CONTINUITY. 227 



experiment, and analogy, and yet reprehensible to apply the 

 same mode of investigation to the past history of the earth 

 and of the organic remains embalmed in it ? 



If we disbelieve in sudden creations of matter or force, in 

 the sudden formations of complex organisms now, if we now 

 assign to the heat of the sun an action enabling vegetables to 

 live by assimilating gases, carbon, and amorphous earths into 

 growing structures, why should such effects not have taken 

 place in earlier periods of the world's history, when the sun 

 shone as now, and when the same materials existed for his 

 rays to fall upon ? 



If we are satisfied that continuity is a law of nature, the 

 true expression of the action of Almighty Power, then, though 

 we may humbly confess our inability to explain why matter 

 is impressed with this tendency to gradual structural forma- 

 tion, we should cease to look for special interventions of 

 creative power in changes which are difficult to understand, 

 because, being removed from us in time, their concomitants 

 are lost ; we should endeavour from the relics to evoke their 

 history, and when we find a gap not try to bridge it over with 

 a miracle. 



If it be true that continuity pervades all physical pheno- 

 mena, the doctrine applied by Cuvier to the relations of the 

 different parts of an animal to each other might be capable 

 of great extension. All the phenomena of inorganic and 

 organised matter might be expected to be so inter-related 

 that the study of an isolated phenomenon would lead to a 

 knowledge of numerous other phenomena with which it is 

 connected. As the antiquary deduces from a monolith the 

 tools, the arts, the habits, and epoch of those by whom it is 

 wrought, so the student of science may deduce from a spark of 

 electricity or ray of light the source whence it is generated ; and 

 by similar processes of reasoning other phenomena hitherto 

 unknown may be deduced from their probable relation with 

 the known. But, as with heat, light, magnetism, and electri- 

 city, though we may study the phenomena to which these 

 names have been given, and their mutual relations, we know 

 nothing of their ultimate cause ; so, whether we adopt the view 

 of natural selection, of effort, of plasticity, &c., we know not 



Q 2 



