314 GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES 
deem it capable of producing a higher example; and, while 
we are thus reasoning, man appears upon creation, —a crea- 
ture immeasurably superior to all the others, and whose very 
nature it is to make use of his experience of the past for his 
guidance in the future. And if that only be solid experience 
or just reasoning which enables man truly to anticipate the 
events which are to come, and so to make provision for them, 
and if that experience be not solid, and that reasoning not 
just, which would serve but to darken his discernment, and 
prevent him from correctly predicating the cast and complex- 
ion of coming events, what ought to be his decision regarding 
an argument which, had it been employed in each of the van- 
ished creations of the past, would have had but the effect of 
arresting all just anticipation regarding the creation imme- 
diately succeeding, and which, thus reversing the main end 
and object of philosophy, would render the philosopher who 
clung to it less sagacious in divining the future than even the 
ordinary man? But, in truth, the existing premises, wholly 
altered by geologic science, are no longer those of Hume. 
The foot-print of his unhappy illustration does not now stand 
alone. Instead of one, we see many foot-prints, each in ad- 
vance of and on a higher level than the print immediately 
behind it ; and, founding at once on an acquaintance with the 
past, extended throughout all the periods of the geologist, and 
on that instinet of our nature whose peculiar function it is to 
anticipate at least one creation more, we must regard the expec- 
tation of “a new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness,” as not unphilosophic, but as, on the contrary, 
altogether rational, and fully according to experience. 
