324 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



"untenable." The first is the theory held by many of 

 the Greek philosophers, though not by the greatest of 

 them, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, nor by the Stoics 

 and Eleatics, nor indeed by Xeniades, Democritus and 

 Epicurus, that the order of the world is eternal. The 

 lecturer showed, as has been done time and again by 

 others, that the succession of events in the past history 

 of the world, as revealed by geological science, is such 

 as necessarily implies a commencement, a beginning of 

 its organic history, and a beginning of its cosmical his- 

 tory. The second " untenable hypothesis " is that of " cre- 

 ation." For the purpose of making known his conception 

 of the "creation hypothesis" he assumes that which is 

 set forth in the epic of John Milton; and, after presenting 

 Milton's graphic though grotesque picture of the origin 

 of animal forms, proceeds, to show that it is not scienti- 

 fically exact. This was no difficult undertaking, since 

 there was probably not an intelligent person in his audi- 

 ence, or in the city of New York, who would maintain 

 that Milton's picture is a representation scientifically exact. 

 It is doubtful if the poet himself regarded it as a literal 

 history of events in detail. Milton employed a warm 

 and productive imagination, and it might be affirmed in 

 advance that the poet's pen would produce a picture whose 

 exuberance of metaphor would prove eminently distasteful 

 to cold and rigorous science. 



Now, we cannot refrain from expressing wonder that 

 a scientific gentleman, entering upon a scientific examina- 

 tion of theories of the origin of things, should pass by 

 every scientific or philosophic exposition of the " creation 

 theory, 1 ' and go complacently to the glowing picture of a 

 poetic imagination for the most rationally stated form of 



