162 DARWINIANA 



most unlimited manner. He is not peculiar in this 

 regard. Mr. Agassiz tells us that the conviction 

 is " now universal, among well-informed naturalists, 

 that this globe has been in existence for innumerable 

 ages, and that the length of time elapsed since it first 

 became inhabited cannot be counted in years;" Pic- 

 tet, that the imagination refuses to calculate the im- 

 mense number of years and of ages during which the 

 faunas of thirty or more epochs have succeeded one 

 another, and developed their long succession of gen- 

 erations. Now, the reviewer declares that such indefi- 

 nite succession of ages is " virtually infinite," "lacks 

 no characteristic of eternity except its name," at least, 

 that "the difference between such a conception and 

 that of the strictly infinite, if any, is not appreciable." 

 But infinity belongs to metaphysics. Therefore, he 

 concludes, Darwin supports his theory, not by scien- 

 tific but by metaphysical evidence ; his theory is " es- 

 sentially and completely metaphysical in character, rest- 

 ing altogether upon that idea of ' the infinite ' which 

 the human mind can neither put aside nor compre- 

 hend." l And so a theory which will be generally 

 regarded as much too physical is transferred by a 

 single syllogism to metaphysics. 



Well, physical geology must go with it : for, even 

 on the soberest view, it demands an indefinitely long 

 time antecedent to the introduction of organic life 

 upon our earth. A fortiori is physical astronomy a 

 branch of metaphysics, demanding, as it does, still 

 larger " instalments of infinity," as the reviewer calls 

 them, both as to time and number. Moreover, far the 



1 North American Review , loc. cil., p. 487, et passim. 



