[37] “Dr. Neill mentions,” says the Rev. Mr. Landsborough, in his complete and very interesting “History of British Sea-Weeds,” “that on our shores algæ generally occupy zones in the following order, beginning from deep water:—F. Filum; F. esculentus and bulbosus, F. digitatus, saccharinus, and loreus; F. serratus and crispus; F. nodosus and vesiculosus; F. canaliculatus; and, last of all, F. pygmæus; which is satisfied if it be within reach of the spray.”
[38] We are supplied with a curious example of that ever-returning cycle of speculation in which the human mind operates, by not only the introduction of the principle of Epicurus into the “Vestiges,” but also by the unconscious employment of even his very arguments, slightly modified by the floating semi-scientific notions of the time. The following passages, taken, the one from the modern work, the other from Fénélon’s life of the old Greek philosopher, are not unworthy of being studied, as curiously illustrative of the cycle of thought. Epicurus, I must, however, first remind the reader, in the words of his biographer, “supposed that men, and all other animals, were originally produced by the ground. According to him, the primitive earth was fat and nitrous; and the sun, gradually warming it, soon covered it with herbage and shrubs: there also began to arise on the surface of the ground a great number of small tumors like mushrooms, which having in a certain time come to maturity, the skin burst, and there came forth little animals, which, gradually retiring from the place where they were produced, began to respire.” And there can be little doubt, that had the microscope been a discovery of early Greece, the passage here would have told us, not of mushroom-like tumors, but of monads. Save that the element of microscopic fact is awanting in the one and present in the other, the following are strictly parallel lines of argument:—
“To the natural objection that the earth does not now produce men, lions, and dogs, Epicurus replies that the fecundity of the earth is now exhausted. In advanced age a woman ceases to bear children; a piece of land never before cultivated produces much more during the few first years than it does afterwards; and when a forest is once cut down, the soil never produces trees equal to those which have been rooted up. Those which are afterwards planted become dwarfish, and are perpetually degenerating. We are, however, he argues, by no means certain but there may be at present rabbits, hares, foxes, bears, and other animals, produced by the earth in their perfect state. The reason why we are backward in admitting it is, that it happens in retired places, and never falls under our view; and, never seeing rats but such as have been produced by other rats, we adopt the opinion that the earth never produced any.” (Fénélon’s Lives of the Ancient Philosophers.)
“In the first place, there is no reason to suppose that, though life had been imparted by natural means, after the first cooling of the surface to a suitable temperament, it would continue thereafter to be capable of being imparted in like manner. The great work of the peopling of this globe with living species is mainly a fact accomplished: the highest known species came as a crowning effort thousands of years ago. The work being thus to all appearance finished, we are not necessarily to expect that the origination of life and of species should be conspicuously exemplified in the present day. We are rather to expect that the vital phenomena presented to our eyes should mainly, if not entirely, be limited to a regular and unvarying succession of races by the ordinary means of generation. This, however, is no more an argument against a time when phenomena of the first kind prevailed, than it would be a proof against the fact of a mature man having once been a growing youth, that he is now seen growing no longer..... Secondly, it is far from being certain that the primitive imparting of life and form to inorganic elements is not a fact of our times.” (Vestiges of Creation.)
[39] “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” and “Explanations, being a Sequel to the Vestiges.”
[40] The chapter in which this passage occurs originally appeared, with several of the others, in the Witness newspaper, in a series of articles, entitled “Rambles of a Geologist,” and drew forth the following letter from a correspondent of the Scottish Press, the organ of a powerful and thoroughly respectable section of the old Dissenters of Scotland. I present it to the reader merely to show, that if, according to the author of the “Vestiges,” geologists assailed the development hypothesis in the fond hope of “purchasing impunity for themselves,” they would succeed in securing only disappointment for their pains:—
“THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH.
“To the Editor of the Scottish Press.
“Sir,—I occasionally observe articles in your neighbor and contemporary the Witness, characteristically headed ‘Rambles of a Geologist,’ wherein the writer with great zeal once more ‘slays the slain’ heresies of the ‘Vestiges of Creation.’ This writer (of the ‘Rambles,’ I mean) nevertheless, and at the same time, announces his own tenets to be much of the same sort, as applied to mere dead matter, that those of the ‘Vestiges’ are with regard to living organisms. He maintains that the world, during the last million of years, has been of itself rising or developing, without the interposition of a miracle, from chaos into its present state; and, of course, as it is still, as a world, confessedly far below the acme of physical perfection, that it must be just now on its passage, self-progressing, towards that point, which terminus it may reach in another million of years hence.[!!!] The author of the ‘Vestiges,’ as quoted by the author of the ‘Rambles,’ in the last number of the Witness, complains that the latter and his allies are not at all so liberal to him as, from their present circumstances and position, he had a right to expect. He (the author of the ‘Vestiges’) reminds his opponents that they have themselves only lately emerged from the antiquated scriptural notions that our world was the direct and almost immediate construction of its Creator,—as much so, in fact, as any of its organized tenants,—and that it was then created in a state of physical excellence, the highest possible, to render it a suitable habitation for these tenants, and all this only about six or seven thousand years ago,—to the new light of their present physico-Lamarckian views; and he asks, and certainly not without reason, why should these men, so circumstanced, be so anxious to stop him in his attempt to move one step further forward in the very direction they themselves have made the last move?—that is, in his endeavor to extend their own principles of self-development from mere matter to living creatures. Now, Sir, I confess myself to be one of those (and possibly you may have more readers similarly constituted) who not only cannot see any great difference between merely physical and organic development,[!!] but who would be inclined to allow the latter, absurd as it is, the advantage in point of likelihood.[!!!] The author of the ‘Rambles,’ however, in the face of this, assures us that his views of physical self-development and long chronology belong to the inductive sciences. Now, I could at this stage of his rambles have wished very much that, instead of merely saying so, he had given his demonstration. He refers, indeed, to several great men, who, he says, are of his opinion. Most that these men have written on the question at issue I have seen, but it appeared far from demonstrative, and some of them, I know, had not fully made up their mind on the point.[!!!] Perhaps the author of the ‘Rambles’ could favor us with the inductive process that converted himself; and, as the attainment of truth, and not victory, is my object, I promise either to acquiesce in or rationally refute it.[?] Till then I hold by my antiquated tenets, that our world, nay, the whole material universe, was created about six or seven thousand years ago, and that in a state of physical excellence of which we have in our present fallen world only the ‘vestiges of creation.’ I conclude by mentioning that this view I have held now for nearly thirty years, and, amidst all the vicissitudes of the philosophical world during that period, I have never seen cause to change it. Of course, with this view I was, during the interval referred to, a constant opponent of the once famous, though now exploded, nebular hypothesis of La Place; and I yet expect to see physical development and long chronology wither also on this earth, now that their root (the said hypothesis) has been eradicated from the sky.[!!!]—I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,
“Philalethes.”