There is another aspect of the doctrine of the Archetypal Unity of Composition of Animals, by which it points to an Intelligence from which the frame of nature proceeds; namely this:—that the Archetype of the Animal Structure being of the nature of an Idea, implies a mind in which this Idea existed; and that thus Homology itself points the way to the Divine Mind. But while we acknowledge the full [645] value of this view of theological bearing of physiology, we may venture to say that it is a view quite different from that which is described by speaking of “Final Causes,” and one much more difficult to present in a lucid manner to ordinary minds.
BOOK XVIII.
GEOLOGY.
WITH regard to Geology, as a Palætiological Science, I do not know that any new light of an important kind has been thrown upon the general doctrines of the science. Surveys and examinations of special phenomena and special districts have been carried on with activity and intelligence; and the animals of which the remains people the strata, have been reconstructed by the skill and knowledge of zoologists:—of such reconstructions we have, for instance, a fine assemblage in the publications of the Palæontological Society. But the great questions of the manner of the creation and succession of animal and vegetable species upon the earth remain, I think, at the point at which they were when I published the last edition of the History.
I may notice the views propounded by some chemists of certain bearings of Mineralogy upon Geology. As we have, in mineral masses, organic remains of former organized beings, so have we crystalline remains of former crystals; namely, what are commonly called pseudomorphoses—the shape of one crystal in the substance of another. M. G. Bischoff[48] considers the study of pseudomorphs as important in geology, and as frequently the only means of tracing processes which have taken place and are still going on in the mineral kingdom.
[48] Chemical and Physical Geology.
I may notice also Professor Breithaupt’s researches on the order of succession of different minerals, by observing the mode in which they occur and the order in which different crystals have been deposited, promise to be of great use in following out the geological changes which the crust of the globe has undergone. (Die Paragenesis der Mineralien. Freiberg. 1849.)