46 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Applied within the limits of the time registered by the known 

 fraction of the crust of the earth, I believe that Uniformitariauism is 

 unassailable. The evidence that, in the enormous lapse of time be- 

 tween the deposition of the lowest Laiirentian strata and the present 

 day, the forces which have modified the surface of the crust of the 

 earth were diflferent in kind, or greater in the intensity of their action, 

 than those which are now occupied in the same work, has yet to be 

 produced. Such evidence as w'S possess all tends in the contrary 

 direction, and is in favor of the same slow and gradual changes occur- 

 ring then as now. 



But this conclusion in no wise conflicts with the deductions of the 

 physicist from his no less clear and certain data. It may be certain 

 that this globe has cooled down from a condition in which life could 

 not have existed ; it may be certain that, in so cooling, its contract- 

 ing crust must have undergone sudden convulsions, which were to our 

 earthquakes as an earthquake is to the vibration caused by the periodi- 

 cal eruption of a geyser ; but in that case the earth must, like other 

 respectable parents, have sowed her wild-oats, and got through her 

 turbulent youth, before we, her children, have any knowledge of her. 



So far as the evidence afibrded by the superficial crust of the earth 

 goes, the modern geologist can, ex animo, repeat the saying of Hut- 

 ton, " We find no vestige of a beginning no prospect of an end." 

 However, he will add, wdth Hutton, " But in thus tracing back the 

 natural operations which have succeeded each other, and mark to us 

 the course of time past, we come to a period in which we cannot see 

 any further." And if he seek to peer into the darkness of this period, 

 he will welcome the light profiered by physics and mathematics. 

 Contemporary Hevieic. 



EVOLUTION" A^^D THE AFTER-LIFE. 



Bt K. OSGOOD MASON, A. M., M. D. 



FEW persons are able to escape some form of belief in the exist- 

 ence of a soul. Whatever view we may take of its origin, grada- 

 tions, or development, whether the infinite soul, the human, the animal, 

 and the " soul of things," are each only manifestations in different 

 degrees of the same great principle, or each enlargement and refine- 

 ment in the ascending series is to be considered a development, or 

 whether nothing is to be dignified as soul except that wliich is mani- 

 fested through human forms whatever views we may have regard- 

 ing its limitations and destiny we cannot escape the conviction that 

 there is, in man at least, a distinct entity, a combination of faculties, 

 a blending of sensation, will, and wisdom, which we call soul. Its 

 powers, its modes of action, and its destiny, have been subjects of 



