FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF ANIMALS 15 



the action of physical agents upon organized beings presupposes the 

 very existence of those beings. ^^ The simple fact that there has been 

 a period in the history of our earth, now well known to geologists/^ 

 when none of these organized beings as yet existed, and when, never- 

 theless, the material constitution of our globe, and the physical forces 

 acting upon it, were essentially the same as they are now,^'^ shows 

 that these influences are insufficient to call into existence any living 

 being. 



Physicists know, indeed, these physical agents more accurately 

 than the naturalists, who ascribe to them the origin of organized 

 beings; let us then ask them, whether the nature of these agents is 

 not specific, whether their mode of action is not specific? They will 



" A critical examination of this point may dispel much of the confusion which pre- 

 vails in the discussions relating to the influence of physical causes upon organized be- 

 ings. That there exist definite relations between animals as well as plants and the 

 mediums in which they live, no one at all familiar with the phenomena of the organic 

 world can doubt; that these mediums and all physical agents at work in nature have 

 a certain influence upon organized beings is equally plain. But before any such action 

 can take place and be felt, organized beings must exist. The problem before us in- 

 volves, therefore, two questions, the influence of physical agents upon animals and 

 plants already in existence, and the origin of these beings. Granting the influence of 

 these agents upon organized beings to the fullest extent to which it may be traced 

 (see Sect, xvi), there remains still the question of their origin upon which neither 

 argument nor observation has yet thrown any light. But according to some, they orig- 

 inated spontaneously by the immediate agency of physical forces and have become 

 successively more and more diversified by changes produced gradually upon them, by 

 these same forces. Others believe that there exist laws in nature which were established 

 by the Deity in the beginning, to the action of which the origin of organized beings may 

 be ascribed; while according to others, they owe their existence to the immediate in- 

 tervention of an intelligent Creator. It is the object of the following paragraphs to 

 show that there are neither agents nor laws in nature known to physicists under the 

 influence and by the action of which these beings could have originated; that, on the 

 contrary, the very nature of these beings and their relations to one another and to the 

 world in which they live exhibit thought and can therefore be referred only to the 

 immediate action of a thinking being, even though the manner in which they were 

 called into existence remains for the present a mystery. 



le pg^ geologists only may now be inclined to believe that the lowest strata known 

 to contain fossils are not the lowest deposits formed since the existence of organized 

 beings upon earth. But even those who would assume that still lower fossiliferous beds 

 may yet be discovered or may have entirely disappeared by the influence of plutonic 

 agencies (Powell, Essays, p. 424) must acknowledge the fact that everywhere in the 

 lowest rocks known to contain fossils at all there is a variety of them found together. 

 (See Sect. VII.) Moreover, the similarity in the character of the oldest fossils found in 

 different parts of the world goes far, in my opinion, to prove that we actually do 

 know the earliest types of the animal kingdom which have inhabited our globe. This 

 conclusion seems fully sustained by the fact that we find everywhere below this oldest 

 set of fossiliferous beds other stratified rocks in which no trace of organized beings 

 can be found. 



" See below. Sect, xxl 



