Professor Pictet on the Distribution of Fossils. 269 



' historian ; and some authors have believed that they could 

 discern, in the days of the creation, the traces of great geolo- 

 gical epochs. 



On the other hand, philosophers who ascribe the actual 

 state of the organization on the surface of the globe, to a 

 gradual progress to perfection of inferior organisms in the 

 series of time — who believe in spontaneous generation — and 

 who admit the possibility of species passing from one form 

 to another, under the variable influence of exterior agents, 

 and the media in which they live — hailed with delight an 

 idea which seemed to retrace, by real and visible monuments, 

 the various phases of this organic developement. 



It is not, then, surprising, that, under the influence of 

 these theological and philosophical agreements, the idea of 

 a gradual progress to perfection in the organization of ani- 

 mals, should have speedily struck its roots deep, and that, 

 in the infancy of science, eager attempts should have been 

 made to connect the known facts with it. But if, now that 

 correct observations are more numerous, we should attempt, 

 without permitting ourselves to be dazzled with the bril- 

 liancy of these theories, to discuss them coolly and con- 

 scientiously, we shall be obliged to divest them of nearly all 

 their generalities, and reduce them to very slender propor- 

 tions. We shall soon perceive that the law, such as we 

 have expressed it, can aff"ord only a false and incomplete 

 idea of facts, which it either distorts or exaggerates. 



In order to shew this, it is proper, in the first instance, to 

 form a precise idea of the circumstances which ought to 

 make us regard one organization as superior to another, and 

 to inquire how the beings of the present world appear in 

 this point of view. 



The idea of gradual advance to perfection in organization, 

 is connected more or less with the theory of a scale of beings ; 

 that is to say, with the opinion that all animals form a series, 

 from man down to the most imperfect being, in which each 

 species, less perfect than that which preceded, and more so 

 than that which follows it, would form a link in an uninter- 

 rupted chain. This idea of a scale of beings is founded on 

 the evident fact, that there are various degrees of perfection 



