DIVERSIFIED TYPES FOUND EVERYWHERE. 



17 



has been a period in the history of our earth, now well 

 known to geologists, 1 when none of these organized beings 

 as yet existed, and when, nevertheless, the material con- 

 stitution of our globe and the physical forces acting upon 

 it were essentially the same as they are now, 2 shows that 

 these influences are insufficient to call into existence any 

 living being. 



point may dispel much of the confu- 

 sion which prevails in the discussions 

 relating to the influence of physical 

 causes upon organized beings. That 

 there exist definite relations between 

 animals as well as plants and the 

 mediums in which they live, no one 

 at all familiar with the phenomena 

 of the organic world can doubt ; that 

 these mediums, and all physical 

 agents at work in nature, have a cer- 

 tain influence upon organized beings, 

 is equally plain. But, before any such 

 action can take place and be felt, 

 organized beings must exist. The 



O O 



problem before us involves, there- 

 fore, two questions, the influence of 

 physical agents upon animals and 

 plants already iu existence, and the 

 origin of these beings. Granting the 

 influence of these agents upon organ- 

 ized beings to the fullest extent to 

 which it may be traced (see Sect. 

 16), there remains still the question 

 of their origin, upon which neither 

 argument nor observation has yet 

 thrown any light. But, according to 

 some, they originated spontaneously 

 by the immediate agency of physical 

 forces, and have become successively 

 more and more diversified by changes 

 produced gradually upon them by 

 these same forces. Others believe that 

 there exist laws in nature which were 

 established by the Deity in the be- 

 ginning, to the action of which the 

 origin of organized beings may be 

 ascribed ; while, according to others, 

 they owe their existence to the im- 

 mediate intervention of an intelli- 

 gent Creator. It is the object of the 

 following paragraphs to show that 



there are neither agents nor Jaws in 

 nature known to physicists, under the 

 influence, and by the action of which, 

 these beings could have originated ; 

 that, on the contrary, the very nature 

 of these beings and their relations 

 to one another and to the world in 

 which they live exhibit thought, and 

 can therefore be referred only to the 

 immediate action of a thinking being, 

 even though the manner in which 

 they were called into existence re- 

 mains for the present a mystery. 



1 Few geologists only may now be 

 inclined to believe that the lowest 

 strata known to contain fossils are 

 not the lowest deposits formed since 

 the existence of organized beings 

 upon earth. But, even those who 

 would assume that still lower fos- 

 siliferous beds may yet be disco- 

 vered, or may have entirely disap- 

 peared, by the influence of plutouic 

 agencies (POWELL'S Essays, etc., p. 

 424), must acknowledge the fact, 

 that, everywhere in the lowest rocks 

 known to contain fossils at all, there 

 is a variety of them found together. 

 (See Sect. 7.) Moreover, the simi- 

 larity in the character of the oldest 

 fossils found in different parts of the 

 world goes far, in my opinion, to 

 prove that we actually do know the 

 earliest types of the animal kingdom 

 which have inhabited our globe. This 

 conclusion seems fully sustained by 

 the fact, that we find everywhere, 

 below this oldest set of fossiliferous 

 beds, other stratified rocks, in which 

 no trace of organized beings can be 

 found. 



2 See below, Sect. 21. 







