from whence some of them probably passed 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 
 
 over and peopled Ireland, and probably Scot- 
 land. The Bretons and the Basques are 
 found in the extreme West, driven there pro- 
 bably by the Gaul in a similar manner. In 
 the Mediterranean, again, we find Eastern 
 Greeks or Phoenicians settling on all the 
 shores of the Mediterranean. The small- 
 handed races, whom we now find in the East, 
 seem also to have furnished their quota to the 
 West, as we discover so many instances of 
 the short-hilted swords. Again, we do not 
 find proofs of the existence of any large popu- 
 lations among pre -historic men, with the 
 doubtful exception perhaps of the Swiss lake- 
 dwellers and of the people of the Danish 
 Koggen-middens. As far as the former is 
 concerned, the conjecture of their migration 
 from Italy is faintly confirmed by their num- 
 bers, Italy having been at an early period 
 
 G 
 
82 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 very thickly peopled, to judge from the innu- 
 merable ruins of towns found in almost every 
 part of the country. Like the modern Swiss, 
 the refugees would have found a comparative 
 security in their mountains, and from thence 
 thin out into farther Western and Northern 
 regions. A slight confirmation of the con- 
 jecture that they derived their origin from 
 the Eastward may be alleged from the dis- 
 covery of jade and other Oriental productions 
 in the lake-dwellings ; however, it is equally 
 possible that these Eastern products may 
 have been objects of barter. On the whole, 
 it seems almost certain that pre-historic man 
 of the West and North derived his origin 
 from historic man of the East, and must 
 certainly therefore be considered of a lesser 
 antiquity, as the necessity of migration from 
 the East would only have been felt when the 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 83 
 
 populations of the East had grown to dimen- 
 sions exceeding the means of subsistence — 
 the principal, if not the only cause of such 
 migrations. Such, we must suppose, was 
 the incentive to the later incursions Westward 
 of the Northmen in England and France — the 
 peopling of Iceland. A ripple of the great 
 Westward flow of the wave of population is to 
 be found in the attempt of the Danes to colo- 
 nise America (Vinland) in. the tenth century, 
 and their subsequent disastrous colonisation 
 of Greenland. 
 
 If, therefore, historic man of the East, with 
 the exception of the Jewish race, can only 
 pretend to an antiquity of, at the outside, 
 2000 years B.C., the introduction of pre-his- 
 toric man to the West must certainly be of a 
 very much more recent date. Nor can we 
 find, as has been shown, any argument for 
 
84 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 his great antiquity in the juxtaposition of 
 his remains with extinct fossil animals, or 
 their burial under gravel-beds, or in caverns 
 with or without such juxtaposition. 
 
 If any one will consider what his position, 
 even as a man of general education, or even 
 a scientific man, would be if driven naked out 
 of house and home into a wilderness, he will 
 be persuaded of the difficulties to which he 
 would be put to provide himself with the 
 simplest cutting instrument. Even if he 
 should find himself in a country of ironstone, 
 how would he set about the process of smelt- 
 ing and then working the iron without ham- 
 mer ? To make bronze he would acknowledge 
 to be perhaps altogether beyond his powers, 
 even if he w^ere lucky enough to fall in with, 
 and had technical knowledge to distinguish, 
 tin and copper ore. If in a chalk country. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 85 
 
 without iron, tin, or copper, he would find 
 some difficulty in the manufacture of flint 
 implements. Bronze Roman axes are found 
 of much the same pattern as those of pre- 
 historic man. Are we to suppose that the 
 Romans or other more civilised races than the 
 pre-historic man of Gaul copied the barbarian 
 invention ? It seems more probable that the 
 pre-historic exile or refugee adopted, in the 
 construction of his axe of stone for want of 
 other material, the form which he recollected, 
 or which, may be, he brought with him, and 
 handed down the same to his successors. 
 
 The theory of a stone, bronze, and iron 
 age, each one preceding the other by a vast 
 lapse of time, appears to be a conjecture ot 
 little value. For is it not pretty certain 
 that, as within the last few hundred years, 
 and perhaps even now, stone, bone, and 
 
86 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 wooden implements were the only weapons 
 and tools of many a savage nation, so there 
 were probably many degraded savage na- 
 tions such as now exist, probably the out- 
 casts from quasi-civilised nations, who used 
 no other implements, and yet might be con- 
 temporaneous even with the Romans of the 
 Augustan age, or at an earlier period, with 
 the civilised nations of the East ? Mr. 
 Llewellyn Jewitt, in his '' Grave-mounds and 
 their Contents" (p. i6), says, "Another ex- 
 ample from Rondisay Hill of a bronze 
 dagger, a barbed arrow-head of flint, and 
 a beautiful drinking-cup." Again, " In a 
 barrow at Paccelly Hay was found a fine 
 axe-head of stone and a bronze dagger, 
 (ibid., p. 26); again, "The Gristhorpe coflin 
 contained among other things three flint 
 flakes, a fragment of a ring of horn, a small 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 87 
 
 implement of wood, and a bronze dagger," 
 (ibid., p. 48); and, finally, "The articles which 
 the grave-mounds and cemeteries of the 
 Romano- British period most frequently pro- 
 duce are (among other things) arms both 
 of bronze and of iron." To this may be 
 added that flint arrow-heads have been 
 found about Roman camps. From these 
 examples we may surely infer that bronze 
 and stone, and bronze and iron, were used 
 indiscriminately by the people to whom the 
 grave-mounds belonged, the less civilised 
 makinsf use of stone at the same time that 
 the more civilised used bronze or iron, or 
 both. Thus the Germans of the Rhine make 
 use largely of brass pots and pans, while 
 ours are of tin or copper. The discovery of 
 lake-dwellings, standing alone, affords no 
 evidence of any great antiquity. They were 
 
88 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 institutions in Scotland certainly in the time 
 of the Romans, in Iceland within the last 
 400 years, and in Africa to this day, accord- 
 ing to Captain Burton. Nor can the quanti- 
 ties of very rude flint implements afford any 
 satisfactory evidence of the existence of a 
 very ancient savage race. The mason's 
 hammer is a rude implement compared [^to 
 the carpenter's or the jeweller's. May not the 
 rude flint implements have been used for 
 coarse and heavy work, the less rude ones 
 the implements of a poorer class, the finer 
 ones those of the wealthy, and have been 
 all of the same period. The accumulations 
 of refuse by Fuegians and Australians are 
 the Kjokkenmoddings of our day, and the 
 relics of ancient Danes, Scotch, or British, 
 found in buried forests, afford no substantial 
 proofs of any enormous antiquity ; for, ac- 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 89 
 
 cording to the great authority of Sir R. 
 Murchison, the vertical stumps of these 
 forests, instead of affording indications of 
 long and slow action, are evidences of a sud- 
 den movement,* and he cites the eminent Dr. 
 Forchhammer, who very rationally ** argued 
 that the rapid immersion of the trunks, and 
 their having been quickly surrounded by 
 marine mud, could alone have preserved 
 them ; for if the trees had been gradually 
 sinking at the rate of an inch or two in a 
 year, they would have been entirely decom- 
 posed under the atmosphere long before their 
 submergence, and thus no trace of their trunks 
 would have remained." 
 
 The savage races do not certainly present 
 the progressive development of beauty or 
 intellect, and it would seem more probable 
 
 * <'Siluria," p. 491. 
 
90 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 that they are degenerating into, rather than 
 that they should have proceeded from, the 
 Simian genus, if there be any truth in de- 
 velopment theories. The supposition of an 
 island within the tropics as the original seat 
 of man is, as certainly contrary to all 
 history and tradition, more valuable than 
 mere guess and conjecture. The Duke of 
 Argyll has in his " Primaeval Man " sadly 
 undermined, if not completely disposed of, 
 the "Savage Theory" of Sir J. Lubbock, 
 which supposes the primaeval man a savage. 
 This theory, like many others of the present 
 day, seems to be useless, a mere guess, not 
 admitting of any kind of verification, draw- 
 ing very largely upon conjecture, very little 
 upon history or facts. Taking a general 
 view of the globe, it appears that the ex- 
 tremities of the great continents have been 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. QI 
 
 the refuges of the outcasts of the earth — the 
 Cape of Good Hope, with its Hottentots; Terra 
 del Fuego; Australia; in the southern; the 
 arctic regions ; all, or nearly all, of the high 
 latitudes in the northern hemisphere; also 
 outlying islands in both hemispheres ; every 
 discovery of new lands in these regions 
 during the last two or three centuries has 
 shown us nothing but tribes of savage people 
 without a semblance of the progress we 
 call civilisation. If the primseval man was 
 a savage, and civilisation gradually proceeded 
 from him, how is it that every one of these 
 tribes of savages was found in the savage 
 state, though isolated and left to their own 
 devices, like the primseval savage ? Some 
 one of them ought surely, with plenty of time 
 before them, to have acquired the art of at 
 least one of the three R's. How is it that 
 
92 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 the Fuegian, exposed as he has been for 
 centuries to a fearful climate of cold and 
 tempest, has not yet made any progress 
 towards the attainment of the simplest arts 
 bearing on his comfort ? Why was the 
 wretched Tasmanian so utterly degraded as 
 to have lost or never discovered the art of 
 making a fire, and the Australian savage 
 scarcely superior to a beast as far as civili- 
 sation is concerned ? The history of man 
 seems to show that degradation, as much as 
 progress, has been his true condition — "the 
 badge of all our race." History shows us 
 that the whole of Europe north of the Alps 
 is indebted, at all events for its first germs 
 of civilisation, to the Italians or Romans ; 
 the Romans and their predecessors, the 
 Etruscans, to Greece ; the Greeks to Asiatic 
 peoples, and not improbably, or in part at 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 93 
 
 least, to the Jews ; for we find Tatian assert- 
 ing that the Greeks derived their learning 
 from the barbarians, and Clement of Alex- 
 andria, in the **Stromata," showing from Aris- 
 tobulus and Numenius, that Plato and Pytha- 
 goras drew their philosophy from Hebrew 
 books, and that Pythagoras was a plagiarist 
 of Moses. 
 
 The progress of improvement in the West 
 has been but slow ; the civilisation in the 
 Middle Ages, in some respects, inferior for 
 many a century to that of the imperial 
 Romans ; even Benvenuto Cellini regarded the 
 Parisians as little better than barbarians, and 
 the English still worse ; and Burton's interest- 
 ing " Life of Simon, Lord Lovat," shows that 
 even the Highlanders at that time were not 
 very far removed from the savage state. 
 The Irish native, in the time of Elizabeth, 
 
94 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 seems to have been as nearly a savage as 
 possible. The first great strides of progress 
 began apparently with the invention of print- 
 ing, and the arrival in Europe of many Con- 
 stantinopolitan Greeks at the time of the 
 Mahomedan conquest. Steam power by land 
 and sea, the electric telegraph, and the resul- 
 tant facility of communication between na- 
 tions, are now causing gigantic strides in 
 civilisation in Europe and North America. 
 
 But let us look back to the history of the 
 Eastern nations of the Old World. There, 
 instead of progress, we find evidence of 
 degradation. The industrious Chinese have 
 been long in a stationary state, and much 
 inferior to their ancestors, whose grand works 
 they cannot or do not imitate. The mag- 
 nificent ruins of Nakon Wat stand " like a 
 mighty sphinx frowning contemptuously on 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 
 
 95 
 
 the infantine and barbaric state of the arts 
 and science of the people who are now the 
 denizens of the forests and plains in its 
 vicinity." * The Hindus are equally degene- 
 rate. The great empires, Nineveh, Babylon, 
 having fulfilled the predictions of the prophets 
 of the Bible, are desolation. The Egyptians, 
 the Copts, and all Asia, are more or less in 
 a very degraded state. The curse of Ham 
 seems ever to have bowed down the miser- 
 able African. The savages of Africa are 
 for the most part as primaeval as ever, or 
 perhaps in a worse state than that of the 
 primaeval savage, making a guess at his con- 
 dition ; and not even the communication with 
 civilised men has had as yet much effect, nor 
 the influence of Mahometanism, which is so 
 
 * Mr. D. O. King, in "Journal of Geological Society," vol. 
 XXX. p. 183. 
 
g6 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 far in advance of fetishism and savagery, in 
 introducing an advance in the arts and 
 morals of civilisation. 
 
 History therefore seems to show that civi- 
 lisation, or the arts, its physical and moral 
 accompaniments, beginning somewhere in the 
 East, has been always passing slowly West- 
 ward from one part of the earth to another — 
 a process which is still going on ; and now 
 that the time is arrived when, as the prophet 
 Daniel says, " man shall walk to and fro over 
 the earth, and knowledge shall increase," we 
 may hope for a renewed progress over the 
 whole world, if not checked by evil influences, 
 the parasites of civilisation, or by the out- 
 rageous anarchical doctrines now prevailing 
 among sections of the peoples of the West. 
 
 The account therefore of the Bible, concise 
 as it is, considered as a history with only the 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 97 
 
 » 
 
 same authority as of other histories, appears 
 to be far more consistent with all that we 
 know of human progress (little as is that 
 knowledge) in archaic times, than the con- 
 jecture of the "primaeval savage," for in the 
 Bible we learn that in the very beginning of 
 man's history there were men endowed, as 
 we must suppose, with superior intellects, who 
 discovered and made known to the world 
 many of the arts which contributed to the 
 civilised condition of human beings. 
 
 We have, however, in the history of the Pit- 
 cairn Islanders, almost a direct proof of how 
 easily and how^ soon the descendants of a civi- 
 lised race might become savages. After all the 
 fathers but one of the settlers on the island, 
 some of them educated but evil men, had 
 perished by murder or otherwise, leaving a 
 tribe of descendants almost in a savage state, 
 
 H 
 
98 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Adams, the surviving father, repented of his 
 evil ways, and with the inspiration of Chris- 
 tianity and the Bible, infused a wonderful 
 degree of order, and a very remarkable 
 amount of real virtue, into the islanders, 
 although they were much behindhand in all 
 the material arts of civilised life, scantily 
 supplied as they were with the tools and 
 appliances of civilisation. Can we for a 
 moment suppose that, had it not been for 
 the spirit of religion which shed its bene- 
 ficial influence upon Adams, those immediate 
 descendants of civilised man would not have 
 fallen into complete savagery ? 
 
 The Pitcairn Islanders were indeed for a 
 long time absolutely cut off from communica- 
 tion with the rest of the world, but the 
 segregation of tribes or individuals by the 
 moral barrier of hatred or fear, which would 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MAN. 99 
 
 be continually compelling them to fly into 
 the wilderness, or the physical barrier of 
 mountains, such as the Alps, of rivers, or of 
 seas, would, as in the case of the Pitcairn 
 Islanders, as completely deprive them of the 
 advantages of communication with the tribes 
 or nations of a higher civilisation from which 
 they, like the first Pitcairn settlers, had 
 escaped or had been expelled and compelled 
 to migrate out of reach of their enemies. 
 Many an American tribe is now under- 
 going the same process, notwithstanding the 
 anxiety of the United States' Government 
 to treat them, with all humanity. Such 
 humanity was by no means a feature in 
 the characters of the Greeks and Romans. 
 Slavery or death was the doom of the 
 conquered. 
 
 The coarser flint instruments may represent 
 
lOO SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS, 
 
 a neolithic age, but may equally have been 
 the instruments used for coarser purposes or 
 by the poorest of the tribe, while the finer 
 ones were the property of the chiefs or the 
 richer individuals. They may be of a remote 
 antiquity, but probably of an antiquity less 
 remote, as far as the West is concerned, than 
 the historic period of the East. The use of 
 iron and bronze may have been fashions of 
 individuals, tribes, or nations. The destruc- 
 tion of iron by oxydation being very rapid, 
 and that of bronze very slow, bronze imple- 
 ments may be found w^hile their contempo- 
 raneous iron implements may. have long since 
 perished. Generally speaking, it may be 
 said that the distinction of a stone, bronze, 
 and iron age, cannot be accepted with any 
 degree of certainty, and comes within the 
 misty region of conjecture. 
 
DARWINISM, 
 
 1\ /TR. Darwin's theories of the origin of 
 species by progressive development, 
 by natural selection, &c., involves the con- 
 sideration of a very remote antiquity indeed 
 for genus homo. 
 
 "We thus learn that man is descended 
 from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail 
 and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its 
 habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World." ^^' 
 A large fossil monkey having been discovered 
 in Miocene strata, his conclusion is, that w^e 
 are the descendants of some kind of baboon 
 at some period long anterior to the Post 
 
 * Darwin's " Descent of Man," vol. iL p. 389. 
 
I02 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Pleiocene period, and "Thus," he says, 
 " we have given to man a pedigree of 
 prodigious length." * Professor Huxley f 
 says that Darwin's "explanation or coin- 
 cidence of observed with deduced facts, 
 is, as far as it extends, a verification of the 
 Darwinian view." " As far as it extends " is 
 a very loose qualification of verification. 
 Adopting Mill's terminology, inductions and 
 ratiocinations we have in copious abundance, 
 and Mr. Darwin's arguments remain in that 
 stage of investigation, but not one single 
 " verification " of his conclusions is to be 
 found, if verification means not a mere 
 inference from observed facts, but some 
 positive proof of the truth of the inference ; 
 for the best of reasons, that a " verification " 
 
 * "Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 213. 
 t " Lay Sermons," Sec, 
 
DARWINISM. 103 
 
 of ]\Ir. Darwin's theory is simply impossible, 
 as we can never attain to any proof whatever 
 of the truth of his fundamental principle that 
 mankind and all animals have descended from 
 one, four, or five primordial forms. Ma.ny of 
 his facts he often admits are doubtful. His 
 views are not new. They are but a rechauffe 
 in a scientific crust of ancient conjectures, no 
 doubt suggested by the same similarities 
 which seem to have influenced the Darwinian 
 views. The faun of antiquity with pointed 
 ears and tail, the satyr, centaur, dryads, sea- 
 nymph, merman and maid, &c., must now be 
 considered representations of realities, not 
 mythological or poetical fictions. Darw4n 
 thus states his view in the '* Orisfin of 
 Species," p. 484, '^from analogy, that probably 
 all the organic beings which have ever lived 
 on the earth have descended from some one 
 
I04 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 primordial form into which life was first 
 breathed by the Creator." Again, in the 
 same page, " I believe that animals have 
 descended from at most only four or five 
 progenitors, and plants from an equal or 
 lesser number." In the last page he repeats 
 his notion of the descent of organic beings 
 from '^either a few forms, or one into which 
 life was originally breathed by the Creator," 
 and at page 489 we read, " as all the forms of 
 life are the lineal descendants of those which 
 lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may 
 feel certain that the ordinary succession by 
 generation has never been broken." 
 
 According, therefore, to this view, from 
 some one Eozoon, Ascidian, or primordial 
 form, or four or five, all organic beings, 
 genera and species, have proceeded in some 
 order or other, as from mollusks to fish, fish to 
 
DARWINISM. 
 
 105 
 
 birds, birds to reptiles, reptiles to quadrupeds, 
 and, finally, from ourangs or gorillas to man, 
 in " the ordinary succession by generation," 
 progressive development by natural selection, 
 the struggle for existence, sexual selection, 
 evolution, &c., one or all, the modus operafidu 
 In support of this view, we are also furnished 
 with arguments derived from the similarity 
 of totally distinct genera in the embryonic 
 stage. Mr. Darwin has collected a number 
 of facts relating to the similarity of structure 
 in that stage, and also relating to rudimentary 
 structures. "The homological construction 
 of the whole frame in the members of the 
 same class is intelligible, if we admit their 
 descent from a common progenitor, together 
 with their subsequent adaptation to diversified 
 conditions. On any other view, the similarity 
 of pattern between the hand of a man or 
 
106 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a 
 seal, the wing of a bat, &c., is utterly inex- 
 plicable. It is no scientific explanation to 
 assert that they have all been formed on the 
 same ideal plan."* He acknowledges, how- 
 ever, that " It is notorious that man is con- 
 structed on the same general type or 
 model with other mammals." f And again, 
 " With respect to development, we can 
 clearly understand, on the principle of varia- 
 tions supervening at a late embryonic period, 
 how it is that the embryos of wonderfully 
 different forms should still retain, more or 
 less perfectly, the structure of their common 
 progenitor. No other explanation has ever 
 been given of the marvellous fact that the 
 embryo of a man, dog, seal, bat, reptile, &c., 
 can at first sight hardly be distinguished 
 
 * "Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 31. f Ibid., p. 10. 
 
DARWINISM. 107 
 
 from each other."* It can hardly be said 
 that we clearly understand the retention of 
 these structures, especially after the supposed 
 immense lapse of time from the common 
 progenitor, or why, if indeed they are abso- 
 lutely identical in the different embryos, they 
 should not have shared in the changes they 
 have all undergone in other subsequent 
 stages of growth for thousands of years. 
 
 May there not be another conjecture as 
 plausible as that of the common progenitor 
 to account for the marvellous fact that the 
 embryos of man, dog, seal, &c., can " at 
 first sight be hardly distinguished from one 
 another ? " 
 
 " It is notorious that man is constructed 
 on the same general type or model with 
 other mammals." f That is to say, the 
 
 * " Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 32. t Ibid., p. 10. 
 
Io8 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Creator has ordained that certain chemical 
 and mechanical and other laws, together with 
 the inscrutable law of life, shall operate in 
 the construction of all mammals. As there- 
 fore the man, dog, seal, &c., are evidently 
 constructed on the same general type or 
 model in the adult stage, the a fortiori 
 conclusion, without, or antecedent to, any 
 observation, would naturally be that the 
 em.bryos also would be on the same general 
 type or modeL Again, the variations in the 
 germs or ovules of these different mammals 
 would be imperceptible, and as the growth is 
 gradual, in another stage they would at first 
 sight be hardly distinguishable, but as their 
 growth continued, so their variations would 
 become more and more apparent, until they 
 culminated in the adult creatures. 
 
 Mr. Darwin seems to infer that the varia- 
 
DARWINISM. 
 
 109 
 
 tions supervene only " at a late embryonic 
 period." It seems more probable that they 
 should be continually going on from the first 
 germ in gradual steps, though too minute and 
 gradual for our detection in the earlier stages, 
 rather than that they should suddenly super- 
 vene at any particular stage. Admitting the 
 fact of a '' general type or model " of creation, 
 it seemjs nothing extraordinary that parts 
 or limbs of different mammals should also 
 partake of the same typical plan, or that 
 there should be a similarity of pattern 
 between the " hand of a man or monkey and 
 foot of a horse," without any other " common 
 progenitor" than the Great Artificer who 
 designed the model. If it be scientific to 
 assert that all mammals have been formed 
 on the same ideal, plan, type, or model, 
 surely it is as scientific to assert that these 
 
TIO SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 parts of these mammals are also formed on 
 the same ideal, plan, type, or model. If the 
 whole machine of animal structure is of the 
 same model, it seems probable that the parts 
 of such structures should necessarily be also 
 of the same model. 
 
 Notwithstanding this apparent similarity of 
 the different creatures in the embryonic stage, 
 the experience of thousands of years has 
 shown that in the adult stage they invariably 
 lose that similarity, and as invariably assume 
 the respective forms of their parents — a 
 constant invariable law as far as we are 
 able to judge. Mr. Darwin's theory is in 
 direct opposition to this law, as according to 
 that theory the embryo of the one, four, or 
 five progenitors and their descendants must 
 have assumed in the adult stage, not species 
 only, but genera also, in numberless cases 
 
DARWINISM. Ill 
 
 different forms from those of their parents. 
 It would therefore appear more probable that, 
 instead of one, four, or five progenitors, there 
 must have been legion. 
 
 With respect to rudimentary organs, as for 
 instance the mammae of men. The male and 
 female being constructed on the same model, 
 it seems as rational as the conjecture of a 
 common progenitor to suppose that up to 
 a certain period the embryos of male and 
 female are of the same model, that at another 
 the functional arrangements are arrested 
 v>^hen the embryo is destined to be a male, 
 the organ remaining in a rudimentary state. 
 
 But are we quite certain that some rudi- 
 mentary organs in man analogous to those 
 in animals may not have served some purpose . 
 in his embryonic stage, though apparently 
 useless in his complete development ? are we 
 
112 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 quite certain that they are even then useless 
 —may they not be. for the purpose of adding 
 beauty to the form, or may there not be 
 other causes which we know not and can 
 never know r Can we, for instance, pretend 
 to assert that the vestige of the spinal chord 
 found in the os coccyx is useless in the em- 
 bryonic stage r As a great general law, we 
 see in the vast field of creation an almost 
 universal adaptation and use of everything 
 created ; it is therefore more probable that 
 such organs are not useless, and that it is our 
 ignorance w^hich pronounces them to be so. 
 Even in the case of deformities, we may 
 presume that they subserve some use or other 
 of which we are ignorant. It may be said 
 this is no scientific explanation ; but science 
 and common sense must agree that there is 
 an infinity of inexplicable things in Nature, 
 
DARWINISM. II 
 
 beginning with the first grand difficulty, crea- 
 tion — its end and object ; and Mr. Darwin, to 
 do him justice, in many cases admits our 
 ignorance. Sir C. Lyell, referring to La- 
 marck's '* Philosophic Zoologique," says : — 
 " Among other facts, the abortive teeth con- 
 cealed in the jaws of some of the mammalia 
 are mentioned, such teeth not being required, 
 because their food is swallowed without mas- 
 tication. The discovery also by G. St. Hilaire 
 of teeth in the foetus of the whale is alluded 
 to, and the small size of the eyes of the mole, 
 which scarcely makes any use of its organs 
 of vision." Is it true that the mamm-alia 
 swallow all their food without mastication r 
 Some of them certainly masticate bones and 
 Yegetdihles^fazdedeviietix. As full license is 
 given to conjecture, the following may be 
 hazarded. If mankind were killed off before 
 
 I 
 
114 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 coming to maturity, and before the wise tooth 
 had grown, man, as one of the mammalia, 
 would be said to have abortive teeth con- 
 cealed in his jaws. May not this be the case 
 with some other mammalia, and these abor- 
 tive teeth intended for use in an advanced 
 stage of life, which their many enemies rarely 
 if ever allow them to attain ? Does every, 
 we might almost say any, man who kills a 
 very old mammal examine the jaw to see if 
 there is any sign of growth in these abortive 
 teeth ? As for the mole, it is incorrect to 
 say that he scarcely makes any use of his 
 organs of vision. Moles are not only seen 
 sometimes abroad in the daytime, but must 
 often be above ground at night or at dusk 
 in search of other quarters ; his organs of 
 vision therefore are of considerable use. As 
 all living creatures are constructed on the 
 
DARWINISM. 115 
 
 same type or model, and as the organs of 
 vision are an essential part of the model, the 
 Proteus anguineus^ to which he also refers, 
 has such organs, but undeveloped. It may 
 be necessary for such development that light 
 should be required, which, in the lakes within 
 the caves of Styria and Kentucky, is wholly 
 absent. The caves of Kentucky also contain 
 the cave rat of Professor Silliman, with 
 greatly enlarged eyes, the converse of the 
 Proteus, probably because it is not confined 
 to total darkness in the water of the subter- 
 ranean lakes like the Proteus, but may occa- 
 sionally wander into parts of the caves where 
 some degree of light penetrates. We do not 
 make development theories on the eyes of owl 
 or cat, why should we do so in cases which ap- 
 pear to us exceptional ? We might as well attri- 
 bute any or all of our organs to use or disuse. 
 
Il6 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. . 
 
 When we consider, admire, and wonder at 
 the marvellous adaptation of every living 
 creature, from the minutest insect to the 
 largest mammal, to the purpose for which 
 it was created, is it not a rational conclusion 
 that these apparent exceptions, the rudimen- 
 tary organs, do subserve some object of which 
 we are ignorant r What, it may be said, is 
 the use of the lavish amount of beauty of 
 form and colour in the animal and vegetable 
 world r Mr. Wallace, I think, in one of his 
 works, expresses surprise at the extraordinary 
 amount of beauty of insects and plants, 
 wasted, as it were, unseen and unappreciated 
 in the solitude of tropical forests. May it 
 not be that, as in the arts as well as Nature, 
 beauty is in fact only appreciated by the few 
 of a higher natural or cultivated intelligence ? 
 so, there may be far higher intelligences, 
 
DARWINISM. 117 
 
 capable like ourselves, but to a far greater 
 degree, of admiring and enjoying the won- 
 ders and beauty so lavishly displayed in the 
 works of the Creator, many of which are not 
 appreciable by our lower intelligence or de- 
 ficiency of our organs of sight, many hidden 
 from us in the microscopic world as well as in 
 the unknown solitudes of the mountains, forest, 
 desert, or impenetrable depths of the ocean. 
 
 We are told that owing to the imperfection 
 of the geological record, the links which 
 unite the different genera are missing, that 
 here and there instances, such as Simo- 
 cyomdcB, HycBjiitis ancylotheriuin, in Miocene 
 strata, Archceopteryx and Campsognathiis, in 
 the Oolite, are supplied, but inasmuch as 
 these supposed links are few and far between, 
 while their number, if they existed at all, 
 ought to be very great, and therefore ought 
 
Il8 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 to be found at least in the same proportion 
 as other fossils, we have every right to assume 
 that we presume too much on " the imperfec- 
 tion of the geological record." We may 
 therefore continue without fear to classify 
 genera, preserving as they do throughout all 
 time their distinguishing features. But why 
 are we to seek for these supposed links 
 among fossil animals ? We have these 
 apparent links between the snake and the 
 lizard, in the different Sirens [Street miguineay 
 Lacerfa a?tgtitnea, Chaleidis lacerta)^ some with 
 two, some with four diminutive legs and 
 various numbers of toes ; also the carpet snake 
 of Australia, with "two little homy legs, 
 scarcely discernible, on the belly near the 
 vent ; " but we have not the smallest proof 
 of any one of these changing into either 
 extreme of the chain — the snake or the lizard. 
 
DARWINISM. IJ9 
 
 It is then assumed that " natural selection," 
 with a sufficiency of millions of years, will 
 produce such a development and effect the 
 change. This is mere assertion without proof; 
 indeed, the proof is the other way, for the 
 last few thousand years are a part of the 
 aforesaid million, and, " natural selection 
 being always at work," one or more instances 
 ought to have been detected even within the 
 last one, two, or three hundred years. " Natural 
 selection," how^ever, would have little chance 
 of success, for it is difficult to believe that 
 any animals should have enjoyed all the 
 advantages demanded for progress in deve- 
 lopment by natural selection during a million 
 of years continuously, in the face of all the 
 probable changes of climate and circum- 
 stances on the earth's surface during such a 
 lengthened period. One genus we may 
 
I20 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 suppose to have enjoyed a very lengthy 
 enjoyment of all the advantages of "natural 
 selection," the genus Cestracion, but seems 
 to have made not the slightest progress of 
 development, and remains very slightly 
 altered since it swam in the waters of the 
 Devonian period. Darwin tells us that " In 
 North America the black bear was seen by 
 Hearne swimming for hours with widely- 
 open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, 
 insects in the water." [How could Hearne 
 tell that insects were the bear's sole object r] 
 " Even in so extreme a case as this, if the 
 supply of insects were constant, and if better 
 adapted competitors did not exist in the 
 country, I can see no difficulty in a race of 
 bears being rendered by natural selection 
 more and more aquatic in their structure 
 and habits, with larger and larger mouths, 
 
DARWINISM. 121 
 
 till a creature was produced as monstrous 
 as a whale."* The sharks ought surely to 
 have become by this time as monstrous as 
 the whale, with such enlarged advantages of 
 " natural selection." As a rule, however, 
 instead of becoming such monsters, these, as 
 well as all our mammalia, have degenerated 
 in monstrosity from their fossil types. Among 
 the supposed instances of the discovery of the 
 missing link, let us take that of the Simo- 
 cyonidae, between the bear and the wolf. It 
 can scarcely be supposed, on any reasonable 
 ground, that the transformation of the ex- 
 traordinarily active and rapid wolf into the 
 clumsy and slow bear, or vice versa, could 
 have been anything but a slow process, due 
 to some supposed " natural selection," or that 
 the "evolution" was not a gradual one 
 
 * " Origin of Species," p. 184. 
 
122 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 through ages of time, so that first the long 
 tail disappeared, then the short toes changed 
 to long claws, &c., &c. We should then 
 have every reason to assume that the Simo- 
 cyonidse were but a small fraction of the 
 number of links between bear and w^olf. 
 But the Darwinian hypothesis assumes that 
 "as all the forms of life are the lineal descen- 
 dants of those which lived long before the 
 Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that 
 the ordinary succession by generation has 
 never been broken " (p. 489), and as his " long 
 race " of bears at length becoming " monstrous 
 as a whale " requires a lengthy period of 
 gradual changes in structure, so there should 
 be many links between our Simocyonidse 
 bear and wolf, so ought there to be infinitely 
 more between bear and wolf and their trans- 
 mutation into horse, stag, elephant, baboon, 
 
DARWINISM. 123 
 
 and man in the " ordinary succession by gene- 
 ration." Here again we rely too much on the 
 " imperfection of the geological record," and 
 might as well interpret that record through 
 the teachings of the open page of Nature 
 of our own epoch, Avhich is utterly silent 
 as to such transmutations; and if we do find 
 similarities or links in greater numbers in 
 the ancient record than among our own 
 fauna, attribute the former with more reason 
 to distinct creations. As we find it a universal 
 law that all genera and species, from man 
 downwards, decline intermixture with other 
 genera and species, so much that even in a 
 state of semi-domestication, or, as I may call 
 it, unnatural selection (the red, for instance, 
 will not even breed with the fallow-deer), 
 all arguments from the attempts of man to 
 create a fusion of species (for such a fusion 
 
124 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 of genera is well known to be impossible), 
 or to vary their form, are futile, as in the 
 one case the results are hybrids, so that a full 
 stop is put upon the " ordinary succession by 
 generation ; " and in the other, all that is done 
 is the production of deformities, which in most 
 cases are not lasting, and which " natural 
 selection," in so far as there is any truth 
 in the doctrine, would certainly cure in time.* 
 For instance, if the bandy-legged deformity 
 of the Ancon sheep, carefully maintained by 
 interbreeding, disappeared with the desire to 
 continue the breed, and supposing that they 
 had been left entirely to Nature, it seems pretty 
 nearly certain that the least bandy-legged and 
 
 * Hue, in his "Voyage dans le Thibet," vol. ii. p. 221, says, 
 " Les chevaux demi-anes (cheval hemiane) sont feconds, et se 
 reproduisent en perpetuant I'espece, qui demeure toujours inal- 
 terable." 
 
DARWINISM. 125 
 
 consequently more active ram would get the 
 better of the others, and that in the course 
 of time natural operations would reverse the 
 operations of the farmer, and the Ancon race 
 be extinguished. Professor Huxley dilates 
 on the six-fingered individuals of Malta ; 
 but what are these but similar monstrosities, 
 like the Ancon sheep or the Siamese twins, 
 the exceptions to the general law of Nature 
 and which Nature is sure to suppress ? The 
 extraordinary beak of some pigeons, or ad- 
 ditional vertebra, like the occasional sixth 
 finger in man, the Siamese twins, indeed all 
 the so-called varieties reared by man, may be 
 likewise monstrosities which Nature, left to her- 
 self, would correct. The question is, what are 
 deformities and what are varieties. Every de- 
 viation from the normal type ought perhaps to 
 be considered a deformity, and as such would 
 
126 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 be corrected to preserve the wonderful order 
 which is exhibited in all nature, and which 
 would be destroyed if monstrosities were 
 allowed to propagate to any great extent. 
 Care may no doubt improve, in our view 
 and for our purposes, races of many animals. 
 We may also be pretty nearly certain that, 
 left to Nature, varieties degenerate (in our 
 view) and revert to their original type. We 
 may also be certain, however, that into what- 
 ever varieties closely allied species may 
 change, the animals of different genera will 
 not in any case form alliances in the " ordi- 
 nary succession by generation." The pre- 
 servation of favoured races in the struggle 
 for life by means of natural selection, or the 
 converse, but in simpler words, " the weakest 
 go to the wall," may be one of the laws of 
 creation, and to it may be due the preserva- 
 
DARWINISM. 127 
 
 tion of all races in the same forms, and, for 
 thousands of years, even of the same di- 
 mensions in which they have hitherto existed, 
 and in such a marvellous and constant order 
 as to enable us to arrange and classify genera 
 and species by the inspection of a single tooth 
 or bone taken from strata of all geological 
 ages. But have we any instance of the de- 
 struction in our own age in the struggle for 
 existence of any race or species unless by 
 the act of man ? On the contrary, it would 
 seem that, in the wilds of Africa for in- 
 stance, the Carnivora and Graminivora are so 
 balanced that they do not extirpate one 
 another, and vegetation is supplied, as a rule, 
 equal to their wants. We have no know- 
 ledge of the extinction of any genus of our 
 own geological period under the ordinary 
 operations of Nature. That extinction can 
 
128 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 only be found in former geological periods, 
 and of genera and species essentially differ- 
 ing from those of our geological periods ; and 
 as we find new creations, such as the whale 
 and the sheep, surely we may as reasonably 
 suppose new creations of similar though not 
 the same creatures, the general type or model 
 being preserved through all time, as that all 
 should have been evolved from the one, four, or 
 five primordial forms, contrary to all our expe- 
 rience — a conjecture founded upon unnatural 
 (as they may be called) modifications which 
 Nature in time obliterates. 
 
 "Geology reveals to us the extraordinary 
 fact, and without its aid the fact never could 
 have been known, that as the globe passed 
 from one condition to another, whole races 
 of animals perished, and were succeeded by 
 others with organizations adapted to the 
 
DARWINISM. 129 
 
 altered state of our planet. On this phe- 
 nomenon is based the fundamental principle 
 of the identification of strata by their im- 
 bedded remains." * But the great mine of 
 the fossil world is very far from being worked 
 out ; and therefore, when facts do not fall in 
 conveniently with theories, appeal is made 
 to the imperfection of the geological record, 
 and a serious demand is made upon our 
 credulity, when we are gravely assured of the 
 gradual evolution of all organic creatures from 
 one, or four, or five primordial forms, involving 
 a vast lapse of time and a multiplicity of 
 links, which as yet have not been discovered, 
 notwithstanding their multitude, if they ever 
 existed ; for, as to the alleged links, none ap- 
 proach so closely together as our present 
 before-mentioned sirens, snakes, and lizards, 
 
 * ** Siluria," chap, xliii. p. i. 
 K 
 
J30 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 of the evolution of which from one another 
 we have not a particle of evidence. If there 
 are such links so closely following in a chain, 
 "the identification of strata by their imbedded 
 remains " would obviously become next to im- 
 possible. So satisfactory, however, has been 
 this identification, that it is impossible to 
 ignore it, witness the Silurian strata in all 
 parts of the earth, in which not even a fish has 
 ever been found ; also the coal-measures, and 
 indeed all the strata of the earth which are 
 classified or identified by their fossil remains. 
 The marvellous and constant order in the 
 fauna of the earth is perhaps even more 
 remarkable in the case of its flora. If no 
 sino-le instance of the evolution or transmu- 
 tation of genera or species of the fauna of the 
 earth has come within our knowledge, still 
 less have we any evidence of the transmu- 
 
DARWINISM. 131 
 
 tation in a single palpable instance of the 
 trees of the forest or the flowers of the earth ; 
 and notwithstanding their endless variety and 
 the myriads of insects carrying the pollen 
 from flower to flower, affording, one would 
 suppose, every facility for transmutation, all 
 remain in their wonderful order, enabling us, 
 as in the case of the fauna, to classify and 
 arrange. Dr. Hooker has indeed suggested 
 conspicuous examples of unstable forms and 
 apparent transitional links, which one would 
 suppose might only be varieties. Professor 
 Parrot shows one of the modes by which 
 these changes in plants may be accounted 
 for ; there are probably many others. " These 
 changes in plants, resulting from the height 
 of situation, were first observed by me during 
 my travels in the Caucasus, on which occasion 
 I accurately described them. I subsequently 
 
132 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 made the same observations on the Swiss and 
 Italian Alps, and on the Pyrenees, and now 
 they were again repeated in the most unequi- 
 vocal manner on Ararat: so that several 
 different kinds of plants occur equally under 
 the same circumstances on all those mountains, 
 the several specimens coinciding most com- 
 pletely ; whereas they have so little resem- 
 blance to the very same plants growing in 
 the lower regions of the same mountain tract 
 that one would hardly suspect them to be of 
 the same species."* Surely, if we seek for 
 laws, we must find them in the immense 
 multitude of examples which are visibly con- 
 stant and invariable, and certainly not dog- 
 matize on a few possibly, nay, probably, only 
 apparent exceptions. 
 
 * <' Journey to Ararat," by Dr. F. Parrot, Cooky's transla- 
 tion, p. 201. 
 
DARWINISM. 
 
 133 
 
 Let us imagine the destruction of the pre- 
 sent external crust of the earth, and, like the 
 different geological periods — primary, second- 
 ary, and tertiary — a new geological period, 
 only distinguishable by its imbedded fossil 
 remains, the remains of all our living crea- 
 tures, including man, and, with him, his works. 
 Let us also imagine a new or remodelled 
 earth's surface, and a new race of intellec- 
 tual reasoning animals like ourselves. Now 
 suppose philosophers of this new state of 
 things discovering the fossils of the horse 
 [Equus curvidens) of America, and finding 
 above them, in the strata of our period, the 
 fossils of the horse of our period. Some of 
 these philosophers would contend, very natu- 
 rally but very untruly, that the horse of our 
 day was the descendant of Equus curvidens 
 in the " ordinary succession by generation," 
 
134 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 for the American horse of our day was intro- 
 duced by the Spaniards into that continent, 
 nor was any such animal known to exist there 
 previously to that introduction. If, therefore, 
 such a mistake might so easily be made in 
 the case of species so closely allied, we may 
 with more reason infer that it is a gross mis- 
 take to suppose the evolution of one distinct 
 genus from another by the " ordinary succes- 
 sion by generation." Again, the same phi- 
 losophers of the supposed new period would 
 find the casts of anchors of every variety of 
 form in the rocks or deposits of only the 
 former strata, some very rude, some of very 
 perfect shapes, or of fragments of boats and 
 ships of an immense variety, but a variety 
 which still showed them to have, in one 
 sense, a common origin ; that is to say, to have 
 been the creation of some intelligent being. 
 
DARWINISM. 135 
 
 In the same way we see the creations of an 
 infinitely higher intelligence, and have no 
 more reason to conclude the evolution con- 
 trary to all experience of one from the other, 
 than in the case of the anchor or the ship. 
 The beautiful little anchors which cover the 
 body of the Synapta, and from which the idea 
 of one of our patent anchors would seem to 
 have been taken, compared as to their origin 
 with our anchors, may afford instruction to 
 those who cannot comprehend a supreme crea- 
 tive intelligence beyond that of man. Perhaps 
 if, following the reasoning of some of our 
 scientific men, the suggested philosopher of a 
 new period of the earth's crust might pronounce 
 these minute anchors, which he should find 
 in a fossil state, the germs or the primordial 
 form of all the fossil anchors. 
 
 It is alleged that some of the well-known 
 
136 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 facts of comparative anatomy, as for instance 
 the foot of marsupials, are inexplicable on 
 any other theory but that of evolution. Many 
 natural facts were inexplicable to former 
 philosophers, except through theories long 
 since exploded. This theory seems to be 
 of the same character, and is constructed 
 upon a few, as yet, inexplicable facts (if indeed 
 it be true that they are not explicable on the 
 theory of distinct creation), in the teeth of the 
 universal law which has preserved genera 
 and species for thousands of years in precisely 
 the same forms and with the same anatomical 
 distinctions as they present themselves to us 
 to this day. 
 
 Mr. Darwin's final conclusion, that mankind 
 is descended from an ape-like progenitor in 
 the ordinary succession by generation from 
 some of the monkey tribes, the pointed ears. 
 
DARWINISM. 137 
 
 tail, &c., being at last obliterated but leaving 
 their traces, seems to contradict his principle 
 of " natural selection " and the doctrine of the 
 ** survival of the fittest." Since reading his 
 book, I have been in the habit of looking at 
 human ears, and as far as I have seen, the 
 point in the ear on which he partly founds his 
 conclusion is completely absent ; as for the 
 tail, no human beings have as yet been found 
 with that accommodation, not even as an 
 exceptional deformity, great as the advantage 
 would have been of a prehensile one, espe- 
 cially to sailors. 
 
 We are told that in the "struggle for 
 existence " the weaker animal must give way 
 to the stronger, and the weaker be extin- 
 guished or absorbed in the stronger race. 
 Now man is physically the least fitted animal 
 to contend in that struggle with others, not 
 
T38 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 being furnished, as all other animals, with 
 offensive or defensive organs, and with less 
 physical strength than the anthromorphous 
 apes, man's nearest congeners ; consequently, 
 unless all the imaginary Simian progenitors 
 produced a new creature, mentally though 
 not physically superior, at one and the same 
 time (not very probable), this half-man half- 
 ape would infallibly fail in the " struggle for 
 existence." A single man-eating tiger will 
 even now compel a whole village in India to 
 migrate ; how much more would the powerful 
 gorilla or ourang outang make mincemeat of 
 some feeble link or links between themselves 
 and man ! Sir Charles Lyell alludes to this 
 difficulty, the feebleness of man as compared 
 with animals, and says, " But this difficulty 
 has been met, as before stated, by assigning as 
 the original seat of man, some island within 
 
DARWINISM. 139 
 
 the tropics free from large beasts of prey."" 
 This conjecture, to meet the difficulties of 
 another conjecture, seems to involve a con- 
 tradiction of the doctrine of " progressive 
 development in the struggle for existence." 
 Surely the weak animal, half-man half-ape, 
 would have little chance in his island in the 
 struggle for existence with his powerful 
 relations, gorilla or ourang. The fruits of the 
 trees would be seized before he could reach 
 them, and he would be pushed aside in the 
 struggle for the fruits of the ground, and 
 therefore have small chance of progressive 
 development. Surrounded by water, the 
 ourang's half-developed progeny might doubt- 
 less have been driven out of its tropical island, 
 and obliged to find a refuge on a neighbouring 
 continent, which implies either swimming, for 
 
 * " Principles," p. 466. 
 
140 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 which the Simian race are not remarkable, 
 or the power of constructing something in the 
 nature of raft or boat, or drifting on a log 
 with a very moderate distance of water to 
 cross ; but on the continent they would have 
 found as dangerous enemies to progress as in 
 their tropical island-home, in the tropical 
 lion, tiger, &c. All history and tradition are 
 against the conjecture, and the tradition — no 
 ordinary one — of the garden of Eden seems a 
 far more rational solution of the problem. 
 Why the gorilla, or ourang, or other baboon 
 should have ceased, in their undisturbed 
 forests, whether island or continental, to 
 produce their superior congener, man, or at 
 least some kind of half-breed, for so many 
 thousand years, and should only have done so 
 in the Miocene or Pleiocene period, con- 
 jecturers must further determine. Why the 
 
DARWINISM. 141 
 
 ourang or gorilla, with all the advantages of 
 seclusion in impenetrable jungles or forests, 
 with habits formed, in some cases, of building 
 (in which, however, they are by no means as 
 proficient as birds), should not have become 
 monstrous in intelligence, as the bear, swim- 
 ming about with open mouth, in magnitude, 
 and produced by progressive development, in 
 the last few centuries of the millions of years 
 they are supposed to have existed, a single 
 palpable link between themselves and man, 
 one is at a loss to conceive. 
 
 Millions upon millions of suns, and probably 
 planets, are recognised facts ; so are millions 
 of miles of space. Millions of years are 
 unhesitatingly admitted by many philoso- 
 phers into calculations of the time required 
 for the formation of portions of the earth's 
 crust; why should they have any difficulty 
 
142 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 in admitting and believing in thousands, or 
 even millions, of created organic beings, or 
 their germs, protoplasms, or primordial forms, 
 when they see the infinite millions of created 
 things in the heavens, including, probably, 
 infinite millions more which they do not see r 
 Mr. Darwin's new theory of " sexual selec- 
 tion" is introduced as another mode of 
 natural selection in the struggle for existence, 
 and is based upon the assumption that in 
 some cases the female selects the male, not 
 the male the female ; for it is unquestionable 
 that with respect to the mammalia the male 
 selects, as he acknowledges in the case of the 
 seal, and as is well known in the case of the 
 stag, the bull, the buffalo, &c. In the semi- 
 wild herds of buffaloes in Italy, after a contest 
 between the bulls for the females, the con- 
 quered bull retires to some thicket in a state 
 
DARWINISM. 143 
 
 of insanity, and from thence rushes out at and 
 kills every living thing that passes. Sports- 
 men are warned to take care of the " bufalo 
 matto " by the peasants, and very dangerous 
 it is to fall in with one. It is also assumed 
 that birds have an aesthetic taste for beauty ; 
 may they not in that case have other tastes, 
 for a good-tempered male for instance, inde- 
 pendent of his beauty ? Then again, does the 
 improvement of the race depend upon the 
 male alone ; has not the health and strength, 
 and perhaps beauty of the female, something 
 to do with her offspring ? 
 
 " The males, as we have seen, are generally 
 ready to breed before the females ; of the 
 males the strongest, and, with some species, 
 the best armed, drive away the weaker males, 
 and the former w^ould then unite with the 
 more vigorous and best-nourished females, as 
 
144 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 these are the first to breed. Such vigorous 
 pairs would surely rear a larger number of 
 offspring than the retarded females, which 
 would be compelled, supposing the sexes to 
 be numerically equal, to unite with the 
 conquered and less powerful males ; and this 
 is all that is wanted to add, in the course of 
 successive generations, to the size, strength, 
 and courage of the males, or to improve their 
 weapons."* According to this statement of 
 the case, it would seem that even these male 
 birds select the "more vigorous and best- 
 nourished females." 
 
 This supposed improvement by sexual 
 selection, doubtful at the best, and founded 
 upon one class of animal life, to the exclu- 
 sion of the opposite evidence afforded by 
 the mammalia, is adduced as proof cf the 
 
 * " The Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 261. 
 
DARWINISM. 145 
 
 supposed law which affects all organic beings ; 
 but as we have been acquainted with many 
 animals, through the records of past ages of 
 one kind or other for thousands of years, 
 surely we ought to find evidence of their 
 improvement in " size and strength," and an 
 improvement of their weapons. Such, how- 
 ever, is notoriously not the case. And if we 
 take the instance, among others, of the 
 peacock, we may see the portrait of our 
 present peacock, exactly as he is now, as 
 well as of other animals, in the ancient 
 monuments of Rome, Egypt and Nineveh. 
 
 If it be true that, through " natural selec- 
 tion" and the "struggle for existence, the 
 stronger and generally improved individuals 
 of every species have been gradually im- 
 proving the race and adding to their strength, 
 size, and courage," and the improvement of 
 
 L 
 
146 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 their weapons, it follows that the present 
 
 species must be superior to their ancient 
 
 progenitors, or, conversely, that the ancient 
 
 progenitors must have been inferior in 
 
 strength and size, and courage, and with 
 
 inferior weapons ; but if the present species 
 
 of the earth are, as asserted, the descendants 
 
 of those we find in a fossil state, the very 
 
 reverse is the case, for the fossils of almost 
 
 all species show that they were very much 
 
 superior in size, strength, and with much 
 
 more powerful weapons. Witness the saurians, 
 
 and nearly all the mammalia. The theory, 
 
 therefore, of sexual selection is founded upon 
 
 a very questionable, not to say false, basis, 
 
 being directly contradicted in many instances 
 
 by our own experience of some thousand 
 
 years. The true law seems to be that the 
 
 strongest male, whether more or less perfect 
 
DARWINISM. 147 
 
 or beautiful (admitting that beauty is a proof 
 of the stronger and more perfect animal), 
 will to a certain extent exclude the less 
 powerful male, thus preserving the race in 
 the same form and condition through ages, 
 and preventing its deterioration and annihila- 
 tion, rather than causing future progressive 
 development of any kind in ages to come, 
 for which progressive development in the 
 past we have not a particle of evidence. 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON 
 DARWINISM. 
 
 PROFESSOR HUXLEY, in his " Lay Ser- 
 mons on the Origin of Species," takes 
 the opportunity of heaping eulogistic phrases 
 upon science in general and invention, and 
 contempt upon those who differ in opinion 
 from Mr. Darwin, although he himself is but 
 a half-and-half believer; they are "pietists," 
 " bibliolaters," " bigots," " old ladies of both 
 sexes," &c. Abuse and ridicule are calculated 
 to inflict pain — a kind of persecution which 
 Professor Huxley deprecates very properly as 
 applied to scientific men of former days ; and 
 it is to be hoped that he will condescend 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 149 
 
 to approve and observe the sacred maxim, 
 " Do unto others as you wish they should 
 do unto you." 
 
 " The coeval imaginations," he says,* '* cur- 
 rent among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, 
 recorded by writers whose very name and 
 age are admitted by every scholar to be 
 unknown, have not yet shared their fate [the 
 myths of paganism], but even at this day 
 are regarded by nine-tenths of the civilised 
 world as the authoritative standard of fact, 
 and the criterion of the justice of scientific 
 conclusions in all that relates to the origin 
 of" things, and, among these, of species." And 
 again, sarcastically, "The first chapter of 
 Genesis contains the beginning and end of 
 sound science." 
 
 Nine-tenths of the civilised world ! Are 
 
 * " Lay Sermons," Sec, p. 305. 
 
150 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 they all " pietists," " bigots," " old ladies of 
 both sexes," &c. ? At all events they are in 
 the scientific good company of Bacon, Newton, 
 and Faraday — men as scientific as any of 
 our present professors of science. Huxley's 
 statement of their opinions is a most unfair 
 one. They do not expect to find in the few 
 brief and majestic words of the first chapter of 
 Genesis a scientific exposition, they find there 
 the most concise account of an event which it 
 would take a library of books to explain in 
 detail. They hold its authenticity upon far 
 better and sounder evidence than is produced 
 for the conjectures of Lamarck and DarwirT ; 
 and if, on account of the want of the name 
 and age of the writers or writer, compilers or 
 annalists of this book of a remote antiquity, 
 authenticated as it has been by other histories, 
 monuments, &c., together with other more 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 151 
 
 remarkable evidences of its truth, it is not 
 to be believed, we may as well shut up all 
 history, which always must consist of com- 
 pilations from other writers. The name of the 
 author of any history is no criterion of its 
 greater or less credibility, except perhaps 
 to his cotemporaries. No one but an inspired 
 person could give a true authoritative account 
 of Creation, and happily for the good of man- 
 kind, nine-tenths of the civilised world are 
 satisfied that the author of Genesis was so 
 inspired ; but to say that they regard it as 
 the criterion of the justice of scientific con- 
 clusions, that the first chapter of Genesis 
 contains the beginning and end of sound 
 science, is a very deceptive statement of the 
 views of " nine-tenths of the civilised world." 
 The great truth taught by the first chapter 
 of Genesis, that the Almighty God was the 
 
152 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Creator of heaven and earth, may, in one 
 sense, be held by the nme-tenths, including 
 some of the greatest of the wise and the 
 scientific, as the " beginning and end of sound 
 science ; " but that so concise a narrative of 
 such a stupendous work as that of the creation 
 of a world could possibly give us any insight 
 into the modits operandi of "the mystery of 
 mysteries. Creation," as Darwin justly calls 
 it, they, I imagine, do not believe and cannot 
 regard it as the criterion of the justice of 
 particular so-called scientific conclusions. It 
 must not be forgotten that the great truth 
 of the one God, the Creator of all things, 
 was preserved to the world by the "semi- 
 barbarous " Jewish people alone, in the midst 
 of the general idolatry of surrounding nations, 
 in probably the only form in which that 
 nation and myriads of the unscientific could 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 153 
 
 understand it, leaving to the scientific — the 
 drops in the ocean of humanity — a large field 
 for speculation and conjecture as to the 
 process of Creation. Darwin, vol. i. p. 182, 
 says, " The highest form of religion — the grand 
 idea of God hating sin and loving righteous- 
 ness — was unknown in primaeval times." It 
 was certainly not unknown in the primaeval 
 times of the history of the Bible, the only 
 ones of which we have any knowledge. Surely 
 the ten Commandments, the formulated ex- 
 pression of the sentiments expressed through- 
 out in the Bible in the primaeval times, before 
 the promulgation of the Commandments, show 
 the knowledge of a "God hating sin and 
 loving righteousness." 
 
 The Professor asserts that " The doctrine 
 of special creation owes its existence to the 
 supposed necessity of making science accord 
 
154 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 with the Hebrew cosmogony ; but it is 
 curious to observe that, as the doctrine is 
 at present maintained, it is as hopelessly in- 
 consistent with the Hebrew view as any 
 other hypothesis." 
 
 The Mosaic account of Creation, as before 
 suggested, is manifestly a popular, as it may 
 be called, and not a scientific account, for the 
 best of reasons, that if clothed in a scientific 
 form it would have been wholly unintelligible 
 to the great mass of its readers ; we cannot 
 therefore expect to deduce from it any argu- 
 ments as to the 7nodus opcrajidi of Creation. 
 Whatever, therefore, may be the doctrine of 
 special creation as maintained at present by 
 some men of science, others may be permitted 
 to hold the view that it is not inconsistent 
 with Hebrew cosmogony, especially since 
 there are so many professors and others 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 155 
 
 holding such different views on many a 
 scientific question, involved in the attempt to 
 construct a cosmogony. An authoritative 
 revelation of the one Almighty Creator of the 
 universe to his intelligent creatures appears 
 to have been necessary to control the vagaries 
 of human reason. Montaigne has described 
 those of the ancient philosophers, and amus- 
 ingly winds up his account : — " Fiez-vous a 
 vostre philosophic ; vantez-vous d'avoir trouv6 
 la febve au gasteau, a veoir ce tintamarre de 
 tant de cervelles philosophiques." * 
 
 In their various attempts at the construction 
 of theories to explain the mode of creation of 
 the globe, and things upon it, modem " scien- 
 tific men " are not unlikely to find a com- 
 mentator like Montaigne. One of the last 
 of these theories supposes meteoric stones, 
 * " GEuvres de Montaigne," J. A. Buchon, p. 280. - 
 
156 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 usually, if not always, of some metallic sub- 
 stance in an incandescent state, to have 
 contained and supplied the seeds or germs 
 of the growths with which the earth is filled. 
 
 The only certain scie^itific conclusion at 
 which we can arrive through that chapter of 
 Genesis, is that God was the Creator of all 
 things, and that the conjecture of " the fool 
 who has said in his heart there is no God,'' 
 that some fortuitous combination of molecular 
 forces has developed into the wonderful order 
 and harmony of the universe, is nonsense. 
 With those holding decided views of pro- 
 gressive development, it seems extraordinary 
 that there should be any difficulty in believing 
 that man is not the end and summit of 
 intellectual existence, and that there should 
 not be improved existences, or existences of 
 another nature, good and bad, not so in- 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 157 
 
 timately connected with earthy matter as 
 we are. If *' man is developed from an ovule, 
 about the 125th of an inch diameter/'* a 
 microscopic object, perhaps in an earlier 
 stage even more minute, developed into the 
 form of intellectual man, it seems reasonable 
 to infer that after death the vital energy may 
 still remain in some minute germ or ovule, be 
 developed into, or as St. Paul says, " raised a 
 spiritual body," or clothed in another form of 
 matter, and man thereby given "hopes for 
 a still higher destiny in the distant future ; " * 
 not, as I suppose Mr. Darwin means, an 
 improved animal on this earth, or merely an 
 improvement of the race, which to each of 
 us individually would be, instead of a hope, 
 a painful regret that we cannot expect to 
 
 * "Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 14. 
 t Ibid., vol. ii. p. 405. 
 
158 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 participate in the improvement, but a hope 
 in which each individual man is concerned 
 personally, of which some of our modern 
 "scientific conclusions" would fain deprive 
 us, and of which Mr. Darwin's conclusions 
 will assuredly not deprive many '' of the 
 nine-tenths of the civilised world." 
 
 Well may we more than admire the beauti- 
 ful ancient symbol of a future glorified exis- 
 tence—the butterfly ; the creeping caterpillars 
 finishing their existence in their coflin, the 
 chrysalis, and finally emerging from it, in 
 some cases, in the most gorgeous forms in 
 Nature. Nor should we forget that the germ 
 of the caterpillar must contain in some 
 wonderful manner the essence or substance 
 which is elaborated into the exceeding beauty 
 of the butterfly. How is it possible to ex- 
 plain this marvellous metamorphosis ? and 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 1 59 
 
 knowing, seeing it, why have the smallest 
 doubt of the authoritatively-declared meta- 
 morphosis of the intellectual being, man ? 
 
 " When astronomy was young," the morn- 
 ing stars sang together for joy, "and the 
 planets were guided in their courses by 
 celestial hands. Now the harmony of the 
 stars has resolved itself into gravitation ac- 
 cording to the inverse square of their dis- 
 tances, and the orbits of the planets are 
 deducible from the laws of the forces which 
 allow a schoolboy's stone to break a window. 
 The lightning was the Angel of the Lord ; 
 but it has pleased Providence in these modern 
 times that science should make it the humble 
 messenger of man."* Here, by the way, the 
 Professor uses a figure much like that of 
 the Bible. Electricity, not lightningy has 
 
 * "Lay Sermons," &c., p. 310. 
 
l6o SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 been made the humble messenger of man. 
 Lightning still remains, not the humble 
 messenger, but too often the irresistible 
 destroyer of man. 
 
 It is a subject of regret to find a professor 
 treating a matter so interesting and serious 
 to nine-tenths of the civilised world in a 
 manner so scornful and so shallow. To 
 quote a poetical expression from a poetical 
 work (the Book of Job), as a scientific ex- 
 position of a natural fact, and then to draw 
 an invidious comparison between it and the 
 prose of a geometrical law, when, moreover, 
 there are many passages elsewhere in the 
 Bible showing that the writers held no such 
 unscientific notions, certainly does not betray 
 much regard for fairness and truth. Where 
 the Professor finds that the lightning was 
 "the Angel of the Lord," I am at a loss 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. i6t 
 
 to discover, unless he confounds the 0x07a 
 TTvpog, "flame of fire," the figurative words 
 of St. Paul, taken from the poetical language 
 of the 104th Psalm, with do-TpaW/, "lightning." 
 As well might he accuse Goethe of a want of 
 astronomical knowledge for writing in the 
 opening of "Faust," "Die Sonne tont nach 
 alter Weise in Briider-spharen Wettgesang." 
 If this be a specimen of scientific liberalism 
 on which he prides himself, scientific liber- 
 alism will with reason stink in the nostrils 
 of "nine-tenths of the civilised world." To 
 show no respect for the opinions of these nine- 
 tenths, and insult them with opprobrious 
 terms, is that kind of liberalism which is 
 so remarkable in the Bradlaughs and Odgers 
 of the present day. 
 
 Professor Huxley says, " A section, a hun- 
 dred feet thick, will exhibit at different heights 
 
 M 
 
l62 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 a dozen species of ammonite, none of which 
 passes beyond its particular zone of limestone 
 or clay into the zone below it or into that 
 above it ; so that those who adopt the doctrine 
 of special creation, must be prepared to 
 admit that at intervals of time corresponding 
 with the thickness of those beds, the Creator 
 thought fit to interfere with the natural course 
 of events for the purpose of making a new 
 ammonite." * What can the Professor know 
 of the " natural course of events " in the 
 ammonite world ? In that presumptuous cer- 
 tainty of the correctness of his inductions he 
 seems to^ think he^ has triumphantly posed 
 the believer in special creation ; but Dr. 
 Carpenter's researches in the deep sea have 
 shown the foolishness of those inductions, 
 and that different creatures simultaneously 
 
 * " Lay Sermons," p. 308. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 163 
 
 exist in zones of different heights, and that 
 the " intervals of time corresponding with the 
 thickness of these beds " may be no intervals 
 at all. Why should not the Creator have 
 thought fit to create varieties of ammonites 
 as well as the infinite varieties in all Nature, 
 an infinite variety extending throughout the 
 universe, if Mr. Proctor, in his lecture. Royal 
 Institution, May 6, 1870, is correct in saying 
 that the chief characteristic of the sidereal 
 system is its infinite variety. 
 
 After this nullification of the Professors 
 scientific sarcasm, we may laugh at his addi- 
 tional remark : " But the hypothesis of special 
 creation is not only a mere specious mask for 
 our ignorance, its existence in biology marks 
 the youth and imperfection of the science."* 
 
 He uses also the phrase, "Force the 
 
 * "Lay Sermons," p. 310. 
 
164 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 generous new wine of science into the old 
 bottles of Judaism." The discoveries of Dr. 
 Carpenter have turned some of this generous 
 wine very sour. 
 
 At page 74 of his ^' Lay Sermons," he lays 
 down some excellent rules for the instruction 
 of the young in science, but on a sudden we 
 come to the very startling recommendation 
 or instruction, " and especially tell him [a 
 child !] that it is his duty to doubt until he is 
 compelled by the absolute authority of Nature 
 to believe that which is written in books." 
 Following such astounding and mischievous 
 advice, the child would believe nothing beyond 
 that which it discovers by its own personal ex- 
 perience, and certainly not the "Lay Ser- 
 mons." This, indeed, would not be an unmi- 
 tigated evil. The misstatements of facts, lies, 
 false-reasoning from doubtful facts and con- 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 165 
 
 elusions, false "deductions, inductions, and 
 ratiocinations," are so commonly " written in 
 books," that it is not extraordinary that some 
 men should drop into the folly of a universal 
 scepticism, and especially in scientific ques- 
 tions, as they observe so often "scientific 
 men " holding diametrically opposite opinions 
 before commissions, committees of the House 
 of Commons, and in courts of law engaged 
 in such questions. " What is truth ? " they 
 ask. The Professor's advice would tend to 
 increase this scepticism ; which, however, men 
 contrive somehow or other to forget in the 
 thousand and one concerns of their daily life. 
 
 But the fact is that men, let alone children, 
 as far as the knowledge of Nature, or indeed 
 any kind of knowledge, is concerned, must 
 to a great extent be as grown children as far 
 as belief in " that which is written in books ; " 
 
l66 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 for few, we may say none, have the time or 
 the opportunity for an appeal to the " absolute 
 authority of Nature," or in other words, to 
 experiment or direct observation of all the 
 multitudinous varieties of Nature's operations. 
 One can understand a professor of anatomy 
 saying to his pupils, " Do not take for granted 
 what I tell you or what you read, but test 
 the truth for yourself as you have the means 
 of testing it ; " but to lay down the same 
 principle for children generally seems posi- 
 tively mischievous, and it is to be hoped will 
 not be an instruction of the Board of Educa- 
 tion. Teachers will not stand being told by 
 children that they do not believe them, and I 
 pity the child who adopts the Professor's 
 scientific doctrine. As Carlyle tersely puts it 
 — the clerk in Eastcheap cannot be for ever 
 verifying his ready-reckoner. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 167 
 
 In almost every concern of life we are com- 
 pelled to have more or less faith or belief in 
 what we read or are told by others. " Ne 
 sutor ultra crepidam " is a valuable maxim. 
 Everybody cannot know everything. We 
 must therefore rely upon or have faith in 
 others. It is a necessity of our nature, 
 and must extend from very many of the 
 lowest to the very highest consideration. 
 The man or child would be an incredulous 
 fool who refused to believe anything for 
 which he could not obtain "the absolute 
 authority of Nature." How the Professor, 
 requiring a child to have the " absolute 
 authority of Nature " for his belief, can sub- 
 scribe the Darwinian doctrine, seems very 
 extraordinary, as that doctrine certainly has 
 not that absolute authority. 
 
 " The species of animals which inhabit the 
 
l68 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Opposite sides of the Isthmus of Panama are 
 wholly distinct, &c. ; but where the student 
 seeks an explanation of them from the sup- 
 porters of the received hypothesis of the 
 origin of species, the reply he receives is, in 
 substance, of Oriental simplicity, * Mashallah, 
 it so pleased God.' There are different 
 species on opposite sides of the Isthmus of 
 Panama, because they were created different 
 on the two sides," &c.^'' In another place 
 Professor Huxley writes : — " All who are 
 confident to express an opinion are, at pre- 
 sent, agreed that the manifold varieties of 
 animal and vegetable form have not come 
 into existence by chance, nor result from 
 capricious exertion of creative power." f 
 
 We find also in Fritz Miiller's " Facts and 
 Arguments for Darwin," p. 22 : — " To the old 
 
 * "Lay Sermons," p. 312. t Ibid., p. 236. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 169 
 
 school, this occurrence of two kinds of males 
 [of the Taxeis dubms], a microscopic isopod, 
 will appear to be merely a matter of curiosity. 
 To those who regard the * plan of Creation ' 
 as the conception of an Almighty intellect, 
 matured in the thoughts of the latter before it 
 is manifested in palpable external forms, it 
 will appear a mere caprice of the Creator, as 
 it is inexplicable either from the points of 
 view of practical adaptation or from the 
 typical plan of structure. From the side of 
 Darwin's theory this fact acquires meaning 
 and significance.'' It would doubtless appear 
 to the old school, and to every one else, a 
 matter not " merely," but very remarkably, a 
 matter of curiosity ; but the idea of mere 
 caprice of the Creator seems a puerile objec- 
 tion to the doctrine of special creation ; for 
 supposing that all genera and species have 
 
lyo SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Sprung from a " germ " or " protoplasm/' or 
 the " one primordial form into which life was 
 first breathed by the Creator," or the four or 
 five of Darwin, is it to be supposed for one 
 moment that He who created that germ, 
 protoplasm, or primordial form, was not aware 
 beforehand of the infinite varieties of form 
 which it would assume ? The absurd notion 
 of caprice might therefore as unreasonably be 
 entertained by the follower of Darwin as by 
 any other inventor of theories. What can we 
 pretend to know of the "practical adapta- 
 tion " of certain relations of the microscopic 
 isopod, or whether even the two males may 
 not be according to typical plan of structure in 
 other microscopic isopods with which we are 
 so little acquainted ? This is going very far to 
 fetch an argument for Darwinism, which one 
 would suppose, according to " sexual selec- 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 171 
 
 tion," would decree the destruction of the 
 weaker male. 
 
 The creations of mankind are faint images 
 of the creations of God. The Greeks and 
 Etruscans have left us a great variety of 
 beautiful forms in their pottery. Do we call 
 this caprice ? Would not one identical form 
 of pot have answered all the purpose r Is it 
 caprice which has dictated all the endless 
 varieties of form of the useful and the orna- 
 mental of man's creation ? For what object 
 the infinite, wonderful, and beautiful varieties 
 of God's creation should have been placed on 
 this earth at all, who can pretend to explain ? 
 We are compelled to say, " Mashallah, it so 
 pleased God." 
 
 Professor Huxley again says : * — " The 
 * special creation ' hypothesis presumes every 
 
 * " Lay Sermons," &c., p. 306. 
 
172 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 species to have originated from one or more 
 stocks, these not being the result of any other 
 form of living matter, or arising by natural 
 agencies, but being produced, as such, by a 
 supernatural creative act." Happily the 
 Professor does not entertain the view that 
 the varieties of animal or vegetable life 
 have come into existence by chance, or that 
 inert matter can have by its inert self pro- 
 duced the wonderful harmony, adaptation to 
 purpose, extraordinary combinations of me- 
 chanical and other laws, and the mysterious 
 energies of life. We will leave that to the 
 '* fool who has said in his heart there is 
 no God." But it seems more easy to believe 
 in the "supernatural creative act" of some 
 hundreds or thousands of genera and species 
 as of the one or four or five of Darwin, into 
 which " life," as he says, " was first breathed by 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 173 
 
 the Creator," than in the creation of one or 
 more eozoons, which should expand into the 
 multitudes of organic life. It is contrary to the 
 experience of some thousands of years, that 
 any single genus has, " in the ordinary suc- 
 cession by generation," ever diverged into 
 any other form, or that any species has 
 undergone any other change but a slight 
 modification, under exceptional circumstances, 
 and with a large amount of evidence in most 
 cases that a return to normal circumstances 
 will restore the species to its normal form. 
 
 Again, he says " the ' transmutation ' hypo- 
 thesis considers that all existing species are 
 the result of the modification of pre-existing 
 species, and those of their predecessors by 
 agencies similar to those which at the present 
 day produce varieties and races, and therefore 
 is altogether a natural way; and it is pro- 
 
174 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 bable, though not a necessary consequence of 
 this hypothesis, that all living beings have 
 arisen from a single stock." This hypothesis 
 then supposes a modification of species such 
 as those of our own days into varieties of 
 races and species, not of genera as well as 
 species, which is the Darwinian theory, and 
 of which we have no knowledge or expe- 
 rience at the present or at any other time 
 whatever, and, as we have said before, these 
 so-called varieties and races have naturally a 
 tendency to revert to their original forms 
 rather than to perpetuate their variations. 
 
 So uncertain, so impalpable a hypothesis, so 
 mysterious this problem of creation and life, 
 that it seems mere dogmatism to insist upon 
 the truth of such theories, and an unwhole- 
 some return to the anti-Baconian days of 
 scientific reasoning. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 175 
 
 "Huxley is doing his best to back up 
 Darwin," says Sir Wm. Denison,* "What 
 I have seized upon is his admission that 
 the brain of the gorilla is as perfect as that of 
 man. If this be the case, the inference is 
 simple, that the brain which in its perfect 
 state allows a brute to be sicch a brute cannot 
 be that which constitutes a man." Darwin 
 w^ould perhaps reply that- natural or sexual 
 selection has effected the improvement which 
 constitutes the human brain at some remote 
 period ; but why this improvement should not 
 have continued, and have been constantly 
 going on with men and monkeys, remains 
 to be explained. Cuvier's doctrine would 
 appear far more rational : — " Le developpe- 
 ment des etres organises est plus ou moins 
 prompt et plus ou moins etendus, selon que 
 
 * *' Varieties of Viceregal Life," vol. ii. p. 230. 
 
f76 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 les circonstances lui sont plus ou moins 
 favorable. La chaleur, I'abondance, et I'espece 
 de la nourriture, d'autres causes encore y 
 influent, et cette influence peut etre generale 
 sur tout le corps, ou partielle sur certaines 
 organes ; de la vient que la similitude des 
 descendans avec leurs parents ne peut jamais 
 etre parfaite. Les difl"erences de ce genre, 
 entre les etres organises, sont ce qu'on appelle 
 des varietes. On n'a aucune preuve que 
 toutes les difl'erences qui distinguent au- 
 jourd'hui les etres organises soient de nature 
 a avoir pu etre ainsi produites par les circon- 
 stances. Tout ce que Ton a avance sur ce 
 sujet est hypothetique ; I'experience parait 
 montrer au contraire que, dans I'etat actuel du 
 globe, les varietes sont renfermees dans 
 des limites assez etroites, et, aussi loin que 
 nous pouvons remonter dans I'antiquite, nous 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 177 
 
 voyons que ces limites etaient les memes 
 qu'aujourd'hui. On est done oblige d'admettre 
 certaines formes, qui se sont perpetues depuis 
 I'origine des choses sans exceder ses limites ; 
 et tout les ' etres appartenant a Tune de ces 
 formes constituent ce que Ton appelle une 
 espece. Les varietes sont des subdivisions 
 accidentelles de I'espece." * 
 
 " It is notorious that man is constructed 
 on the same general type or model with 
 other mammals," f it is, therefore, not surpris- 
 ing " that their tissues and blood " should 
 have a similarity to those of lower animals. 
 "Monkeys are liable to many of the same 
 non-contagious diseases as we are " — '* the 
 Cebus AzarcB, in its native land," % is found 
 liable to catarrh. But so is the dog and 
 
 * " Regne Animal," p. 19. 
 
 t *' Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 10. % Ibid., p. ii. 
 
 N 
 
178 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 horse, also from apoplexy, &c., as well as 
 monkeys. Medicine also produces the same 
 or a similar effect on other animals besides 
 monkeys. Horses will drink beer in Germany, 
 as well as monkeys brandy; but I do not 
 know whether any other animals but monkeys 
 have been taught to smoke, except perhaps 
 the dog. In short, in his material internal 
 as well as external form, man " is constructed 
 on the same general type or model" with 
 other mammals, and as these have been 
 constructed in a gradation of resemblances 
 of one kind or another, the last gradation 
 the nearest in the scale to man is no doubt 
 the monkey. Upon these resemblances the 
 theory of Mr. Darwin has apparently been 
 formed — a theory, or rather conjecture, founded 
 upon most uncertain evidence, which must 
 be for ever wanting in logical proof ; and why 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM, 1 79 
 
 it should cease to operate, why one mammal 
 should not be evolving new forms, and the 
 ourang or gorilla producing ape-like men 
 or some other "hairy quadruped furnished 
 with a tail and pointed ears," or why no 
 fossil trace has been found of any one of 
 the " series of forms graduating insensibly 
 from some ape-like creature, to man as he 
 now exists," * though the monkey has been 
 found fossil in Miocene strata, seems very 
 surprising if there be a shadow^ of truth in 
 the theory. On the contrary, it seems much 
 more probable that creation has completed 
 the series as it now exists and from which it 
 never varies, the supposed missing links 
 between the monkey and man, the imaginary 
 " hairy quadruped," being as m^ythical as the 
 faun, centaur, merman and mermaid of former 
 
 * " Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 233. 
 
l8o SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 days. There are, however, genera or species 
 more or less closely resembling one another, 
 and some apparent links between them, such, 
 for instance, as between the snake and the 
 lizard; for we have, as mentioned before, 
 the little sirens, some with two, some with 
 four little legs, with different numbers of toes, 
 and the carpet snake of Australia.''' Here we 
 have closely apparent links between snake 
 or lizard ; but what is this, but only a closer 
 adherence to similarity of type or model in 
 these particular instances. They are, however, 
 specifically distinct, and I presume no one will 
 pretend that snake or lizard evolves sirens, 
 or vice versa, or to explain why, if ever there 
 were such evolution, that evolution is not still 
 in progress before our eyes. This instance of 
 
 * These four-legged little snakes swarm in parts of the 
 Roman Campagna in the spring season. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. l8l 
 
 a close similarity of form in living creatures of 
 one genus ought to raise a very substantial 
 doubt of the truth of transmutation or evolution 
 theories, or of the gradual and progressive de- 
 velopment of man from an ape-like progenitor 
 through many forms, even if we were to dis- 
 cover any of these supposed fossil links or forms 
 which are now so conspicuously wanting. 
 
 In Knightley's ''The Hermits," p. 87, we 
 find that St. Anthony " sees in a stony valley 
 a short manikin, with crooked nose and brow 
 rough with horns, whose lower parts ended 
 in goat's feet," and Anthony, " asking him 
 who he was, was answered, I am a mortal, 
 and one of the inhabitants of the desert, 
 whom the Gentiles, deluded by various errors, 
 worship by the name of fauns, satyrs, and in- 
 cubi." According to Darwin, this story ought 
 to be considered credible ; and St. Jerome 
 
I02 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 adds, p. 88, " Lest this should move a scruple 
 in any one on account of its incredibi- 
 lity, it was corroborated, in the reign of 
 Constantine, by the testimony of the whole 
 world. For a man of that kind, being led 
 alive to Alexandria, afforded a great spectacle 
 to the people ; and afterwards the lifeless 
 carcass, being salted lest it should decay 
 in the summer heat, was brought to Antioch, 
 to be seen by the Emperor." 
 
 Having been assured by an eminent lawyer 
 that he had seen a child with the legs of a 
 moose deer, which had frightened the mother 
 of the child before her confinement, St. 
 Jerome's fact may possibly be credible, and 
 the strange animal not a clever deception ; 
 but the inference from it is not tenable. Such 
 monstrosities, like the Siamese twins, &c., are 
 possible. Mr. Darwin's theory would justify 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 183 
 
 St. Jerome in his belief to the fullest extent, 
 and his followers may perhaps welcome this 
 creature of St. Anthony's as one of the miss- 
 ing links. 
 
 Professor Huxley says, " The solvency of 
 great mercantile companies rests on the 
 validity of the laws w^hich have been ascer- 
 tained to govern the seeming irregularity of 
 that human life, which the moralist bewails 
 as the most uncertain of things ; plague, 
 pestilence, and famine are admitted, by all but 
 fools, to be the natural result of causes for the 
 most part fully within human control, and not 
 the unavoidable tortures inflicted by wrathful 
 Omnipotence upon his helpless handiwork."* 
 
 Is it possible that the Professor means to 
 take the moralist to task, and will assure 
 the certainty of his own life for the next three, 
 
 ♦ *' Lay Sermons," p. 311. 
 
184 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 seven, or twenty-one years, as he would the 
 lease of a house, upon the validity of this 
 so-called law, by which life assurance com- 
 panies are enabled to run the risks of the 
 uncertainty of life ? It is found from certain 
 tables of mortality, experience, and calcula- 
 tions founded upon them, that, taking a large 
 number of persons in good health at various 
 periods of life, the chances of the duration of 
 life are for so many years, and allowing a 
 good margin for the uncertainty, the insurance 
 companies stake the certainty of their capital 
 and a large amount in premiums (and nothing 
 but a large number of premiums can give any 
 chance of success) against the uncertainty of 
 life ; which, however, notwithstanding all this 
 care in selection, inquiry, and medical in- 
 vestigation, they have often to bewail with 
 "the moralist," as too many modern com- 
 panies know to their cost. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 1 85 
 
 The " fools " would be much obliged to the 
 wise men of science if they w^ould show them 
 how to put seasons of excessive drought, or 
 of excessive rain and snow, heat and cold, 
 the epidemics which attack vegetation and 
 animals — the potatoe disease for instance — the 
 cholera, yellow fever, and the variety of 
 pestilences which have swept over the earth, 
 under human control. They come and they 
 depart, a scourge to the organic beings of 
 the world ; and all that man can do, scarcely 
 even *' for the most part," and by no means 
 " fully," is to mitigate in some cases their 
 severity. As far as man is concerned, some 
 epidemics may be mitigated, it is doubtful 
 whether they could be averted, by sanitary 
 measures. But decay and death is part of 
 the order of all creation on this earth, and 
 in the case of mankind, is more or less pre- 
 
l86 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 ceeded by sufferings, diseases, or accidents, 
 which are in a multiplicity of cases not 
 "within human control," and we seem to be 
 as far as ever from the time when the soul 
 shall leave the body without such antecedent 
 sufferings, all the men of science notwith- 
 standing. They are tortures inflicted upon 
 the helpless handiwork of the Creator; but 
 we have no right to say they are inflicted 
 by "wrathful Omnipotence," any more than 
 the ignorant or stupid man would have to 
 say that the punishment of death or im- 
 prisonment, involving probably mental torture 
 quite equivalent to physical pain, was the 
 wrathful act of a government ; for we are in 
 complete ignorance of the reason why Omni- 
 potence has thought fit to allow the existence 
 of pain and death, and of evil, their fruitful 
 cause ; and in that ignorance we must remain. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 187 
 
 for we never can expect to understand the 
 great scheme of the universe, or solve the 
 mystery of the existence and the origin of evil. 
 This painful part of the law of existence 
 must for the present be part of the great 
 scheme ; but, none the less, this physical law 
 may be closely connected with the moral 
 law. Sir Charles Bell, one of our truest ex- 
 perimental philosophers, says, " But why then 
 have I such inexhaustible delight in the whole 
 face of Nature ? No, it is the pleasure I have 
 in investigating structure. Everything there 
 so perfect, so curiously fitted, and leading you 
 by little and little to the comprehension of a 
 wisdom so perfect that I am forced to believe 
 that, in the moral world things are not really 
 left in all that disarray which our partial 
 view would persuade us they are."* 
 
 * " Letters of Sir C. BeU," p. 251. 
 
SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 The Bible, however, supplies a consolation 
 for sufferers, and the manner in which the 
 apparent " disarray " is provided for. To cite 
 one of many such comforting assurances, 
 St. Paul, referring to the fact of the existence 
 of evil, " the world groaneth and travaileth 
 with pain until now," * shows them a glorious 
 compensation in the hope of happiness in a 
 future life, and not on very severe conditions, 
 many of which consist of means of making 
 life in this world less miserable. Who even 
 in this life would not willingly submit to a 
 few months or years of suffering, for the 
 prospect of the enjoyment of a long life of 
 health ? In fact, men are ready to undergo the 
 pain of a fearful operation for the sake of 
 a prospective, even uncertain, cure. Of this 
 hope of happiness in a future life some men of 
 
 * Romans viii. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 189 
 
 science are striving to deprive mankind — a 
 boon perhaps to the worst portion of our race, 
 who contribute so largely to its miseries, by- 
 relieving them of the fear of forfeiture of that 
 hope and of the punishment of their crimes. 
 
 If in the foregoing extract the Professor only 
 means that we have no right to assume that 
 any special infliction is the punishment of 
 Heaven for any special iniquity, he will 
 be only repeating the teaching of Christ, who 
 said, " He maketh his sun to rise on the evil 
 and the good, and sendeth the rain on the 
 just and on the unjust." * The parable of the 
 tares,! and the reference to the Galileans, 
 whose blood Pilate had mingled with their 
 sacrifices, and the eighteen upon whom the 
 tower of Siloam fell, :J: show also that we have 
 no right as Christians to assume that cala- 
 
 * Matthew v. 45. f lb. xiii. | Lulce xiii. 
 
190 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 mities are necessarily punishments inflicted 
 by the Creator in this world ; and yet at the 
 same time it does not follow that there may 
 not be exceptions to the rule, and that great 
 natural disasters may be punishments specially 
 inflicted for great moral crime, though nothing 
 but inspired authority would justify us in as- 
 serting them to be so in particular instances. 
 
 It is difiicult to understand the value of a 
 remark that Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace 
 have done good to science by making people 
 think. As well might it be said that the 
 invention of a number of falsehoods did good, 
 by bringing out the truth. Or again, that 
 science cannot make progress without theo- 
 rizers. It seems a question whether theo- 
 rizers, who produce theories based upon false 
 or very uncertain grounds, do not rather in- 
 jure than benefit the cause of true science, by 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. I9I 
 
 lowering it as well as its professors in the 
 estimation of the world in general. 
 
 Professor Huxley, referring to the teleogical 
 argument, says * — " The teleogical argument 
 runs thus : an organ or organism (A) is pre- 
 cisely fitted to perform a function or purpose 
 (B), therefore it was specially constructed to 
 perform that function ;" and at page 332, "Far 
 from imagining that cats exist in order to 
 catch mice well, Darwinism supposes that cats 
 exist because they catch mice well — mousing 
 being not the end, but the condition of their 
 existence." It will hardly be denied that the 
 stomach of the cat was "precisely fitted to 
 perform a function," that of assimilating and 
 digesting its food ; then it would follow that 
 its claws, teeth, and admirable agility, " were 
 precisely fitted " to fill that stomach, or, in 
 
 * "Lay Sermons," &c., p. 330. 
 
192 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 other words, to catch its prey — rats, mice, birds 
 and such small deer, — and, to go a little further, 
 that its rough tongue was " precisely fitted " 
 to enable it to work up the flesh and skin of 
 the animals it destroys, as the lion's tongue 
 is armed with a formidable array of hooked 
 bones for a like purpose. But for what pur- 
 pose the tail of the cat, if not to give (it is 
 but a suggestion) expressive signs of its dif- 
 ferent mental emotions ? Mr. Darwin, in the 
 "Origin of Species," p. 196, gives us the fol- 
 lowing theory on the tail generally, — " Seeing 
 how important an organ of locomotion the 
 tail is in most aquatic animals, its general 
 presence and use for so many land animals, 
 which in their lungs and modified air-bladders 
 betray their aquatic origin, may perhaps be 
 thus accounted for. A well-developed tail 
 having been formed in an aquatic animal, 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 1 93 
 
 it might subsequently come to be worked 
 in for all sorts of purposes, as a fly-flapper, 
 an organ of prehension, or as an aid in turn- 
 ing, as with the dog, though the aid must be 
 slight, for the hare, with hardly any tail, can 
 double quickly enough." Is this gravely to 
 be called science ? The fish's tail is its great 
 organ of locomotion, and a marvellous one it 
 is. Might we not suggest with more reason, 
 that if there were any such development at 
 all, it " might come to be worked in " as legs : 
 But as the Darwinian system is founded 
 upon similarities, the tail of the fish being at 
 its nether end, the quadruped, the descendant 
 of the fish, must have been similarly furnished ! 
 As in the sea, so in certain lakes (perhaps 
 in many others) there are shoals of gre- 
 garious fishes, caught like the herring or 
 pilchard in nets stretched along the coasts. 
 
 o 
 
194 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 There is the pollan of Lough Neagh, the 
 agone of the Lake of Como, and a similar 
 gregarious fish in the Lake of Geneva. It 
 is difficult to conceive how these different 
 fish, partaking of the same gregarious habits, 
 but in other respects quite distinct, could 
 have proceeded from a common progenitor, 
 and taken up their separate abodes in these 
 lakes, as it is difficult to imagine a communi- 
 cation between lakes so distant from one 
 another. No doubt we shall be furnished 
 with one or more conjectural explanations, 
 dignified with the adjunct scientific, like these 
 profound conjectures with respect to the tail 
 of mammals. 
 
 That Darwinism supposes that cats exist 
 because they catch mice well, and that it is 
 the condition of their existence, seems a 
 simple truism ; in other words, that cats exist 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 195 
 
 because they are provided with the means and 
 power of obtaining their food, otherwise they 
 could not live. " That cats exist in order to 
 catch mice well " would certainly be a strange 
 teleogical argument ; unless it only means that 
 they exist in order to keep down the excess 
 of the very voracious rats, mice, and small 
 birds, which, unchecked, would soon eat up a 
 country. 
 
 Vegetation must have been first created to 
 afford food for the innumerable herbivora of 
 all kinds, as without it they could not have 
 existed ; and the carnivora, whether cats, 
 wolves, tigers, or lions, again, to keep down 
 the excess of the herbivora, perhaps also to 
 save them from a lingering death by starva- 
 tion and old age. The poisonous snake, again, 
 may possibly have been destined to check the 
 too great increase of the carnivora. 
 
196 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Sir Charles Lyell* quotes Mr. Wallace's 
 argument on the long neck of the giraffe. 
 " Changes," says Mr. Wallace, " have been 
 brought about, not by the volition of the crea- 
 tures themselves, but by the survival of varie- 
 ties which had the greatest facilities of obtain- 
 ing their food. The giraffe did not acquire its 
 long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of 
 lofty trees, and by constantly stretching out 
 its neck for that purpose, but varieties which 
 occurred with a longer neck than usual had 
 an advantage over their shorter-necked com- 
 panions, and on the first scarcity of food were 
 enabled to survive them." 
 
 Now we have the duck with a short neck, 
 the goose with a longer one, and the swan 
 with the longest neck of the three, and all 
 three have remained, as we know from ancient 
 
 * "Principles of Geology," vol. ii. p. 281. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 197 
 
 representations, for thousands of years past 
 with the same proportional length of neck. 
 But the duck, turning up its little tail verti- 
 cally, has struggled for these thousand years, 
 and struggles still, to pick up its food from the 
 bottom of ponds and rivers, as the giraffe has 
 stretched out its neck " to reach the foliage of 
 lofty trees," and the goose and the swan, 
 like the duck, have been similarly employed. 
 Why should not varieties of the longer neck, 
 as well as the giraffe, have **had an advantage " 
 over the shorter-necked duck, and all our 
 geese have become swans ? According to Mr. 
 Wallace's argument, ducks and geese should 
 have become long-necked birds like the swan. 
 The giraffe, instead of being furnished with 
 a long neck, through the extinction of the 
 shorter-necked giraffes, of the existence of 
 which we have not a particle of evidence, 
 
198 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 might just as well have acquired shorter, 
 instead of their preposterous, fore-legs, in 
 order to enable it to pick up its food from the 
 ground ; a larger field for food than the foliage 
 of trees. At present, in order to pick up food 
 from the ground, it is obliged to straddle out 
 its forelegs with difficulty — an inconvenient 
 process which would just as likely have been 
 corrected in the struggle for existence by the 
 shortening of the legs. There is scarcely an 
 animal in existence some of the limbs of 
 which might not be theoretically improved, 
 according to these views of apparent expe- 
 diency ; but all such limbs, as far as we 
 know hitherto, have been exactly contrived 
 to fulfil, without change of any kind, the 
 objects of the existence of the animals to 
 which they belong. We have no knowledge 
 of such ** changes having been brought about." 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 199 
 
 It seems a mere shallow conjecture, dignified 
 with the name of scientific. Professor Hux- 
 ley and F. Miiller allege that the opponents 
 of their arguments must infer caprice in the 
 work of the Creator. Messrs. Darwin and 
 Wallace's arguments lead to the inference 
 that the creations of the Almighty were 
 defective, and not sufficiently adapted to the 
 purposes for which they were created — that 
 the shorter-necked mythical giraffe was in 
 fact a blunder. Verily a new scientific 
 system of jumping at conclusions. To in- 
 stance another. Mr. Darwin * lays it down 
 as a " corollary of the highest importance 
 that the structure of every organic being is 
 related in the most essential, yet hidden, 
 manner to that of all other organic beings 
 with which it comes into competition for food 
 
 * " Origin of Species," p. 77. 
 
200 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 or residence, or from which it has to escape, 
 or on which it preys. This is obvious in the 
 structure of the teeth and talons of the tiger, 
 and in that of the parasite which clings to the 
 hair on the tiger's body." Here is a grand 
 generalisation ; but is it true ? the wolf, bear, 
 hyaena, jackal, come into " competition for 
 food " with the feline races ; but the one set 
 has toes and nails, the others claws. So the 
 horse has hoofs, the ox cloven feet. If the 
 parasite of the tiger, " on which it preys," 
 has legs and claws like his victim, are we 
 to infer that the parasite of the horse has 
 hoofs, of the ox cloven feet, or of man, 
 our enemy the flea or louse, five fingers ? 
 One would be glad also to learn whereabouts 
 in the long chain of beings " from one primor- 
 dial form " in *^ the ordinary succession by ge- 
 neration," our parasite is to be placed, and 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 20I 
 
 what relationship the parasite of man bears 
 to man. 
 
 How can the various species of deer be 
 said to have a " structure related in the most 
 essential manner " to the lion, panther, &c., 
 from which they have to escape ? Certainly 
 not in the terminations of the feet. Darwin 
 also refers to the destruction of organs 
 through " natural selection." '^' He says : — 
 " What can be plainer than that the webbed 
 feet of ducks and geese are formed for swim- 
 ming ? yet there are upland geese with webbed 
 feet which rarely or never get near the water, 
 and no one except Audubon has seen the 
 frigate bird, which has all its toes webbed, 
 alio-ht on the surface of the sea." He also 
 says, "The deeply scooped membrane be- 
 tween the toes shows that structure has 
 
 * ''Origin of Species," p. 185. 
 
202 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 begun to change." It is difficult to believe 
 that the frigate bird does not alight on the 
 surface of the sea, either for washing, of which 
 birds are fond, or for sleeping or repose, like 
 any other sea-bird. Audubon is the only 
 witness to prove the fact ; but have other 
 witnesses been examined, and of the thou- 
 sands of sailors, how many would there be 
 who would take any notice whatever of the 
 fact r For aught we know, the frigate bird 
 may take his rest on the sea at night, when it 
 would be impossible, or difficult at all events, 
 to see them. As for the upland goose, water 
 or no water, web-footed like the frigate bird it 
 still remains, and disuse of its web has not de- 
 stroyed it. It is said that South Sea Island 
 babies can swim almost before they can walk. 
 They ought, according to the theory of the ac- 
 quisition of organs by use, to have lost the 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM, 203 
 
 power of walking, and their toes have become 
 web-footed by natural selection. Perhaps we 
 shall be told that they will become so in 
 millions of years if they remain during those 
 years in the same conditions of existence. 
 But this is not likely. Physical, let alone 
 moral, conditions and changes of the earth's 
 surface, are, we are told, and no doubt truly, 
 always going on ; therefore the Otaheitan 
 babies have a poor chance of getting time 
 enough for the convenience of acquiring 
 webbed feet, and this surely is the case with 
 every other living creature on the face of the 
 earth. We may co^ijectiire that these changes 
 of structure by natural selection might take 
 place, but we may be very sure, or at all 
 events have presumptive evidence, that they 
 never will, as they never have, in the whole 
 experience of man. 
 
204 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 When we consider the infinite creations of 
 the whole universe — the stars, or suns, and 
 worlds of infinite variety, which our tele- 
 scopes can disclose, with the conviction of the 
 existence of an infinity of others which they 
 cannot disclose ; when we reflect upon the 
 possibility, or rather probability of these 
 worlds, infinite in number, containing living 
 organisms in an infinity heaped upon infinity, 
 that we should have any difficulty in imagin- 
 ing an infinite variety of separate creations 
 of the organic beings upon earth, seems un- 
 reasonable, to say the least. To substitute 
 for this a theory founded upon conjectures 
 derived from a few isolated and doubtful 
 facts respecting varieties, the theory of the 
 progress in development of all organic beings 
 from some one, or four, or five primordial forms, 
 in the ordinary succession by generation, in 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 205 
 
 the teeth of the fact that all genera and species 
 too, as far as wild or semi-wild animals are 
 concerned, abhor intermixture, seems still 
 more unreasonable." 
 
 Professor Tyndal, commenting upon the 
 miracle at Gibeon, " Sun, stand thou still ; 
 and thou, ^loon, on the valley of Ajalon," says, 
 *^ The energy here involved is equal to that 
 of trillions of horses working for the whole 
 of the time employed by Joshua in the 
 destruction of his foes." And again, *' The 
 same lavish squandering of energy stares 
 
 the scientific man in the face To 
 
 other miracles similar remarks apply. Trans- 
 ferring thought from our little sand- grain of 
 an earth to the immeasurable heavens, where 
 
 * For instance, the closely allied species, the red and fallow 
 deer, will not breed together in their semi-domesticated condition 
 in a park . 
 
2o6 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 countless worlds, with their freights of life, 
 probably revolve unseen ; . . . . and bring- 
 ing this face to face with the idea that the 
 Builder and Sustainer of it all should contract 
 Himself to a burning bush, or behave in 
 other familiar ways ascribed to Him, it is 
 easy to understand how astounding the incon- 
 gruity must appear to the scientific man. Did 
 this credulous prattle of the ancients about 
 miracles stand alone ; were it not locally as- 
 sociated with words of imperishable wisdom, 
 and with examples of moral grandeur un- 
 matched elsewhere in the history of the 
 human race, both the miracles and their 
 evidences would have long since ceased to 
 be the transmitted inheritance of intelligent 
 men. Under the pressure of the awe which 
 this universe inspires, well may we exclaim 
 in David's spirit, if not in his words — 'When 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 207 
 
 I consider the heavens the work of Thy fingers, 
 the moon and the stars which Thou hast 
 ordained; what is man that Thou should be 
 mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou 
 shouldst so regard him.' " * 
 
 Naturally impressed with "the awe which 
 this universe inspired," scientific men must be 
 equally impressed, as were the scientific Kirby 
 and Spence, with the fact " that of innumer- 
 able species of insects, many of them beyond 
 conception fragile and exposed to dangers 
 and enemies without end, no link should be 
 lost from the chain, but all be maintained in 
 those relative proportions necessary for the 
 good of the system ; that if one species for a 
 while preponderates, and, instead of preserv- 
 ing, seems to destroy, yet counterchecks 
 should at the same time be provided to reduce 
 
 * " Fragments of Science," p. 446. 
 
2o8 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 it within its due limits ; and further, that the 
 operations of insects should be so directed as 
 to effect the purposes for which they were 
 created, and never exceed their commission."* 
 Not only therefore has the Creator estab- 
 lished laws for the preservation of the har- 
 mony of the immeasurable universe above us, 
 but has also condescended to establish similar 
 laws for the myriads of the minutest of his 
 creations in this "our little sand-grain of 
 earth." Some of these purely physical laws 
 we seem to have discovered, many others are 
 utterly perplexing and beyond our ken. Still 
 more perplexing are the moral laws which 
 govern the intelligent world of his creation. 
 Science cannot reach them. But we cannot 
 believe that his care has not extended to his 
 
 * "Introduction to Entomology," Kirby and Spence, vol. i. 
 p. 19. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 209 
 
 intelligent creation mankind, as well as to 
 his creations of inert matter and unintelligent 
 organisms. Well indeed may we share in 
 David's astonishment that the Infinite Being 
 should be " mindful " of man, as well as of 
 the greatest and minutest objects of his 
 creation, from the impossibility of our finite 
 ideas comprehending the infinite. 
 
 But it will be said that He has established 
 laws for the human race which equally govern 
 the existence of the intelligent as of the un- 
 intelligent creatures of the earth — physical 
 laws for the former as for the latter. But 
 there is something inherent in the nature of 
 man which no other creatures possess — the 
 intellectual faculties ; for it is absurd to 
 compare them with the instinct of animals ; 
 the glimmer of reason which Mr. Darwin 
 endeavours to show in animals, compared 
 
 P 
 
210 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 with human intellectual faculties, is as the 
 light of a candle to the noonday sun ; it is 
 but another similarity which man shares 
 with animals in material form, but a simi- 
 larity in which there is scarcely more than a 
 faint likeness. Mankind requires something 
 more than the physical laws which regulate his 
 material existence; his intellectual existence 
 requires the guidance of moral laws, without 
 which the race would dwindle and perish from 
 off the face of the earth. Man enjoys a free- 
 dom of action for good or evil. The moral 
 laws are the restraint which controls the 
 abuse of his powers, and some kind of religion 
 has been found necessary by all nations in 
 the whole history of the earth (even the 
 monsters of the French Revolution discovered 
 the necessity of establishing the worship of 
 the ''fetre Supreme") in order to give strength 
 and influence to the moral laws. If science 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 211 
 
 may discover the instincts and physical laws 
 which preserve all living creatures in the 
 order and proportions in which they are so 
 wonderfully preserved, science must also ac- 
 knowledge the intellectual attributes for good 
 or evil of man, and the moral laws which 
 preserve the race of men in a similar, though 
 by no means the same, order and proportions. 
 Religion, without w^hich moral laws are but 
 fine words or waste paper,* and may be called 
 a science, the object of which is to discover 
 the purest form in which is taught the super- 
 
 * Moral laws, without the sanction and authority of religion, 
 will only be observed as long as it is expedient to observe them. 
 All the fine moral arguments in the world will not prevent 
 certain men from lying if they be secure against detection. 
 Alas, many other such infractions of the moral laws might be 
 enumerated. One that has always struck me as unaccountable, 
 is the horrible cruelty with which some slave-owners were wont 
 to treat their unhappy slaves, for that was not even an expedient 
 breach of the law. 
 
212 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 intending authority and care of the Deity, 
 who hates and will punish sin, and loves and 
 will reward righteousness — the science which 
 teaches of the Creator as other sciences teach 
 of his creations, and therefore of the highest 
 interest to thinking, intelligent men. 
 
 Apart, therefore, from any revelation, we 
 may with sound reason believe, as I have 
 said before, that the Creator would not leave 
 his intelligent creatures without some know- 
 ledge of his Will ; and that the communication 
 of that Will has been transmitted in a certain 
 manner, that is, through one nation, to man- 
 kind, as we have independent and ample 
 evidence to prove. It is difficult indeed to 
 imagine how otherwise it could have been 
 transmitted ; and how could we know that that 
 heavenly Will did really come from heaven, 
 except by the exercise of heavenly powers 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 213 
 
 t 
 
 altogether beyond the powers of man, that 
 is, by miracle ? The Baptist in prison sends 
 his disciples to ask of Christ, "Art thou he that 
 should come, or do we look for another r" The 
 answer was, " Go and show John again those 
 things which ye do hear and see : the blind 
 receive their sight and the lame walk ; the 
 lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear ; the 
 dead are raised up, and the poor have the 
 Gospel preached to them." Could any other 
 answer be satisfactory to the prisoner, any 
 other logical proof be given of the heavenly 
 nature of the mission of Christ ? It would be 
 contrary to common sense for any one to say 
 this mode of God's dealings with man was 
 impossible ; all he could say would be that it 
 was improbable. He should then follow the 
 example of the Baptist prisoner, and inquire 
 into the evidence to accept or reject it at 
 
214 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 his own peril. Though we may cavil at a 
 belief in miracles of which we only read, and 
 be cautious of accepting them on account of 
 the many false imitations, explain it as you 
 will, we have the standing miracle of the 
 Jewish dispersion, and of the persistent exist- 
 ence and strange characteristics of that other 
 branch of the race, the sons of Ishmael, pro- 
 phesied thousands of years ago (see Newton, 
 '' On the Prophesies "), always before our eyes, 
 to afford us evidence not to be found in any 
 other history of the extraordinary character, 
 and a rational conviction, of the sacred truth 
 of the Bible. We are not, therefore, left 
 entirely to the evidence of history ; not, how- 
 ever, that we have any reasonable ground for 
 withholding our faith from that history. In- 
 credulity is often as foolish as credulity. As 
 "■ scientific men " have so often and recently 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 215 
 
 declared things of science to be impossible, 
 objectionable, or useless (see p. 275), which 
 have turned out perfectly possible and of the 
 greatest advantage, we need not be surprised 
 at, or believe any of their assertions of the 
 impossibility or the improbability of a real 
 or apparent break in the continuity of the 
 laws of creation at the fiat of the Creator. 
 Such assertions may be considered the pre- 
 sumptuous incredulity of scientific men. 
 Whether the sun and moon hastening not 
 to go down for a whole day was a real or 
 apparent phenomenon we cannot know, but 
 to estimate the forces required at trillions, 
 or twenty trillions of horse-power, and to 
 assume that exercise of power to have been 
 too great for the occasion, seems to be the 
 assuming of a knowledge which is beyond 
 our ken altogether. How can we estimate 
 
2l6 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 the importance of any event to the moral 
 world, trifling as it may appear in our eyes, 
 to the great scheme of law which must govern 
 the world of intelligence, or count up the 
 amount of dead material force which it would 
 be worth while to exercise to bring about the 
 event ? To assign limits to the infinite al- 
 mighty power of God, or to suppose that 
 trillions of horse-power are great or small 
 in his sight, would be but a low and unphi- 
 losophic view. As well might we say that it 
 was not tanti to stop the 2,000 horse-power 
 engines of an ironclad to prevent the running 
 down of a child in a skiff. 
 
 Professor Tyndal does not indeed appear 
 to hold so enlarged and philosophic a view 
 of the Infinite Being, the Creator of the uni- 
 verse, as we find in both the Old and New 
 Testament. As we see in Nature the same 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 217 
 
 wonderful and, as I may say, careful adap- 
 tation of means to end in the smallest as in 
 the largest object of creation, and the same 
 order as in the whole universe of stars and 
 planets, as far as our knowledge extends, so 
 we see in the Bible the conception of infinite 
 greatness and power and of a condescension 
 to the lowest of his intelligent creations on 
 the part of the Almighty Creator. There He 
 is found as the Creator of heaven and earth, 
 and yet He speaks with Adam and Eve. He 
 speaks with Moses in the flaming fire in the 
 bush, and before the people of Israel in the 
 awful grandeur of the thunders of Mount 
 Sinai. " But will God indeed dwell on the 
 earth ? Behold, the heaven, and heaven of 
 heavens, cannot contain thee ; how much less 
 this house that I have builded ! "* " For thus 
 
 _^ * I Kings viii. 27. 
 
2l8 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth 
 eternity, whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the 
 high and holy place, with him also that is of 
 a contrite and humble spirit to revive the 
 spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart 
 of the contrite ones ;"* and again he speaks 
 with Elijah— "And, behold, the Lord passed 
 by, and a great and strong wind rent the moun- 
 tains, and brake in pieces the rocks before 
 the Lord ; but the Lord was not in the wind : 
 and after the wind an earthquake ; but the 
 Lord was not in the earthquake : and after 
 the earthquake a fire ; but the Lord was 
 not in the fire : and after the fire a still 
 small voice."! "Whither shall I go then 
 from thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then 
 from thy presence ? If I climb up to heaven 
 Thou art there. If I go down to hell Thou 
 
 * Isaiah Ivii. 15. f i Kings xix. 11, &c. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 219 
 
 art there also."* In the New Testament — 
 " Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, 
 and not one of them is forgotten before God r"t 
 Many other passages might be cited to show 
 how lofty, indeed how philosophical a con- 
 ception of the Creator, with whom there can 
 be neither great or small, beginning or end, is 
 the conception of Jew and Christian derived 
 from the Bible. The '* incongruity " so as- 
 tounding to some scientific men, can be no 
 incongruity to others who have not so low a 
 conception of the Creator of the universe. If, 
 however, the Professor is still astounded, he 
 may perhaps be more reconciled to the passage 
 as interpreted by St. Stephen before his mar- 
 tyrdom ; for he says, there appeared to Moses 
 "in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel 
 of the Lord in a flame of fire in the bush.":{: 
 
 ♦ Psalm cxxxix. 6, 7. f Luke xii. 6. % Acts vii. 30. 
 
220 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 And again, in a subsequent verse, *'The 
 same (i.e. Moses) did God send to be a ruler 
 and a deliverer by the haiid of the angel 
 which appeared to him in the bush." The 
 Professor is hard upon our ancestors for their 
 belief in and punishment of witches and 
 wizards, but surely the seance at which he 
 was present shows that there are people in 
 England, as there are also in America and 
 elsewhere, who believe in an intercourse with 
 spirits, the very same belief as that which 
 constituted the witch. Even table-turning, by 
 some of the adepts employed for purposes of 
 witchcraft, is shown to be only a repetition of an 
 ancient form of witchcraft by A. de Broglie, who 
 gives his ancient authorities : " Trois officiers, 
 nommes Pergannus, Fedusius et Iren^e, aides 
 de deux magiciens Patricius et Hilaire, avaient 
 con9u . . . le desir de connoitre quel serait 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 221 
 
 le successeur de Valens. Pour satisfaire leur 
 curiosite ils avaient eu recours a une pratique 
 de sorcellerie fort en usage a cette epoque, et 
 qui consistait ... a mettre en mouve- 
 ment sans aucune impulsion exterieure, et 
 uniquement par des rites magiques, une petite 
 table de laurier reposant sur trois pieds. La 
 table portait un disque de metal sur la face 
 duquel etaient gravees les 24 lettres de I'al- 
 phabet. Quand on avait reussi a la faire 
 entrer dans un mouvement de rotation sur 
 elle-meme, on approchait un anneau suspendu 
 a un fil qui, frappant dans ses oscillations 
 tantot une lettre tantot une autre, arrivait a 
 former des syllabes, puis des mots ; . . . 
 enfin ... ils avaient vu distinctement 
 I'anneau et la table former par leur rencontre 
 les deux syllabes Theod."* Here we have 
 
 * *' L'Eglise et I'Empire Romain," vol. v, p. 308. 
 
222 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 table-turning in the fourth century, with the 
 trifling modification of the alphabet and ring ; 
 but perhaps these may be used by some 
 modern necromancers. 
 
 In the results of these and similar magical 
 pretensions, which evil results sometimes 
 show themselves in the form of insanity, and 
 sometimes in the form of swindling a friend, 
 we may see a good reason for prohibiting, i.e. 
 punishing them, let alone the blasphemous 
 nonsense which is sometimes their fruit. Even 
 now we punish the poor wise woman who tells 
 fortunes with cards or other devices. The 
 belief in the existence of spirits, good or bad, 
 is, however, not without a very reasonable 
 ground; for we cannot believe, indeed one 
 may say it is a stupid presumption to assume, 
 that our intelligence is the highest in creation, 
 or that intelligence must be inseparably con- 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 223 
 
 nected with substance such as ours. Scien- 
 tific men, from Newton to Faraday, have had 
 a very strong faith in the Christian religion, 
 which obliges a belief in the Bible, in miracles, 
 and this belief in spirits. The unscientific 
 may set the opinions of the great genius of 
 science. Professor Faraday, against those of 
 Professor Tyndal. Swedenborg, one of the 
 first scientific men of his day, respected by 
 philosophers as well as potentates, not only 
 believed in the existence of spirits, but 
 asserted that he conversed with them, and 
 the evidence of his having had such com- 
 munication with them was satisfactory to 
 Baron Grimm, Professor Schlegel, and 
 Immanuel Kant. It is clearly, therefore, 
 unwise to put implicit faith in the opinions of 
 " scientific men," except in matters relating 
 to their own special science, and not always 
 
224 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 even then, especially if they be French ; 
 according to Professor Huxley, not in any 
 case until you have the " absolute authority 
 of Nature." The belief in the existence of 
 spirits has been the rational belief of the 
 wisest of men of all time, and generally of 
 all men ; no wonder, therefore, that men 
 should have a yearning desire to penetrate 
 the mystery. But it is one thing to believe 
 in the existence of spirits, and that they may 
 be made apparent to our senses under extra- 
 ordinary circumstances — quite another thing 
 to believe that we can call them at our will 
 " from the vasty deep " by the help of male or 
 female mediums or the legs of wooden tables. 
 Imposture is for the most part an imitation of 
 truth, and so far we are indebted to Professor 
 Tyndal for exposing an instance of delusion if 
 not imposture. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 225 
 
 Professor Huxley's " Lay Sermon on Dar- 
 winism " would lead the reader to imagine 
 that science would be a wholesome substitute 
 for religion, and Sir J. Lubbock, inferentially, 
 contrasts unfavourably the teaching of religion 
 with the teachings of science. The latter 
 writes, " Men do wrong, either from ignorance, 
 or in the unexpressed hope that they may 
 enjoy the pleasure and yet avoid the penalty 
 of sin. In this respect there can be no doubt 
 that religious teaching is widely mistaken. 
 Repentance is too .often regarded as a substi- 
 tute for punishment." * Is it not certain that 
 men do often enjoy the pleasure and avoid 
 the penalty of sin in this world ? Alas, we 
 all know too well that there are such people 
 as prosperous profligates of all kinds, and 
 unless they have the conscience which religion 
 
 * " Pre-historic Times," p. 489. 
 
 Q 
 
226 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 teaches to alarm them, their pleasure is un- 
 alloyed by penalty of any kind. Sir J. 
 Lubbock appears to have but a slight ac- 
 quaintance with " religious teaching " of the 
 meaning of repentance. Religion does not 
 teach that repentance is a " substitute for 
 punishment." Repentance is required for sin, 
 whether followed by punishment or not. It 
 is not regret alone for sin committed, but in- 
 cludes a determination not to sin again, 
 independently of all idea of the results of 
 sin. 
 
 The following explanation of Lactantius, to 
 whom the language of Scripture was a living 
 language, and to whom the translation of the 
 Greek word for repentance in the New Testa- 
 ment could then be no difficulty, may be of 
 use to those who have mistaken the " teaching 
 of religion " with respect to repentance ; but, 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM, 227 
 
 if Protestants, they must be the very ignorant 
 indeed. 
 
 " Is enim qui facti sui poenitet, errorem suum 
 pristinum intelligit : idioque Greeci melius et 
 significantius jM,cravotai/ dicunt ; quem nos pos- 
 sumus resipiscentiam dicere ; resipiscit enim 
 ac mentam suam quasi at insania recipit, quem 
 errati piget, castigatque seipsum dementiae, 
 et confirmat animum suum ad rectius vi- 
 vendum ; tum illud ipsum maxime cavet, ne 
 rursus in eosdem laqueos indicatur. Denique 
 muta animalia cum fraude capiuntur si aliquo 
 se modo in fugam extricaverint, sunt post- 
 modum cautiora ; vitantque semper se omnia, 
 in quibus dolos insidiasque senserunt. Sic 
 hominem pcenitentia cautum, se diligentum 
 facit ad evitanda peccata, in qua3 semel fraude 
 deciderit. Et idcirco Deus imbecillitatem 
 nostram sciens, pro sue pietate aperuit 
 
228 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 hominis portuin salutis ; ut huic necessitate 
 cui fragilitas nostra subjecta est medicina 
 poenitentiae subveniret." * 
 
 " For he who repents of his action, under- 
 stands his former error ; so the Greeks use 
 the word ixmvoiav (change of mind) better 
 and with more significance, which we may 
 call, ' resipiscentiam ' (a coming to one's senses 
 again) ; for he comes to his senses, and 
 recovers his mind from a state of insanity, 
 who grieves at his error, and chastises him- 
 self for his madness, and fortifies his mind 
 for living a better life ; besides that, his 
 greatest care is lest he should be led into 
 the like snares. Indeed, even dumb animals 
 also, when they are taken by snares, if in any 
 way they can extricate themselves, become 
 afterwards more cautious, and avoid always 
 
 * Lactantius, lib. vi. 24. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 229 
 
 those things in which they perceive guile 
 or snares. Thus repentance makes man 
 cautious and careful to avoid those sins in 
 which he once had fallen through guile. For 
 no one can be so prudent, so circumspect, as 
 that he should not sometimes fall. And 
 therefore God, knowing our weakness, has 
 in his pity opened a harbour of safety to 
 men, that the medicine of repentance should 
 come to the relief of this need to which 
 our frailty is subject." 
 
 The same interpretation of repentance is 
 to be found in both the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, where we seek our religious teaching. 
 Solomon, at the dedication of the Temple, says, 
 " Yet if they shall bethink themselves in 
 the land whither they are carried captives, 
 and repent, and make supplication unto 
 Thee : and so return unto Thee with 
 
230 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 all their heart and soul," &c.* In St. Mat- 
 thew, " Bring forth therefore fruits meet for 
 repentance. "t 
 
 St. Paul also says, he " showed first unto 
 them of Damascus, &c., that they should 
 repent and turn to God, and do works meet 
 for repentance^ 
 
 All these teachings, as well as the whole 
 tenor of Scripture, plainly show that re- 
 pentance is not a " substitute for punishment ; " 
 and if it implies sorrow for past sins, it also 
 implies a determination not to return to them. 
 
 Sir John Lubbock goes the length of 
 saying, " that the great principle of natural 
 selection is to biology what the law of 
 gravitation is to astronomy." This is indeed 
 comparing great things with small. To com- 
 pare the discovery of the great law which 
 
 * I Kings viii. 47, 48. f Matt. iii. 8. 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 23I 
 
 governs all bodies in the heavens and the 
 earth with that of natural selection, or the 
 survival of the fittest, which, shorn of its 
 scientific pretensions, resolves itself into the 
 obvious rule that the stronger and healthier 
 animals will get the better of and survive the 
 weaker animals of any species, for the conser- 
 vation of the race, is a remarkable feature in 
 modern scientific thought, and might be con- 
 sidered the discovery of a mare's nest as com- 
 pared with the great discovery of Newton. 
 
 A philosophical deism tends to produce a 
 virtual atheism. The great mass of mankind 
 see the most elaborate contrivance of the 
 ingenuity of man without a thought of the 
 contriver; in fact, in a few generations his 
 name almost passes away. Is it not the same 
 with the marvellous works of God ? Who but 
 the very thoughtful, as well as intellectual, 
 
232 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 ever connect any of those works with the 
 idea of Him who created them ? A substantive 
 and formulated creed is surely necessary for 
 the welfare of mankind in general, and a 
 sense of Eternal over-ruling justice as a 
 deterrent from crime and of Eternal mercy as 
 an encouragement to virtue, in order to con- 
 trol the evil passions, and the abuse of the 
 innocent passions, inherent in our natures. 
 
 Scientific research opens our eyes to the 
 fact that the Creator has bestowed the same 
 care on the minutest as on the greatest of his 
 unintelligent creations of the physical world. 
 We cannot therefore, with Sir C. Bell, believe 
 that his care has not extended to the intelli- 
 gent creations of the moral world, or that He 
 has left the moral world " in all that disarray 
 which our partial view would persuade us 
 they are." We have therefore a scientific 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 233 
 
 reason for believing that He has extended his 
 care to the moral world, in the communica- 
 tion of his Will to his intelligent creatures. 
 This has been the rational belief of some of 
 the wisest and the scientific of mankind for 
 ages ; and in the words of an address of 
 Mr. Harper's — " It must be remembered that 
 these writings (the Bible) were in the first 
 place intended for a semi-barbarous race 
 recently rescued from the debasing influences 
 of slavery, and afterwards for all people and 
 all classes of all time, of whom the savans 
 form an inappreciably minute number. It is 
 not one of the least extraordinary attributes 
 of the Bible, that a book of such unparalleled 
 antiquity should have escaped the many de- 
 structions w^ith which it has been threatened, 
 and preserved for so many ages an unex- 
 ampled respect," &c. Mr. Harper might have 
 
234 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 added that the Jews alone of all the surround- 
 ing nations who had a literature, Phoenicians, 
 &c., preserved these their writings. With 
 their literature those other nations have 
 utterly perished, as foretold by the prophets, 
 and as by them foretold in these very writings 
 the Jews alone survive, scattered over the face 
 of the earth. It is also not a little remark- 
 able that the literature of the Greeks and 
 Romans, so essential to our understanding 
 of the New Testament, has been providentially 
 preserved amidst the general wreck of the 
 literature of other nations. *'The unexampled 
 respect " for the Bible some scientific men are 
 endeavouring to destroy. Two generations 
 have now had experience of the results of 
 that destruction in France and elsewhere, 
 where the blood-thirsty monsters who had 
 lost that respect proclaimed murder, arson, 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 235 
 
 robbery, and violence of all sorts as their 
 miserable creed, or rather want of creed. 
 Voltaire, infidel as he was, had the sense to 
 see, and to warn men in some of his writings, 
 of the danger which, however, he had not 
 the sense to see he was doing his utmost to 
 create by his other works. In his " Homelie 
 sur I'Atheisme," he says:*— ''Si le monde 6tait 
 gouverne par des athees, il vaudrait autant 
 etre sous I'empire de ces etres infernaux qu'on 
 nous peint acharnes contre leurs victimes." 
 And in his letter to Villeviellef— " Je veux 
 que les princes et les ministres reconnaissent 
 un Dieu, et meme un Dieu qui punisse et par- 
 donne. Sans ce frein, je les regarderai comme 
 des animaux feroces, . . . mais que cer- 
 tainement me mangeront s'ils me rencontrent 
 sous leurs griffes quand ils auront faim," &c. 
 
 * Vol. xxxii. p. 147. t Vol. ix. p. 523. 
 
236 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 The past history of France has proved Vol- 
 taire's shrewdness in seeing the evil, and folly 
 in not seeing how much he was doing to 
 promote it. Some of our scientific men are 
 following in his footsteps, less directly, but 
 perhaps more insidiously. If not therefore 
 indifferent to the welfare of mankind — per- 
 haps of their own kith and kin — they should 
 not make use of crude theories, doubtful 
 inferences from often contradictory evidence, 
 and scientific, or so-called scientific facts, to 
 undermine the authority of the Bible, and, 
 with it, Christianity. If they persist, careless 
 of the lessons of the past, instead of being 
 our material benefactors, as so many have 
 been, they will be the execration of genera- 
 tions to come, should history, as it is too 
 probable, repeat itself. 
 
 It is curiously and instructively interesting 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 237 
 
 to read in the life of Voltaire, prefixed to the 
 edition of his works of 1789 — "Si Tamour de 
 I'humanite est devenue le langage commun de 
 tous les hommes; si les guerres sont devenues 
 moins frequentes ; ... si pour la premiere 
 fois la raison commence a repandre sur tous 
 les peuples de I'Europe un jour egal et pur ; 
 partout dans I'histoire de ces changemens on 
 trouvera le nom de Voltaire." 
 
 If Condorcet could have read the future, he 
 would have been compelled to acknowledge 
 the utter falsehood of this eulogium. The 
 " amour de I'humanite " was the general 
 condemnation and persecution to death in 
 general of all who differed in opinion from 
 the party in power; instead of the "guerres 
 moins frequentes," wars of almost unparalleled 
 magnitude and frequency; and as to the 
 reason "egal et pur," as they were so they 
 
238 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 continued to be, pretty words without mean- 
 ing. In fact, France was, soon after the date 
 when those words were written, writhing as 
 it were in the tortures of delirium, her children 
 decimated, and the seeds of misfortune sown 
 to grow up for a harvest of misery about every 
 twenty years until now. 
 
 The horrible tortures and executions for 
 offences and imaginary offences against the 
 superstitious tyranny of the Roman Church 
 were enough to rouse the indignation of such 
 a man as Voltaire, and, like so many French- 
 men, to make him fall from one extreme to 
 another, and this opposite extreme seems to 
 produce the same bitter fruits of cruelty and 
 tyranny, as we have so recently seen in the 
 diabolical and senseless murders and arson 
 committed by the monsters of the Commune 
 of Paris. Scientific men may destroy in the 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 239 
 
 minds of many, as bad and ignorant men have 
 debased or perverted, the Christian religion — 
 the purest and most authentic ever known to 
 man ; but scientific men and philosophers 
 never have built up, and never can be ex- 
 pected to build up, a moral edifice with any 
 amount of scientific material. Of all sciences 
 it would be supposed that medical science, so 
 intimately connected as it is with our physical, 
 and, collaterally, with our moral well-being, 
 ought to command the belief of civilised 
 man; but how little influence has it on the 
 conduct of men in general! Ignorance in 
 many a case cannot be pleaded ; indeed. 
 Professor Huxley's " absolute authority of 
 Nature," discovered by personal experience, 
 has often no effect whatever. The interna- 
 tional conspiracy against all property is one of 
 the ugly fruits of the absence of all religion— 
 
2^0 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 a miserable envy of the better condition of 
 one's neighbour, or, in other words, a repudia- 
 tion of the tenth Commandment, "Thou shalt 
 not covet." 
 
 The deep-sea soundings, superintended by 
 Dr. Carpenter, afford us evidence to prove 
 that the deductions and ratiocinations of some 
 scientific men are sometimes altogether erro- 
 neous. He says '^ that the soundings have 
 shown " the existence of a varied and abun- 
 dant submarine fauna at depths which have 
 been generally supposed to be either alto- 
 gether azoic or tenanted only by animals 
 of a very low type," and that not even the 
 total privation of light, which the highest 
 authorities have affirmed to be essential to 
 the existence of life, prevents these rayless 
 
 * " Lecture at the Royal Institution." — (" Proceedings of the 
 Royal Institution, &c.," vol. v. part vi. p. 506.) 
 
MR. HUXLEY ON DARWINISM. 241 
 
 depths of ocean from supporting a vast and 
 continuous mass of life."^ At p. 508 he shows 
 how geologists " might easily fall into the 
 mistake of supposing two such different faunae 
 occurring at different levels must indicate 
 two distinct climates separated in time, 
 instead of indicating, as they have been shown 
 to do, two contemporaneous but dissimilar 
 climates, separated only by a few miles 
 horizontally and by 300 fathoms vertically." 
 
 Not many years ago a formidable array of 
 scientific men, especially in France, endea- 
 voured to prove the great antiquity of man, 
 from the supposed and confidently asserted 
 immense antiquity of the zodiacs of Dendera 
 and Esneh, but their elaborate arguments 
 came to a miserable conclusion after about 
 twenty years' discussion, by the discovery that 
 
 * "Proceedings of the Royal Institution," vol. v. pt. vi. p. 504. 
 
 R 
 
242 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 these monuments were of recent Roman im- 
 perial date. Some writers have endeavoured 
 to produce other arguments for the antiquity 
 of man, from the mythical histories of Egypt, 
 India, and China, which, if they prove any- 
 thing, prove the vanity and lying spirit of 
 some of our race. 
 
 It will therefore be prudent to withhold 
 our belief in the Darwinian theory and the 
 immense antiquity of pre-historic man until 
 we find better evidence for it than has 
 hitherto been produced, lest the theory should 
 share the fate of the deductions from the 
 zodiacs of Dendera and Esneh. 
 
THE DELUGE. 
 
 TN their monuments, histories, or records, 
 the ancient nations of the Old World have 
 left the tradition of a great deluge, involving 
 the destruction of the human race, with the 
 exception of a family or a few individuals. 
 This tradition was preserved even by nations 
 of the New World, and also in that newer 
 world, Australia. Mr. E. B. Kennedy,'^ 
 quoting James Morrill's account of the blacks, 
 witn whom he passed a miserable captivity 
 of seventeen years, says, "They say their 
 forefathers witnessed a great flood, and nearly 
 all were drowned, only those who got on a 
 very high mountan were saved." This 
 
 * *' Four Years in Queensland," p. 84. 
 
244 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 tradition, therefore, may be called an all but 
 universal tradition among the nations of the 
 earth, or, to use the words of Professor Hitch- 
 cock, a " scientific man " and a geologist, 
 "It is well known that in the written and 
 unwritten traditions of almost every tribe 
 and nation under heaven, the story of a 
 general deluge has been prominent." * All 
 these traditions agree in referring the great 
 catastrophe to a deluge. Attempts have been 
 made to account for them by the suggestion 
 that great floods have been common in most 
 countries, and therefore it is not extraordinary 
 that every nation should have attributed the 
 great disaster to such a cause. 
 
 Why should all nations have agreed in 
 handing down such a tradition at all if such 
 an awful event never took place ? 
 
 * •< Religion of Geology," p. 104. 
 
THE DELUGE. 245 
 
 If it was a tradition handed down to 
 posterity by the survivors of the nation that 
 suffered, why should such a catastrophe have 
 been almost universally described as affecting 
 one family or two individuals ? So over- 
 whelming a flood is not common in the ex- 
 perience of mankind. 
 
 Again, why should all nations have 
 unanimously attributed the destruction to a 
 deluge ? 
 
 Far more terrible local disturbances are of 
 common occurrence in many countries. The 
 earthquake for instance, so awfully sudden, 
 so fearfully destructive, swallowing up whole 
 towns, whole populations, and unlike other 
 great natural agents of destruction, leaving an 
 unconquerable feeling of terror. In many 
 countries this would have been as likely to 
 be assigned as the cause of the great 
 
246 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 catastrophe as a flood. This, or the volcano, 
 might just as well have been supposed the 
 destroying agent, especially in Mexico and 
 Peru, not to mention many a country of the 
 Old World. 
 
 Not only do all of these traditions agree 
 in the main fact, but many of them agree 
 also in some details. The ark, dove, or other 
 bird, are to be found, curiously enough, in 
 their emblematic representations of the deluge, 
 so that Mexicans, pagan Greeks, and the 
 Christians of the Catacombs, peoples so 
 distant in time and place, have adopted a 
 very similar mode of representing it. Figures 
 of the Apamean medal, and the Christian 
 representation of the ark from the cemetery of 
 Callixtus at Rome, are given by Dr. Wiseman 
 at p. 321 of his " Lectures," and Lord Kings- 
 borough's great work, " The Mexican Repre- 
 
THE DELUGE. 247 
 
 sentation." Thus the traditions of mankind 
 are even in some details in strict accordance 
 with the narrative of the Deluge contained in 
 the Bible. 
 
 The author of that narrative has recorded 
 the prophetic announcement of another very 
 different, but perhaps more painful, catas- 
 trophe, the dispersion and degradation of the 
 race to which he belonged. We see it now 
 fulfilled to the letter, and neither time nor 
 persecutions unnumbered have prevented the 
 Jewish race from bearing witness to its fulfil- 
 ment ; but they, as well as too many others, 
 have eyes that will not see, ears that will not 
 hear, and understanding but they will not 
 understand. 
 
 Without assuming any authority for the 
 Pentateuch as the work of inspiration, and 
 considering it only as a secular history of an 
 
248 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 event the remembrance of which has been 
 preserved by the nations of the earth, let us 
 consider whether the facts of geology, imper- 
 fect as is our knowledge of it, and the 
 conjectures founded on that imperfection, are 
 really, as some pretend, incompatible with 
 this Biblical and universal tradition of the 
 Deluge. It must always be borne in mind, 
 that the few brief sentences in which the 
 Deluge is described in Genesis are written 
 in a dead and very ancient language, and 
 therefore, that our translation may not give a 
 perfect reflection of the original, word for 
 word. That whatever there is in the history 
 in the nature of detail, is given in the most 
 general terms, and that it was written for 
 the comprehension, not of scientific men, 
 but primarily for a race of semi-barbarous 
 and ignorant men, just emancipated from a 
 
THE DELUGE. 249 
 
 cruel bondage, and in after-ages, as we have 
 good reason to believe, for the great mass of 
 the world of human beings. May we not fairly 
 assume that words, to which in our translation 
 we give an extended signification, ought to 
 bear a limited one ? For instance, the word 
 we translate "earth" in the account of the 
 Deluge, bears the signification of land, 
 country, or region in other parts of the 
 Pentateuch. "And the famine was over all 
 the face of the earth." "And all countries 
 came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn."* 
 " And there was no bread on the whole 
 earth,"! according to Dr. Kalisch's translation. 
 We must in reason infer that our translation 
 of these passages has not caught the exact 
 meaning of the original, and that the words 
 "all," "the whole," and "the earth," ought 
 
 * Gen. xli. 56, 57. t Ibid, xlvii. 13. 
 
250 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 to bear a limited and not a universal meaning. 
 Our version of Gen. xlvii. 1 3 is, " and there 
 was no bread in all the land," whence it 
 would appear that the words **on the whole 
 earth" of Dr. Kalisch, and "in all the land" 
 of our version, were in the Hebrew of 
 doubtful signification, or admitting of either 
 translation. That of our version seems, from 
 the contrast, the more rational one. Dr. 
 Kalisch, however, will not admit of any 
 limitation in the case of the general expres- 
 sions relating to the Deluge, but in his note 
 to Exod. xxi. 6, where the words " for ever " 
 are used, he quotes Rashbam to show that 
 these words must, as they clearly must, be 
 understood to mean " all the days of his life," 
 and Ebn Ezra, who says that " for ever means 
 a long time." Without the help of Rashbam 
 or Ebn Ezra, we may fairly assume that, like 
 
THE DELUGE. 251 
 
 the words " for ever," the other words referred 
 to may, as in some instances they clearly 
 must, bear a limited and not a universal 
 meaning. But the substantive " earth," even 
 in French or Italian, if dead languages, 
 would admit of different interpretations. It 
 would scarcely be a figurative expression 
 to write " Toute la terre etait couverte 
 de neige," where the writer merely re- 
 ferred to the country around him. Yet the 
 word "terre," if French were a dead lan- 
 guage, might be translated either the earth 
 or the land. 
 
 But it is not only in the Old Testament 
 that we find words having a limited significa- 
 tion to which we apply a general or universal 
 one in our translation, for we find them also 
 in the New Testament. "And there were 
 dwelling at Jerusalem devout men out of 
 
252 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 every nation under heaven ; " * " And how 
 hear we every man in our own tongue wherein 
 we were born ? "| and then enumerating the 
 nations, and therefore limiting the expression 
 "under the whole heaven." Again,t "the 
 truth of the Gospel which is come unto you as 
 it is in all the world ; " and in verse 2^y " the 
 hope of the Gospel which was preached to 
 every creature under heaven." In fact, it 
 would be easy to show that, even in modem 
 languages, a translation may be literally cor- 
 rect, although idiomatically wrong. Another 
 instance we find in St. Luke, chap. ii. 
 verse i, "There went out a decree from 
 Cesar Augustus that all the world (Trao-av ttjv 
 oLxovfxivrjv) should be taxed," implying of course 
 those parts of the world under the rule of Cesar. 
 After the Deluge, we find (Gen., chap. viii. 
 
 * Acts ii. 5. t Ibid. ii. 8. X Col. i. 5, 6. 
 
THE DELUGE. 253 
 
 verse 2 1 ), " I will not curse the ground any more 
 for man's sake." Why should not the render- 
 ing here have been the earthy as in other pas- 
 sages of a similar import ? We may therefore 
 assume that these words, if the same in the 
 Hebrew, may be used interchangeably as 
 " earth," " country," " ground," or " region." 
 It can hardly be supposed that Moses, 
 whether writing under the influence of his 
 own inspired authority, or quoting the 
 writings of others on which he set his impri- 
 matur, or writing without that inspiration 
 which enabled him to foresee and foretell the 
 fate of the Jewish people, was ignorant of the 
 vast quantity of animals and reptiles of 
 Africa, and that if he had meant that literally 
 all the animals of the whole globe were 
 brought into the ark, he would not have made 
 some allusion to the extraordinary manner 
 
254 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 in which they were so brought from all parts 
 of the earth. At the same time it must 
 be considered that as we find the remains 
 of the elk and the reindeer in the caves of 
 Lebanon (see p. 270), and those of a variety of 
 other animals now confined to limited spaces 
 in tropical, and no longer in temperate zones, 
 a far greater number of species may have 
 been in existence before and in the region of 
 the Deluge than at the present day. Where 
 it is said, '*I will cause it to ram upon the 
 earth forty days and forty nights," we may 
 safely suppose that the rain which fell on one 
 part of the earth may have fallen in the shape 
 of snow, though not speciallv mentioned, in 
 another part at a higher altitude or in less 
 temperate zones, nor can it be called a forced 
 interpretation. "Fifteen cubits upward did 
 the waters prevail ; and the mountains were 
 
THE DELUGE. 355 
 
 covered." * After the rain had fallen a hundred 
 and fifty days, it began to abate, and con- 
 tinued to abate from before the seventeenth 
 day of the seventh month, when the ark 
 stranded, until the tenth month (i.e, nearly 
 three months), when on the first day of the 
 tenth month, the tops of the mountains were 
 seen. As it is impossible to see any distance 
 through heavy rain or driving sleet and snow, 
 the tops of the mountains covered with snow 
 may have been the mountains seen when the 
 great fall had ceased, which till then could 
 not have been seen. This view is in some 
 measure confirmed by the absence of the 
 raven, which Noah at first sent forth at the 
 end of forty days from the first of the tenth 
 month, and the return of the dove, for the 
 raven could find a rest for the soles of its 
 
 * Gen. vix. 20. 
 
256 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 feet on the snow, and food in the body 
 of some dead animal, but the snow would 
 have been no resting-place for the deli- 
 cate dove, and food there would have been 
 none for her. 
 
 Any one describing a great exceptional fall 
 of rain over the whole of the British Isles, 
 would not think it necessary to specify that 
 the rain fell in the shape of snow on our 
 mountains. We do not expect in rainfall 
 tables any mention of the depth of snow 
 which may have fallen on the mountains of 
 Scotland or elsewhere. We could not, there- 
 fore, expect to find in the very concise 
 description in Genesis of the Deluge, any 
 mention of snow, and unless we found there a 
 special assertion that rain and rain only fell, 
 it is a fair presumption that in higher 
 latitudes, or on lofty mountains, snow may 
 
THE DELUGE. 257 
 
 have taken the place of rain, in the usual 
 course of Nature's operations. 
 
 Mr. Stopford Brooke, in one of his sermons, 
 tells us " the Hebrew language has more than 
 ten different words for different kinds of rain." 
 It would not be therefore surprisingf to find 
 that we had not discovered the exact meaning 
 of one of these ten words in so ancient a book 
 as the Pentateuch. 
 
 Geology teaches us that at a certain period 
 of the earth's history intense cold prevailed in 
 temperate and even tropical latitudes. Many 
 a valley in every country belonging to the 
 present and last configuration of the earth's 
 crust bears witness to the effects ol glacial 
 action, combined perhaps with gfreat flooas 
 from the melting of the snow and ice which 
 once covered the land. Rocks were ground 
 by the ice into gravel or sand, and the sides 
 
 S 
 
258 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 of valleys heaped up with vast confused 
 masses of stones, sand, and debris ; and the 
 groovings and strise on rocky surfaces, the 
 moutonnes or polished rocks, the transported 
 blocks, such as we now see caused by ice 
 and snow and modern glaciers, attest the 
 former existence of what are called glacial 
 periods. Some of the transported blocks of 
 stone, carried to a great distance, deposited 
 by floating icebergs, belonging to another 
 period, when the present earth's surface was 
 submerged ; but others, belonging to our period, 
 may have been transported, not by icebergs, 
 but by the *' calotte " of snow which covered 
 the mountains. For the blocks seen on ice- 
 bergs at sea must once have been in or on 
 the ice before it broke away from the glacier, 
 and might have been deposited on terra-firma 
 by the melting of the ice or snow before it 
 
THE DELUGE. 259 
 
 could reach the sea. That the calotte, or 
 great mantle of ice or snow on lofty mountains, 
 is a moving body (viscous or plastic) there 
 is little doubt ; consequently, any mass of rock 
 detached from its parent mountain, and falling 
 on its surface would be carried to a distance 
 on the surface of the moving calotte. If I 
 recollect rightly one of the difficulties attend- 
 ing the plan for a northern telegraphic com- 
 munication with America, via Iceland and 
 Greenland, was said to be the impossibility of 
 carrying the wires on posts across the snows 
 of Greenland in consequence of this motion. 
 Dr. Kane shows,* not theoretically but by 
 actual observation, the manner in which these 
 transported blocks and rocking-stones are 
 deposited, not under water, but on dry land 
 by the snow. He says, '* the rocks which 
 
 * "Arctic Explorations," vol. ii. p. 227. 
 
26o SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 fall in this manner (from the cliffs) upon 
 the ice-belt were rapidly imbedded by the 
 action of the sun's heat; and it happened 
 frequently, of course, that one more recently 
 disengaged would overlie another that had 
 actually sunk below the surface. This, as the 
 ice-belt subsided in the gradual thaw, had 
 given many examples of the rocking-stone. 
 I have placed in the margin some drawings 
 of these geological puzzles. They were of 
 all sizes, from tons to pounds, often strangely 
 dissimilar in material, though grouped within 
 a narrow area, their diversity depending on 
 the varying strata from which they came." 
 
 Professor Charles Martens* has shown that 
 the evidences of a glacial period are to be 
 found in many places in both hemispheres. 
 Agassiz found traces of glaciers in the Brazils. 
 
 * *' Revue des Deux Mondes," 1867. 
 
THE DELUGE. 26l 
 
 Sir W. Denison, in a letter to Sir R. Murchi- 
 son,^' (the answer unfortunately is not given), 
 gives an account of many transported blocks 
 or boulders near Kurnool, with sketches of 
 two of them, one a very remarkable monument 
 of the workings of Nature, a stone full 20 ft. 
 in height standing upon two other stones 
 about 10 ft. long. "The hills," he says, "on 
 which are these stones, are bare of soil; in 
 fact they rise out of the dry plain, looking 
 as if they had been washed clean of all earth. 
 A force capable of denuding the hills would, 
 one would think, have destroyed the equili- 
 brium of these balanced boulders." The above- 
 cited observations of Dr. Kane appear amply 
 sufficient to account for the curious position 
 of these stones, and the melting of the snow 
 and heavy rains for the denudation of the 
 ♦ ** Varieties of Viceregal Life," voL ii. p. 278. 
 
262 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 hills. It can hardly be supposed that icebergs 
 deposited these blocks so nicely on the 
 submerged hills, or that the subsequent action 
 of the waves as the hills rose from the waters, 
 would have left undisturbed the lofty stone 
 on its narrow supports. It appears more 
 probable that these stones were borne along 
 by the calotte of snow, and deposited in 
 the manner they are now in the arctic 
 regions on its melting. In any case we 
 have good reason to conclude that there was 
 at some time or other a period of intense cold 
 in tropical Hindostan as well as in the Brazils 
 and Europe. We have yet to learn whether 
 there is any evidence of a glacial period in 
 Africa. 
 
 Whether this intense cold, this glacial 
 period, prevailed over the whole earth at the 
 same time or at different times no one can 
 
THE DELUGE. 263 
 
 pretend to assert, but it would seem that 
 if a glacial period prevailed in the tropics, 
 it would probably extend to more temperate 
 latitudes with a greater intensity, still greater 
 again in the higher latitudes."^ It will, how- 
 ever, be sufficient for our purpose to suppose 
 that such a glacial period was that which 
 caused the destruction of the human race by a 
 deluge, wherever that race happened at the 
 time to be existing. A glacial period, 
 general, and taking place in the temperate 
 zones of the earth, would be likely to produce 
 great floods either at its commencement or 
 as its intensity was moderating. We cannot 
 
 * Professor Forbes (" Norway and its Glaciers," p. 242) 
 thinks it highly probable " that Norway was once nearly covered 
 by ice and snow;" and at p. 243, *• It is exceedingly probable 
 that a diminution of the temperature of the summer months by 
 4*^ would at once place one-fourth of the surface of Norway 
 within the snow-line." 
 
264 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 give a precise meaning to the figurative ex- 
 pression, "the fountains of the great deep 
 were broken up, and the windows (or flood- 
 gates) of heaven were opened." It is suflicient 
 to understand by these, a great fall of rain, 
 which in the higher latitudes and regions 
 of the earth may have been snow, with perhaps 
 great inroads of the sea, such as are often the 
 effect of earthquakes, destroying all living 
 things, together with man, in that part of the 
 earth which they inhabited. Supposing, as 
 before suggested, " the whole earth " of our 
 translation changed to "the whole country," 
 or region, and to imply that part of the earth 
 inhabited by man, it would not follow that 
 the destruction was so complete in other parts 
 of the earth, where modified intensities of cold 
 may have prevailed, and where mankind may 
 not have penetrated, but where animals of 
 
THE DELUGE. 265 
 
 some kinds may have escaped the great 
 catastrophe. Considering how slow has been 
 the growth of population in the historic period 
 of Western Europe, we have more reason 
 to suppose that mankind was at a far earlier 
 period confined to a limited area of the earth's 
 surface, than that the race should have spread 
 over the whole earth. As a rule, all nations 
 which retained any tradition of an origin, 
 held that they were peoples who had migrated 
 from elsewhere, driving out scanty populations, 
 leaving no tradition, as the North American 
 Indians are now, with all our advanced civi- 
 lisation, being gradually exterminated or 
 driven back into the wilderness. 
 
 As we find evidence of a high temperature 
 having prevailed even in arctic regions at 
 some period or periods in geological history, 
 it is possible, or rather probable, that the 
 
266 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, and other 
 now tropical animals, the remains of which 
 have been found in Britain, France, Germany, 
 Russia, and other now temperate latitudes, 
 may have enjoyed before the Deluge a far 
 better climate than we have now, and were 
 able to exist where they could not at present ; 
 and although the Siberian elephant was 
 clothed with a more hairy and woolly cloth- 
 ing than the Asiatic elephant, which however 
 is provided with hair, it can scarcely be 
 supposed that, even with such scanty clothing, 
 the elephant could resist the severity of a 
 Siberian winter.* It has been said that great 
 heat would be required to produce a sub- 
 
 ♦ The conjecture that the hippopotamus and other tropical 
 animals may have made summer migrations from tropical to 
 temperate latitudes can scarcely be accepted ; a short swim 
 would enable the hippopotamus to cross the Red Sea into 
 Arabia, but such, I apprehend, is not his practice. 
 
THE DELUGE. 267 
 
 sequent great fall of rain and snow. If, there- 
 fore, the heat of the earth suited to the 
 existence of those animals had been great 
 before the Deluge, the evaporation, its con- 
 sequence, would supply the excess of rain 
 and snow, as the three years of unusual 
 heat preceding the years 1770-71 have been 
 succeeded by a severe winter and heavy 
 floods. But I do not suppose scientific men 
 are prepared to lay down the dictum, that the 
 quantity of vapour in the atmosphere is a 
 constant invariable quantity, incapable of 
 increase or decrease by exceptional causes, 
 astronomical or terrestrial, of which we are 
 ignorant. 
 
 The tropical animals whose remains are 
 found in so many parts of Europe may have 
 been then destroyed by the excessive cold ; 
 and this, indeed, seems a rational way of 
 
268 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 accounting for the destruction of the vast 
 herds of Siberian mammoths and the 
 rhinoceros, coexistent maybe in time, but not 
 necessarily in place, with antediluvian man, 
 as well as other tropical animals, such as 
 the hippopotamus, whose bones are found in 
 Europe ; some of these would then have been 
 frozen up, and may have supplied man and 
 animals with food many years after the 
 Deluge, and before the intensity of the cold 
 had disappeared in Western Europe, as the 
 Siberian mammoth, &c., are now doing in 
 Siberia. Other animals may have been swept 
 away, mixed up with the bones of animals of 
 aquatic habits ; " tons of fractured bones of 
 hippopotami " * may then have been huddled 
 together in caverns and crevices of the rocks, 
 as in Sicily. The rain, the snow, and the cold 
 
 * "Siluria,"p. 492. 
 
THE DELUGE. 269 
 
 of the glacial period may not have prevailed 
 to the same amount or with the same intensity- 
 over every part of the earth's surface, but 
 specially over that portion of the world 
 tenanted by man ; many animals therefore, 
 even non-migratory, may have survived the 
 great cataclysm in other parts of the world, 
 as many even now are able to resist the 
 severity of an arctic winter, or as the tiger 
 that of a Siberian climate. 
 
 Or we may suppose that the glacial period 
 was not simultaneous in its effects over the 
 whole earth, so that many animals may have 
 survived, though locally destroyed altogether 
 in that part of the earth which they shared 
 with man. If by some great convulsion the 
 Gulf-stream were diverted from its present 
 course, either northwards, through Baffin's 
 Bay into the arctic seas, or westward, either 
 
270 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 through a submergence of the Isthmus of 
 Panama into the Pacific, or in some other 
 direction, the climate of Europe, depending 
 so much on the genial influence of the Gulf- 
 stream, would suffer a grievous reduction in 
 temperature, and that genial influence would 
 be transferred to other regions of the globe. 
 The late Russian expedition has shown how 
 powerful is that influence, preventing, as it 
 appears, ice from forming even in the polar 
 basin. The increase of temperature after the 
 Flood, or glacial period, would probably have 
 been gradual, and we find that Mount 
 Lebanon had its glaciers before the historic 
 period. "If," says Mr. H. B. Tristram, in 
 his " Land of Israel," p. 1 1, " as Mr. Dawkins 
 considers, these teeth are referable to those 
 now exclusive quadrupeds, we have evidence 
 of the reindeer and elk having been the food 
 
THE DELUGE. 271 
 
 of man in the Lebanon not long before the 
 historic period ; for there is no necessity to 
 put back to any date of immeasurable 
 antiquity the deposition of these remains in a 
 limestone cavern/' This may be true ; at 
 the same time we must not forget that the 
 bodies or remains of these animals may have 
 been frozen up and been the food of man, as 
 the animals of some remotely ancient glacial 
 period are now eaten in Siberia. On the 
 other hand, the elk and the reindeer may 
 have existed before the Deluge in some of 
 the intensely cold regions of Armenia, and 
 have been preserved among the animals 
 brought into the ark. 
 
 Without having recourse to the miraculous, 
 or to that which appears to us a break in 
 the order of Nature, there is no reason for 
 assuming that Noah may not have brought 
 
272 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 together specimens of all the animals of the 
 country over which the Deluge was to pass, as 
 we have done in England and France in the 
 Zoological Gardens or in the Jardin des 
 Plantes, with animals from all parts of the 
 earth, assigning, as before suggested, a limited 
 interpretation to the words which in our 
 translation bear a universal meaning, and 
 supposing the animals brought into the ark to 
 be those then existing in the region inhabited 
 by men, and which was overwhelmed by the 
 Great Flood, and not the animals existing in 
 every part of the world. It seems reasonable 
 to suppose that if all animals were destroyed 
 in any great region by a flood, it would be 
 necessary to provide a stock to take their 
 place at its cessation, or the surviving men 
 could not have existed after its subsidence, as 
 the Prussians in the late war provided rations 
 
THE DELUGE. 273 
 
 and the English provisions, to meet the wants 
 of the Parisians when Paris ceased to be 
 their ark. It may be objected that unclean 
 animals and creeping things were also pre- 
 served, but we cannot pretend to know 
 whether or not such creatures are necessary 
 in the economy of Nature ; indeed, the fact 
 of their existence seems sufficient to entitle us 
 to the belief that they are necessary. 
 
 Various may be the conjectures to explain 
 the subsidence of so great a flood. Evapora- 
 tion, some great subsidence where now is the 
 Caspian Sea, or the earth opening her mouth 
 on a great scale, as she has done in a small 
 one in the island of Cephalonia, where the sea 
 has been pouring into the earth in a con- 
 tinuous stream for years. If this wholly 
 inexplicable phenomenon (for Professor An- 
 sted's capillary theory can hardly be con- 
 
 T 
 
274 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 sidered a satisfactory explanation)* were 
 unknown, the impossibility of such an 
 apparent exception to the law, that water 
 finds its own level, would have been loudly 
 declared. For aught we know, there may be 
 many more such deviations from general 
 laws, especially in that sealed book, some 
 pages of which have been recently read — the 
 bottom of the great deep. It may here be 
 repeated that Dr. Carpenter has shown, from 
 the results of the experience of the deep-sea 
 sounding expedition, that there are many 
 things in the great depths of the ocean which 
 we dreamt not of in our philosophy, and that 
 that philosophy in some respects has been 
 hitherto very grossly in error. The por- 
 tentous calculations of millions of years, based 
 upon certain geological appearances, turn out 
 
 * Professor Ansted's " Ionian Islands," chap, xi.] 
 
THE DELUGE. 
 
 275 
 
 to be fallacious, and life and vision at the 
 bottom of the great deep, pronounced to be 
 impossible, has now become an unquestion- 
 able fact. 
 
 We have, however, good reason for doubting 
 declarations of the " impossible " by scientific 
 men ; for even in matters within the purview 
 of science they have been grossly mistaken. 
 Sir H. Davy condemned the proposal of 
 lighting towns with gas; Dr. Lardner de- 
 monstrated that a steamer could not cross 
 the Atlantic ; and railway locomotive speed 
 was ridiculed as impossible by many of the 
 principal members of the engineering pro- 
 fession. Worst of all, perhaps, was the oppo- 
 sition raised by some of the most eminent 
 "scientific men" of medical science to the 
 use of ether as an anaesthetic, the greatest 
 possible boon to suffering humanity. The 
 
276 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 circular issued to the medical officers in the 
 Crimean campaign, recommending them not 
 to make use of chloroform in operations, on 
 the pretence (which seems like a grim joke) 
 that pain is a wholesome stimulant, is suf- 
 ficient to caution us against implicit faith in 
 science. Sir Charles Lyell has, however, in 
 his description of Etna,* pronounced that 
 "No general deluge can have occurred in 
 the forest zone of Etna since the lateral cones 
 were thrown up ; for few, if any, of these heaps 
 of loose scoriae could fail to have been swept 
 away by a great flood, and all of them would 
 have exhibited some signs of denudation." 
 No doubt a great rush of water would pro- 
 bably have washed away all or part of them ; 
 but the description of the Flood in Genesis 
 seems to imply a gradual submersion, for it 
 
 * " Principles," chap. xxvi. pp. 46, 47. 
 
THE DELUGE. 277 
 
 was to rain forty days and forty nights, after 
 which the " rain from heaven was restrained ; " 
 or, according to Dr. Kalisch, " assuaged," 
 "and the waters decreased continually from 
 before the seventh month, and were dried up 
 on the first of the first month of the following 
 year," a period of from between five and six 
 months. Therefore, according to the descrip- 
 tion in Genesis, there is reason to suppose a 
 gradual subsidence of the water, and not any 
 such violent rush of water, either in its rising 
 or falling. Supposing the surface of the 
 Mediterranean had risen above these cones, 
 and that" the Straits of Gibraltar were then 
 formed to let out the waters ; even in that case 
 the water would have subsided so gradually 
 at the distance of Etna from Gibraltar, as not 
 to affect these cones, especially if covered, as 
 they may have been, with vegetation (and who 
 
278 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 can say they were not so covered ?) which, Sir 
 C. Lyell says in the same place, protects them 
 from waste by rain or wind. Again, can it 
 be affirmed that they were not much larger 
 originally than now, and have not been sub- 
 ject to waste ? Again, if snow covered them, 
 and not water, they may have lost little or 
 nothing of their first dimensions. I cannot, 
 therefore, see that these lateral cones of Etna, 
 if then in existence, afford any argument 
 against a general deluge. Dr. Kalisch* has 
 made use of the cones of scoriae in the vol- 
 canic region of Auvergne for a similar argu- 
 ment against a general deluge, but he seems 
 not to have been aware that Sidonius Apol- 
 linaris and Avitus incidentally relate the 
 great devastation created by an eruption of 
 
 * *' Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testa- 
 ment," vol. i. p. 143- 
 
THE DELUGE. 279 
 
 some kind or other of the volcanoes of Au- 
 vergne in the sixth century. Extracts from 
 those writers to that effect may be seen in the 
 Quarterly Review, in article, " The ancient 
 Laws and Institutes of England," No. 148, 
 p. 281. It is therefore perfectly possible that 
 these very cones of scoriae may not have been 
 thrown up until long after the Deluge, always 
 remembering how very recent are the records 
 and traditions of the country. From the 
 ignorance of Dr. Kalisch, and not of him 
 alone in this case, we observe that we must 
 not place reliance upon the " memory of man." 
 Vitruvius informs us, long before the first 
 historic eruption of Vesuvius, that ** It is how- 
 ever said, that in former times fires under 
 Vesuvius existed in abundance, and thence 
 evolved flames about the fields.* As far as 
 
 * " Vitruvius," Gwilt's translation, p. 41. 
 
28o SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 man is concerned, Italy was, in the times of 
 Vitruvius, an ancient country compared with 
 countries north of the Alps ; it is not there- 
 fore surprising that no record should have 
 been preserved of the active state of volcanoes 
 or volcanic regions in the north. If written 
 tradition may so easily be forgotten, how 
 much more is it the case with oral tradition ? 
 For aught we know, therefore, northern vol- 
 canoes, such as the Eifel, may have been 
 active at no very early period of the earth's 
 history. 
 
 Dr. Kalisch raises as another objection the 
 immensity of time required for the excavation 
 by the rivers of their channels through ba- 
 saltic rocks 150 feet high. A reply to this 
 objection is to be found in Sir C. Lyell's de- 
 scription of the Simeto, which it will be as 
 well to repeat : " In the course therefore of 
 
THE DELUGE. 281 
 
 about two centuries the Simeto has eroded a 
 passage from fifty to several hundred feet 
 wide, and in some parts forty to fifty feet 
 deep;" he adds, that the lava cut through 
 "consists of a compact homogeneous mass 
 of hard blue rock." It does not appear, there- 
 fore. Dr. Kalisch is right in assuming such 
 an immensity of time for the work of the 
 river. Little faith, indeed, as I have endea- 
 voured to show, can be placed in these calcu- 
 lations of immense periods of time. 
 
 Hugh Miller's suggestions with reference 
 to the Deluge, the great subsidence of the 
 earth in the region of the Caspian Sea — and 
 his suggestion ought to be treated with the 
 greatest respect — may be a solution of the 
 problem of the Deluge. But if it be true, 
 as afiirmed by many geologists, that such 
 
 * Lyell's ** Principles," Sec. vol. i. p. 357. 
 
252 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 changes in level of the earth's surface are 
 so continually going on that we are to con- 
 sider the earth, and not the sea, unstable ; and 
 besides these changes, when we consider the 
 other dislocations, subsidences from earth- 
 quakes, and other causes to which the earth's 
 surface is subjected, of which we have fre- 
 quent examples in our own days, and which 
 must obliterate the traces of the past, we 
 cannot expect to find any direct evidence of 
 the Deluge, more especially with our scanty 
 knowledge of that part of the earth where we 
 suppose it to have taken place. However, 
 without giving any forced or unnatural inter- 
 pretation of expressions in the archaic lan- 
 guage of the Pentateuch, and only applying 
 the same latitude of interpretation to them 
 as we are compelled to do in other instances 
 in the same book, we may have good reason 
 
THE DELUGE. 283 
 
 to think that the objection raised by some 
 scientific men, and by some geologists, are not 
 borne out either by their criticisms or by the 
 facts of geology, and the conjectures they 
 found upon them. That the glacial period, 
 which Professor Charles Martens* actually 
 supposes, rightly or wrongly, to have taken 
 place subsequently to mankind's appearance 
 on earth, may have been the period of the 
 Deluge, is at all events a probable method of 
 accounting for theNoachian Deluge related in 
 a book of unequalled authority, and for the 
 all but universal tradition of mankind. We 
 may therefore confidently believe that the 
 obscure and difficult readings of the geolo- 
 gical book of Nature are not inconsistent with 
 the relation of the Deluge in the Bible — a 
 book containing, as Professor Tyndal elo- 
 
 * " Revue des Deux Mondes," 1867. 
 
284 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 quently says, "words of imperishable wis- 
 dom, and with examples of moral grandeur 
 unmatched elsewhere in the history of the 
 human race.'* 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 
 
 A T the risk of being numbered with 
 " bibliolaters, pietists, and old women 
 of both sexes," among whom, how^ever, I 
 should find myself in first - rate scientific 
 company, I must avow a sincere belief in the 
 inspired character of the Old Testament, w^ith 
 its " words of imperishable wisdom and with 
 examples of moral grandeur unmatched 
 elsewhere in the history of the human race," 
 the more, as it has been attested by the 
 New Testament, for which I entertain, if 
 possible, a still greater veneration and belief. 
 Certain clergymen indeed seem to ignore 
 the fact, forgetful of the words of the Saviour, 
 
286 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
 neither will they be persuaded though one 
 rose from the dead." Also, " For had ye 
 believed Moses, ye would have believed me : 
 for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his 
 writings, how shall ye believe my words ? " 
 That any clergyman of the Church of England, 
 with a common sense of honour, honesty, and 
 truth, can retain the advantages, position, and 
 emoluments of that Church, the doctrines of 
 which he has sworn to teach, while perverting 
 or denying them — betraying the castle he 
 bound himself to defend — is the disgrace 
 of the present day, supported and encouraged 
 as it is by so many laymen, who, if they like 
 the treachery, should in common honesty 
 detest the traitor, ready as they would be to 
 punish as a swindler or traitor the ignorant 
 man who takes money on false pretences, or 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 287 
 
 the soldier who betrays his post. Some of 
 these reverend gentlemen we have heard of 
 insinuating that in these days no one is 
 prepared to undergo martyrdom. They have 
 spoken falsely for others, as Bishop Patteson 
 has recently borne witness. They ignore the 
 many who, in the strength of their convictions, 
 are continually risking their health and lives 
 in battling with deadly fevers, prepared for a 
 martyrdom unheeded by the world, but they 
 will not even sacrifice the good things of this 
 world to their convictions — a base and con- 
 temptible conclusion, as every honest thinker 
 (to use the present scientific cant expres- 
 sion) must surely acknowledge. The offence 
 given to the feelings of veneration for the 
 Bible is touchingly expressed in the Jewish 
 answer to Colenso's mischievous and often 
 childish objections, discussed and refuted 
 
288 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 ages ago by writers of their persuasion. 
 Sharing in these feelings, I propose to add a 
 few considerations to the many which have 
 been so ably and so often adduced to show 
 that there is no such inconsistency as has 
 been pretended by some of our professors 
 between the cosmogony of Moses and the 
 discoveries of science. 
 
 It must be admitted that our knowledge of 
 the language of the Bible, and of the habits, 
 customs, and expressions of thought of the 
 ancient people with which it deals, cannot 
 possibly be so complete as to enable us to 
 interpret satisfactorily certain idiomatic ex- 
 pressions and allusions, or even to understand 
 the precise meaning of some words in the 
 Bible. Many difficulties of the kind may be 
 observed in every Hebraistic commentary of 
 the Old Testament, and indeed occasionally 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 289 
 
 in the New, as in all other ancient writings in 
 dead languages ; nevertheless the knowledge 
 we have is quite sufficient to enable us to 
 appreciate their value and to derive all 
 essential advantage from them, whether they 
 be sacred or profane. If, on the one hand, 
 we have the authority of science — not however 
 always a certain, unquestionable authority, 
 for new are often setting aside former dis- 
 coveries or theories — we have, on the other, the 
 strongest evidence of the more than human 
 origin of the Bible. We have, therefore, good 
 reason for assuming that any apparent and 
 absolute discrepancy, if any there be, between 
 undoubted facts in Nature as discovered by 
 science, and such facts as are stated in the 
 Mosaic cosmogony, is due to a wTong in- 
 terpretation of its meaning. Whatever amount 
 of scientific knowledge Moses and the Egyp- 
 
 u 
 
290 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 tians may have possessed, it cannot be 
 questioned that, as we have the advantage of 
 all the knowledge of the past, our scientific 
 acquirements must necessarily be very much 
 greater ; but that the Egyptians had a certain 
 amount of scientific knowledge their remains 
 of a very early date testify in various ways. 
 It is also possible that the gross and 
 monstrous idolatry of the Egyptians was the 
 gradual growth of superstition, if Lucian on 
 the Syrian goddess is to be believed, for he 
 says, " The Assyrians imbibed their doctrines 
 (the doctrines of the Egyptians), and built 
 temples, in which they also placed statues and 
 idols, of which the Egyptians had none in 
 former ages." There is therefore reason to 
 suppose that Moses, whether he wrote the 
 first chapter of Genesis, or set his imprimatur 
 on the writings of others, did not derive his 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 291 
 
 science, astronomy especially, from " mere 
 optical appearance," as Dr. Kalisch will have 
 it. The Jehovist and Elohist theories are 
 very ingenious, but doubtful, as the sacred 
 names are in places found in close proximity, 
 and, after all, these readings may be nothing 
 more than what we might find in a modern 
 author who might use indiscriminately the 
 words "God," "the Lord," or the "Holy 
 One " in the same work. The great paramount 
 object of the Book of Genesis is, the Revela- 
 tion of One Almighty God the Creator of 
 all things, clothed in the simplest form 
 perhaps of which the marvellous work of 
 creation is capable, for the comprehension of 
 all men, and not for that of the few scientific 
 units among them. Libraries of books 
 would be insufficient to explain it, and they 
 would be unintelligible to the mass of man- 
 
292 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 kind. When we consider the idolatry of the 
 world in general, with its abominable and 
 often cruel rites, and the multifarious and 
 conflicting views of philosophers of all times, 
 the necessity of such a revelation is apparent. 
 No human being could, without inspiration 
 from heaven, give a true account of the great 
 work of creation. In so concise a description 
 of this complicated and marvellous work, we 
 can only expect to find in it the largest 
 generalisations, any exceptions to which would 
 of course remain unrecorded. 
 
 " In the beginning God created the heaven 
 and the earth." Before geology existed as 
 a science these words were considered to 
 refer to a period antecedent to the state of 
 the earth as described in the second verse — 
 " And (or but) the earth was without form, and 
 void ; and darkness was upon the face of the 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 293 
 
 deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon 
 the face of the waters." *- Dr. Kalisch, in his 
 " Historical and Critical Commentary of the 
 Old Testament," pronounces that " The con- 
 necting particle and [at the beginning of the 
 verse] expresses here necessarily immediate 
 sequence. ... It is, in a word, utterly im- 
 possible to separate the two first verses and 
 to suppose between them an immense interval 
 of time." Now as we find that same particle, 
 and, in our translation at the beginning of 
 nearly every verse or sentence in Genesis, 
 that in various instances it is merely a " con- 
 necting particle," to signify a continuation of 
 the narrative, without any such " immediate 
 sequence," and that this particular particle, 
 
 ♦ There is some reason to think St. Peter held this view, for 
 he says that '■'■ by the Word of God the heavens were of old, 
 and the earth standing out of the water and in the water." 
 
294 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 a7id, only happens to be the first in the whole 
 Bible, it seems anything but "utterly im- 
 possible to separate the two first verses and 
 to suppose between them an immense interval 
 of time." In the Vulgate (the translation of 
 St. Jerome, who was assisted by rabbis of his 
 day), the rendering of this word, and^ is 
 "autem," hut; and in the Septuagint transla- 
 tion we find the word Kai, and, used as in our 
 version everywhere except in the beginning 
 of this second verse ; there we find 'H l\ yn rjv 
 aoparos, &c., "but," or, " for the earth was 
 invisible, — &c.," it would almost appear for 
 the purpose of marking that there was no 
 such " immediate sequence " as Dr. Kalisch 
 dogmatically assumes. It is, therefore, a fair 
 interpretation of the text to consider that the 
 first verse has reference to the beginning of 
 creation, the second to a certain period when 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 295 
 
 the created earth was in a chaotic state 
 preparatory to its adaptation for the require- 
 ments of man and of animate nature contem- 
 poraneous with him, in the same manner as 
 geology shows the existence of other periods 
 adapted to other organic creatures. For it 
 appears that certain changes or revolutions 
 have at different times altered the condition 
 of the earth's surface ; that in the earliest 
 periods there probably prevailed a large 
 amount of intense heat, mineral matter in a 
 state of fusion furnishing the various materials 
 of which the earth's crust was afterwards to 
 be composed ; that at one period animal life 
 was confined to mollusks alone — creations, be 
 it observed, totally distinct from those of 
 subsequent periods ; at another period fishes, 
 birds, and reptiles were introduced ; in the 
 last period mammals ; and, finally, man. Not 
 
296 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 only are these various periods distinguish- 
 able from the evidence of their fossil witnesses, 
 but also from other general considerations. 
 A much greater heat on the earth's surface 
 must have prevailed when immense masses 
 of plutonic or igneous rocks, granite, &c., 
 penetrated the sedimentary rocks and strata 
 of the primary and secondary period, scarcely 
 at all touching the tertiary, and not reaching 
 at all the more recent periods. The truth 
 of this inference of a greater amount of 
 heat is confirmed by the evidence of a vast 
 amount of tropical vegetation (distinct, how- 
 ever, from our tropical vegetation) discovered 
 in many regions of the world, arctic, temperate, 
 and tropical.* The fossils of each period are 
 
 * Humboldt, whose knowledge and experience of volcanoes 
 and their action was so great, says in the " Cosmos," vol. i. 
 p. 259, ** The active volcanoes of the present time coramunicat- 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 297 
 
 SO distinctly marked that the geologist can 
 at once, speaking generally, declare the 
 period to which each fossil belongs. 
 
 We have therefore good geological reason 
 for supposing that the earth, described as 
 "without form, and void," may then have 
 been passing through that revolution which 
 produced an earth's surface adapted to the 
 existence of the present series of animate life, 
 including man, the Creator's most exalted 
 creature — the last geological period. From 
 geology again, we learn that though essen- 
 tially different forms of organic life were in 
 existence at the several periods, in some cases 
 
 ing with the air by craters, must not be confounded with those 
 older eruptions of granite, quartzose, porphyry, and euphotide, 
 through open but speedily closed fissures (forming veins) which 
 occur in the older transition strata. Vide also pp. 274-5, showing 
 the distinction. 
 
298 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 the resemblance of the newer to the older 
 forms is preserved ; and whether any of them 
 survived the different revolutions of the earth, 
 which may have been the case with respect 
 to some of them, especially marine creations, 
 as we now know that they can exist at 
 profound depths and in darkness ; or whether 
 after each such revolution a new took the 
 place of the old creation, preserving in some 
 cases the same form, in others a similarity 
 of type or form, we may conjecture, but never 
 be able to discover, still less dogmatically to 
 assert. As an illustration of my meaning as 
 to such new creations, I compare them with 
 the works of a Palissy, or a Wedgwood, or a 
 Minton, who gave up old forms, retaining the 
 general order of construction, and adopted 
 new forms in their creations. I have already 
 adverted to the absurd objection of the sup- 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 299 
 
 position of caprice in creation. We may be 
 thankful for the great enjoyment vouchsafed 
 to us by the infinite variety of vegetation, 
 indeed of all Nature — a variety which might 
 equally be attributed to such caprice. We 
 may, in fact, see many a purpose in the con- 
 vulsions which have acted upon the surface 
 of the earth in these different periods, and 
 which, in the words of Von Humboldt, have 
 covered **the dry land of either half of the 
 globe with a beautiful abundance of indi- 
 vidual forms," and been "conducive to free 
 at least the greater portion of it from the 
 blank of uniformity which appears to cramp 
 and impoverish both the physical and intel- 
 lectual powers of man." * We have also 
 evidence of times of a more uniform tempera- 
 ture, perhaps an intense heat on the surface 
 
 * " Cosmos," vol. i. p. 323. 
 
300 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 of the globe, and, comparatively near the 
 time when man first appeared, a period of 
 intense cold. " Hence, independently of the 
 indications of a more equally diffused and 
 warmer temperature in older times than at 
 the present day, such large erratic blocks are 
 in themselves direct testimonials of that 
 intense cold which it is believed was princi- 
 pally due to the increase of great elevated 
 masses of land especially characteristic of the 
 quasi-modern period." * 
 
 The " darkness over the face of the deep '* 
 may have been the lost light of the sun, or, on 
 a large scale, a darkness similar to that which, 
 on a small scale, hangs over the Peruvian 
 plains, thus described by Humboldt in his 
 " Cosmos " t — " A thick mist covers the sky for 
 
 * Murchison's " Siluria," p. 505. t Vol. iii. pp. 86, 87. 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 30I 
 
 several months during the season called * el 
 tiempo della Garua.' No planet, not even one 
 of the brightest stars of the southern hemi- 
 sphere, neither Canopus, nor the Southern 
 Cross, nor the two bright stars of the Cen- 
 taur, are visible. Often one can hardly con- 
 jecture the^^ place of the moon. If occasion- 
 ally during the daytime it is possible to 
 distinguish the outlines of the sun's disk, it 
 appears rayless, shorn of its beams, as if 
 
 viewed through a coloured glass, &c 
 
 A grave consideration is suggested by the 
 character of this atmospheric stratum, which 
 is so unfavourable to the transmission of light, 
 and so unfitted for electric discharges, that 
 thunder and lightning are unknown there, 
 and which veils the plains in constant mist, 
 while above, the Cordilleras raise aloft, free 
 and unclouded, their elevated plains and 
 
302 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 snowy summits. According to the conjectures 
 which modern geology leads us to form 
 respecting the ancient history of our atmo- 
 sphere, its primitive state, in respect to 
 composition and density, must have been 
 little favourable to the passage of light. If 
 then we think of the many processes which 
 may have been in operation in the early state 
 of the crust of the globe, in the separation 
 of solid, liquid, and gaseous substances, we 
 are impressed with a view of how possible it 
 must have been that we should have been 
 subjected to conditions and circumstances 
 very different from those which we actually 
 enjoy. We might have been surrounded by 
 an untransparent atmosphere, which, while 
 but little unfavourable to the growth of several 
 kinds of vegetation, would have veiled from 
 us the whole starry firmament." 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 303 
 
 Here, then, we have a philosophical con- 
 jecture, harmonizing not only with the Mosaic 
 description of the state of the earth's surface 
 before the fourth day, but also with that of the 
 third day, when vegetation was to appear 
 before the appearance of the light of the sun. 
 It must not be supposed that Von Humboldt 
 had any intention of suggesting such a har- 
 mony between his conjectures and the state- 
 ments in the first chapter of Genesis, for in 
 the first volume, p. 288^ he speaks of "geology, 
 now finally abstracted, on the Continent at 
 least, from Semitic influences." We have no 
 reason to envy France at all events, where 
 the absence of " Semitic influences " has 
 largely contributed to that utter absence 
 of principle which has produced so many 
 grievous wars and revolutions, with their 
 bitter fruits and abundant stock of misery for 
 
304 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 its inhabitants. But, further on, it will be 
 seen that many other suggestions— on scien- 
 tific principles — may be adduced to account 
 for the darkness over the face of the deep. 
 
 " And God said. Let there be light : and 
 there was light " (otherwise translated " Let 
 light be, and light was "). " And God saw the 
 light, that it was good : and God divided the 
 light from the darkness. And God called the 
 light Day, and the darkness he called Night. 
 And the evening and the morning were the first 
 day," or, " Evening was, and morning was.'* 
 
 It is remarkable that Moses, living with 
 a people and among nations who made the 
 sun an object of worship, attributing to it all 
 light and life, should not have taken the 
 common human view, and described light as 
 an emanation from the sun. On the contrary, 
 we learn the truth from Moses, that there is 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 305 
 
 light wholly independent of the sun. Never- 
 theless, the sun may have been at this time in 
 existence without light, but retaining its 
 power of attraction to keep the earth in its 
 orbit, yet having lost the light which shone on 
 former periods of the earth's history. Many 
 stars or suns have shone for years, the light of 
 which has entirely disappeared. Who can 
 pretend to assert that such an event may not 
 at that time of a new creation have taken 
 place with respect to our sun ? Dark spots 
 have covered vast surfaces of the sun, dark 
 spots very many diameters larger than that of 
 the earth. It is possible that these dark 
 spots (supposed openings in the photosphere) 
 may so have covered, either partially or 
 completely, its surface, as to render its light 
 imperceptible on the earth. The undulatory 
 theory (undulations of light crossing and 
 
 X 
 
3o6 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 meeting one another in infinite directions) has 
 replaced the Newtonian theory of light, and a 
 supposed universal aether has been conjec- 
 tured — supported by the observed contraction 
 of the periods of Encke's comet. But as to what 
 light really is we know not ; we have only 
 discovered the mode of its transmission, so far 
 at least as to give a satisfactory interpretation 
 of its action. Schellen, in his "Spectrum 
 Analysis," p. 9, says, " The immediate cause of 
 the luminosity of a flame has not yet been 
 fully ascertained, notwithstanding the many 
 investigations that have been made with this 
 object." We have therefore reason to admire 
 the Mosaic account of the first renewed 
 appearance of light, in its scientific aspect, 
 always supposing that account to apply to the 
 creation of the earth's surface for the last 
 geological human period. We have no 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 307 
 
 reason to take the words " let there be light " 
 as signifying a first creation of light (it is not 
 said, God created light as He "created the 
 heaven and the earth"), but in the sense of 
 " let there be light upon the earth," which 
 does not preclude the idea of a pre-existence 
 of light, to which, at the time we have now 
 under consideration, the earth may have been 
 insensible. Schellen again says {J.bid.^ p. 55), 
 " Light is not therefore a separate substance, 
 but only the vibration of a substance which, 
 according to its various forms of motion, 
 generates light, heat, or electricity." 
 
 Every one in the time of Moses, as 
 now, must have been aware that day and 
 night are owing to the presence and ab- 
 sence of the sun's light. Accordingly we find 
 in the fourteenth verse, " Let there be lights 
 in the firmament of the heaven to divide the 
 
308 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 day from the night," &c. The words, there- 
 fore, *' And God called the light day, and the 
 darkness he called night," must either be 
 taken parenthetically, or the light of the sun 
 must have been at that time not either in 
 quality or intensity identical with that re- 
 ferred to in the sixteenth verse. Of the 
 possibility of such a state of things we have 
 evidence in the fact that not only have stars 
 or suns been seen to increase their lights 
 gradually to that of stars of the first magni- 
 tude, and then to die away again into 
 darkness, but these suns also have visibly 
 changed their colours, or, in other words, their 
 light, and any satellite planets they may have 
 must have suffered accordingly.* So the first 
 light of the sun, as mentioned in this verse, 
 
 * Humboldt says : " Dark cosmical bodies may suddenly shine 
 forth afresh by a resumed luminous process." — (Vol. iii. p. 152.) 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 309 
 
 may have proceeded from a photosphere 
 different to that it attained subsequently, and 
 might be, perhaps, more adapted to the 
 growth of ih^ first germs of the vegetation the 
 earth was to produce on the third day of 
 creation, which will presently be considered.* 
 " And the evening and the morning were 
 the first day." The days of creation seem 
 merely to point out that at certain six 
 different times the various works of creation, 
 or the fiats of the Almighty, were sent forth ; 
 nor have we any right to assume that by the 
 six days is meant six consecutive days of one 
 week, a view derived perhaps from the 
 
 • Mr. Denison remarks on the words " let there be light," 
 that ** no other words would have been equally conect ; for it is 
 now ascertained that light is not a thing to be created like 
 water, but rather a state of things like fire or noise." — 
 ("Astronomy without Mathematics," p. 28.) 
 
3IO SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Statement in the fourth commandment — " For 
 in six days the Lord made heaven and 
 earth," &c. ; but surely these six days of the 
 commandment may be considered only as 
 representing symbolically the six times at 
 which the fiats of creation went forth, as the 
 seventh day was to perpetuate the remem- 
 brance of the rest from creation, a rest 
 continued to the best of our knowledge up to 
 the present day. We are nowhere told that 
 creation took place in one week. 
 
 But although we can take in a general idea 
 of a creation of the earth, much as we often 
 see the material results of a mental process 
 without the smallest conception of the manner 
 in which they were brought about, the modus 
 operandi, or what were the processes of 
 creation, are, and ever must be, tabula rasa 
 to us. Whether creation signifies the creation 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 3II 
 
 of the first germ or protoplasm of any creature 
 or its full development, we are not told, and 
 perhaps, certainly as far as the mass of 
 mankind are concerned, could not understand 
 if told. All therefore we have to understand 
 by the Mosaic description of creation is the 
 simple fact of creation at certain times or 
 periods, but the how, and the how long or 
 how short the completion of each separate 
 work, we are not told, and the solution of the 
 mystery can only be a matter of conjecture. 
 Even in the creations or inventions of man, 
 such, for instance, as the extraordinary calcu- 
 lating machine of Mr. Babbage, it might be 
 said that it was created when elaborated in 
 his mind or sketched on paper, supposing that 
 he were certain that it would work when 
 constructed, as in the case of the creations of 
 an Almighty power. I think, however, that 
 
312 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 when we come to the consideration of the 
 text describing, or rather announcing, the 
 appearance of vegetation, we shall be led to 
 the conclusion that that text actually conveys 
 the idea that the work of the third day was 
 the work of time, and not of a period of 
 twenty-four hours. 
 
 ** And God said, Let there be a firmament 
 in the midst of the waters, and let it divide 
 the waters from the waters. And God made 
 the firmament, and divided the waters which 
 were under the firmament from the waters 
 which were above the firmament : and it was 
 so. And God called the firmament Heaven. 
 And the evening and the morning were the 
 second day.*' The word firjuavient is trans- 
 lated expanse by Kalisch and others : it is 
 therefore evident that we are not acquainted 
 with the exact meaning of the word, whatever 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 313 
 
 meaning the Septuagint (o-rcpeco/xa) or the 
 Vulgate may have given to it. We may, 
 however, infer that it means the creation of 
 the atmosphere, which is saturated with the 
 vapour of water, and shows that, in the words 
 of ** Cosmos," * " Our planet has two cover- 
 ings or envelopes — one general, the atmo- 
 sphere, as elastic fluid ; and one particular, 
 only locally distributed, bounding the solid, 
 and thereby giving it its figure, the sea." 
 The atmosphere was thus prepared for the 
 organic life which was to come, different 
 in some respects perhaps from the atmosphere 
 of the past, for it is supposed by some 
 philosophers, Humboldt among others,! that 
 the atmosphere contained a greater amount of 
 carbonic acid, to account for the great luxu- 
 riance of vegetation in the former world, as 
 • Vol. i. p. 308. t Vol. i. p. 270. 
 
314 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 evidenced by the coal formation found in 
 every latitude of the earth. That the Bible 
 was not intended to teach astronomy any 
 more than chemistry or the various ologies, 
 but to teach as its sole object the duty of man 
 to his Creator, is evident. We do not find 
 fault with the astronomer because he does 
 not treat of other sciences as well as his own. 
 The term fir7nanie7it and heaven we may 
 therefore presume to be an expression used 
 figuratively, like that of the "vault of heaven," 
 employed repeatedly by Humboldt, yet we do 
 not suppose he considered the heavens a 
 vault ; or as we read in the Bible of the 
 earth "opening her mouth" — a figurative 
 expression. If under the term waters we may 
 include vapour, which I conceive we have 
 every right philologically to do, the descrip- 
 tion of Moses is very much what we know of 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 315 
 
 the atmosphere, and it seems more probable 
 that a man, living under the glorious trans- 
 parency of an Egyptian or an Eastern atmo- 
 sphere, would not have imagined the existence 
 of any intermediate stratum between earth 
 and heaven. 
 
 " And God said, Let the waters under the 
 heaven be gathered together unto one place, 
 and let the dry land appear : and it was so. 
 And God called the dry land Earth ; and the 
 gathering together of the waters called he 
 Seas : and God saw that it was good." 
 
 In this very general description of a stu- 
 pendous event, we may suppose particular 
 exceptions ; and, as I have before said, we 
 have no right to assume that these words 
 imply an instantaneous operation concluded 
 in one day. There may have been islands 
 scattered here and there : the peaks of the 
 
3l6 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Himalayas, Andes, or Alps may have then 
 stood above the waters ; but we gather from 
 geology the unquestionable fact that, at some 
 time or times, great portions of the earth 
 were either uplifted from the waters, or the 
 waters were lowered. The cretaceous forma- 
 tions and other masses of strata containing 
 the fossils of marine creatures incontestably 
 show that they were once beneath the waters, 
 though now uplifted high above them. What 
 we know, therefore, of the earth's surface is 
 amply sufficient to show that the Mosaic 
 account is, in this respect, in accordance 
 with geological science. 
 
 "And God said. Let the earth bring forth 
 grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit- 
 tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed 
 is in itself, upon the earth : and it was so. 
 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 317 
 
 yielding seed after his kind, and the tree 
 yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after 
 his kind : and God saw that it was good. And 
 the evening and the morning were the third 
 day." 
 
 It is again remarkable that Moses, seeing, 
 as we all see, how necessary are the light and 
 heat of the sun for the growth of vegetation, 
 should, if guided only by natural human 
 intelligence, have placed the creation, or the 
 first production, of a new vegetation, before 
 the light of the sun was made to shine upon 
 the earth. It is not said here that God 
 created grass, &c., but " let the earth bring 
 forth," which may imply that the seeds of 
 vegetation were already in the earth, waiting 
 for the atmospheric conditions suitable to 
 their growth. We cannot know what were 
 these conditions before or after that time, 
 
3l8 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 but we know that the vegetation of former 
 periods of the earth's history was very dif- 
 ferent, and that the atmospheric conditions 
 provided for them must have been very dif- 
 ferent from those of our period. The almost 
 universal coal-measures, for instance, afford 
 an unmistakable proof that the same climate 
 prevailed in arctic, temperate, and tropical 
 latitudes in both hemispheres, although it 
 was impossible that these latitudes could have 
 enjoyed the same amount of the sun's light 
 or heat. We have therefore satisfactory 
 proof of vegetation of the richest character 
 flourishing under a minimumi of that light 
 and heat; or again, to use the words of 
 Humboldt, *' We might have been surrounded 
 by an untransparent atmosphere which, while 
 but little unfavourable to the growth of vege- 
 tation, would have veiled from us the whole 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 319 
 
 Starry firmament." In this part of the history 
 of creation we may also observe how general 
 is the description, for Moses only mentions 
 grass, herbs, and fruit-trees ; yet it is im- 
 possible to suppose he was not aware of the 
 many other trees, water-plants, seaweeds, 
 &c., which he does not mention. So in other 
 descriptions we can only find generalisations 
 of the largest kind. 
 
 As we cannot know in what manner or by 
 what process the earth, bare of all vegetation, 
 was converted into the state of a beautiful 
 garden, such as we now see it, we may only 
 conjecture that the full light of the sun was 
 not suited to its first coming into existence. 
 The sun's heat creates the storm and fills 
 the atmosphere, by evaporation, with clouds 
 and rain. We may conjecture that incipient 
 vegetation, especially on hill and mountain- 
 
320 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 sides, could not have borne the denuding 
 effects of the storm and the rain, as we now 
 know that (as I have before shown) hill-sides 
 and large tracts, once deprived of their forests, 
 are laid bare by them of all vegetation, with 
 the destruction of vegetation at the base of 
 the hills and mountains. Accordingly, we 
 find in the fifth and sixth verse of the second 
 chapter — " For the Lord God had not caused 
 it to rain upon the earth, and there was not 
 a man to till the ground. But there went up 
 a mist from the earth, and watered the whole 
 face of the ground " — a gentle irrigation, more 
 suited to the incipient life of plants. Here 
 again these words seem to imply a slow, 
 continuous action. The fiat went forth on 
 the third day, but the sense of the relation 
 seems to imply that the work of the mist was 
 not completed in the course of one day of 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 32I 
 
 twenty-four hours, although no one can pre- 
 tend to say that the germination of the vege- 
 tation of the whole earth did not, or could 
 not, take place in the course of one day 
 at its first appearance. That the vegetable 
 kingdom should have preceded the appearance 
 on earth of the animal kingdom seems con- 
 sonant with reason, inasmuch as the vast 
 proportion of the animal world derive their 
 subsistence and life from the vegetable world, 
 which, according to Humboldt, " far exceeds 
 the animal world on the face of the sflobe." * 
 He indeed says: — "Nothing seems to testify, 
 as .... it has been assumed, that vegetable 
 life was awakened sooner than animal life 
 upon the face of the old earth, and this was 
 brought about or determined by that."f And 
 his reason for this notion is an extraordinary 
 * "Cosmos," vol. i p. 377. f Vol. i. p. 297. 
 
 Y 
 
322 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 one : — "The existences of races of men in the 
 very northern polar zones, who subsist on the 
 flesh of fish and seals and whales, is enough 
 of itself to assure us of the possibility of 
 living without vegetable matter of any 
 kind;"* that is to say, that because the 
 omnivorous animal, man, is endowed with a 
 constitution enabling him to exist under all 
 conditions of food and climate, as well without 
 vegetable as without animal food, therefore 
 we are to assume, without any proof or expe- 
 rience, that creatures purely herbivorous can 
 exist without vegetable matter. And this, 
 because we have not discovered in the Silu- 
 rian or Devonian strata much fossil vegeta- 
 tion. Mr. Philips, however, in the " Geology 
 of Oxford," p. 74, enumerates four kinds of 
 plants in the Silurian period. Many circum- 
 
 * Humboldt, p. 298. 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 323 
 
 stances may account for the absence — which, 
 after all, is but apparent — of more kinds of 
 plants and greater quantities in the ancient 
 strata. But as we are now dealing with the 
 human geological period, we can have no 
 doubt of the infinite number of the creatures 
 of our earth who live upon its flora, and who 
 supply food for the carnivora. The true scien- 
 tific view would therefore seem to correspond 
 with that of Genesis, w^hich places the creation 
 of the flora before that of the fauna of the 
 earth. 
 
 " And God said. Let there be lights in the 
 firmament of the heaven to divide the day 
 from the night ; and let them be for signs, and 
 for seasons, and for days, and years : and let 
 them be for lights in the firmament of the 
 heaven to give light upon the earth : and it 
 was so. And God made tw^o great lights ; the 
 
324 
 
 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 greater light to rule the day, and the lesser 
 light to rule the night : He made the stars also. 
 And God set them in the firmament of the 
 heaven to give light upon the earth, and to 
 rule over the day and over the night, and to 
 divide the light from the darkness : and God 
 saw that it was good. And the evening and 
 the morning were the fourth day." 
 
 The production of the lights, and that God 
 made the two great lights, are separate 
 clauses, as it were; the first showing that 
 the sun's light was made to shine in its 
 full force upon the earth, the second to 
 be taken parenthetically, as if it were said, 
 "God caused the sun's light to shine on 
 earth by day, the moon's by night — for 
 God had made the sun and moon, the 
 stars also." The words He made^ in the sen- 
 tence, ''He made the stars also," are not in 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 325 
 
 the original. That the ancient readers of 
 this passage held that it signified a former 
 creation, as far as the stars are concerned, 
 we have every reason to think with more 
 modern authorities ; for though the passage 
 in Job, " the morning stars sang together " 
 when God " laid the foundations of the earth," 
 is a poetical one, it could hardly have been 
 said if the writer supposed the creation of the 
 earth to have preceded that of the stars. 
 Perhaps, also, it was especially declared that 
 not only did God command " Let there be 
 light," &c., but also emphatically that God 
 made or created the " two great lights," &c., 
 to guard against the idolatrous worship of 
 the sun and moon, the sun being probably, 
 even in the time of Moses, by the Egyptian 
 and almost all heathen nations of old, and 
 even to this day, an object of worship with 
 
326 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 some of the peoples of the earth. In the 
 concise description of this wondrous work 
 of creation, we only find its primary objects, 
 as far as the earth is concerned ; Moses, or 
 the person whose words he has adopted — if 
 indeed this part of the Pentateuch is a com- 
 pilation—must have been aware of the fact 
 that the sun has other important functions. 
 Could he, living in Egypt, have possibly 
 been unaware that heat as well as light 
 proceeded from the sun, that that heat with- 
 out moisture produced a desert, and with 
 it the richest vegetation r It is absurd there- 
 fore to find fault with the description, from 
 the absence of any references to certain 
 other properties of the sun and moon, which, 
 whether they were known or not to Moses, 
 would have been out of place in this grand, 
 general, and concise description, and would 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 327 
 
 have required a volume to enumerate so as 
 to be intelligible. The creation of immense 
 masses of matter such as the sun (in size 
 many times the diameter of the earth) has 
 undoubtedly had for its object a beneficial 
 influence upon the earth, and for the myriads 
 of living souls and animated beings dwelling 
 upon it. The sun may or may not have 
 the same influence in other planets, for we 
 know nothing more than that it preserves 
 those planets in their orbits. Of the moon's 
 influence we know little more than that in 
 addition to its light, its attraction, together 
 with that of the sun, affects the tides of the 
 ocean ; and we have some reason to con- 
 jecture that that great mass of matter is a 
 fearful waste of volcanoes, without atmo- 
 sphere or (perhaps) water, and therefore with- 
 out life, such at least as exists on this earth. 
 
328 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 So far therefore as we know, the moon was 
 created for the principal purpose of shedding- 
 light upon the earth at night. Professor 
 Tyndal treats "this little sand-grain of earth" 
 as nothing compared with the infinite uni- 
 verse of worlds of matter : and so it is ; but 
 we must not forget that this " little sand- 
 grain " contains myriads of living, intelligent, 
 immortal souls, which in their Creator's view 
 may surely be of more importance than 
 masses of inert matter such as the sun and 
 moon. Two sharks, it is said, were convers- 
 ing together after making a meal upon the 
 dead body of a seaman fallen from the Great 
 Eastern. "What a wonder," said shark A, 
 "that that monstrous edifice, many times 
 bigger than those troublesome whales, should 
 be for the use of such miserable creatures 
 as the one we have just dined upon!" — 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 329 
 
 " Pooh, nonsense ! " answered shark B ; *' it 
 is absurd to suppose so great, so wonderful a 
 construction to be for the use of such wretched 
 little animals." 
 
 Thus far then we have good reason to 
 believe that in the grand simplicity of the 
 Mosaic description of the work of creation 
 there is nothing contradictory to the determi- 
 nations of science, but rather a coincidence 
 with them. 
 
 " And God said. Let the waters bring forth 
 abundantly the moving creature that hath 
 life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in 
 the open firmament of heaven. And God 
 created great whales, and every living creature 
 that moveth, which the waters brought forth 
 abundantly, after their kind, and every winged 
 fowl after his kind, and God saw that it was 
 good. And God blessed them, saying. Be 
 
330 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in 
 the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 
 And the evening and the morning were the 
 fifth day." 
 
 From the researches of geologists we gather 
 that great changes have taken place on the 
 earth's surface which are divided into periods. 
 The vegetable world of one period is very 
 different from that of another period. The 
 same may be said of the animal world. 
 Races and species have wholly disappeared 
 and given place to wholly different species. 
 Both the flora and fauna of the earth in some 
 of these periods show from their presence 
 in all parts of the earth that its climate must 
 have been different from the climate of our, the 
 latest, period. If, therefore, such changes 
 have taken place on the face of the earth, we 
 may with reason believe it to be more than 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 331 
 
 probable that such a change took place when 
 the present organic life on earth, including 
 mankind, was created. We can never know 
 what were the first processes of creation. 
 Some ancient cosmogonies pretend to give 
 an account of such processes, and some 
 modem scientific men have been or are en- 
 gaged in inventing theories to explain them ; 
 but all are wanting in the essential element 
 of historical or geological evidence in ex- 
 planation of the fact that no such processes 
 have ever been known to mankind, or why 
 they should have so long ceased to operate. 
 But whatever may have been those first pro- 
 cesses, all that the words of Genesis demand 
 of us is the belief that all animal life was 
 created by the Almighty. We might also 
 assume that the exceptional mention of the 
 creation of the whale, to an inhabitant of 
 
332 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 Egypt not a familiar mammal, may be to 
 show that this creation of the fifth day was 
 the creation of the last great periodic change 
 of the earth's surface, the whale being un- 
 known hitherto in the fossil world of the 
 earlier periods. And because we trace a 
 few forms passing into the last period from 
 the preceding one, we have no right to 
 consider this fact evidence against a new 
 creation; for either it is possible that the 
 former forms of life should have perished and 
 have been removed, or that some of them 
 may have survived exceptionally the general 
 destruction — the very general and concise 
 nature of this history of creation naturally 
 excluding exceptions, exceptions which, geo- 
 logically, for the most part are to be found 
 among the lower forms of life. Our absolute 
 ignorance of the modus operandi of a first 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. $:^;^ 
 
 creation of anything whatever — whether male 
 
 and female were created at the same time ; 
 
 whether a germ, protoplasm, or primordial 
 
 form was the first seed of life ; or whether 
 
 the process was a long or a short one, w^e 
 
 can never know. If a long one, there is 
 
 nothing in the account given in Genesis to 
 
 prevent such an interpretation. All that we 
 
 are told is, that creative energy was exercised 
 
 in the creation of animal life on the fifth day 
 
 of its exercise. It is possible that the process 
 
 was long, but equally possible that it was 
 
 instantaneous for aught we know. As I have 
 
 said before, we have no right to interpret the 
 
 six days as days of one week. Even in the 
 
 English language, events may surely be said 
 
 to have taken place in six days without 
 
 necessarily implying the six days of one 
 
 week. It would be no error in language to 
 
334 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 say that Professor So-and-so lectured on light 
 one day, on the atmosphere a second day, on 
 vegetation a third day, &:c., although such 
 lectures were delivered only once a month, or 
 with any other intervals of time between them. 
 Whether genera or species which abhor inter- 
 mixture ever intermixed, or whether each 
 genus, species, or race were distinct creations, 
 the first chapter of Genesis does not inform 
 us. All we learn from it is the fact that the 
 Almighty God was their Creator, a fact un- 
 questioned by the greatest of our scientific men. 
 " And God said. Let us make man in 
 our image, after our likeness : and let them 
 have dominion over the fish of the sea, 
 and over the fowl of the air, and over the 
 cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 
 creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 
 So God created man in his own image, in 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 335 
 
 the image of God created he him ; male and 
 female created he them." 
 
 Here again we have the simple declaration 
 of man's creation by the Almighty without 
 the smallest reference to the process of his 
 creation, leaving that entirely to speculation, 
 which may be characterised as idle. I have 
 endeavoured to show that the arguments for 
 the great antiquity of man are very fallacious. 
 Geology, however, as far as its revelations 
 extend, shows unmistakably that man was 
 among the latest, as we learn in Genesis that 
 he was the last of the creations of the 
 Almighty. This geological fact is of such 
 general application, that if we were to find in 
 tertiary or even in secondary strata remains 
 of man, or of his works, we should be justified 
 in concluding their position was due to their 
 fall into a fissure, the result of an earthquake 
 
336 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 or some other unknown cause, rather than 
 that they should have been the relics of men 
 who were living at the period of the stratum 
 in which they might be found. This caution 
 is requisite because it is not impossible that 
 such remains may be discovered some day or 
 other at any depth in the earth, although I 
 am not aware of any such discovery of human 
 relics as yet, notwithstanding the very great 
 number of men and their works now in the 
 bowels of the earth, buried in fissures caused 
 by the earthquakes which appear to have 
 shaken one part or other of the globe through- 
 out all time.* This account of man's creation 
 is in exact conformity with what we know of 
 
 * " Could we have daily news of the state of the whole of the 
 earth's surface, we should, in all probability, become convinced 
 that some point or another of this surface is ceaselessly shaken ; 
 that there is uninterrupted reaction of the interior upon the ex- 
 terior going on." — ("Cosmos," vol. i. p. 221.) 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 337 
 
 the results of geological research ; and any 
 conclusions, or rather conjectures, of science 
 as to the manner or the process of creation, 
 cannot in any way affect the simple state- 
 ment of Genesis that man was the work 
 of the Creator, whatever secondary laws they 
 may think to discover in the process of his 
 creation. 
 
 The mythophilosophical conjectures of the 
 present day, pretending to an explanation of 
 the first processes of the creation of organic 
 beings, seem to be little more credible than 
 the mythological descriptions of times past. 
 To call them scientific seems altogether a 
 misnomer, for true science is based upon 
 indubitable fact, which cannot be gainsaid. 
 The processes of creation we can never 
 penetrate, and the attempts to do so smack 
 very much of the scientific pedantry which 
 
 z 
 
338 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 assumes to explain all the inexplicable things 
 in nature, not so utterly beyond the reach of 
 our intelligence as the mystery of mysteries 
 — Creation. 
 
 In the second chapter we find, "And the 
 Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
 ground/' Any one wishing for the confirma- 
 tion of science on this point, will find in the 
 Kensington Museum the earthy substances of 
 which, in their due proportions, his mortal 
 body is composed. That Dr. Kalisch and 
 other commentators should have considered 
 this second chapter a second cosmogony, dif- 
 fering from the first, seems an unwarrantable 
 misconstruction of the text. Can it be sup- 
 posed that the writer or compiler of these two 
 chapters should have deliberately contradicted 
 himself, almost, one might say, in the same 
 breath ? The second chapter appears to be 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 339 
 
 merely a recapitulation and amplification, with 
 a few details of the first, or, according to the 
 theory in *'Adam and the Adamite," an ac- 
 count of the creation of Adam as distinguished 
 from the men mentioned in the first chapter. 
 Dr. Kalisch alleges that in the first chapter 
 "the birds and beasts are created before man ; " 
 in the latter, or second chapter, " man before 
 beasts and birds," because it is said in the 
 nineteenth verse, " And out of the ground the 
 Lord God formed every beast of the field," &c., 
 having before said in the seventh verse, ** And 
 the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
 ground." The answer to this is to be found 
 in the Vulgate translation of the nineteenth 
 verse, *' Formatis igitur Dominus Deus de 
 humo cunctis animantibus terra," 6zc. (**The 
 Lord God, therefore, having formed every 
 living thing of the earth," kc.) It is therefore 
 
340 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 only a question of the tense which is to be 
 given to the verb for?ned. As we find 
 in the preface to the edition of the Vulgate 
 of Clement VIII., " in hac tamen pervulgata 
 sectione, sicut nonnulla consulto niutata^ ita 
 etiam alia, quae mutanda videbantur, consulto 
 immutata relicta sunt,'' the authenticity of 
 the version is questionable, and the reading 
 may not be trustworthy unless found in 
 earlier copies. However, the Septuagint 
 gives the same past signification to the word 
 
 foVJllcdj hr\<x(j& — KOI eTrXacrev 6 @eoQ €TL iK tt}? yyjs 
 
 Tvavra to. 6r]pia, &c. Here there can be no 
 doubt of the past signification of iTrXaa-e, 
 inasmuch as it is used in the fifteenth verse, 
 
 Kol eXaj3€ KvptOQ 6 9eo^ rov o.vOpo)7rov ov eTrA-afre, which 
 
 can only be translated " had made." The 
 same word and tense, the first aoristic, e-n-Xaorev, 
 is used in the seventh verse. The versions, 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 34 1 
 
 therefore, of these passages of the second 
 chapter in the Vulgate and Septuagint seem 
 certainly more rational than our authorised 
 version. 
 
 The other arguments adduced for assuming 
 the second chapter to contain another and a 
 different cosmogony are satisfactorily nulli- 
 fied in Wordsworth's " Holy Bible." 
 
 Without presuming to give any dogmatic 
 interpretation of the Mosaic account of Crea- 
 tion or of the Deluge, or to suppose that my 
 view of the manner in which they are to be 
 construed is the correct one, I hope to have 
 shown, without any strained readings of the 
 text, that the brief and majestic history of 
 these two great events, in their relation to 
 science, may coincide rather than conflict 
 with scientific knowledge, wherever it can be 
 brought to hciiY upon so concise, indefinite, 
 
342 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 and popular, as it may be called, relation of 
 such a complicated work. 
 
 Well did St. Peter predict that scoffers 
 should come, saying, " Where is the promise 
 of his coming ? for since the fathers fell asleep 
 all things continue as they were from the 
 beginning of creation." The Christian doc- 
 trine that it pleased God to set apart one 
 nation of the earth through which His Will 
 is communicated to mankind, is surely a doc- 
 trine with which primd-facia science cannot 
 deal, and scientific men have neither right 
 nor reason to reject. But this doctrine is 
 supported by statements of miracles — i.e. of 
 exceptions to general laws, including pro- 
 phetic announcements. How could a proof 
 be given to mankind of their divine commis- 
 sion to teach, except by the demonstration of 
 powers beyond those of man ? But miracles 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 343 
 
 have been constantly mere impostures. Are 
 not all human things subjected to imposture, 
 and are we to reject all because of these 
 impostures r Imposture is in fact nothing, as 
 a rule, but the imitation or adulteration of 
 truth. Science shows many instances of 
 exceptions to general law^s in the physical 
 world. Why are Ave to suppose that some 
 of these exceptions to physical laws, in the 
 forms of miracles, may not have been ordained 
 to enable the great and true religious teachers 
 of mankind to prove that their mission was 
 of God r Many of our greatest— the greatest, 
 indeed — of our scientific men have been of 
 this opinion ; and, considering the untold 
 and unnumbered material advantages science 
 has conferred upon mankind, it is painful to 
 see some of its professors arrayed in hostile 
 attitude to religion ; for without reliq-ion 
 
344 SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 morality, truth, and virtue would be rarer 
 than they are ; and without morality, science 
 and knowledge would be as likely to produce 
 as much evil as good, to the misery of the 
 human race, already sufficiently corrupted by 
 their uncontrolled passions and the evil teach- 
 ing of some so-called savans and scientific 
 men — as St. Paul says, the " oppositions of 
 science falsely so called." Babbage brought 
 the doctrine of chances or probabilities to 
 bear upon Hume's argument from probabili- 
 ties against miracles, thus showing by a strict 
 mathematical demonstration the fallacy of 
 Hume's reasoning. He also shows a remark- 
 able exception to, one would suppose, an un- 
 alterable mathematical law, a break in the 
 continuity of a quasi-infinite series, such as 
 miracles may be in the continuity of physical 
 laAvs, of which we have anything but a perfect 
 
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 345 
 
 knowledge. With Babbage, Sir C. Bell, Sir 
 H. Davy, Faraday, Newton, and Bacon, we 
 may be comforted in the assurance that true 
 science is not the antagonist of the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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