DR. WHEWELL'S PAL.ETIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 1'27 



have to seek for an ancient and different class of 

 causes, as affecting them, from any which are now 

 seen operating. " In no palaetiological science," 

 >ays he, " has man been able to arrive at a begin- 

 ning which is homogeneous with the known course 

 of events. We can, in such sciences, often go very 

 far back, determine many of the remote circum- 

 stances of the past series of events, ascend to a 

 point which seems to be near their origin, and 

 limit the hypothesis respecting the origin itself; 

 but philosophers have never demonstrated, and, 

 so far as we can judge, probably never will be 

 able to demonstrate, what was the primitive state 

 of things from which the progressive coiu-se of the 

 world took its first departure. In all tliese 

 paths of research, when we travel far backwards, 

 the aspect of the earlier portions becomes very 

 different from that of the advanced part on which 

 we now stand ; but in all cases the path is lost in 

 obscurity as it is traced backwards to its starting 

 point : it becomes not only invisible, but unima- 

 ginable ; it is not only an interruption, but an 

 M abyss which interposes itself between us and any 

 intelligible beginning of things."* 



* Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, apttd Indications of 

 the Creator. 



