LECTURE IX.

THE HYPOTHESIS OF CREATION BY LAW.

In all ages of the world, where men have been enlightened enough to reason upon the causes of phenomena, a mysterious and a mighty power has been imputed to the laws of nature. A large portion of the most enlightened men have felt as if those laws not only explain, but possess an inherent potency to continue, the ordinary operations of nature. Most men of this description, however, have thought that to originate nature must have demanded the special exercise of an infinite and all-wise Being. But a few, in every age, have endeavored to exalt law into a Creator, as well as Controller, of the world. The hypothesis has assumed a great variety of forms, and until recently few have attempted to draw it out in all its details, and apply it to all nature. Among the ancient philosophers it was based on the eternity of matter, and made the foundation of a system of rank atheism. Starting with the position, as an axiom, that nothing produces nothing,—in other words, that creation out of nothing is impossible,—Democritus maintained that all existence was the result of two necessary and self-existent principles, viz., space, infinite in extent, and atoms, infinite in number. The latter have been eternally in motion, in directions varying from right lines; and their necessary collisions have produced the various forms of organic and inorganic nature. To produce animals and plants, it was only necessary that the atoms should be suitably arranged. The only animating principle was the rapid agitation of atoms.

In modern times, very few philosophers have ventured to solve the whole problem of the universe by any self-acting, self-producing power in nature. La Place limited himself to the mode in which the great bodies of the universe were produced by the vertical movements of nebulous matter; although his object, equally with that of Democritus and Epicurus, was to dispense with an intelligent, personal Deity. Lamarck, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, and Bory St. Vincent, assuming the existence of matter and its laws, have endeavored to show, by the inherent vitality of some parts of matter, how the first or lowest classes of animals and plants may have been produced; and how, from these, by the theory of development and the force of circumstances, all the higher families, with their instincts and intellects, may have been evolved. A still more recent, but anonymous, writer has had the boldness to unite these nebular hypotheses, with those of spontaneous generation and transmutation, into a single system, and to attempt to clothe it with the garb of philosophy; nay, to do this in consistency, not only with Theism, but with a belief in revelation. This theory is what I denominate the hypothesis of creation by law. And judging from its wide reception, we should be led to infer that it had strong probabilities in its favor. It should, therefore, at least receive a careful and candid examination. For though many of its statements and conclusions are absurd, and some of them are highly ridiculous, the hypothesis, at least in some of its parts, falls in with certain loose notions that have got possession of the public mind, and which nothing but cogent reasoning can eradicate.

Before entering upon such an examination, however, it seems necessary to go somewhat more into detail in illustration of the nature of this hypothesis. It may conveniently be described under the heads of cosmogony, which attempts to account for the origin of the world; zoögony, which explains the origin of animals; and zoönomy, which describes the laws of animal life.[17]

The cosmogony of this theory is embraced in what is denominated the nebular hypothesis, propounded by the eminent mathematician La Place. He supposes that, originally, the whole solar system constituted only one vast mass of nebulous matter, being expanded into the thinnest vapor and gas by heat, and more than filling the space at present occupied by the planets. This vapor, he still further supposes, had a revolution from west to east on an axis. As the heat diminished by radiation, the nebulous matter must condense, and consequently the velocity of rotation must increase, and an exterior zone of vapor might be detached; since the central attraction might not be able to overcome the increased centrifugal force. This ring of vapor might sometimes retain its original form, as in the case of Saturn’s ring; but the tendency would be, in general, to divide into several masses, which, by coalescing again, would form a single mass, having a revolution about the sun, and on its axis. This would constitute a planet in a state of vapor; and by the detachment of successive rings might all the planets be produced. As they went on contracting, by the same law, satellites might be formed to each; and the ultimate result would be solid planets and satellites, revolving around the sun in nearly the same plane, and in the same direction, and also on their axes.

Although this hypothesis has been regarded with favor by many philosophers, who were Theists, and even Christians, yet the object of La Place in proposing it was to sustain atheism. Sir Isaac Newton had expressed the conviction that “the admirable arrangement of the solar system cannot but be the work of an intelligent and most powerful Being.” La Place declared that, in this statement, Newton “had deviated from the method of true philosophy,” and brought forward these views to sustain his declaration. Whether they do sustain it, will be considered in another place. But since it is one of those modes in which men have attempted to account for the universe without a Deity, it is a proper subject of examination in this lecture, in which we are inquiring whether law alone will account for the creation and sustentation of the universe.

The zoögony of this hypothesis undertakes to show how animals and plants may be produced without any special exercise of creating power on the part of the Deity. It supposes matter to be endowed with certain laws, whose operation alone will determine life in brute matter, or, rather, whose operation constitutes life. Some would have it that a part of matter is essentially vital; that is, endowed with inherent life; and that this matter, like leaven, communicates life to dead matter arranged in a certain order. But the more modern view is, that life is produced by electrical agency. It is found that the fundamental form of organic beings is a globule, having another globule forming within it. It is also found that globules may be produced in albumen by electricity; and if we could discover how nature produces albumen, it is thought that the whole process by which living organisms are produced would be distinctly before us. It seems to be simply the operation of electricity, and requires no intervention of special creating energy. If the question arises, Whence came such marvellous laws to exist in nature? the atheist replies that matter and its laws are eternal, having neither beginning nor end; while the Theist, who maintains this hypothesis, asserts that, when God created matter, he endowed it with such laws, having an inherent, self-executing power.

Having thus ascertained, as it supposes, how life and organization in the simplest forms may be produced, the next inquiry is, how the more perfect and complicated forms of organic beings may be developed by laws, without divine power. This constitutes the zoönomy of the subject. The French zoölogist, Lamarck, first drew out and formally defended this hypothesis, aided by others, as Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Bory St. Vincent. Their supposition was, that there is a power in nature, which they sometimes denominated the Deity, yet did not allow it to be intelligent and independent, but a mere blind, instrumental force. This power, they supposed, was able to produce what they called monads, or rough draughts of animals and plants. These monads were the simplest of all organic beings, mere aggregations of matter, some of them supposed to be inherently vital. And such monads are the only things ever produced directly by this blind deity. But in these monads there was supposed to reside an inherent tendency to progressive improvement. The wants of this living mass of jelly were supposed to produce such effects as would gradually form new organs, as the hands, the feet, and the mouth. These changes would be aided by another principle, which they called the force of external circumstances, by which they meant the influence upon its development of its peculiar condition; as, for instance, a conatus for flying, produced by the internal principle, would form wings in birds; a conatus for swimming in water would form the fins and tails of fishes; and a conatus for walking would form the feet and legs of quadrupeds. Thus the organs were not formed to meet the wants, but by the wants, of the animal and plant. Of course, new wants would produce new organs; and thus have animals been growing more and more complicated and perfect from the earliest periods of geological history. Man began his course as a monad, but, by the force of Lamarck’s two principles, has reached the most elevated rank on the scale of animals. His last condition before his present was that of the monkey tribe, especially that of the orang-outang. The advocates of this hypothesis generally, however, suppose that there are from three to fifteen species of men, and that the different races are not mere varieties of one species. The most perfect species, the Caucasian, after leaving the monkey state, has gradually risen through the inferior species, and is still making progress; so that we cannot tell where they will stop. In general, the advocates of this hypothesis are materialists; that is, they do not suppose that there is a soul in man, distinct from the body, but that thought is one of the functions of the brain. They usually also regard moral qualities as mainly dependent upon organization, agreeably to the opinions of ultra phrenologists; and hence that they are more to be pitied than blamed for their deviations from rectitude.

Such is the hypothesis. Let us now, in the first place, assume it to be proved, and see what inferences follow.

I remark, first, that the occurrence of events according to law does not remove the necessity of a divine contriving, superintending, and sustaining Power.

That every event in the universe takes place according to fixed laws I am ready to admit. For what is a natural law? Nothing more nor less than the uniform mode in which divine power acts. In the case of miracles, it may be that the ordinary laws of nature are suspended or counteracted; at least, they are increased or diminished in their power. Yet from what we know of the divine perfections, we must conclude that God has certain fixed rules by which he is regulated in the performance of miracles; and, of course, in the same circumstances we should expect the same miracles. So that we may reasonably admit that even miracles are regulated and controlled by law, like common events; though, from the infrequency of the former, men cannot understand the laws that regulate them.

Now, if the advocates of this hypothesis mean simply that every event is regulated by law,—in other words, that with like antecedents like consequents will be connected,—I have no controversy with them; and such is the precise statement of a modern anonymous popular writer on the subject.

He declares that his “purpose is, to show that the whole revelation of the works of God presented to our senses and reason is a system based on what we are compelled, for want of a better term, to call law; by which, however, is not meant a system independent or exclusive of the Deity, but one which only proposes a certain mode of his working.”—Sequel to the Vestiges of Nat. Hist. of Creation, p. 2.—But this is by no means all that is meant by this hypothesis. Nay, the grand object of the writer above quoted is, to show that there is no such thing as miraculous interference in the creation or preservation of the universe. He admits only the ordinary laws of nature, but denies all special and extraordinary laws; and says that it does not “appear necessary that God should exercise an immediately superintending power over the mundane economy.”—Vestiges, p. 273.—Nay, he denies that the original creation of the universe and of animals and plants required any thing but the operation of natural laws; of such laws as we see and understand. The thought does not seem to have occurred to him, that special and miraculous acts of the Deity may be as truly governed by law as the motions of planets. Every thing of that sort he seems to regard as a violation of law,—a stepping aside from fixed principles,—a sort of afterthought with Jehovah,—a remedy for some defect in his original plans. True, the law of miracles and of special providence is very different from the common course of nature; and, therefore, the one may for a time supersede the others. But this does not prove that the former is not regulated by laws; nor that it did not enter into the original plan of the universe in the divine mind. It must have been a part of that plan; every thing was a part of it, and there can be with him no afterthought, no improvement, no alteration of his eternal designs.

Admitting that every event, miraculous as well as common, is under law, it by no means renders a present directing and energizing Deity unnecessary. This hypothesis admits that organic life had a beginning, for its grand object is to show how it began by law alone. Now, who gave to matter, in a gaseous state, such wonderful laws that this fair world should be the result of their operation? If it would require infinite wisdom as well as power to create the present universe at once out of nothing, would it demand less of contrivance and skill to impart such powers to brute matter? It was not merely a power to produce organic natures, to form their complicated organs, to give life, and instinct, and intellect; but to adapt each particle, each organ, each animal, and each plant, most exactly and most wonderfully to its place in the vast system, so that every single thing should most beautifully harmonize with every other thing.

Again. What is a natural law without the presence and energizing power of the lawgiver? How easily are men bewildered by words! and none has led more astray than this word law. We talk about its power to produce certain effects; but who can point out any inherent power of this sort which it possesses? Who can show how a law operates but through the energizing influence of the lawgiver? How unphilosophical then to separate a law of nature from the Deity, and to imagine him to have withdrawn from his works! For to do this would be to annihilate the law. He must be present every moment, and direct every movement of the universe, just as really as the mind of man must be in the body to produce its movements. Take away God from the universe, or let him cease to act mentally upon it, and every movement would as instantly and certainly cease, as would every movement of the human frame, were the mind to be withdrawn, or cease to will. We realize the necessity of the divine presence and energy to produce a miracle. But if miracles are performed according to law, as much as common events,—and we surely cannot prove they are not,—why is a present Deity any more necessary in the one case than in the other? The Bible considers common and miraculous events exactly alike in this respect. And true philosophy teaches the same.

I see not, then, why this law hypothesis does not require an infinite Deity, just as much as the ordinary belief, which supposes that God originally created the universe by his fiat, and sustains it constantly by his power, and from time to time interferes with the regular sequence of cause and effect by miracles. The only difference seems to be this: While the common view represents God as always watching over his works, and ready, whenever necessary, to make special interpositions, the law hypothesis introduces him only at the very dawn of the universe, exerting his infinite wisdom and power to devise and endow matter with exquisite laws, capable, by their inherent self-executing power, of originating all organic natures, and producing the infinite variety of nature, and keeping in play her countless and unceasing agencies. It was only necessary that he should impress attenuated matter with these laws, and then put the machine in motion, and it would go on forever, without any need of God’s presence or agency; so that he might henceforward give himself up to undisturbed repose.

I know, indeed, that La Place, and some other advocates of this latter hypothesis, do not admit any necessity for a Deity even to originate matter or its laws; and to prove this was the object of the nebular hypothesis. But how evident that in this he signally failed! For even though he could show how nebulous matter, placed in a certain position, and having a revolution, might be separated into sun and planets, by merely mechanical laws, yet where, save in an infinite Deity, lie the power and the wisdom to originate that matter, and to bring it into such a condition, that, by blind laws alone, it would produce such a universe—so harmonious, so varied, so nicely adjusted in its parts and relations as the one we inhabit? Especially, how does this hypothesis show in what manner these worlds could be peopled by countless myriads of organic natures, most exquisitely contrived, and fitted to their condition? The atheist may say that matter is eternal. But if so, what but an infinite mind could in time begin the work of organic creation? If the matter existed for eternal ages without being brought into order, and into organic structures, why did it not continue in the same state forever? Does the atheist say, All is the result of laws inherent in matter? But how could those laws remain dormant through all past eternity,—that is, through a period literally infinite,—and then at length be aroused into intense action? Besides, to impute the present wise arrangements and organic creations of the world to law, is to endow that law with all the attributes with which the Theist invests the Deity. Nothing short of intelligence, and wisdom, and benevolence, and power, infinitely above what man possesses, will account for the present world. If there is, then, a power inherent in matter adequate to the production of such effects, that power must be the same as the Deity; and, therefore, it is truly the Deity, by whatever name we call it. In short, the fact that La Place did not see that his hypothesis utterly failed to account for the universe without a Deity, strikingly shows us, that a man may be a giant in mathematics, while he is only a pygmy in moral reasoning; or, to make the statement more general, how a man, by an exclusive cultivation of one faculty of the soul, may shrivel all the rest into a nutshell.

From these views and reasonings, it is clear, I think, that the hypothesis of creation by law does not necessarily destroy the theory of religion. For if we admit that every thing in the world of matter and of mind, not excepting miracles and special providences, is regulated, if not produced, by law, it does not take away the necessity of a contriving, sustaining, and energizing Deity. Even though we admit that God has communicated to nature’s laws, at the beginning, a power to execute themselves, (though the supposition is quite unphilosophical,) no event is any the less God’s work, than if all were miraculous.

In consistency with this conclusion, we find that while some advocates of this hypothesis evidently intended it to sustain atheism, its most plausible advocate, as we have seen, fully admits, not only the divine existence, but the reality of revelation. It may, indeed, be doubted whether this anonymous writer has not virtually taken away the Deity, and even moral accountability, by his materialism and his ultra-phrenology; yet we do not see but he may assert his law system without denying God’s existence or attributes.

It must be admitted, however, that the influence of this hypothesis upon practical religion is disastrous. It does, apparently, so remove the Deity from all concern in the affairs of the world, and so foists law into his place, that practically there is no God. If his agency is acknowledged, as having put the vast machine in motion, in some indefinitely remote period of past duration, yet the feeling is, that since then he has given up the reins into the hands of law, so that man has nothing to do with him, but only with nature’s laws; that he has only to submit to these, and not expect any interposition for his relief, however earnestly he cry for it. Now, it is obviously the intention and desire of the advocates of this hypothesis thus to remove God away from his works, and from their thoughts; else why should they so strenuously resist the notion of miracles? For these may just as properly be referred to law as common events. Yet it is one of the most striking features of the hypothesis, that it opposes strongly the idea of any special oversight and interposition on the part of the Deity. True, when we look at the subject philosophically, we must acknowledge that an event is just as really the work of God, when brought about by laws which he ordains and energizes, as by miraculous interposition. Still the practical influence of these two views of Providence is quite different.

Whoever the author of the Vestiges may be, he has evidently lived in a religious community, and felt the influence of a religious atmosphere; for he tries to conform his system as much as possible to the principles of Protestant Christianity. In other words, he feels so much the power of practical piety around him, that he does not suffer the influence of the system which he advocates to exhibit itself fully, nor to drive him into those extravagances of belief which naturally result from it. In order to see what is its natural tendency, we need to go to such a country as Germany, or Switzerland, where there is little to restrain the wildest vagaries of belief. In the works of Professor Lorenz Oken, of Zurich, we see fully developed the tendencies and results of this hypothesis of development by law, combined with the unintelligible idealism of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, &c. In his Physio-philosophy, translated by the Ray Society for the edification of sober, matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxons, we find a man, of strong mind and extensive knowledge, taking the most ridiculous positions with the stoutest dogmatism, and the most imperturbable gravity, yet whose blasphemy is equalled only by their absurdity. Let a few quotations illustrate and confirm this statement.

“The highest mathematical idea, or the fundamental principle of all mathematics, is the zero == 0.

“Zero is in itself nothing. Mathematics is based upon nothing, and consequently arises out of nothing.

“Real and ideal are no more different from each other than ice and water: both of these, as is well known, are essentially one and the same, and yet are different, the diversity consisting in the form. Every real is absolutely nothing else than a number.

“The Eternal is the nothing of nature.

“There is no other science than that which treats of nothing.

“There exists nothing but nothing—nothing but the Eternal.

“Every thing in the world is endowed with life; the world itself is alive, and continues only, maintains itself by virtue of its life.

“Man is God wholly manifested. God has become man, zero has become + —. Man is the whole of arithmetic, compacted, however, out of all numbers; he can, therefore, produce numbers out of himself.

“Animals are men who never imagine. They are beings who never attain to consciousness concerning themselves. They are single accounts; man is the whole of mathematics.

“Arithmetic is the truly absolute or divine science. Theology is arithmetic personified.

“For God to become real, he must appear under the form of the sphere. There is no other form for God. God manifesting is an infinite sphere.

“God is a rotating globe; the world is God rotating.

“The whole universe is material, is nothing but matter; for it is the primary act repeating itself eternally in the centre. The universe is a rotating globe of matter.

“There is no dead matter; it is alive through its being, through the Eternal that is in it. Matter has no existence in itself, but it is the Eternal only that exists in it. Every thing is God that is there, and without God there is absolutely nothing.

“Every thing that is is material. Now, however, there is nothing that is not; consequently there is every where nothing immaterial.

“Fire is the totality of ether, is God manifested in his totality.

“Every thing that is has originated out of fire; every thing is only cooled, rigidified fire.

“God being in himself is gravity; acting, self-emergent light; both together, or returning into himself, heat.

“God only is monocentral. The world is the bicentral God, God the monocentral world, which is the same with the monas and dyas. Self-consciousness is a living ellipse.

“God is a threefold trinity; at first the eternal, then the ethereal, and finally the terrestrial, where it is completely divided.

“The symbolical doctrine of the colors is correct according to the philosophy of nature. Red is fire, love—Father. Blue is air, truth, and belief—Son. Green is water, formation, hope—Ghost. These are the three cardinal virtues. Yellow is earth, the immovable, inexorable falsity, the only vice—Satan. There are three virtues, but only one vice. A result obtained by physio-philosophy, whereof pneumato-philosophy as yet augurs nothing.

“The primary mucus, out of which every thing organic has been created, is the sea mucus.

“The whole sea is alive. It is a fluctuating, ever self-elevating, and ever self-depressing organism.

“If the organic fundamental substance consist of infusoria, so must the whole organic world originate from infusoria. Plants and animals can be only metamorphoses of infusoria. No organism has consequently been created of larger size than an infusorial point; whatever is larger has not been created, but developed.

“The mind, just as the body, must be developed out of these animals, (infusoria.) The human body has been formed by an extreme separation of the neuro-protoplasmic or mucous mass; so must the human mind be a separation, a memberment of infusorial sensation. The highest mind is an anatomized or dismembered mesmerism, each member whereof has been constituted independent in itself.

“The liver is the soul in a state of sleep, the brain is the soul active and awakening.

“Circumspection and forethought appear to be the thoughts of the bivalve mollusca, and snails.

“Gazing upon a snail, one believes that he finds the prophesying goddess sitting upon the tripod. What majesty is in a creeping snail, what reflection, what earnestness, what timidity, and yet at the same time what firm confidence! Surely a snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering deeply within itself.”

It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon mind to believe that a man who could write thus was not out of his senses. Yet Oken is an eminent physiologist, and has made, it is said, important discoveries in respect to the cranial homologies, which have been developed in Professor Owen’s work on the Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton. Nay, Oken declares himself to have written his Physio-philosophy “in a kind of inspiration”—from what world the religious man might be in doubt.

These extravagant notions show what is the natural tendency of the law hypothesis. Yet it does not necessarily convert a man into an atheist. And if any of its advocates declare themselves Theists, and even Christians, we need not regard them as hypocrites, though we may consider them as in an eminently dangerous position; and that, when they shall act consistently, they will swing off into utter irreligion. But my arguments against the hypothesis will be based on the position that it is not sustained by facts; and this is the second position of my lecture.

The nebular hypothesis is a part of the foundation on which the doctrine of creation by law rests. And the high scientific reputation of its author, as well as its apparent coincidence with some of the deductions of geology respecting the earliest condition of the earth, have made philosophers look upon it with considerable favor. Yet very few have been ready to give it implicit credence. And of late the most plausible evidence in its favor seems to be fast vanishing away. The ablest mechanicians are unable to see how a rotary motion should be produced in nebulous matter by refrigeration; or, if this be assumed, how the successive portions, detached by superior centrifugal force, should form spherical masses. But a still more formidable objection lies in the fact that, as improvements are made in telescopes, one and another of the nebulæ, on which the hypothesis rests, have been resolved into stars; and the presumption hence arising is very strong that all are resolvable. In the present aspect of the subject, no sagacious philosopher would dare to rest even an hypothesis upon the unresolved nebulæ. If, however, the nebular hypothesis were shown to be true, it would prove nothing in regard to the production of animals and plants by mere law, without the special agency of the Deity.

The essential and inherent vitality of some kinds of matter is another doctrine on which this hypothesis rests. “In vain,” says Bory St. Vincent, “has matter been considered as eminently brute. Many observations prove that, if it is not all active, by its very nature, a part of it is essentially so; and the presence of this, operating according to certain laws, is able to produce life in an agglomeration of the molecules; and since these laws will always be imperfectly known, it will at least be rash to maintain that an infinite intelligence did not impose them; since they are manifested by their results.”—Dictionnaire Classique d’Histoire Naturelle, art. Materie.

The “observations” to which this writer refers to sustain his hypothesis are those which had been made upon certain vegetable infusions, which, in certain circumstances, exhibited minute particles in motion, apparently by vital forces. These were called monads, and were not supposed to be distinct animals, but only atoms, ready to be organized. The more modern and accurate researches of Ehrenberg and others, however, have shown, beyond all doubt, that these monads are true animals, the minutest of all living beings hitherto discovered. Not less than twenty-six species of them have been described and figured by microscopists, the smallest of which never exceeds the twelve thousandth of an inch in diameter.

The vegetable physiologists have described certain peculiar motions in the minute vessels of plants, that might readily be regarded as matter essentially vital. I refer to what they call rotation and cyclosis. But these are never seen save in the living plant; and, therefore, seem dependent on the general life of the vegetable.

There is, however, danger of mistaking certain motions of the particles of matter, by chemical agency, for the effect of vitality. A curious example is thus described by Ehrenberg, which was discovered by Professor Bornsdorff. “If a solution of the chloride of aluminum be dropped into a solution of potassa, by the alternate precipitation and solution of the aluminum, in the excess of the alkali, an appearance will be given to the drop of aluminate matter, by the chemical changes and reactions which take place, as if the Amœba diffluens were actually present, both as to its form and evolutions, and will seem to be alive. Such appearance is considered by its able discoverer as bearing the same relationship to the real animalcule as a doll, or a figure moved by mechanism, does to a living child.”

We see, then, that the supports on which rests the doctrine of the essential vitality of matter, give way before better instruments and more careful research. Another statement, however, of much higher pretensions, has lately been made, and on no mean authority. Able electricians declare that, by passing currents of galvanism through solutions of silicate or ferrocyanate of potassa, or some analogous substance, after a time, sometimes several years, numerous small insects have been developed, belonging to the acari family.

These experiments appear to have been conducted with fairness and skill; and that the insects showed themselves at the pole of the battery, around which the gelatinous silex collected, cannot be doubted. It is true, however, that, when the solution was exposed to the atmosphere, the insects appeared much sooner and more numerous than when care was taken to exclude every thing but oxygen enough to sustain life. This fact leads to the suspicion that the ova of the insect might have been communicated through the air, and that, even when an attempt was made to exclude the atmosphere, some ova were still present. This conclusion is rendered still more probable by some experiments made by Professor Schulz, of Berlin, on the production of infusoria. Having first boiled the vegetable and animal infusions, so as to destroy all germs of organic life, and expelled all the atmosphere, he attached an apparatus in such a manner that, whatever air entered afterwards, must pass through sulphuric acid, or a solution of potash. The result was, that no infusoria or vegetable forms appeared during two months; but in the same infusion, placed in the open air, and exposed to the same light and heat as that enclosed in the glass vessel, numerous animalcula and fungi appeared in a day or two. It will need, therefore, very long and patient experiments to establish the assertion that galvanism alone can produce living animals without the presence of germs.

Not many years since, the equivocal or casual production of animalcula, without any other parentage than law, was thought to be made out by a multitude of facts. For these minute creatures appeared almost every where, and in places where it seemed impossible that their ova should be found. But the researches of Ehrenberg have cleared up the difficulties of their origination in the ordinary modes of reproduction, in nearly every instance, and the advocates of the law hypothesis have been fairly driven from this stronghold of their argument. In describing the various modes of reproduction with which nature has provided the infusoria, Professor Owen says, “Thus each leaves, by the last act of its life, the means of perpetuating and diffusing its species by thousands of fertile germs. When once the thickly tenanted pool is dried up, and its bottom converted into a layer of dust, these inconceivably minute and light ova will be raised with the dust by the first puff of wind, diffused through the atmosphere, and may there remain long suspended; forming, perhaps, their share of the particles which we see flickering in the sunbeam, ready to fall into any collection of water, beaten down by every summer shower into the streams or pools which receive or may be formed by such showers, and, by virtue of their tenacity of life, ready to develop themselves whenever they may find the requisite conditions of their existence. The possibility, or, rather, the high probability, that such is the design of the oviparous generation of the infusoria, and such the common mode of the diffusion of their ova, renders the hypothesis of equivocal generation, which has been so frequently invoked to explain their origin in new-formed natural or artificial infusions, quite gratuitous.”—Lectures on Comp. Anat. vol. ii. p. 31.

No longer able to maintain a foothold among the animalcula, the defenders of this hypothesis have of late attempted to take a stand among animals of a somewhat higher grade, viz., the entozoa, or animals inhabiting other animals. These being considerably larger than the infusoria, their ova could not float in the atmosphere; but they possess a wonderful tenacity of life; some of them exhibiting signs of life after having been in boiling water for an hour; others have revived after having been packed for a long time in ice, and frozen; others have revived after lying in a dried state for six or seven years. Their power of reproduction, in the ordinary modes, is also prodigious, exceeding even that of the infusoria. It will, then, demand very strong evidence to prove that such animals possess also the power of spontaneous production, without parentage, or that their existence within other animals cannot be explained without such a supposition. For, if capable of being produced without parentage, why should such extraordinary care have been taken for their multiplication, in almost all the ordinary modes in which animals are reproduced?

The extraordinary facts that have been discovered by Professors Steenstrup, Owen, and others, within a few years, respecting what they call alternate generation, or parthenogenesis, have been thought favorable to the hypothesis of development. Among the mollusca, the polyparia, the entozoa, and infusoria, it is found that, in some species, the result of sexual union is the production of a larva without sex, and, therefore, incapable of propagating in the usual way. Yet that larva can of itself produce another larva quite different from itself, and this larva another, and so on, sometimes for eight or ten generations, when the spermatic force seems to be exhausted, and a progeny exactly like the original parents that started the series is produced, capable of giving rise to another and a similar series. Here, then, we find a succession of progeny for several generations, and all quite unlike one another, yet without any immediate parental agency. Why is it not an example of spontaneous generation? and why may not new species be produced in this manner?

There are two facts prominent on this subject which afford a full answer to such questions. One is, that these generations of larvæ always begin with the spermatozoon and the ovum of parents; the other is, that the series always closes, if allowed to run its natural course, in individuals with sex, exactly identical with those that started it; so that the species always remains entire. The whole process is simply one of the infinitely varied modes which nature employs to preserve and perfect the species. The process never stops with any of the larvæ intervening between the fertile parents at the beginning, and the fertile individuals at the end of the series. Professor Owen supposes—certainly with much plausibility—that some of the original germ-cells, not wanted for the production of the first larva, pass on to form the successive generations, till the series is complete; so that, after all, the case is not an exception to the general law of reproduction by parental agency; and instead of sustaining, it certainly goes against, the notion of spontaneous generation and of transmutation of species; because it shows how far parental influence may reach, and how tenacious nature is of specific distinctions. For the same reasons, the case affords a presumption against other alleged cases of equivocal generation and metamorphoses of species.[18]

Appeal has also been made to the vegetable kingdom for examples of the production of organic beings, viz., plants without seeds. Who has not observed, for instance, how the clearing up and burning over of a piece of land will often cause an entirely new tribe of plants to spring up and flourish? Whence came the seeds? We have seen, for instance, (in Richmond, Virginia,) a thick growth of pines upon a spot where from six to ten feet of soil had been removed a few years previously.

It is very possible, in some cases of this kind, that the soil, having been produced by aqueous agencies, may contain seeds to a considerable depth, and that their vitality may have been preserved for centuries; for we know that seeds three thousand years old, taken from Egyptian catacombs, have germinated, in favorable circumstances. In most cases of this sort, however, the winds have probably supplied the seed, it may be, long before. We were one day wandering over Mount Holyoke, where a spot recently cleared was covered with the fire-weed, a species of senecio; and as we were musing upon its origin, a strong blast of wind swept over the plants, just ready to throw off their seeds. Sustained by their light egrets, they floated away on the air in numbers sufficient to cover half the mountain with the plant, when it should be cleared and burnt over. Yet their existence would never be suspected till those circumstances should be developed. At least, until we can prove that the soil contains no seeds by the most careful examination, it will be premature to infer the equivocal production of the plants growing upon it.

Vegetable physiology furnishes another fact, which seems to me to look still more favorable to this law hypothesis than the preceding, although it has not been noticed, so far as I know, by the advocates of that hypothesis. Speaking of the matter of which certain flowerless plants are composed, Dr. Lindlay says, “It is even uncertain whether this matter will produce its like, and whether it is not a mere representation of the vital principle of vegetation, capable of being called into action, either as a fungus, or algæ, or lichen, according to the particular conditions of heat, light, and moisture, and the medium in which it is placed; producing fungi upon dead or putrid organic beings, lichens upon living vegetables, earth, or stones, and algæ where water is the medium in which it is developed.” Again, in speaking of that green slime which often covers the soil, rocks, walls, and glass in damp places, he says, “The slime resembles a layer of albumen, spread with a brush; it exfoliates in drying, and finally becomes visible by the manner in which it colors green or deep brown. One might call it a provisional creation, waiting to be organized, and then assuming different forms according to the nature of the corpuscles which penetrate it, or develop among it. It may further be said to be the origin of two very distinct existences, the one certainly animal, the other purely vegetable.”—Natural System, pp. 326, 328, 334.

Now, admitting all the facts that have been detailed respecting the production of infusoria, entozoa, acari, and cryptogamian plants to be true, although most of them are far from being proved, it seems to me that they do not show us how vitality is produced by mere law, without the special agency of the Deity. Writers on the subject seem to overlook the distinction between organization and life. The first may be present in its highest perfection without the latter, as it is in animals and plants recently killed. The organization is merely a preparation to receive the mysterious principles which we call life and intellect. Light, heat, and electricity may be the essential agents in producing the organization, but they do not explain the nature, or account for the presence, of life. That must, so far as we know, come from some other and a higher source. Galvanism may bring gelatinous matter into the form of an insect, or infusoria, or entozoa; but there is no evidence that it can impart life, however exquisite the organization. It may be, and we have reason to suppose it is, the divine will to bestow life whenever a certain organization exists; but this does not show that his special agency is not concerned in it. He may will that the peculiar life of a lichen shall be given to the same elementary matter which, in another situation, he constitutes an alga, or a fungus, or even an animal. But this would not prove that natural law alone could produce life. There is nowhere any evidence that sensibility, contractility, and especially intellect and volition, are the result of any natural operations. In their properties they are so entirely diverse from all known physical effects, that we must impute them to some other than a natural cause. We must call in the power of a supreme intelligent Being. The laws of affinity, light, heat, and electricity, of endosmose and exosmose, may prepare the organization, but their power ends there; and hence true philosophy requires us to impute the phenomena of life and intellect to an extraneous and infinitely higher cause.

The case, then, stands thus: In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, we are certain that organization requires the previous existence and agency of a being similarly organized, which we call the parent. But suppose that, in a very few cases, the laws of nature can produce the organization. It still demands another and a higher power—not a blind impulse, but an intelligent cause—to bestow life and intellect. To prove the existence of a natural cause for the arrangement of the atoms into an organic structure, does by no means prove the same for those higher and mysterious principles that make that structure a living, thinking being.

Such, however, are the strongest arguments by which the advocates of the law hypothesis sustain their views of the origin of organism, life, and intellect. The next step in their reasoning is to show how animals and plants may be transmuted from one species, or genus, or family, to another; so that the existing vast variety can be traced to a few original germs. They maintain that these developments of the more from the less perfect have proceeded along certain parallel lines; one series of developments, for instance, taking the line of the fishes, another of the reptiles, another of the birds, another of quadrupeds, and so on.

To prove these developments or transmutations, they appeal first to the physiological history of the mammalian embryo. In its earliest stages, it can hardly be distinguished, except in size, from the unborn polygastric infusoria. The brain of a human embryo appears at first like that of an invertebrate animal; next like that of a fish; then successively like that of a reptile, a bird, a rodent mammal, a ruminant, and a monkey. So the heart, at an early stage, looks like that of an insect; then it has two chambers, like that of a fish; then it becomes three chambered, like that of a reptile; and finally, four chambered, as in the mammalia. The inference which these theorists would draw from such facts is, that man actually begins his existence as an animalcule, and passes successively through the mould or condition of other animals, before he reaches the highest. And the reasons why he does become a man, rather than an echinoderm, or a fish, or a monkey, is only some slightly modifying circumstance, as, for instance, a longer gestation. It appears to me, however, that the inferences sound philosophy should derive from such facts are, first, that, while there is a seeming resemblance between the human embryo and that of lower animals, there is, in fact, a real and a wide diversity; so that the one infallibly becomes an inferior animal, and the other a man. Could a single example be produced in which a human embryo stopped at and became an insect, or a fish, or a monkey, there might be some plausibility in the supposition. But it is as certain to become a man as the sun is to rise and set; and, therefore, the human condition results from laws as fixed as those that regulate the movements of the heavenly bodies. That is a very superficial philosophy which infers identity of nature from mere external resemblance.

The phenomena of hybridity furnish another ground of argument in favor of the transmutation of species, and of course in favor of the law hypothesis; for that hybrids are sometimes the result of the union of different species will not be denied. There is, however, a natural repugnance to union between different species; and in a state of nature this can very rarely be overcome. But domestication changes and almost obliterates many natural instincts, and hence hybridity is far more common among domesticated animals and plants. As a general fact, also, the hybrid offspring is incapable of propagating its own race, without union with one of the original species by which it was produced; and this inability to continue this mixed race has been generally regarded among naturalists as the best characteristic of species. Some, however, attempt to show that some hybrid races do continue from generation to generation to propagate their kind. But in most cases the hybrid race ere long runs out, and there is always a strong tendency to revert to the original stock; and were it not for the influence of man, probably such a thing as hybridity would scarcely ever have been heard of. Nature seems to have established strong barriers around species, so that an identity should be preserved; and even if we admit the possibility of their coalescence in some cases, yet we have evidence that almost always they are preserved distinct from century to century; and the same is true even of the more prominent varieties, for we find not only the same species, but the same varieties of animals and plants, preserved some three thousand years in the Egyptian catacombs, that are now alive in the same country. How idle, then, to suppose that the laws of hybridity will account for such radical and entire transmutations as this hypothesis supposes! To accomplish this, it would need as strong a tendency in nature to a union of species, genera, and families, as now exists against it.

But a special appeal has been made on this subject to geology. The history of organic remains, it is thought, corresponds to what we might expect, if the hypothesis of development is true. In the oldest rocks we find chiefly the more simple invertebrate animals, and the vertebrated tribes appear at first in the form of fish, then of reptiles, then of birds, then of mammals, and last of all of man. What better confirmation could we wish than this gradually expanding series? True, all the great classes of organic beings, vegetable and animal, are found nearly at the earliest epoch, and continue through the entire series of rocks. But we have only to suppose a distinct stirps for each of the classes, and that the developments took place along parallel lines, in order to harmonize the facts with the hypothesis.

Such a general view of the subject of organic remains seems to give plausibility to the hypothesis of organic development. But the tables are turned when we descend to particulars. The idea of a distinct stirps or germ for each great class of animals and plants seems to me to destroy an essential feature of the hypothesis. It supposes that law produces at once a vertebral animal and a flowering plant; for the first, certainly, we find in the very lowest of the fossiliferous rocks. “The lower silurian,” says Sir Roderick Murchison, in 1847, “is no longer to be viewed as an invertebrate period, for the onchus (a genus of fish) has been found in the Llandeilo Flags, and in the lower silurian rocks of Bala.”

It is also a most important fact, that this fish of the oldest rock was not, as the development scheme would require, of a low organization, but quite high on the scale of fishes. The same is true of all the earliest species of this class. “All our most ancient fossil fishes,” says Professor Sedgwick, “belong to a high organic type; and the very oldest species that are well determined fall naturally into an order of fishes which Owen and Müller place, not at the bottom, but at the top of the whole class.”—Discourse on the Studies of the University, &c. 5th edit. p. lxiv. pref.

This point has been fully and ably discussed by Hugh Miller, Esq., in his late work, “The Footprints of the Creator, or the Asterolepis of Stromness.” The asterolepis was one of these fishes found in the old red sandstone, sometimes over twenty feet long; yet, says Mr. Miller, “instead of being, as the development hypothesis would require, a fish low in its organization, it seems to have ranged on the level of the highest ichthyic-reptilian families ever called into existence.”

Another point which Mr. Miller has labored hard to establish, and of which there seems to be no reasonable doubt, is, that in many families of animals, not only were the first species that appeared of high organization, but there was a gradual degradation among those that were created afterwards. Of the fishes generally, he says, that “the progress of the race, as a whole, though it still retains not a few of the higher forms, has been a progress, not of development from the low to the high, but of degradation from the high to the low.” Again he says, “We know, as geologists, that the dynasty of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptile; that the dynasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous quadruped; and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was succeeded by that of man, as man now exists—a creature of a mixed character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alternations of enjoyment and suffering. We know further,—so far, at least, as we have succeeded in deciphering the record,—that the several dynasties were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms; that, in short, in the imposing programme of creation, it was arranged as a general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession the magnates should walk first. We recognize yet further the fact of degradation specially exemplified in the fish and the reptile.” “Among these degraded races, that of the footless serpent, which goeth upon its belly, has long been noted by the theologian as a race typical, in its condition and nature, of an order of hopelessly degraded beings, borne down to the dust by a clinging curse; and curiously enough, when the first comparative anatomists in the world give their readiest and most prominent instance of degradation among the divisions of the natural world, it is this very order of footless reptiles that they select.”

Among the invertebrate animals are numerous examples of the deterioration of a race. M. Alcide D’Orbigny, one of the most accomplished of living paleontologists, in his Cours Elementaire de Paleontologie et de Geologie, speaks as follows of the cephalopods found in the oldest rocks: “See, then, the result; the cephalopods, the most perfect of the mollusks, which lived in the early period of the world, show a progress of degradation in their generic forms. We insist on this fact relative to the cephalopods, which we shall hereafter compare with the less perfect classes of mollusks, since it must lead to the conclusion that the mollusks, as to their classes, have certainly retrograded from the compound to the simple, or from the more to the less perfect.”

Such facts as these are absolutely fatal to the hypothesis of development; and geology abounds with them. Indeed, through all her archives, we search in vain for facts that show any thing like a passage of one species, genus, or family, into another. Certain distinct types characterize the different formations up to a certain period, when there is a sudden change; and in the subsequent strata we find animals and plants entirely different from those that have disappeared. The new races are, indeed, often of a higher grade than those that preceded them, but could not have sprung from them.

The true theory of animal and vegetable existence on our globe appears to be this: Such natures were placed upon the earth as were adapted to its varying condition. When the earliest group was created, such were the climate, the atmosphere, the waters, and the means of subsistence, that the lower tribes were best adapted to the condition of things. That group occupied the earth till such changes had occurred as to make it unsuited to their natures, and consequently they died out, and new races were brought in; not by mere law, but by divine benevolence, power, and wisdom. These tribes also passed away, when the condition of things was so changed as to be uncongenial to their natures, to give place to a third group, and these again to a fourth, and so on to the present races, which, in their turn, perhaps, are destined to become extinct. From the first, however, the changes which the earth has undergone, as to temperature, soil, and climate, have been an improvement of its condition; so that each successive group of animals and plants could be more and more complicated and perfect; and therefore we find an increase and development of flowering plants and vertebral animals. And yet, from the beginning, all the great classes seem to have existed, so that the changes have been only in the proportion of the more and less perfect at different periods. In short, we have only to suppose that the Creator exactly adapted organic natures to the several geological periods, and we perfectly explain the phenomena of organic remains. But the doctrine of development by law corresponds only in a loose and general way to the facts, and cannot be reconciled to the details. If that hypothesis cannot get a better foothold somewhere else, it will soon find its way into the limbo of things abortive and forgotten.

I have now noticed, I believe, the principal sources of evidence in which the law hypothesis rests; and at the best, we find only a possibility, but rarely, if ever, a probability, that such a power exists in nature. I turn now, for a few moments, to the arguments on the other side; that is, against the hypothesis.

And first, it cannot explain the wonderful adaptation of animals and plants to their condition and to one another.

There is not a more striking thing in nature than that adaptation; and geology shows us that it has always been so. Now, if any thing requires the exercise of infinite wisdom and power, it is this feature of creation. But according to this hypothesis, the laws of nature may be so arranged as to create every animal and plant just at the right time, and place them in the right spot, and adjust every thing around them to their nature and wants. In other words, it supposes law capable of doing what only infinite wisdom and power can do. What is this but ascribing infinite perfection to law, and imputing to it effects which only an infinite intelligence could bring about? In other words, it is making a Deity of the laws which he ordains. Theoretically it may be of little importance by what name men call the Deity; but practically to impute natural effects to law, as an independent power, is to put a blind, unintelligent agency in the place of Jehovah.

In the second place, where one fact in nature looks favorable to this hypothesis, a thousand facts teach the contrary.

Take for example the reproduction of animals. Out of every thousand individuals we have certain evidence that nine hundred and ninety-nine are brought into existence by the ordinary modes of generation; that is, they depend upon progenitors. Still, if in the thousandth case the animal’s existence was clearly casual, if we could see an elephant, or an ox, start into life without parental agency, that single case would prove the hypothesis. But never do its advocates pretend that any of the larger animals are produced in this way. Nor is it till they get among the smaller and obscure animals, whose habits are very difficult to trace out, that we find any examples where a suspicion even can exist of the communication of vitality irrespective of parental agency. Is not a strong presumption hence produced that further and more scrutinizing observation will show the few excepted cases not to be real exceptions? Does not sound philosophy demand that the proof of the casual production of the thousandth case shall be as decided as that of the normal generation of the nine hundred and ninety-nine? But no one, it seems to me, will pretend that any thing like such certainty exists in a single example throughout all nature. The presumption, then, is really more than a thousand to one against the hypothesis.

Take an example from hybridity. While a thousand species retain from age to age their individuality, not more than one coalesces with its neighbor, and loses its identity. And even here, all admit that there is a constant tendency in the hybrid race to revert to the original stock; and there is strong reason to believe that this will sooner or later take place, and that it would speedily occur in every case, were it not for the influence of domestication. Such facts make the presumption very strong, that species are permanent, and any extensive metamorphosis impossible. Hybridity appears to be in a measure unnatural; and the old proverb true in respect to it—

By the hypothesis under consideration, we ought to expect at least a few examples of the formation of new organs in animals, in the efforts of nature to advance towards a more perfect state. It has usually been said that the time since animals were first described is too short for such development. But we have examples, from the catacombs of Egypt, of animals and plants that lived in that country three thousand years ago; and yet, according to Cuvier,—and who is a better judge?—they are precisely like the living species. Strange that this great length of time should not have produced even one new organ, or the marks of a conatus to produce one. We are, indeed, pointed to the different varieties of the human species, as examples of this progress. But these diversities, also, can be shown to be the same now as at the earliest date of historical records; and where, then, is the evidence that they ever have undergone, or ever will undergo, any change of importance? There may indeed be examples of amalgamation, but under favorable circumstances the original varieties are again developed.

In the third place, geology contradicts this hypothesis.

We have seen that it offers no satisfactory explanation of the gradual increase of the more perfect animals and plants, as we rise higher in the rocks. That fact is most perfectly explained by supposing that divine wisdom and benevolence adapted the new species, which from time to time were created, to the changing and improving condition of the earth. A multitude of species have been dug from the rocks; but not one exhibits evidence of the development of new organs in the manner described by this hypothesis. New species often appear, but they differ as decidedly from the previous ones as species now do; and at the beginning of each formation there is often a very decided advance in the organic beings from those found in the top of the subjacent formation. How can this hypothesis explain such sudden changes, when its essential principle is, that the progress of the development is uniform? Nothing can explain them surely but special creating interposition.

Geology also shows us that for a vast period the world existed without inhabitants. Now, what was it that gave the laws of nature power, after so long an operation unproductive of vitality, to produce organic natures? Who can conceive of any inherent force that should thus enable them, all at once, to do what true philosophy shows to have demanded infinite skill?

In short, of all the sciences, geology most clearly shows special divine interference to explain its phenomena. It presents us with such stupendous changes, after long periods of repose, such sudden exhibitions of life, springing forth from the bosom of universal death, that nothing but divine, special, miraculous agency can explain the results. And of all the vast domains of nature, it seems to me no part is so barren of facts to sustain this hypothesis as the rocks; nor so full of facts for its refutation. These, however, have been so fully detailed in a previous part of this lecture that they need not be here repeated.

In the fourth place, the prodigious increase of the power and the means of reproduction, which we find among the lower tribes of animals, affords a strong presumption against this hypothesis.

The animals highest on the scale, and most perfect in their organization, have only one mode of reproduction, viz., the viviparous. Descending a little lower, we come to the oviparous and ovoviviparous tribes. Passing to the invertebrate animals, we meet with two other modes of reproduction, the gemmiparous and fissiparous. In the first mode, the animal is propagated by buds, like some plants, as the tiger lily; by the second mode, a spontaneous division of the animal takes place.

Now, in some of the lowest of the invertebrate tribes, we find most of the modes of propagation that have been enumerated in operation; so that the same individual in one set of circumstances is oviparous, in another gemmiparous or fissiparous. The consequence is, a power of multiplication inconceivably great. Mr. Owen calculates that the ascaris lumbricoides, the most common intestinal worm, is capable of producing sixty-four millions of young; and Ehrenberg asserts that the hydatina senta, one of the infusoria, increased in twelve days to sixteen millions, and another species, in four days, to one hundred and seventy billions.

Why, now, are these astonishing powers of reproduction given to these minute animals, if it be true that they can also be produced without parentage, and by mere law? This latter mode would supersede the necessity of the former; and therefore, the care taken by Providence to provide the former is a strong presumption that the latter does not exist.

In the fifth place, it is an instructive fact on this subject that, as instruments have been improved, and observations have become more searching, the supposed cases of spontaneous generation have diminished, until it is not pretended now that it takes place except in a very few tribes, and those the most obscure and difficult to observe of all living things. A hundred years ago, naturalists, and especially other men, might easily have been made to believe that many of the smaller insects had a casual origin. But long since, save in the matter of the acari, the entomological field has been abandoned by the advocates of the law hypothesis, and they have been driven from one tribe after another, till at length some of the obscure hiding-places of the entozoa and infusoria are now the only spots where the light is not too strong for the large-pupiled eyes of this hypothesis. Is not the presumption hence arising very strong that it will need only a little further improvement in instruments and care in observation to carry daylight into these recesses, and demonstrate the parentage and normal development of all organic beings?

Finally. The gross materialism inseparable from this hypothesis is a strong argument against it.

I am not aware that any one, except Oken, perhaps, has ever attempted to show that mind, as a spiritual essence, distinct from matter, has been created by natural laws; in other words, that there is in nature a power to produce mind. All such maintain that intellect is material, or, rather, the result of organization, the mere function of the brain, as are also life and instinct. Generally, also, they contend—and, indeed, consistency seems to require it—that the moral powers depend chiefly upon different developments of the brain; so that a disposition to do wrong results more from organization than from punishable mental obliquity; indeed, the worst of criminals are often, on this account, more to be pitied than blamed, and the physician is of more importance than the moralist and the divine for their reformation.

Now, if this system of materialism is true, we ought to embrace it, without any fear of ultimate bad effects. But a philosopher will hesitate long before he adopts a system which thus seems to degrade man from his lofty standing as a spiritual, accountable, and immortal being, and makes his intellectual and moral powers dependent upon the structure of the brain, and, therefore, destined to perish with the material organization, with no hope of future existence, unless God chooses to recreate the man. Nay, if there be no distinct spirit in man, what evidence have we that there is one in Jehovah? A true philosopher, I say, will demand very strong evidence before he adopts any hypothesis that leads a logical mind to such conclusions; and I see not how the one under consideration can terminate in any thing else.

Such are the reasons that lead me to reject the hypothesis of creation by law. I have endeavored to treat the subject in a candid and philosophical manner, not charging atheism upon its advocates when they declare themselves Theists and Christians. Neither have I called in the aid of ridicule, as might easily be done, and as, in fact, has been done by almost every opponent of the system who has written upon it. I have endeavored to show that the hypothesis, tried in the balances of sound philosophy, is found wanting; because, in the first place, the facts adduced to sustain it are insufficient; and secondly, because, where one fact seems to favor it, a thousand testify against it. Is not the conclusion a fair one, that the hypothesis has no solid foundation? Is not the evidence against it overwhelming? Yet it has many advocates, and I must think—I hope not uncharitably—that these are the reasons: First, because men do not like the idea of a personal, present, overruling Deity; and secondly, because there is very little profound and thorough knowledge of natural history in the community. It is just such an hypothesis as chimes in with the taste of that part of the world who have a smattering of science, and who do not wish to live without some form of religion, but who still desire to free themselves from the inspection of a holy God, and from the responsibility which his existence and presence would impose. Depend upon it, gentlemen, you will meet these delusions not unfrequently among the cultivated classes of society, where they have already done immense mischief. You will, indeed, find all the eminent comparative anatomists and physiologists, such as Cuvier and Owen; such chemists as Liebig; such zoölogists as Agassiz and Edward Forbes; such botanists as Hooker, Henslow, Lindley, Torrey, and Gray; and such geologists as De la Beche, Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, D’Orbigny, Buckland, and Miller, decided in their rejection of these views. But when even educated men obtain only a smattering of natural science, they find something very fascinating in this hypothesis; and this is just the religion, or, rather, the irreligion, that suits the superficial, selfish, and pleasure-seeking exquisites of fashionable drawing-rooms, theatres, and watering-places. You will find, therefore, the need of thoroughly studying this subject, or you will not be able, as you would wish, to vindicate the cause of true science and true religion.

I cannot terminate this discussion without referring to an ingenious analogy, suggested by Hugh Miller, in his “Footprints of the Creator,” and drawn from the facts he had stated respecting the degradation of species. No one who has thoroughly studied Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion to the Course of Nature will venture to say that Mr. Miller’s suggestions are mere fancy. As the ideas are entirely original with him, I give them in his own words.

Having spoken of the several dynasties of animals that have succeeded one another on the globe, in a passage which we have already quoted, he says, “Passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dynasty of man in the mixed state and character is not the final one; but that there is to be yet another creation, or, more properly, re-creation, known theologically as the resurrection, which shall be connected in its physical components, by bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity, conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes superiority, shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of responsible man is superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We are further taught that, at the commencement of this last of the dynasties, there will be a re-creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded beings—a re-creation of the lost. We are taught yet further that, though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which at their first introduction were placed on higher ground than that on which they now stand, and sank by their own act, it was yet part of the original design, from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy the existing platform; and that redemption is thus no afterthought, rendered necessary by the fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general scheme, for which provision had been made from the beginning; so that the divine Man, through whom the work of restoration has been effected, was in reality, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, what he is designated in the remarkable text, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Slain from the foundation of the world! Could the assertors of the stony science ask for language more express? By piecing the two records together,—that revealed in Scripture and that revealed in the rocks,—records which, however widely geologists may mistake the one, or commentators misunderstand the other, have emanated from the same great Author,—we learn that in slow and solemn majesty has period succeeded period, each in succession, ushering in a higher and yet higher scene of existence; that fish, reptiles, mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn; that responsible man, ‘made in the image of God,’ and with dominion over all creatures, ultimately entered into a world ripened for his reception; but, further, that this passing scene, in which he forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long series, but merely the last of the preliminary scenes; and that that period to which the by-gone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their well-proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall have perfection for its occupant and eternity for its duration. I know not how it may appear to others, but for my own part I cannot avoid thinking that there would be a lack of proportion in the series of being, were the period of perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected, without the introduction of an intermediate creation of responsible imperfection with that of the dying, irresponsible brute. That scene of things in which God became man, and suffered, seems, as it no doubt is, a necessary link in the chain.”

A single concluding thought forces itself upon my mind. It is this: How ingenious and persevering men are in deluding themselves on the subject of religion! Since the time of Christ, what countless devices have they framed to escape from the lofty truths and spiritual piety of his gospel! Nor are they satisfied with this; for the gospel has shed so much light upon the religion of nature, that even this is more than men like; and, therefore, every science is ransacked for facts to neutralize all religion. Men’s consciences do not permit them to throw off all the forms of religion; and, therefore, they are satisfied if they can only tear out its heart. They like to preserve and to embalm its external covering, as the naturalist does the skin of an animal for his cabinet. And as the latter fills his specimen with straw and arsenic, and fits glass eyes into it, so do men fill up their religious specimen with error and vain speculation, and fit into its head the eyes of false philosophy, and then claim for it intellectual worship. It is the business of educated men to show that such caricatures are neither science nor religion. May you, gentlemen, have your full share in this most useful and noble work.[19]