Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

by Philip Henry Gosse

Chalmers.

We have passed, in review before us the whole organic world: and the result is uniform; that no example can be selected from the vast vegetable kingdom, none from the vast animal kingdom, which did not at the instant of its creation present indubitable evidences of a previous history. This is not put forth as a hypothesis, but as a necessity; I do not say that it was probably so, but that it was certainly so; not that it may have been thus, but that it could not have been otherwise.

I do not touch the inorganic world: my acquaintance with chemistry is inadequate for this: perhaps the same law does not extend to the inorganic elements: perhaps their developments, and combinations are not, like the economy of plants and animals, essentially and exclusively cyclical: perhaps carbon and oxygen and hydrogen could be created in conditions, which obviously did not depend on any previously existing conditions. This I do not know: I neither affirm nor deny it. But I think I have demonstrated in these pages, that such a cyclical character does attach to, and is inseparable from, the history of all organic essences; and that creation can be nothing else than a series of irruptions into circles: that, supposing the irruption to have been made at what part of the circle we please, and varying this condition indefinitely at will,—we cannot avoid the conclusion that each organism was from the first marked with the records of a previous being. But since creation and previous history are inconsistent with each other; as the very idea of the creation of an organism excludes the idea of pre-existence of that organism, or of any part of it; it follows, that such records are false, so far as they testify to time; that the developments and processes thus recorded have been produced without time, or are what I have called prochronic.

Nor is this conclusion in the least degree affected by the actual chronology of creation. The phenomena were equally eloquent, and equally false, whether any individual organism were created six thousand years ago, or innumerable ages; whether primitively, or after the successive creations and annihilations of former organisms.

The law of creation supersedes the law of nature; so far, at least, as the organic world is concerned. The law of nature, established by universal experience, is, that its phenomena depend upon certain natural antecedents: the law of creation is, that the same phenomena depend upon no antecedents. The philosopher who should infer the antecedents from the phenomena alone, without having considered the law of creation, would be liable to form totally false conclusions. In order to be secure from error, he must first assure himself that creation is eliminated from the category of facts which he is investigating; and this he could do only when the facts come within the sphere of personal observation, or of historic testimony. Up to such a period of antiquity as is covered by credible history, and within such a field of observation as history may be considered fairly cognisant of,—the inference of physical antecedents from physical phenomena, in the animal or vegetable world, is legitimate and true. But, beyond that period, I cannot safely deduce the same conclusion; because I cannot tell but that at any given moment included in my inquiry, creation may have occurred, and have been the absolute beginning of the circular series.

The question of the actual age of any species, whether plant or animal, is one which cannot be answered, except on historic testimony. The sequence of cause and effect is not adequate to answer it; for a legitimate use of this principle, supposing it the only element of the inquiry, would inevitably lead us to the eternity of all existing organic life.

One of the familiar street-exhibitions in the metropolis is a tiny coach and horses of glittering metal; which, by means of simple machinery, course round and round the margin of a circular table. Let us suppose two youths of philosophical turn to come up during the process. They gaze for a while, and one asks his companion the following question.

"How long do you suppose that coach has been running round?"

"How long! for an indefinite period, for aught I know. I have counted twenty-two turns, and can see no change: nor can I suggest any point where the course could have begun."

Here a shrewd lad, carrying a grocer's basket, breaks in.