194 ON THE RECEPTION OF 



Smith, that successive strata are characterised by different 

 kinds of fossil remains, became a firmly established law of 

 nature. No one has set forth the speculative consequences 

 of this generalisation better than the historian of the ' Induc- 

 tive Sciences ' : 



" But the study of geology opens to us the spectacle of 

 many groups of species which have, in the course of the earth's 

 history, succeeded each other at vast intervals of time ; one 

 set of animals and plants disappearing, as it would seem, 

 from the face of our planet, and others, which did not before 

 exist, becoming the only occupants of the globe. And the 

 dilemma then presents itself to us anew : either we must 

 accept the doctrine of the transmutation of species, and must 

 suppose that the organized species of one geological epoch 

 were transmuted into those of another by some long-con- 

 tinued agency of natural causes ; or else, we must believe in 

 many successive acts of creation and extinction of species, 

 out of the common course of nature ; acts which, therefore, 

 we may properly call miraculous." * 



Dr. Whewell decides in favour of the latter conclusion. And 

 if any one had plied him with the four questions which he 

 puts to Lyell in the passage already cited, all that can be said 

 now is that he would certainly have rejected the first. But 

 would he really have had the courage to say that a Rhinoceros 

 ticJwrJiinus, for instance, " was produced without parents ; " or 

 was " evolved from some embryo substance ; " or that it 

 suddenly started from the ground like Milton's lion "pawing 

 to get free his hinder parts " ? I permit myself to doubt 

 whether even the Master of Trinity's well-tried courage 

 physical, intellectual, and moral would have been equal to 

 this feat. No doubt the sudden concurrence of half-a-ton of 

 inorganic molecules into a live rhinoceros is conceivable, and 

 therefore may be possible. But does such an event lie 



* Whevvell's f History of the In- vol. iii. p. 624-625. See, for the 

 ductive Sciences.' Ed. ii., 1847, author's verdict, pp. 638-39. 



