Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

by Philip Henry Gosse

In order to perfect the analogy between an organism and the world, so as to show that the law which prevails in the one obtains also in the other, it would be necessary to prove that the development of the physical history of the world is circular, like that already shown to characterise the course of organic nature. And this I cannot prove. But neither, as I think, can the contrary be proved.

The life of the individual consists of a series of processes which are cyclical. In the tree this is shown by the successive growths and deaths of series of leaves: in the animal by the development and exuviation of nails, hair, epidermis, &c.

The life of the species consists of a series of processes which are cyclical. This has been sufficiently illustrated in the preceding pages, in the successive developments and deaths of generations of individuals.

We have reason to believe that species die out, and are replaced by other species, like the individuals which belong to the species, and the organs which belong to the individual. But is the life of the species a circle returning into itself? In other words, if we could take a sufficiently large view of the whole plan of nature, should we discern that the existence of species δ necessarily involved the pre-existence of species γ, and must inevitably be followed by species ε? Should we be able to trace the same sort of relation between the tiger of Bengal and the fossil tiger of the Yorkshire caves, between Elephas Indicus and Elephas primigenius, as subsists between the leaves of 1857 and the leaves of 1856; or between the oak now flourishing in Sherwood Forest and that of Robin Hood's day, from whose acorn it sprang?[99]

I dare not say, we should; though I think it highly probable. But I think you will not dare to say, we should not.[100]

It is certain that, when the Omnipotent God proposed to create a given organism, the course of that organism was present to his idea, as an ever revolving circle, without beginning and without end. He created it at some point in the circle, and gave it thus an arbitrary beginning; but one which involved all previous rotations of the circle, though only as ideal, or, in other phrase, prochronic. Is it not possible—I do not ask for more—that, in like manner, the natural course of the world was projected in his idea as a perfect whole, and that He determined to create it at some point of that course, which act, however, should involve previous stages, though only ideal or prochronic?

All naturalists have speculated upon the great plan of Nature; a grand array of organic essences, in which every species should be related in like ratio to its fellow species, by certain affinities, without gaps and without redundancies; the whole constituting a beautiful and perfect unity, a harmonious scheme, worthy of the infinite Mind that conceived it. Such a perfect plan has never been presented by any existing fauna or flora; nor is it made up by uniting the fossil faunas and floras to the recent ones; yet the discovery of the fossil world has made a very signal approach to the filling up of the great outline; and the more minutely this has been investigated, the more have hiatuses been bridged over, which before yawned between species and species, and links of connexion have been supplied which before were lacking.[101]

It is not necessary,—at least it does not seem so to me,—that all the members of this mighty commonwealth should have an actual, a diachronic existence; anymore than that, in the creation of a man, his fœtal, infantile, and adolescent stages should have an actual, diachronic existence, though these are essential to his normal life-history. Nor would their diachronism be more certainly inferrible from the physical traces of them, in the one case than in the other. In the newly-created Man, the proofs of successive processes requiring time, in the skin, hairs, nails, bones, &c. could in no respect be distinguished from the like proofs in a Man of to-day; yet the developments to which they respectively testify are widely different from each other, so far as regards the element of time. Who will say that the suggestion, that the strata of the surface of the earth, with their fossil floras and faunas, may possibly belong to a prochronic development of the mighty plan of the life-history of this world,—who will dare to say that such a suggestion is a self-evident absurdity? If we had no example of such a procedure, we might be justified in dealing cavalierly with the hypothesis; but it has been shown that, without a solitary exception, the whole of the vast vegetable and animal kingdoms were created,—mark! I do not say may have been, but MUST have been created—on this principle of a prochronic development, with distinctly traceable records. It was the law of organic creation.

It may be objected, that, to assume the world to have been created with fossil skeletons in its crust,—skeletons of animals that never really existed,—is to charge the Creator with forming objects whose sole purpose was to deceive us. The reply is obvious. Were the concentric timber-rings of a created tree formed merely to deceive? Were the growth lines of a created shell intended to deceive? Was the navel of the created Man intended to deceive him into the persuasion that he had had a parent?[102]

These peculiarities of structure were inseparable from the adult stage of these creatures respectively, without which they would not have been what they were. The Locust-tree could not have been an adult Hymenæa, without concentric rings;—nay, it could not have been an exogenous tree at all. The Dione could not have been a Dione without those foliations and spines that form its generic character. The Man would not have been a Man without a navel.