If any one thinks that this is an exaggerated picture of the effects of agnostic evolution as applied to man, I may refer him to the study of Herbert Spencer's recent work The Data of Ethics, which has contributed very much to open the eyes of thoughtful men to the depth of spiritual, moral, and even social and political, ruin into which we shall drift under the guidance of this philosophy. In this work the data of ethics are reduced to the one consideration of what is "pleasurable" to ourselves and others, and it is admitted that our ideas of conscience, duty, and even of social obligation, are merely fictions of temporary use until the time shall come when what is pleasurable to ourselves shall coincide with what is pleasurable to others; and this is to come, not out of the love of God and the influence of his Spirit, but out of the blind struggle of opposing interests. It has been well said that this system of morals—if it can be dignified with such a name—is inferior, logically and practically, not only to the "supernatural ethics" which it boastfully professes to replace, but to the ethics of Aristotle and Cicero, and that "it will not supersede revelation, nor is it likely to displace the old data of ethics, whether Greek, Roman, or English." Independently of its antagonism to theism and Christianity, it is foredoomed by the common sense and the right feeling of even imperfect human nature.
LECTURE III.
EVOLUTION AS TESTED BY THE RECORDS OF THE ROCKS.
Having discussed those vague analogies and fanciful pedigrees by which it has been attempted to drag the science of Biology into the service of Agnostic Evolution, we may now turn to another science—that of the earth—and inquire how far it justifies us in affirming the spontaneous evolution of plants and animals in the progress of geological time. This subject is one which would require a lengthy treatise for its full development, and it cannot be pursued in the most satisfactory way without much previous knowledge of geological facts and principles, and of the classification of animals and plants. On the present occasion it must therefore be treated in the most general possible manner, and with reference merely to the results which have been reached. There is the more excuse for this mode of treatment that, in works already published and widely circulated,[7] I have endeavored to present its details in a popular form to general readers.
Geological investigation has disclosed a great series of stratified rocks composing the crust of the earth, and formed at successive times, chiefly by the agency of water. These can be arranged in chronological order; and, so arranged, they constitute the physical monuments of the earth's history. We must here take for granted, on the testimony of geology, that the accumulation of this series of deposits has extended over a vast lapse of time, and that the successive formations contain remains of animals and plants from which we can learn much as to the succession of life on the earth. Without entering into geological details, it may be sufficient to present in tabular form (see p. 107) the grand series of formations, with the general history of life as ascertained from them.
Tabular View of Geological Periods and of Life-Epochs.
| Geological Periods. | Animal Life. | Vegetable Life. | |
| Cainozoic or Neozoic. | |||
| Post-Tertiary or Modern | {Recent. {Post-Glacial. | Age of Man and Modern Mammals. | Age of Angiosperms and Palms. |
| Tertiary | {Pleistocene, or Glacial. {Pliocene. {Miocene. {Eocene. | Age of Extinct Mammals. (Earliest Placental Mammals.) | |
| Mesozoic. | |||
| Cretaceous | {Upper, {Lower, or Neocomian. | Age of Reptiles and Birds. | (Earliest Modern Trees.) |
| Jurassic | {Oolite. {Lias. | Age of Cycads and Pines. | |
| Triassic | {Upper, {Middle, or Muschelkalk. {Lower. | (Earliest Marsupial Mammals.) | |
| Palæozoic. | |||
| Permian | {Upper, {Middle, or Magnesian Limestone. {Lower. | (Earliest True Reptiles.) | |
| Carboniferous | {Upper Coal-Formation. {Coal-Formation. {Carboniferous Limestone. {Lower Coal-Formation. | Age of Amphibians and Fishes. | Age of Acrogens and Gymnosperms. |
| Erian or Devonian | {Upper. {Middle. {Lower. | ||
| Silurian | {Upper, {Lower, or Siluro-Cambrian. | Age of Mollusks, Corals and Crustaceans. | (Earliest Land Plants.) Age of Algæ. |
| Cambrian | {Upper. {Middle. {Lower. | ||
| Eozoic. | |||
| Huronian | {Upper. {Lower. | Age of Protozoa. (First AnimalRemains.) | Indications of Plants not determinable. |
| Laurentian | {Upper, or Norian. {Middle, {Lower, or Bojian. | ||
In the oldest rocks known to geologists—those of the Eozoic time—some indications of the presence of life are found. Great beds of limestone are contained in these formations, vast quantities of carbon in the form of graphite, and thick beds of iron-ore. All these are known, from their mode of occurrence in later deposits, to be results, direct or indirect, of the agency of life; and if they afforded no traces of organic forms, still their chemical character would convey a presumption of their organic origin. But additional evidence has been obtained in the presence of certain remarkable laminated forms penetrated by microscopic tubes and canals, and which are supposed to be the remains of the calcareous skeletons of humbly-organized animals akin to the simplest of those now living in the sea. Such animals—little more than masses of living animal jelly—now abound in the waters, and protect themselves by secreting calcareous skeletons, often complex and beautiful, and penetrated by pores, through which the soft animal within can send forth minute thread-like extensions of its body, which serve instead of limbs. The Laurentian fossil known as Eozoon Canadense (see Fig. 3) may have been the skeleton of such a lowly-organized animal; and if so, it is the oldest living thing that we know. But if really the skeleton or covering of such an animal, Eozoon is larger than any of its successors, and quite as complex as any of them. There is nothing to show that it could have originated from dead matter by any spontaneous action, any more than its modern representatives could do so. There is no evidence of its progress by evolution into any higher form, and the group of animals to which it belongs has continued to inhabit the ocean throughout geological time without any perceptible advance in rank or complexity of structure. If, then, we admit the animal nature of this earliest fossil, we can derive from it no evidence of monistic evolution; and if we deny its animal nature, we are confronted with a still graver difficulty in the next succeeding formations.
