ORGANIC GEOLOGICAL DYNAMICS. 569 



known course of events. The first origin of language, of civilization, 

 of law and government, cannot be clearly made out by reasoning and 

 research ; just as little, we may expect, will a knowledge of the origin 

 of the existing and extinct species of plants and animals, be the result 

 of physiological and geological investigation. 



But, though philosophers have never yet demonstrated, and perhaps 

 never will be able to demonstrate, what was that primitive state of 

 things in the social and material worlds, from which the progressive 

 state took its first departure ; they can still, in all the lines of research 

 to which we have referred, go very far back ; determine many of 

 the remote circumstances of the past sequence of events ; ascend to 

 a point which, from our position at least, seems to be near the origin ; 

 and exclude many suppositions respecting the origin itself. . Whether, 

 by the light of reason alone, men will ever be able to do more than 

 this, it is difficult to say. It is, I think, no irrational opinion, even on 

 grounds of philosophical analogy alone, that in all those sciences 

 which look back and seek a beginning of things, we may be unable 

 to arrive at a consistent and definite belief, without having recourse to 

 other grounds of truth, as well as to historical research and scientific 

 reasoning. When our thoughts would apprehend steadily the crea- 

 tion of things, we find that we are obliged to summon up other ideas 

 than those which regulate the pursuit of scientific truths ; to call in 

 other powers than those to which we refer natural events : it cannot, 

 then, be considered as very surprizing, if, in this part of our inquiry, 

 we are compelled to look for other than the ordinary evidence of 

 science. 



Geology, forming one of the palsetiological class of sciences, which 

 trace back the history of the earth and its inhabitants on philosophical 

 grounds, is thus associated with a number of other kinds of research, 

 which are concerned about language, law, art, and consequently about 

 the internal faculties of man, his thoughts, his social habits, his con- 

 ception of right, his love of beauty. Geology being thus brought into 

 the atmosphere of moral and mental speculations, it may be expected 

 that her investigations of the probable past will share an influence 

 common to them ; and that she will not be allowed to point to an 

 >rigin of her own, a merely physical beginning of things ; but that, 

 as she approaches towards such a goal, she will be led to see that it is 

 the origin of many trains of events, the point of convergence of many 

 lines. It may be, that instead of being allowed to travel up to this 

 iocus of being, we are only able to estimate its place and nature, and 



