Chapter II: Part 2

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

In truth, the researches of geologists are every day bringing to light new facts, which compel them to modify or abandon many of the positions they formerly held; so that a considerable portion of the science is a mere quicksand of shifting theories. We need only allude to the various suppositions respecting the origin of drift, and to the numerous modifications of the glacial theory. Important discoveries have been made within a short time, showing that certain animal tribes had their origin much farther back than was at first supposed. A few years ago, reptiles were believed to be the highest type of life that existed during the era of the new red sand-stone. But Professor Hitchcock's recent discovery in this stone of the footprints of gigantic birds has added a higher class to the zooelogy of the period; and within a few months, in the same red sand-stone of the Connecticut valley, tracks of two or three species of quadrupeds have been found, some of them being probably mammifers of a lower grade. It is true, no fossil remains of these animals have been brought to light; but this want only renders the discovery more significant for our present purpose. It shows that certain animals must have lived at the period in question, though their remains have not yet been found; and from the greater age of the rocks then formed, and the consequent greater number of convulsions of the earth's surface to which they have been subjected, these remains may have entirely disappeared. It is a curious fact, also, that the animal remains of that period, which have come down to us, belong to genera so constituted, that their bodies might well survive, if we may so speak, the shocks which would have destroyed every trace of some more delicate, or more finely organized, beings. We find remains of the flint-shielded animalcules, the hard-shelled mollusca, and the cartilaginous fishes; but the bodies of mammalia, birds, and even the higher species of fishes, some of which we may suppose to have been more tender and corruptible, have utterly perished. Here and there, an individual of their number left the print of its foot on the sand, which subsequently hardened into rock, and brought down to our times a faint vestige of its past existence.

We are not attempting to impugn the credit of geological science in general, which would be a wholly futile task. The multitude of facts respecting the present constitution of the earth's crust, recently made known by laborers in this department, are among the most curious and most pregnant discoveries of modern times. But when we come to the formation of theories respecting the past history of the earth, in order to account for the phenomena at present visible on its surface, we are evidently afloat on a sea of conjecture, each hypothesis being valid only till a more plausible one is proposed,--which happens very frequently,--or till it is effectually disproved by some new discovery in the rocky strata. A fertile imagination and a bold face are among the most striking traits of our more daring geologists. Grant to one of this character a few modest postulates,--give him certain millions of years, a sufficient number of earthquakes, a whole battery of volcanoes, a few ocean deluges, and the rise and fall of half a dozen continents,--and he will frame a theory off-hand, which will account for the most perplexing phenomena. Our author is certainly entitled to take his place at the very head of this class of speculatists.

In accounting for the work of creation by the natural and unassisted development of the inherent qualities of brute matter, the great difficulty is found at the first link in the chain of animated being. How can we explain the commencement of _life_? We must have a clear idea of the whole scope of this problem, before we can make any attempt at its solution. Life, then, is _not_ mere organization, though most materialists, philosophers, like our author, willingly confound the two things; to hear them reason, one would almost suppose that there was no difference between a dead man and a living one. Organization is subservient to life, ministers to it, manifests it,--supports it, if you please,--but does not constitute it. He must be a bolder man than we are, who will undertake to say _what it is_; but we can very safely declare _what it is not_; and in any particular form or aggregation of matter, whether organic or inorganic, we can give a shrewd guess as to its presence or absence. It may be said, that we beg the question by assuming that organization is not life; it may be so; but it is quite too much to allow the materialist quietly to take the opposite doctrine for granted. He must know the full extent of his task,--that it is necessary for him not only to construct the machine, but actually to set it in motion, so that it shall afterwards run on of its own accord. It is very easy to frame a partial definition of life, by merely describing one or two of its characteristic functions; and then, because some action can be detected between the particles of brute matter, which resembles the exercise of these functions, boldly to declare that the whole mystery is solved. Thus it is said, that life is nothing but the accretion of similar substances, or the addition of like unto like; and as this occurs in crystallization, which is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter, therefore there is no fundamental difference between the properties of living and dead substances. We deny the first proposition; nutrition is not the only characteristic of life, and the nutritive process, whether in vegetables or animals, is not mere accretion, but assimilation. It has been said, though the assertion is by no means fully proved, that assimilation is only a finer kind of chemistry, the constituent principles being brought together only by their natural affinities. Even if this were true, if the stomach and the digestive apparatus were only a well furnished chemical laboratory, fit for conducting the most delicate experiments, the great difficulty would still remain. The question might yet be asked, Where is the chemist? And this is the fundamental question, which the materialists never attempt to answer, but quietly evade.

The difference between an inorganic and an organic body has been explained by Coleridge clearly enough for our purpose. In the former,--a sheaf of corn, for instance,--the whole is nothing more than a collection of the individual parts; in the latter,--an animal,--the whole is the effect of, or results from, the parts. In the latter case, the whole is every thing, and the parts are comparatively nothing. One of the great effects of life is to keep the parts in subjection to the whole, making them contribute to its support and growth, and thus maintaining the unity of the system. The stomach digests, the lungs inhale air, the heart beats, and the blood circulates; and as the joint effect, or as the common supporter,--it matters not which,--of these operations, _life_ continues, and the animated being is a unit; it has not merely virtual, but essential unity. The reciprocal action of the respiratory, circulating, and nervous systems is absolutely necessary to life. The animal dies, and this unity, this subservience of the parts to the whole, immediately ceases. In the functions of the living body, it may be that the ordinary laws of chemistry are preserved, and that the elements of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen combine and separate according to their ordinary affinities, and in no unusual proportions. But after death, at any rate, quite a different set of chemical laws come into play, and produce a result which is the very opposite of that before effected. There is no longer any unanimity or cooeperation; instead of sustaining or building up the animal tissues, the affinities now in operation tear down, destroy, and resolve them into their ultimate elements,--each part following out its own law of destruction or resolution, irrespectively of the others.

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

The apparent exceptions to this statement--as in the case of the polypes, which multiply by fissiparous generation, or by spontaneous division of their bodies into parts, each part becoming a perfect animal--are only apparent. These creatures, which are low down in the scale of being, exemplify what Mr. Owen calls "the law of vegetative or irrelative repetition," as they have many organs performing the same function, and not related to each other by combination for the performance of a higher function. Thus, a Polygastrian has many assimilative sacs, each performing the office of a stomach irrespective of the rest. In the insect tribe, the respiratory function, instead of being performed by one set of lungs for the whole body, is carried on through a series of minute and highly ramified tubes, which traverse every part of the body, and open to the air by a great number of orifices. In some instances, both respiration and digestion seem to take place over the whole surface of the body; for Trembley found at least one case, in which the animal digested its food equally well, after it had been turned inside out. A number of similar parts being repeated in each segment of the individual, the body can be divided, and the several portions, each still containing some of all the organs essential to the whole, will continue to live separately. The severed parts will even continue to grow, and to develope other organs convenient for individual existence. But most animals, especially the more perfect, do not constitute an aggregate of similar parts united by one trunk, and therefore propagation by division is in them impossible. The ovum, when separated from the parent, is an entire animal only _potentially_; during its development, the essential parts which constitute the _actual_ whole are produced. In the case of the polyps, we have only to suppose that the ovum remains connected with the parent being, till all, or nearly all, its essential parts are produced. It is then shed not as a mere ovum, but as an animal nearly or wholly complete.

Now, all the instances adduced by our author, to show similarity of action in the organic and the inorganic world, are irrelevant. The analogies are not merely imperfect; they are no analogies at all. Crystals increase by the aggregation of new particles on the external surfaces of the parts already formed; there is no consentaneous operation of the parts on the whole. The molecules of crystals are homogeneous throughout, and the several aggregates of these molecules are independent of each other; while organized bodies are composed of parts perfectly dissimilar from each other, but all of which conspire to one end. "The growth of organized bodies," says Mueller, "takes place in all particles of their substance at the same time, while the increase of the mass in inorganic bodies is produced by external apposition." Frostwork on the windows may resemble vegetable _forms_; but it has no resemblance whatever to vegetable _life_. Electricity may counterfeit the _action of life_, for a moment, on a particular limb, by causing the muscles to twitch; but it does not counterfeit _life itself_, by causing all the parts again to contribute to the sustentation of the whole. A French chemist, by electric action, may have produced _globules_ in albumen; there is nothing very wonderful in that; any one may blow bubbles in a viscid fluid. The resemblance between these globules and proper germinal vesicles amounts to nothing more than similarity of outward shape; there is no more real resemblance between them than between the oval lump of chalk which farmers sometimes put into a hen's nest, in order to deceive poor Dame Partlet, and the real egg which the hen deposits by the side of it. Certainly, the imponderable agents, heat, light, and electricity, are in some mysterious way _connected with_ life, so as to contribute to its support; there is nothing more in this assertion than in the familiar proposition, that a seed will germinate only under the proper conditions of soil and climate; but that these agents, acting on inorganic matter, ever _create_ or _commence_ life is a pure hypothesis, not supported even by the shadow of a fact.

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

In the first place, it is remarkable, that all the races of animated beings, which are entirely within the range of our powers of observation,--which have such a size and locality that we can study and accurately determine their organization and habits,--are unquestionably produced from parents of their own kind. Only the minute microscopic animals are now supposed to be generated spontaneously; and this alleged fact rests not on direct proof, but only on our inability in certain cases to trace the process of their production in the ordinary way. As many of these animals, in their perfect state, are not more than the twelve thousandth part of an inch in diameter, it is not much to be wondered at, that we should not be able in all cases to discover their ova, or to follow these ova through all their stages of development into the complete being. It is farther remarkable, that these animalcules, when once produced, whether by spontaneous or natural generation, are all found to be provided with the organs or requisite means for continuing their species, and, in fact, for multiplying their number from themselves with astonishing rapidity. As they certainly have children, it seems reasonable to suppose, according to the analogy of all the higher animated tribes, that they also had parents. The ancients supposed, that the worms and insects which appear in decaying organic matter were generated there by the decomposition of the substance, without the previous agency of individuals of the same stock. Every schoolboy is acquainted with Virgil's mode of obtaining a new swarm of bees from the decaying carcass of a heifer. Subsequent researches, made with more care, and perhaps with better instruments of observation, have entirely disproved the hypothesis, and show that the maggots were produced in every case from eggs deposited by flies or other insects, and were afterwards themselves developed into the state of perfect insects. Then it seems reasonable to believe, that the improved observations of future times will clear up the only remaining difficulty, and show how the infusory animalcules also are generated from beings of their own kind.

These minute creatures are prolific to a degree that transcends all calculation; and they exist, either in the egg or maturely developed, in inconceivable numbers. A single wheel-animalcule, _Hydatina senta_, which was watched for more than eighteen days, and which lives still longer, is capable of a fourfold increase in twenty-four or thirty hours; a rate of propagation which would afford in ten days a million of beings. From their tenacity of life, extraordinary powers of reproduction, and incalculable numbers, their united influence may be said to be far more important, in all the great operations of nature, than that of the larger and more perfectly developed organisms. They swarm in all the seas, and play an important part in choking up harbours and forming great deposits at the mouths of rivers. The remains of those which have perished form great beds and strata in the crust of the earth. The silicious stone, called Tripoli, is entirely composed of such remains; at Bilin, in Bohemia, there is one stratum of this substance, fourteen feet thick, one cubic inch of which is estimated to contain forty-one thousand millions of individuals. Their extreme tenacity of life is evinced by the fact, that many of them may be entirely desiccated, and preserved in pure sand for several years, after which, on the application of a drop of water, they may be restored to life. In this dried state, M. Doyere exposed some of them to a heat equal to that of boiling water, and afterwards revived them; though, in an active state, if subjected to a much lower temperature, they perish. If, then, the fully developed and mature can resist such powerful extraneous causes of destruction, how much more must the ova possess the power of enduring them without losing their latent life! The following extract from Professor Owen's Lectures shows the bearing of these facts upon the question of equivocal generation.

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

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

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

In view of facts like these, we may surely say, that the existence of the infusory animalcules, and even of the entozoa, is conceivable, supposing they could only have been produced by parents of their own kind, and without having recourse to the anomalous and hypothetical doctrine of equivocal generation. We may not be able to trace their line of parentage, for our imperfect vision cannot follow the motes which play in the sunbeam, nor track them from their birth-place to their final home. But we know that they must be deposited in every layer of dust that falls from the atmosphere, that they must be inhaled with every breath which an animal draws, and be swallowed with every morsel and drop of its food. The experiments which seem to prove that living beings may be produced from pure inorganic matter are all explicable on the supposition, that adequate precautions were not taken to exclude every animal and germ capable of development from the substances experimented upon, and from the air which was admitted into the apparatus. On this ground, the experiments of Crosse and Weekes, cited by our author, have been quite generally rejected by scientific men, as hardly deserving of notice. We learn that the former was "discouraged by the reception of his experiments," and "soon discontinued them";--with good reason, for it does not appear from our author's account, that he adopted any precautions at all. Mr. Weekes seems to have been a little more cautious, and the consequence was, that he did not observe any appearance of life among the substances experimented upon for "eleven months," at the end of which time we may reasonably suppose, that his precautions ceased to have perfect effect. The only experiment, in which adequate means to guard against causes of error were taken, was that of Professor Schulze, of Berlin, which had a contrary result. We extract Mr. Owen's account of it.

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

For readers who are not familiar with these subjects, it may be well to mention, that the weight of authority is decidedly against this doctrine of spontaneous generation. It is rejected by Mueller, who ranks among the first physiologists of Germany; by Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished microscopists in the world; and by Owen, who stands at the head of the school of comparative anatomy in England, if not in Europe. The remark made by Cuvier, more than thirty years ago, is still true at the present day, that, "although the impossibility of spontaneous generation cannot be absolutely demonstrated, yet all the efforts of those physiologists who believe in the possibility of it have not succeeded in showing us a single instance."

Passing over, then, our author's theory of the origination of life from inorganic matter as utterly untenable, we come to the next point in his system,--the most chimerical of all,--the gradual development of the higher orders of being out of those next beneath them in the scale. It is not pretended, that there is _any known instance_ of the transmutation of species, or of the evolution, in the ordinary way, of any being specifically different from its parents. The same animal, indeed, may pass through different grades of development; but these changes affect only the individual, not the race. The progeny of this animal must begin at the same point where its parent did, and run precisely the same cycle. The tadpole becomes a frog, but the young of that frog are tadpoles; the worm becomes a winged insect, but the eggs of that insect are hatched into nothing but worms. These changes in the life of the individual, like the successive periods of the embryotic state, of infancy, and manhood in the human being, are perfectly consistent with persistence of type in the race, and do not indicate even the possibility that a new species may be developed out of an old one. On the contrary, the germ must be considered as _potentially_ equivalent to the whole future being, for it is invariably developed into that being. If there be any one fact unquestionably established by observation, it is that each species invariably produces its like. "All the phenomena," says Mueller, "at present observed in the animal kingdom, seem to prove that the species were originally created distinct, and independent of each other. There is no remote possibility of one species being produced from another."

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

The point chiefly relied upon to show the credibility of this doctrine is the fact, according to our author, that the higher animals pass through a series of changes resembling the permanent forms of the lower tribes. The first form of man himself "is that which is permanent in the animalcule"; and thence he comes to resemble successively a fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammifers, before he attains his specific maturity. It is held, then, that a premature birth from an animal of a higher kind might have instituted a new race of a lower type; and that a birth unusually delayed, permitting an embryo to be still farther advanced in the line of organization, might have created a new species of a higher order than the parent. Here, every thing depends on the _absolute identity_ of the germs of all animals, in the lower stages of their growth. General resemblances and analogies are of no weight whatever; the essential internal organization of the ova of different species must be the same; otherwise, however ripened into a mature being, whether the birth be advanced or postponed, the individual must still belong to its parents' species, of which it possesses the distinctive peculiarity. Now, this point of _the identity of germs is a mere assumption_; not only is it destitute of proof,--the whole evidence is against it. There is a degree of outward resemblance, but there is no sameness. When we trace the origin of life back to the remotest point to which our powers of observation extend, when we come to microscopic vesicles that can be discerned only by the highest magnifiers, general similarity of outward shape is all that can be predicated of them. The specific differences lie below this general resemblance of outward form; we cannot discern them, but we _know_ that they must exist, and that they are _essential_ differences, for each one of these vesicles is invariably developed, if at all, into an individual of the species to which its parent belongs. The germinal vesicles of a tree and a quadruped are somewhat alike, outwardly; so, to the hen's eyes, there is no difference between her own eggs and the duck's eggs which the farmer's wife has put into her nest. But when she has hatched her brood, part of them are found to be web-footed, and these, to her great astonishment and distress, immediately take to the water. Our author commits the same blunder as the poor hen. This want of consciousness that he has got to the end of his tether, this inability to believe that any difference can exist where he is not able to see it, though it is invariably indicated by future consequent differences of the most striking nature, is perfectly characteristic of the rash theorist in science.

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

To avoid this difficulty, he is driven to a further supposition, still more gratuitous and improbable; namely, that the germ destined to become one of a different race from its parents, having advanced along its usual line of development so far as that line coincides with the one belonging to the new species, there diverges, and follows a different path up to the period of its birth into a new creature; that is, the embryo of a reptile, having grown for a certain time as if it were to be a reptile, suddenly turns aside, like a young man changing his mind about the choice of a profession, and for the rest of its foetal life follows the proper line of progress in order to be developed into a bird. This is mere dreaming, and reminds one only of the wonderful transformations effected by enchantment in an Arabian tale. We might just as plausibly suppose, that the reptile, after it became mature, was suddenly transformed into a bird, as that it underwent this change before it was hatched. All the evidence attainable goes to show, that the law of development is as immutable before as after birth, the several stages of progress succeeding each other in a constant order, and affecting the individual only, not the race. A young monkey is no more likely to be transmuted into a man than an old one; nor is such a metamorphosis at all more probable in the course of its foetal life.

The view we have now obtained of the specific differences between distinct races of being at separate periods of their existence is precisely what might have been anticipated from the law of gradual development, which holds throughout the organic kingdoms. Between two mature animals, these differences are perfectly obvious and well marked. As we go a step back in their history, the distinction becomes a little more obscure; two worms may resemble each other very closely, though the two winged insects subsequently produced from them may be very unlike. Receding still farther, some of these specific differences may entirely disappear, the organs or parts which should exhibit them being not yet developed. And when we come to the primitive germs, so minute as to be visible only through the microscope, no outward distinction, perhaps, is any longer perceptible, and the radical difference of their internal organization is indicated only by the fact, to be verified by subsequent observation, that the two are invariably developed into perfectly distinct animals, belonging respectively to the same races with their parents. A theorist, whose whole system is based upon the invariable operation of natural agencies, cannot reasonably object to this conclusion.

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

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

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

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

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

To say that these laws, distinct and invariable as far as the observation of man has extended, may possibly have been superseded in the lapse of ages by a higher principle, manifesting itself only at long intervals, is again to have recourse to a blank hypothesis, incapable alike of proof or disproof, and unsupported by the faintest intimations from the world of experience. To build up a theory in this way is not to account for the work of creation by the natural agencies and inherent qualities of matter, _as at present observable_, but to fly off to the wild supposition, that matter and life were more richly endowed ages ago than they are in our own day. You affirm, that this higher principle of development did not override the inferior laws at the earlier periods in time's history, because, in the infancy of the universe, the conditions were wanting which are requisite for its manifestation,--because the earth was not ready, the atmosphere was not purified, for the nobler races of being. Very well; but these conditions are answered _now_. All things are ready at the present day for the innate energies of matter to put forth their utmost strength. Why do not fishes generate reptiles, and birds produce mammifers, _now_? Ah! but "the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in great abundance, we could only expect to find the life-originating power at work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances." It seems, then, that these inherent qualities of matter, once supposed to be blind, absolute, and invariable in their operation, are really very judicious and reasonable; they suit the supply to the demand, and actually cease working when the market is likely to be overstocked. The results of such "_natural_ agencies" as these are very like the effects produced by the volitions of a wise and thinking being.

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

With the exposure of this crowning absurdity, we must close our direct examination of this "History of Creation." We have not room to consider some of the appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of the essential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of the immaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with the atheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimate children. But they have already been refuted so often and so conclusively, that any revival of them at the present day is hardly deserving of notice. If we should stop here, then, it may fairly be left to the judgment of our readers, whether we have not fulfilled the pledge given at the outset, by showing that this theory is faulty at every point, even when viewed from the author's own ground. The proposal of it is no new thing. In one or another form, varying in particulars, but agreeing in substance, it has been before the world ever since the days of Democritus, and more especially of his follower, Epicurus. Lucretius clothed it in sonorous and majestic verse, for it is a theme fitted above all others to excite the fancy, and to receive the richest embellishments from the imagination. Modern authors have promulgated it again and again, with little other change than what was requisite to adapt it to recent improvements in science, and to engraft upon it some of their own favorite hypotheses and fancies. The version of it by the French naturalist Lamarck was the latest and the most in vogue, till the appearance of the present volume. So frequently has it been confuted, that the revival of it at this late period seems little more than a harmless exercise of ingenuity, a poetical and scientific dream, and one need hardly take the pains to expose its assumptions and fallacies. The violent suppositions which it involves only remind one of the remark quoted from Pascal on a former page, that "unbelievers are the most credulous persons in the world." If set forth only as a novel and pleasing fancy, it may be classed with other ingenious fictions, that are published without a thought of deception. But if seriously proposed, it can be fitly characterized only by borrowing the homely but energetic language of Dr. Bentley.

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

Custom and convenience lead us to speak of the "laws" of nature, and of the "powers and forces" of brute matter; and few persons, in adopting these phrases, are aware that they are using a figure of speech. Yet nothing is more certain than that all the researches of science have not been able to point out with certainty a single active cause apart from the operation of mind. We discern nothing but regularity and similarity of sequences; and the attribution of these effects to some occult qualities in the atoms or molecules in which they are manifested is wholly hypothetical, and even, when closely examined, is inconceivable. For this reason we affirm, that the theory of our author, professing to account for the whole work of creation "by the operation of law," is not only unsound and baseless in its particulars, but, when scrutinized as a whole, is absolutely unintelligible. _He attempts to account for a string of hypothetical effects, such as spontaneous generation and the transmutation of species, by a series of hypothetical and inconceivable causes, such as the energies of lifeless matter._ Let any one conceive, if he can, of any _power_, _energy_, or _force_ inherent in a lump of matter,--a stone, for instance,--except this merely negative one, that it always and necessarily remains in its present state, whether this be of rest or motion. Let him point out, if he can, the _nexus_ between what are usually denominated cause and effect in matter,--as when two bodies are drawn towards each other, if they are in opposite states of electricity. When he says that it is the _nature_, or _law_, of bodies thus electrified to attract each other, he offers no explanation of the phenomenon; he only refers it to a class of other results, of a similar character, previously observed. It is not pretended, that all or any of these results, formerly known, are more intelligible or explicable than the one in question. But the latter is classed with them, because, from their general similarity, from their taking place under the same outward circumstances, it is reasonably supposed that _one_ cause, whatever it may be, is common to them all. And this is the whole business of the student of nature, to place together results which are so similar, that we may attribute them to a common cause, without assuming to know what that cause is. The sole office of science is the theory, not of causation, but of classification. It is all reducible to natural history, the essence of which consists in arrangement.