CONTINUITY. 229 



how did it become what it is ? by what steps of change, by 

 what mode of force did the substance, the phenomenon, the 

 organism, the habit or the event arise ?] 



The superiority of Man over other animals inhabiting this 

 planet, of civilised over savage man, and of the more civilised 

 over the less civilised, is proportioned to the extent which his 

 thought can grasp of the past and of the future. His memory 

 reaches farther back, his capability of prediction reaches 

 farther forward in proportion as his knowledge increases. He 

 has not only personal memory which brings to his mind at 

 will the events of his individual life he has history, the 

 memory of the race; he has geology, the history of this 

 planet ; he has astronomy, the geology of other worlds. 

 Whence does the conviction to which I have alluded, that each 

 material form bears in itself the records of its past history, 

 arise ? Is it not from the belief in continuity ? Does not the 

 worn hollow in the rock record the action of the tide, its 

 stratified layers the slow deposition by which it was formed, 

 the organic remains imbedded in it, the beings living at the 

 times these layers were deposited, so that from a fragment of 

 stone we can get the history of a period myriads of years ago ? 

 From a fragment of bronze we may get the history of our 

 race at a period antecedent to tradition. As science advances 

 our power of reading such history improves and is extended. 

 Saturn's ring may help us to a knowledge of how our solar 

 system developed itself, for it as surely contains that history 

 as the rock contains the record of its own formation. 



By this patient investigation how much have we already 

 learned, which the most civilised of ancient human races 

 ignored ! While in ethics, in politics, in poetry, in sculpture, 

 in painting, we have scarcely, if at all, advanced beyond the 

 highest intellects of ancient Greece or Italy, how great are the 

 steps we have made in physical science and its applications ! 



But how much more may we not expect to know ! 



We, this evening assembled, Ephemera as we are, have 

 learned by transmitted labour, to weigh, as in a balance, other 

 worlds larger and heavier than our own, to know the length 

 of their days and years, to measure their enormous distance 

 from us and from each other, to detect and accurately ascertain 



