“How far that which Astronomy thus asserts as possible, is probable—what is the value of these possibilities of life in distant regions of the universe, we shall hereafter consider; but in what Geology asserts, the case is clear. It is no possibility, but a certainty. No one will now doubt that shells and skeletons, trunks and leaves, prove animal and vegetable life to have existed. Even, therefore, if Astronomy could demonstrate all that her most fanciful disciples assume, Geology would still have a complete right to claim an equal hearing—to insist on having her analogies regarded. She would have a right to answer the questions of Astronomy, when she asks, How can we believe this? And to have her answer accepted.”[[17]]
We regret that our space prevents our laying before the reader the masterly and deeply interesting epitome of geological discoveries contained in these two chapters. The stupendous series of these revelations may be thus briefly indicated:—That countless tribes of animals tenanted the earth for countless ages before Man’s advent; that former ocean-beds now constitute the centres of our loftiest mountains, as the results of changes gradual, successive, and long continued; that these vast masses of sedimentary strata present themselves to our notice in a strangely disordered state; that each of these rocky layers contains a vast profusion of the remains of marine animals, intermingled with a great series of fresh-water and land animals and plants endlessly varied—all these being different, not only in species, but in kind!—and each of these separate beds must have lasted as long, or perhaps longer, than that during which the dry land has had its present form.
The careful prosecution of their researches has forced on the minds of geologists and naturalists “the general impression that, as we descend in this long staircase of natural steps, we are brought in view of a state of the earth in which life was scantily manifested, so as to be near its earliest stages.”[[18]]
In the opinion of the most eminent geologists, some of these epochs of organic transition were also those of mechanical violence, on a vast and wonderful scale—as it were, a vast series of successive periods of alternate violence and repose. The general nature of such change is vividly sketched by the Essayist, in a passage to which we must refer the reader.[[19]] When, continues the Essayist, we find strata bearing evidence of such a mode of deposit, and piled up to the height of thousands and tens of thousands of feet, we are naturally led to regard them as the production of myriads of years; and to add new myriads, as often as we are brought to new masses of strata of the like kind; and again to interpolate new periods of the same order, to allow for the transition from one group to another.[[20]]
The best geologists and naturalists are utterly at fault, in attempting to account for the successive introduction of these numerous new species, at these immense intervals of time, except by referring them to the exercise of a series of distinct Acts of Creation. The chimerical notion of some natural cause effecting a transmutation of one series of organic forms into another, has been long exploded, as totally destitute of proof: and “the doctrine of the successive CREATION of species,” says the Essayist, “remains firmly established among geologists.”[[21]] There is nothing known of the cosmical conditions of our globe, to contradict the terrestrial evidence for its vast antiquity as the seat of organic life,[[22]] says Dr Whewell: and then proceeds thus, in a passage which is well worth the reader’s attention, and has excited the ire of Sir David Brewster:—
“If, for the sake of giving definiteness to our notions, we were to assume that the numbers which express the antiquity of these four periods—the present organic condition of the earth; the tertiary period of geologists which preceded that; the secondary period which was anterior to that; and the primary period which preceded the secondary—were on the same scale as the numbers which express these four magnitudes:—The magnitude of the earth; that of the solar system compared with the earth; the distance of the nearest fixed stars compared with the solar system; and the distance of the most remote nebulæ compared with the nearest fixed stars,—there is, in the evidence which geological science offers, nothing to contradict such an assumption. And as the infinite extent which we necessarily ascribe to space allows us to find room, without any mental difficulty, for the vast distances which astronomy reveals, and even leaves us rather embarrassed with the infinite extent which lies beyond our furthest explorations; so the infinite duration which we, in like manner, necessarily ascribe to past time, makes it easy for us, so far as our powers of intellect are concerned, to go millions of millions of years backwards, in order to trace the beginning of the earth’s existence—the first step of terrestrial creation.”
To return, however, to the course of the argument. We hear the oppressed observer asking, as he reascends this “long staircase of natural steps” which had brought time down to the mystic origin of animal existence; his eye dimmed with its efforts to “decipher,” in the picturesque language of Sir David Brewster, “downwards, the pale and perishing alphabet[[23]] of the Chronology of Life”—where, all this while, was Man?
Were Europe at this moment to be submerged beneath the ocean, or placed under a vast rocky stratum, what countless proofs would present themselves to the exploring eyes of remote future geologists, of the existence of both Man and his handiwork!—of his own skeleton, of the products of his ingenuity and power, and the various implements and instruments with which he had effected them!
The rudest conceivable work of human art would carry us to any extent backward, but it is not to be found! Man’s existence and history incontestably belong to the existing condition of the earth; and the Essayist now addresses himself to the two following propositions:—
First, That the existence and history of man are facts of an Entirely Different Order from any which existed in any of the previous states of the earth.