186 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [x. 



the position of a scientific Tantalus doomed always to thirst for 

 a knowledge which he cannot obtain ? The reverse is to be 

 hoped ; nay, it may not be impossible to indicate the source 

 whence help will come. 



In commencing these remarks, mention was made of the great 

 obligations under which the naturalist lies to the geologist and 

 palaeontologist. Assuredly the time will come when these 

 obligations will be repaid tenfold, and when the maze of the 

 world s past history, through which the pure geologist and the 

 pure palaeontologist find no guidance, will be securely threaded 

 by the clue furnished by the naturalist. 



All who are competent to express an opinion on the subject 

 are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and 

 vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, 

 nor result from capricious exertions of creative power ; but that 

 they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which 

 order is what men of science term a natural law. Whether such 

 a law is to be regarded as an expression of the mode of operation 

 of natural forces, or whether it is simply a statement of the 

 manner in which a supernatural power has thought fit to act, is 

 a secondary question, so long as the existence of the law and the 

 possibility of its discovery by the human intellect are granted. 

 But he must be a half-hearted philosopher who, believing in that 

 possibility, and having watched the gigantic strides of the 

 biological sciences during the last twenty years, doubts that 

 science will sooner or later make this further step, so as to 

 become possessed of the law of evolution of organic forms of 

 the unvarying order of that great chain of causes and effects of 

 which all organic forms, ancient and modern, are the links. 

 And then, if ever, we shall be able to begin to discuss, with 

 profit, the questions respecting the commencement of life, and 

 the nature of the successive populations of the globe, which so 

 many seem to think are already answered. 



The preceding arguments make no particular claim to novelty ; 

 indeed they have been floating more or less distinctly before the 



