I 



IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 257 



In the first place, it existed as a wild dream ere Geology had 

 any being as a science. It was an antecedent, not a conse- 

 quent, — a starting assumption, not a result. No one will 



possibly you may have more readers similarly constituted) who not only 

 cannot see any great difference between merely physical and organic 

 development [! !], but who would be inclined to allow the latter, absurd 

 as it is, the advantage in point of likelihood. [! ! !] The author of the 

 * Rambles,' however, in the face of this, assures us that his views of 

 physical seK-development and long chronology belong to the inductive 

 sciences. Now, I could at this stage of his rambles have wished very 

 much that, instead of merely saying so, he had given his demonstration. 

 He refers, indeed, to several great men, who, he says, are of his opinions. 

 Most that these men have written on the question at issue I have seen, 

 but it appeared far from demonstrative, and some of them, I know, had 

 not fully made up their mind on the point. [! ! !] Perhaps the author of 

 the * Rambles' could favour us with the inductive process that converted 

 himself ; and, as the attainment of truth, and not victory, is my object, 

 I promise either to acquiesce in or rationally refute it. [?] Till then I 

 hold by my antiquated tenets, that our world, nay, the whole material 

 universe, was created about six or seven thousand years ago, and that 

 in a state of physical excellence of which we have in our present fallen 

 world only the * vestiges of creation. ' I conclude by mentioning that this 

 view I have held now for nearly thirty years, and, amidst all the vicissi- 

 tudes of the philosophical world during that period, I have never seen 

 cause to change it. Of course, with this view I was, during the interval 

 referred to, a constant opponent of the once famous, though now ex- 

 ploded, nebular hypothesis of La Place ; and I yet expect to see physical 

 development and long chronology wither also on this earth, now that their 

 BOOT (the said hypothesis) has been eradicated from the sky. [! ! !] — I am. 

 Sir, your most obedient servant, 



" Philalethes."* 



I am afraid there is little hope of converting a man who has held so 

 stoutly by his notions *' for nearly thirty years ;" especially as, during 

 that period, he has been acquainting himself with what writers such as 

 Drs Chalmers, Buckland, and Pye Smith have written on the other side. 



* It now appears that, though this letter was inserted in the " Scottish 

 Press," the organ of the United Presbyterians, its writer is a Free Church- 

 man. He has since published a good many other anti-geological letters, 

 chiefly remarkable for their facts, to which, with a self-immolating zeal 

 worthy of a better cause, he has attached his name. 



K 



