Note 40 — THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS.

The chapter in which this passage occurs originally appeared, with several of the others, in the Witness newspaper, in a series of articles, entitled “Rambles of a Geologist,” and drew forth the following letter from a correspondent of the Scottish Press, the organ of a powerful and thoroughly respectable section of the old Dissenters of Scotland. I present it to the reader merely to show, that if, according to the author of the “Vestiges,” geologists assailed the development hypothesis in the fond hope of “purchasing impunity for themselves,” they would succeed in securing only disappointment for their pains:—

“THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH.

“To the Editor of the Scottish Press.

“Sir,—I occasionally observe articles in your neighbor and contemporary the Witness, characteristically headed ‘Rambles of a Geologist,’ wherein the writer with great zeal once more ‘slays the slain’ heresies of the ‘Vestiges of Creation.’ This writer (of the ‘Rambles,’ I mean) nevertheless, and at the same time, announces his own tenets to be much of the same sort, as applied to mere dead matter, that those of the ‘Vestiges’ are with regard to living organisms. He maintains that the world, during the last million of years, has been of itself rising or developing, without the interposition of a miracle, from chaos into its present state; and, of course, as it is still, as a world, confessedly far below the acme of physical perfection, that it must be just now on its passage, self-progressing, towards that point, which terminus it may reach in another million of years hence.[!!!] The author of the ‘Vestiges,’ as quoted by the author of the ‘Rambles,’ in the last number of the Witness, complains that the latter and his allies are not at all so liberal to him as, from their present circumstances and position, he had a right to expect. He (the author of the ‘Vestiges’) reminds his opponents that they have themselves only lately emerged from the antiquated scriptural notions that our world was the direct and almost immediate construction of its Creator,—as much so, in fact, as any of its organized tenants,—and that it was then created in a state of physical excellence, the highest possible, to render it a suitable habitation for these tenants, and all this only about six or seven thousand years ago,—to the new light of their present physico-Lamarckian views; and he asks, and certainly not without reason, why should these men, so circumstanced, be so anxious to stop him in his attempt to move one step further forward in the very direction they themselves have made the last move?—that is, in his endeavor to extend their own principles of self-development from mere matter to living creatures. Now, Sir, I confess myself to be one of those (and possibly you may have more readers similarly constituted) who not only cannot see any great difference between merely physical and organic development,[!!] but who would be inclined to allow the latter, absurd as it is, the advantage in point of likelihood.[!!!] The author of the ‘Rambles,’ however, in the face of this, assures us that his views of physical self-development and long chronology belong to the inductive sciences. Now, I could at this stage of his rambles have wished very much that, instead of merely saying so, he had given his demonstration. He refers, indeed, to several great men, who, he says, are of his opinion. Most that these men have written on the question at issue I have seen, but it appeared far from demonstrative, and some of them, I know, had not fully made up their mind on the point.[!!!] Perhaps the author of the ‘Rambles’ could favor us with the inductive process that converted himself; and, as the attainment of truth, and not victory, is my object, I promise either to acquiesce in or rationally refute it.[?] Till then I hold by my antiquated tenets, that our world, nay, the whole material universe, was created about six or seven thousand years ago, and that in a state of physical excellence of which we have in our present fallen world only the ‘vestiges of creation.’ I conclude by mentioning that this view I have held now for nearly thirty years, and, amidst all the vicissitudes of the philosophical world during that period, I have never seen cause to change it. Of course, with this view I was, during the interval referred to, a constant opponent of the once famous, though now exploded, nebular hypothesis of La Place; and I yet expect to see physical development and long chronology wither also on this earth, now that their root (the said hypothesis) has been eradicated from the sky.[!!!]—I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,

“Philalethes.”

I am afraid there is little hope of converting a man who has held so stoutly by his notions “for nearly thirty years;” especially as, during that period, he has been acquainting himself with what writers such as Drs. Chalmers, Buckland, and Pye Smith have written on the other side. But for the demonstration which he asks, as I have conducted it, I beg leave to refer him to the seventeenth chapter of my little work, “First Impressions of England and its People.” I am, however, inclined to suspect that he is one of a class whose objections are destined to be removed rather by the operation of the laws of matter than of those of mind. For it is a comfortable consideration, that in this controversy the geologists have the laws of matter on their side;—“the stars in their courses fight against Sisera.” Their opponents now, like the opponents of the astronomer in the ages gone by, are, in most instances, men who have been studying the matter “for nearly thirty years.” When they study it for a few years longer they disappear; and the men of the same cast and calibre who succeed them are exactly the men who throw themselves most confidently into the arms of the enemy, and look down upon their poor silent predecessors with the loftiest commiseration. It is, however, not uninstructive to remark how thoroughly, in some instances, the weaker friends and the wilier enemies of Revelation are at one in their conclusions respecting natural phenomena. The correspondent of the Scottish Press merely regards the views of the author of the “Vestiges” as possessing “the advantage, in point of likelihood,” over those of the geologists his antagonists: his ally the Dean of York goes greatly further, and stands up as stoutly for the transmutation of species as Lamarck himself. Descanting, in his New System of Geology, on the various forms of trilobites, ammonites, belemnites, &c. Dean Cockburn says,—

“These creatures appear to have possessed the power of secreting from the stone beneath them a limy covering for their backs, and perhaps, fed partly on the same solid material. Supposing, now that the first trilobites were destroyed by the Llandeilo Slates, some spawn of these creatures would arise above these flags, and, after a time, would be warmed into existence. These molluscs,[!!] then, having a better material from which to extract their food and covering, would probably expand in a slightly different form, and with a more extensive mantle than what belonged to the parent species. The same would be still more the case with a new generation, fed upon a new deposit from some deeper volcano, such as the Caradoc or Wenlock Limestone, in which lime more and more predominates. Now, if any one will examine the various prints of trilobites in Sir R. Murchison’s valuable work, he will find but very trifling differences in any of them,[!!] and those differences only in the stony covering of their backs. I knew two brothers once much alike: the one became a curate with a large family; the other a London alderman. If the skins of these two pachydermata had been preserved in a fossil state, there would have been less resemblance between them than between an Asaphus tyrannus and an Asaphus caudatus.... A careful and laborious investigation has discovered, as in the trilobites, a difference in the ammonites of different strata; but such differences, as in the former case, exist only in the form of the external shell, and may be explained in the same manner.[!!] ... As to the scaphites, baculites, belemnites, and all the other ites which learned ingenuity has so named, you find them in various strata the same in all important particulars, but also differing slightly in their outward coverings, as might be expected from the different circumstances in which each variety was placed.[!!] The sheep in the warm valleys of Andalusia have a fine covering like to hair; but remove them to a northern climate, and in a few generations the back is covered with shaggy wool. The animal is the same,—the covering only is changed.... The learned have classed those shells under the names of terebratula, orthis, atrypa, pecten, &c. They are all much alike.[!!!] It requires an experienced eye to distinguish them one from another: what little differences have been pointed out may readily be ascribed, as before, to difference of situation.”[!!!]

The author of the “Vestiges,” with this, the fundamental portion of his case, granted to him by the Dean, will have exceedingly little difficulty in making out the rest for himself. The passage is, however, not without its value, as illustrative of the darkness, in matters of physical science, “even darkness which may be felt,” that is suffered to linger, in this the most scientific of ages, in the Church of Buckland, Sedgwick, and Conybeare.