The Testimony of the Rocks / or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed

by Hugh Miller

LECTURE FIFTH.

GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES.

PART I.

The science of the geologist seems destined to exert a marked influence on that of the natural theologian. For not only does it greatly add to the materials on which the natural theologian founds his deductions, by adding to the organisms, plant and animal, of the present creation the extinct organisms of the creations of the past, with all their extraordinary display of adaptation and design; but it affords him, besides, materials peculiar to itself, in the history which it furnishes both of the appearance of these organisms in time, and of the wonderful order in which they were chronologically arranged. Not only—to borrow from Paley's illustration—does it enable him to argue on the old grounds, from the contrivance exhibited in the watch found on the moor, that the watch could not have lain upon the moor forever; but it establishes further, on different and more direct evidence, that there was a time when absolutely the watch was not there; nay, further, so to speak, that there was a previous time in which no watches existed at all, but only water clocks; yet, further, that there was a time in which there were not even water clocks, but only sundials; and further, an earlier time still in which sundials were not, nor any measurers of time of any kind. And this is distinct ground from that urged by Paley. For, besides holding that each of these contrivances must have had in turn an originator or contriver, it adds historic fact to philosophic inference. Geology takes up the master volume of the greatest of the natural theologians, and, after scanning its many apt instances of palpable design, drawn from the mechanism of existing plants and animals, authoritatively decides that not one of these plants or animals had begun to be in the times of the Chalk; nay, that they all date their origin from a period posterior to that of the Eocene. And the fact is, of course, corroborative of the inference. "That well constructed edifice," says the natural theologian, "cannot be a mere lusus naturæ, or chance combination of stones and wood; it must have been erected by a builder." "Yes," remarks the geologist, "it was erected some time during the last nine years. I passed the way ten years ago, and saw only a blank space where it now stands." Nor does the established fact of an absolute beginning of organic being seem more pregnant with important consequences to the science of the natural theologian than the fact of the peculiar order in which they begin to be.

The importance of the now demonstrated fact, that all the living organisms which exist on earth had a beginning, and that a time was when they were not, will be best appreciated by those who know how much, and, it must be added, how unsuccessfully, writers on the evidences have labored to convict of an absurdity, on this special head, the atheistic assertors of an infinite series of beings. Even Robert Hall (in his famous Sermon on Modern Infidelity) could but play, when he attempted grappling with the subject, upon the words time and eternity, and strangely argue, that as each member of an infinite series must have begun in time, while the succession itself was eternal, it was palpably absurd to ask us to believe in a succession of beings that was thus infinitely earlier than any of the beings themselves which composed the succession. And Bentley, more perversely ingenious still, could assert, that as each of the individuals in an infinite series must have consisted of many parts,—that as each man in such a series, for instance, must have had ten fingers and ten toes,—it was palpably absurd to ask us to believe in an infinity which thus comprised many infinities,—ten infinities of fingers, for example, and ten infinities of toes. The infidels had the better in this part of the argument. It was surely easy enough to show against the great preacher, on the one hand, that time in such a question is but a mere word that means simply a certain limited or definite period which had a beginning, whereas eternity means an unlimited and undefinable period which had no beginning;—that his seeming argument was no argument, but merely a sort of verbal play on this difference of signification in the words;—further, that man could conceive of an infinite series, whether extended in infinite space, or subsisting in infinite time, just as well as he could conceive of any other infinity, and in the same way; and that the only mode of disproving the possibility of such a series would be to show, what of course cannot be shown, that in conceiving of it in the progressive mode in which, according to Locke, man can alone conceive of the infinite or the eternal, there would be a point reached at which it would be impossible for him to go on adding millions on millions to the previous sum. The symbolic "ad infinitum" could be made as adequately representative in the case of an infinite series of men or animals in unlimited time, as of an infinite series of feet or inches in unlimited space, or of an infinite series of hours or minutes in the past eternity. And as for Bentley, on the other hand, he ought surely to have known that all infinities are not equal, seeing that Newton had expressly told him so in the second of his four famous letters; but that, on the contrary, one infinity may be not only ten times greater than another infinity, but even infinitely greater than another infinity; and that so the conception of an infinity of men possessed of ten infinities of fingers and toes is in no respect an absurdity. Of the three infinities possible in space, the second is infinitely greater than the first, and the third infinitely greater than the second. A line infinitely produced is capable of being divided into—that is, consists of—an infinity of given parts; a plane infinitely extended is capable of being divided into an infinity of infinitely divisible lines; and a cube, that is, a solid, infinitely expanded, is capable of being divided into an infinity of infinitely divisible planes. In fine, metaphysic theology furnishes no argument against the infinite series of the atheist. But geology does. Every plant and animal that now lives upon earth began to be during the great Tertiary period, and had no place among the plants and animals of the great Secondary division. We can trace several of our existing quadrupeds, such as the badger, the hare, the fox, the red deer, and the wild cat, up till the earlier times of the Pleistocene; and not a few of our existing shells, such as the great pecten, the edible oyster, the whelk, and the Pelican's-foot shell, up till the greatly earlier times of the Coraline Crag. But at certain definite lines in the deposits of the past, representative of certain points in the course of time, the existing mammals and molluscs cease to appear, and we find their places occupied by other mammals and molluscs. Even such of our British shells as seem to have enjoyed as species the longest term of life cannot be traced beyond the times of the Pliocene deposits. We detect their remains in a perfect state of keeping in almost every shell-bearing bed, till we reach the Red and Coraline Crags, where we find them for the last time; and, on passing into older and deeper lying beds, we see their places taken by other shells, of species altogether distinct. The very common shell Purpura lapillus, for instance, is found in our raised beaches, in our Clyde beds, in our boulder clays and mammaliferous crags, and, finally, in the Red Crag, beyond which it fails to appear. And such also is the history of the common edible mussel and common periwinkle; whereas the common edible cockle, and common edible pecten (P. opercularis) occur not only in all these successive beds, but in the Coral Crag also. They are older by a whole deposit than their present contemporaries, the mussel and periwinkle; and these, in turn, seem of older standing than shells such as Murex erinaceus, that has not been traced beyond the times of the mammaliferous crag, or than shells such as Scrobicularia piperata, that has not been detected in more ancient deposits than raised sea beaches of the later periods, and the elevated bottoms of old estuaries and lagoons. We thus know, that in certain periods, nearer or more remote, all our existing molluscs began to exist, and that they had no existence during the previous periods; which were, however, richer in animals of the same great molluscan group than the present time. Our British group of recent marine shells falls somewhat short of four hundred species;[19] whereas the group characteristic of the older Miocene deposits, largely developed in those districts of France which border on the Bay of Biscay, and more sparingly in the south of England, near Yarmouth, comprises more than six hundred species. Nearly an equal number of still older shells have been detected in a single deposit of the Paris basin,—the Calcaire grossier; and a good many more in a more ancient formation still, the London Clay. On entering the Chalk, we find a yet older group of shells, wholly unlike any of the preceding ones; and in the Oolite and Lias yet other and different groups. And thus group preceded group throughout all the Tertiary, Secondary, and Palæozoic periods; some of them remarkable for the number of species which they contained, others for the profuse abundance of their individual specimens, until, deep in the rocks at the base of the Silurian system, we detect what seems to be the primordial group, beneath which only a single animal organism is known to occur,—the Oldhamia antiqua,—a plant-like zoophyte, akin apparently to some of our recent sertularia, (See fig. 5, page 48.) Each of the extinct groups had, we find, a beginning and an end;—there is not in the wide domain of physical science a more certain fact; and every species of the group which now exists had, like all their predecessors on the scene, their beginning also. The "infinite series" of the atheists of former times can have no place in modern science: all organic existences, recent or extinct, vegetable or animal, have had their beginning;—there was a time when they were not. The geologist can indicate that time, if not by years, at least by periods, and show what its relations were to the periods that went before and that came after; and as it is equally a recognized truth on both sides of the controversy, that as something now exists, something must have existed forever, and as it must now be not less surely recognized, that that something was not the race of man, nor yet any other of the many races of man's predecessors or contemporaries, the question, What then was that something? comes with a point and directness which it did not possess at any former time. By what, or through whom, did these races of nicely organized plants and animals begin to be? Hitherto at least there has been but one reply to the question originated on the skeptical side. All these races, it is said, have been developed, in the long course of ages, into what they now are, as the young animal is developed in the womb, or the young plant is developed from the seed. Topsy, in the novel, "'spected that she was not made, but growed;" and the only class of opponents which the geological theist finds in the field which his science has laid open to the world is a class that hold by the philosophy of Topsy.

Let me briefly remark regarding this development hypothesis, with which I have elsewhere dealt at considerable length, that while the facts of the geologist are demonstrably such, that is, truths capable of proof, the hypothesis is a mere dream, unsupported by a shadow of evidence. A man of a lively imagination could no doubt originate many such dreams; nay, we know that in the dark ages dreams of the kind were actually originated. The Anser Bernicla, or barnacle goose, a common winter visitant of our coasts, was once believed to be developed out of decaying wood long submerged in sea water: and one of our commonest cirripedes or barnacles, Lepas anatifera, still bears, in its specific name of the goose-producing lepas, evidence that it was the creature specially recognized by our ancestors as the half-developed goose. As if in memory of this old development legend, the bird still bears the name of the barnacle, and the barnacle of the bird; and we know further, that very intelligent men for their age, such as Gerardes the herbalist (1597), and Hector Boece the historian (1524), both examined these shells, and, knowing but little of comparative anatomy, were satisfied that the animal within was the partially developed embryo of a fowl. Such was one of the fables gravely credited as a piece of natural history in Britain about three centuries ago, and such was the kind of evidence by which it was supported. And we know that the followers of Epicurus received from their master, without apparent suspicion, fables still more extravagant, and that wanted even such a shadow of proof to support them as satisfied the herbalist and the historian. The Epicureans at least professed to believe that the earth, after spontaneously producing herbs and trees, began to produce in great numbers mushroom-like bodies, that, when they came to maturity, burst open, giving egress each to a young animal, which proved the founder of a race; and that thus, in succession, all the members of the animal kingdom were ushered into existence. But whether the dream be that of the Epicureans of classic times, or that of the naturalists of the middle ages, or that of the Lamarckians of our own days, it is equally a dream, and can have no place assigned to it among either the solid facts or the sober deductions of science. Nay, the dream of the Lamarckians labors under a special disadvantage, from which the dreams of the others are free. If some modern Boece or Epicurus were to assert that at certain definite periods, removed from fifteen to fifty thousand years from the present time, all our existing animals were developed from decaying wood, or from a wonderful kind of mushrooms that the earth produced only once every ten thousand years, the assertion, if incapable of proof, would be at least equally incapable of being dis-proven. But when the Lamarckian affirms that all our recent species of plants and animals were developed out of previously existing plants and animals of species entirely different, he affirms what, if true, would be capable of proof; and so, if it cannot be proven, it is only because it is not true. The trilobites have been extinct ever since the times of the Mountain Limestone; and yet, by series of specimens, the individual development of certain species of this family, almost from the extrusion of the animal from the egg until the attainment of its full size, has been satisfactorily shown. By specimen after specimen has every stage of growth and every degree of development been exemplified; and the Palæontologist has come as thoroughly to know the creatures, in consequence, under their various changes from youth to age, as if they had been his contemporaries, and had grown up under his eye. And had our existing species, vegetable and animal, been derived from other species of the earlier periods, it would have been equally possible to demonstrate, by a series of specimens, their relationship. Let us again instance the British shells. Losing certain species in each of the older and yet older deposits at which we successively arrive, we at length reach the Red and Coraline Crags, where we find, mingled with the familiar forms, a large per centage of forms now extinct; then going on to the shells of the lower Miocene, more than six hundred species appear, almost all of which are strange to us; and then, passing to the Eocene shells of the Calcaire grossier, we find ourselves among well nigh as large a group of yet other and older strangers, not one of which we are able to identify with any shell now living in the British area. There would be thus no lack of materials for forming such a genealogy of the British shells, had they been gradually developed out of the extinct species, as that which M. Barrande has formed of the trilobites. But no such genealogy can be formed. We cannot link on a single recent shell to a single extinct one. Up to a certain point we find the recent shells exhibiting all their present specific peculiarities, and beyond that point they cease to appear. Down to a certain point the extinct shells also exhibit all their specific peculiarities, and then they disappear forever. There are no intermediate species,—no connecting links,—no such connected series of specimens to be found as enables us to trace a trilobite through all its metamorphoses from youth to age. All geologic history is full of the beginnings and the ends of species,—of their first and their last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of development. The Lamarckian sets himself to grapple, in his dream, with the history of all creation: we awaken him, and ask him to grapple, instead, with the history of but a few individual species,—with that of the mussel or the whelk, the clam or the oyster; and we find from his helpless ignorance and incapacity what a mere pretender he is.

But while no hypothesis of development can neutralize or explain away the great geologic fact, that every true species had a beginning independently, apparently, of every preceding species, there was demonstrably a general progress, in the course of creation, from lower to higher forms, which seems scarce less fraught with important consequences to the natural theologian than this fact of beginning itself. For while the one fact effectually disposes of the "infinite series" of the atheist, the other fact disposes scarce less effectually of those reasonings on the skeptical side which, framed on the assumption that creation is a "singular effect,"—an effect without duplicate,—have been employed in urging, that from that one effect only can we know aught regarding the producing cause. Knowing of the cause from but the effect, and having experience of but one effect, we cannot rationally hold, it has been argued, that the producing cause could have originated effects of a higher or more perfect kind. The creation which it produced we know; but, having no other measure of its power, we cannot regard it, it has been contended, as equal to the production of a better or nobler creation, or of course hold that it could originate such a state of things as that perfect future state which faith delights to contemplate. It has been well said of the author of this ingenious argument,—by far the most sagacious of the skeptics,—that if we admit his premises we shall find it difficult indeed to set aside his conclusions. And how, in this case, does geology deal with his premises? By opening to us the history of the remote past of our planet, and introducing us, through the present, to former creations, it breaks down that singularity of effect on which he built, and for one creation gives us many. It gives us exactly that which, as he truly argued, his contemporaries had not,—an experience in creations. And let us mark how, applied to each of these in succession, his argument would tell.

There was a time when life, animal or vegetable, did not exist on our planet, and when all creation, from its centre to its circumference, was but a creation of dead matter. What, in that early age, would have been the effect of the argument of Hume? Simply this,—that though the producing Cause of all that appeared was competent to the formation of gases and earths, metals and minerals, it would be unphilosophic to deem him adequate to the origination of a single plant or animal, even to that of a spore or of a monad. Ages pass by, and the Palæozoic creation is ushered in, with its tall araucarians and pines, its highly organized fishes, and its reptiles of comparatively low standing. And how now, and with what effect, does the argument apply? It is now rendered evident, that in the earlier creation the producing Cause had exerted but a portion of his power, and that he could have done greatly more than he actually did, seeing that we now find him adequate to the origination of vitality and organization in its two great kingdoms, plant and animal. But, still confining ourselves with cautious skepticism within the limits of our argument, we continue to hold that, as fishes of a high and reptiles of a low order, with trees of the cone-bearing family, are the most perfect specimens of their respective classes which the producing Cause has originated, it would be rash to hold, in the absence of proof, that he could originate aught higher or more perfect. And now, as yet other ages pass away, the creation of the great Secondary division takes the place of that of the vanished Palæozoic; and we find in its few dicotyledonous plants, in its reptiles of highest standing, in its great birds, and in its some two or three humble marsupial mammals, that in the previous, as in the earlier creation, the producing Cause had been, if I may so express myself, working greatly under his strength, and that in this third creation we have a still higher display of his potency. With some misgivings, however, we again apply our argument. And now yet another creation,—that of the Tertiary period, with its noble forests of dicotyledonous trees and its sagacious and gigantic mammals,—rises upon the scene; and as our experience in creations has now become very considerable, and as we have seen each in succession higher than that which preceded it, we find that, notwithstanding our assumed skepticism, we had, compelled by one of the most deeply seated instincts of our nature, been secretly anticipating the advance which the new state of things actually realizes. But applying the argument once more, we at least assume to hold, that as the sagacious elephant is the highest example of animal life yet produced by the originating Cause, it would be unphilosophic to deem him capable of producing a higher example. And, while we are thus reasoning, man appears upon creation,—a creature immeasurably superior to all the others, and whose very nature it is to make use of his experience of the past for his guidance in the future. And if that only be solid experience or just reasoning which enables us truly to anticipate the events which are to come, and so to make provision for them; and if that experience be not solid, and that reasoning not just, which would serve but to darken our discernment, and prevent us from correctly predicating the cast and complexion of coming events; what ought to be our decision regarding an argument which, had it been employed in each of the vanished creations of the past, would have had but the effect of arresting all just anticipation regarding the immediately succeeding creation, and which, thus reversing the main end and object of philosophy, would render the philosopher who clung to it less sagacious in divining the future than even the ordinary man? But, in truth, the existing premises, wholly altered by geologic science, are no longer those of Hume. The footprint on the sand—to refer to his happy illustration—does not now stand alone. Instead of one, we see many footprints, each in turn in advance of the print behind it, and on a higher level; and, founding at once on an acquaintance with the past, extended throughout all the periods of the geologist, and on that instinct of our nature whose peculiar function it is to anticipate at least one creation more, we must regard the expectation of "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness," as not unphilosophic, but as, on the contrary, altogether rational and according to experience.

Such is the bearing of geological science on two of the most important questions that have yet been raised in the field of natural theology. Nor does it bear much less directly on a controversy to which, during the earlier half of the last century, there was no little importance attached in Britain, and which engaged on its opposite sides some of the finest and most vigorous intellects of the age and country.