PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. xlvii 



succession of forms in certain orders, so as to make a very conceiv- 

 able organic scale as regards those orders. We have just seen that 

 Professor Agassiz avows his belief that " the chief features of the 

 order of succession in which animals were gradually introduced upon 

 our globe" are conformable both to a true classification of animals, 

 and the embryonic changes undergone by the highest. In our 

 Proofs and Illustrations, nearly every order of the Invertebrata is 

 thus exhibited, upon authority of the highest kind, in the most 

 perfect connexion with geological time. When the candid reader 

 has perused these examples, he will be enabled to appreciate the 

 intellectual probity of Professor Sedgwick, in alleging that the advo- 

 cates of development can only give a, semblance of truth to their 

 theory " by reconstructing, hypothetically, a chain of being out of 

 the organic fragments of the old world," etc. 



It may be well, moreover, for the reader to bear in mind that the 

 doctrine here condemned receives a certain degree of support from 

 Professor Sedgwick himself. It will be found that, in another part 

 of his pamphlet, he expresses his belief that "the origin of the 

 organic world was determined by law," partly on the ascertained 

 historical development of the forms and functions of organic life 

 during successive epochs, which seems to mark a gradual evolution 

 of Creative Power, manifested by a gradual ascent towards a higher 

 type of being." So he negatives on one page the question, " Do the 

 organic types of the old world follow one another chronologically in 

 such a manner as to arrange themselves on any conceivcible organic 

 scale, whether simple or complicated?" And he admits, on another, 

 " a development of forms and functions" throughout geological time, 

 marking " a gradual ascent to a higher type of being." What can 

 we understand from all this, but that, " widely separated, broken, 

 and disjointed" as the phenomena of geology are, he is unable to 

 deny that there is an order in them after all ? Verily, he is the 

 most obliging of controversialists, for if he denies any essential fact 

 of his author at one place, he is pretty sure to give it his sanction 

 at another, and a little trouble in the re-arrangement of his ideas is 

 enough to bring him into tolerable harmony with the theory he 

 condemns. 



" On a scheme like this [of development] there is," says Professor 

 Sedgwick, " neither sobriety in nature's movements, nor constancy 

 in her laws." It " calls on us to believe in a series of miracles (for 

 what is a miracle but a violation of the ordinary course of nature ?) ; 

 and it puts our language out of all true co-ordination with our 

 knowledge. We use the word law to define the ascertained orderly 

 movements in nature, whether animate or inanimate ; and the suc- 

 cessive changes we contemplate are connected in our minds under 

 the ideas of material cause and material effect. But the moment we 

 are led to speculate on the beginning of things whether it be the 

 beginning of a solar system, or the beginning of some new order of 

 organic life we are inevitably led to a conception of the First Cause, 

 and we define the fact now under contemplation by the word creation." 



