Nothingness of Material and Pantheistical Theories. 31 



carefully studied, I may be permitted to pause for an instant, 

 and consider the consequences which directly flow, in a 

 theoretical point of view, from so many scrupulously examined 

 facts. And, in the first place, it is evident that, from the 

 most ancient times, all the classes of invertebrate animals 

 have been represented on the surface of the globe ; that they 

 have all presented from the first a great diversity of generic 

 and specific forms ; that this variety is in no respect less, if 

 we take into account all the conditions of their preservation, 

 and all the difficulties of observation, than that of the species 

 of a local fauna belonging to the present creation, circum- 

 scribed within limits corresponding to the extent of the sur- 

 face of the palaeozoic formations hitherto examined ; that the 

 number of these fossils is certainly as considerable as that 

 of the lists of living species which were published, scarcely 

 half a century ago, as complete enumerations of the animals 

 of well known countries. I shall merely mention, as ex- 

 amples, the various faunas of Europe at the end of the last 

 century, or even those of Brazil, Egypt, Arabia, and the In- 

 dies, and the lists of palaeozoic fossils published by Messrs J. 

 Phillips, De Verneuil and D'Archiac, or those which accom- 

 pany M. Murchison's work on the Silurian system. 



These facts, now as well established as facts of this nature 

 can be, clearly shew the impossibility of referring the first 

 inhabitants of the earth to a small number of original stocks, 

 which have become diversified under the modifying influence 

 of external conditions of existence. They point out to us, as 

 with the finger, the direct intervention of a creative Intelli- 

 gence, anterior to the existence of all beings, who has or- 

 dained their relations, determined their development, and di- 

 rected their successive appearance, up to the establishment 

 of the order of things which now prevails in the world. These 

 facts also prove the nothingness of all material and panthe- 

 istical theories, which ascribe to finite beings a self-existing 

 power, and make them depend solely on indeterminate ex- 

 terior influences. 



When I commenced the publication of my researches on 

 fossil fishes, I was acquainted with no species more ancient 

 than those of the coal formation, and even with a very 



