become familiarized to our mind. But the value of the book in question is, that it is a clear and connected statement of a very common tendency of thought. In the main, it is concise, attractive and well-sustained; in some parts, forcible, striking and even eloquent. The theory we do not consider to be as new as the author himself regards it. For its elaborate statement and defence, and for the prominence with which the points of discussion now stand out before the public mind, we are indebted to him. Every statement he has made may be denied, and each argument he has used may be successively confuted; but the tendency he represents will still remain. An excessive generalizing of the scope and agency of natural law, till it seems to absorb and blot out every other power in the universe, will be a prevailing habit of many minds; and some, in spite of every confutation and denial, will welcome and apply the conclusions of this very book. And say what we will, the researches of modern science afford much apparent justification to such a tendency. Now how shall this state of things be met? Allowing every argument, conceding the plausibility of the author's whole scheme, how are the great topics of life and duty affected by it? This is the question which we shall keep steadily in sight, and answer as clearly as we can. The author's position and purpose we shall first state, as nearly as we can, in his own words. The special hypotheses, (such as the nebulous origin of the globe, and "organic creation in the manner of natural law,") are subordinate to the main object of the work. This is, to show that "the whole revelation of the works of God is based in LAW; by which, however, is not meant a system independent or exclusive of Deity, but one which only proposes a certain mode of his working." This "has long been pointed to by science, though hardly anywhere broadly and fully contemplated." "The time seems to have come," he says, "when it is proper to enter into a re-examination of the whole subject, in order to ascertain whether in what we actually know, there is most evidence in favor of an entire or a partial system of fixed order. When led to make this inquiry for myself, I soon became convinced that the idea of any exception to the plan of law stood upon a narrow and constantly narrowing foundation, depending, 1846.] Theory of the Earth. 335 indeed, on a few difficulties or obscurities, rather than objections, which were certain soon to be swept away by the advancing tide of knowledge. It appeared, at the same time, that there was a want in the state of philosophy amongst us, of an impulse in the direction of the consideration of this theory, so as to bring its difficulties the sooner to a bearing in the one way or the other; and hence it was that I presumed to enter the field." — Sequel, pp. 2, 3. When we consider that the theory he maintains has been the object, on the one hand, of the most indiscriminate admiration and defence, and, on the other, of equally indiscriminate censure, ridicule and even abuse, the difficulty of making a fair statement of it is very apparent. It adds to the difficulty, that while the one part have sustained and further carried out unimportant inferences and hints, which make the moral bearing of the book apparently doubtful and even repulsive, the other part have most needlessly sought to obscure or deny very harmless positions, which, but for this controversy, no one would ever have thought of disputing. To proceed to the author's theory. It begins with that magnificent cosmogony, which blends together the last results of almost the whole circle of the sciences. Setting out with the nebulous hypothesis of Herschel and Laplace, he brings us to the time when the earth was a great whirling globe of molten fire. Then he traces down the series of geological phenomena by which its surface was brought to its present form. The slow hardening of the first rugged crust, heaved and shaken by the fiery waves beneath; the dusky, sultry cloud of vapors, gradually settling into clearness, while with raging storms torrents of water poured down into the depths from the cliff-sides, carrying with them great beds of the torn and crumbling mass; the vast simmering sea, resting on a hot, unstable bottom, and for long ages boiling down the river-deposits into solid "primary strata;" the terrific convulsions with which, at distant intervals, these were upheaved by earthquakes,-compared to which those of the present day are but the slight returning shudder after a strong man's convulsions earthquakes submerging whole continents and changing sea into land; the swelling and rending and swaying to and fro of those solid fetters, by which the vast deep was at length securely chained; then the clustering mosses and numberless varieties of shells, marking the introduction of life upon the new-formed earth; the enormous forests of palm and gigantic fern, which were one after another sunk and folded together like a leaf into thick coal-beds, by the terrific forces of the great deep; the shoals of fishes; the swarms of gigantic reptiles; the strange and uncouth forms of "beasts and creeping things innumerable;" the gradual advance made, as the continents became settled and the air more clear, towards higher forms of animated being; and the preparation thus going on, through countless centuries, for the future habitation of the lord of all this wondrous creation; these furnish the outline of that "biography of the earth." They are detailed, though not with any beauty or force of imagination, yet with a clearness and method which make them attractive, even through their driest scientific details, in the opening chapters of the work. We We have thus traced rapidly, keeping as near as possible to the author's leading idea, the general course of those marvellous changes, through which that great cloud of "fire-mist," or that ball of surging flame, had to pass. are led on, step by step, through the gradations of being that successively appear, till we come down to the present appearance of the earth. Here we find the clear air, the drifting cloud, the pouring river, the diversities of climate; the countless multitude of living things, life swarming in every nook, and oozing out at every pore; the various species of plants or animals, themselves countlessly diversified, and each exquisitely adapted to the spot it must inhabit; the many elements, single or in numberless combinations, nicely adjusted, and distributed with amazing forethought and accurate, proportion; those subtle agents, electricity and light, half matter half spirit, darting with the speed of thought from place to place, the hands and eyes, as it were, of Omnipotence itself; life everywhere, harmonized, balanced, restrained and provided for; - such is the grand, crowning display, for which all the rest was but a course of preparation, ordained of eternity, in the counsels of the Most High. It would be injustice here not to quote the author's words. "And what a preconception or forethought have we here! For let us only for a moment consider how various are the exter 1846.] Divine Forethought in Creation. 337 nal physical conditions in which animals live-climate, soil, temperature, land, water, air: the peculiarities of food, and the various ways in which it is to be sought: the peculiar circumstances in which the business of reproduction and the caretaking of the young are to be attended to all these requiring to be taken into account, and thousands of animals to be formed, suitable in organization and mental character for the concerns they were to have with these various conditions and circumstances, - here a tooth fitted for crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a hook for suspension; here to repress teeth and develope a bony net-work instead; there to arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only for a certain brief time: let us, I say, only consider these things, and we shall see that the decreeing of laws to bring the whole about was an act involving such a degree of wisdom and device as we only can attribute, adoringly, to the one Eternal and Unchangeable. It may be asked, how does this reflection comport with that timid philosophy which would have us to draw back from the investigation of God's works, lest the knowledge of them should make us undervalue his greatness, and forget his paternal character?" — Vestiges, p. 178. Such is a slender outline of the scheme of creation displayed in the earth on which we dwell. It is to the hidden plan of this, that science seeks to find a clue. It is through the mazes of this, that the author of the work before us studies to find the foot-prints of the mysterious power that framed it; the "vestiges of the natural history of creation." What order does all this follow? Are all the parts mutually connected and dependent? Do all result from the same fiat of the Almighty will? Have the method and rule of succession been appointed from the beginning; and is what we see, in its overwhelming complexity, but the development of one unchanging plan? Consider that "the great globe itself and all that it inhabit," make but a single unnoticed speck in a vast "sand-cloud" of myriads of firmaments each perhaps as glorious and varied as that which sparkles in its immensity above us in the winter sky. Have we any hint, can we find any trace of order, that shall justify us in saying that the whole flood of life, the whole solemn march of evolution, is but the uniform, unbroken progression of one thought of God? Such, we conceive, is the question which the author of this volume, in no irreverent spirit, has attempted to solve. Such is the intricate obscurity in which he has undertaken to trace the steady lines of a certain order, and an all-enfolding plan. The immensity and overpowering vastness of the whole problem of the universe must be kept in view, if we would do justice to the man, or understand the nature of the task he has set himself about. Let us fairly see and meet the difficulty which he attempts to solve. On the one hand, the minutely perfect adaptation of each thing to its sphere, the numberless marks of benevolent forethought everywhere shown, the wonderful balance maintained among so many conflicting elements, and the steady advance everywhere manifest towards higher and higher forms of being, compel us to acknowledge the wisdom and love that rule in all, and to lift our thoughts towards an intelligent Creator. On the other hand, every mind experiences a difficulty, which cannot be got over, in referring each single thing to the immediate and, so to speak, mechanical agency of the Infinite. This speculative difficulty indicates the position, from which the main argument of the work proceeds. To use the words of Cudworth, "In the judgment of the writer it is not so decorous in respect of God neither, that he should set his own hand, as it were, to every work, and immediately do all the meanest and triflingest things himself drudgingly; * * * from whence it would follow also, that they are all done either forcibly and violently, or else artificially only, and none of them by any inward principle of their own.' ""** We state the difficulty in the words of Cudworth, rather than of this writer, both as being less invidious, and as showing that it has always pressed upon a certain class of minds. For ourselves, we do not like the statement. We know that it can be instantly met by the question, — how does anything, too trivial or too painful to be regarded as an immediate creation, change its character, when provided for, ages beforehand, in an undeviating counsel? How is a disease or a monster accounted for, (suppose our mind startled and pained by it,) by throwing its creation back indefinitely, or by referring it, as Cudworth does, to an inferior "plastic nature?" And so the difficulty still re mains. * Intellectual System. Ch. III. § 37. 4. |