A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'

by Francis Bowen

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

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

The question now occurs, How are we to account for the origin of life, both in the vegetable and animal kingdoms? The answer can readily be given, if we follow out resolutely to their remotest consequences the principles that have already been established. The evolution of natural laws, the necessary action of the qualities with which atoms were at first endowed, has sufficed to produce this complex system of mutually dependent worlds, and all the successive transformations of the earth's rind, which have fitted it for the support of successive races of organic beings. May not the same causes have produced the beings themselves? The one process would seem to be not much more elaborate and intricate than the other. If the inherent qualities of matter have built up a solar system, they may have created, also, the first animalcule, the first fish, the first quadruped, and the first man. There has been a marked progress, in either case, from the chaotic, the rude, the imperfectly developed, up to the orderly, the complex, the matured forms. The first essays, the rude efforts, of nature have gradually been perfected. The chaotic world that was first shelled off from the sun differed not less widely from the admirably furnished planet we now inhabit, than does the zoöphyte, whose remains are not split out of the rock, from man, the present head of the animal tribe. At any rate, geology informs us, that the causes, whatever they may be, which produce life, have been long and frequently in operation. They were not exhausted in the first effort; they are probably still at work throughout the universe. Not merely successive generations, but successive races, both of plants and animals, widely distinguished from each other, have, at different periods, tenanted the earth's surface. Those of which we possess the fossil remains belong, almost without exception, to extinct species. They were crowded out of existence, as it were, by the new forms, more perfectly organized, which came to take their places in the improving condition of things. This continuous agency of the life-producing causes, effecting still higher results by each successive effort, seems to point directly to the gradual expansion and development of the qualities with which matter was first endowed.

We actually see natural agents now at work around us, producing results which counterfeit life, if they do not constitute it. Many substances crystallize into shapes bearing a strong resemblance to vegetable forms, as in the well known chemical experiment producing the arbor Dianæ. The passage of the electric fluid leaves marks that are like the branches and foliage of a tree, and the same fluid exerts a direct influence on the germination of plants. Some of the proximate principles of vegetable and animal bodies, such as urea and alantoin, are said to have been produced artificially by the chemist; and in the combination of the simple elements, such as carbon and oxygen, into these proximate principles, it is now acknowledged that there is no violation of the ordinary laws of chemical affinity. The origin of all vegetable and animal life, so far as it can be traced, is in germinal vesicles, or little cells containing granules. Such are the ova of all animals; and both vegetable and animal tissues are entirely formed from them. When the parent cells come to maturity, they burst and liberate the granules, which immediately develope themselves into new cells, thus repeating the life of their original. Now, it has been asserted, that globules can be produced in albumen by electricity; and if these globules are true germinal vesicles, the difficult problem of producing life by artificial means is entirely solved.

But the burden of this part of the theory rests on the evidence that has been produced of late years to favor the doctrine of equivocal generation, or the production of living beings without the agency, either direct or indirect, of parents of the same species. Can such beings, orphans in the strictest sense, now be produced or discovered? We have not space to repeat our author's argument on this difficult mooted question in science, nor is it necessary; he sums up the evidence on his own side, and of course finds it satisfactory, though the weight of authority is against him. He adduces the experiments of Mr. Crosse, repeated by Mr. Weekes, who claim to have produced animalcules in considerable numbers, of a species before unknown, by passing a voltaic current through silicate of potash, and through nitrate of copper. The existence of entozoa, or parasitic animals, found in the interior of the bodies of other animals, and found nowhere else, is thought to support the same doctrine. The question is, How came they there? Being too large, either in their perfect form, or in the egg, to have passed through the capillary blood-vessels, how came they within the body of another animal,—itself but a few weeks or a few days old, or even in the embryo stage,—unless they were created there without parentage of their own species?

These facts and reasonings, it is true, only go to prove, that animalcules, or beings of very small size, and low in the scale of animated existence, can be produced in this way by the inherent qualities of matter. No one will pretend, that a dog, a horse, or a man can thus be created. How can we account for the existence of these larger animals of a higher type, admitted to have been denizens of the earth only since the latest geological epochs, and therefore of comparatively recent origin? Here we come to another point in our author's theory,—the transmutation of species, or the successive development of higher and higher orders of being out of the species immediately below them, through the accidental or natural fulfilment of certain conditions, in the course of a long period of years.

Natural history teaches us, that there is quite a regular gradation among the several tribes of vegetables and animals; though we may not be able to range all the species, as constantly advancing in a single line, there is certainly the general appearance of a scale, beginning with the most simple, and going on to the most complex forms. While the external characteristics are very different, all are but variations of a single plan, which exists as the basis of all, and is varied in each individual only so as to accommodate it to the conditions under which the individual is to live. The germ of a higher animal—a mammifer, for instance—is the representative of a lower animal full-grown, like the volvox globator; the latter remaining in this initial stage, as an animalcule, through its whole existence; while the former is developed out of it, by successive stages, into a quadruped, or even into a man. Similar functions are performed in different animals by very different organs, the gills of fishes performing the same office as the lungs of the mammalia; and these different organs sometimes exist, at different periods, according to the degree of development, in the same animal. Thus, the tadpole, so long as it continues to be a fish, breathes by gills, which disappear and give place to lungs when it becomes a frog. Similar transformations of the insect tribe are familiar to all. Imperfect or rudimentary organs are found in certain animals, as the mammæ of a man; a particular organ being here developed to a certain extent, though it is not needed; but being developed a little further, it becomes useful in the next set of animals in the scale. The same peculiarity is found among plants; the skilful gardener being able actually to develope these rudimentary organs by supplying the requisite conditions, and thus, as it were, to raise the plant one step in the scale.

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

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

Usually, it is true, each species produces only its like,—"every creeping thing and beast of the earth" bringing forth young "after his kind." But the development of a single animal, under the ordinary law, takes place in a few weeks or days; while the development of distinct races and species is the work of a whole creation, and is spread over countless ages. It is reasonable to suppose, that the latter is effected by means of a higher law, manifesting itself only at long intervals. Its infrequent manifestation is no argument against the regularity and necessity of its occurrence,—against its being a law at all. The comet that visits our system only once in five hundred years is controlled by the same inflexible principle which causes the return of another comet once in five years. The conditions requisite for a development more perfect than usual,—that is, for the production of a new species,—instead of a new individual of the same species, may be fulfilled only at long intervals; but when they are fulfilled, the result—the more perfect development—takes place as necessarily, as much by the virtue of law, as the more ordinary phenomenon of the propagation of one race. These conditions may be answered in the successive stages of improvement, through which the earth and its atmosphere pass, during the vast periods of time contemplated in geology. In the era of the old red sand-stone, for instance, there were no higher animals than fishes, because the atmosphere was highly charged with carbonic acid, and could not support respiration by lungs. When the air became purer, the gills were changed into the imperfect lungs of the amphibious tribes, such as the huge saurians and the frogs. Deprive these latter animals, in their lower stage, of all access to the light, and they will not advance to their higher stage. Put a tadpole into a perforated box, and sink it to the bottom of a river, and the animal will never be perfected into a frog; he will grow to an enormous size, but he will continue a tadpole.