246 SPECULATIVE SCIENCE 



in some regions do not preclude temperate climates in others, 

 and after all the evidence of tranquillity is very slight. There 

 are coarse deposits as well as fine ones ; now a varying current 

 sifts a deposit better than a thousand sieves, the large stones fall 

 first in a rapid torrent, then the gravel in a rapid stream, then 

 the coarse sand, and finally the fine silt cannot get deposited 

 till it meets with still water. And still water might assuredly 

 exist at the bottom of oceans, the surface of which was traversed 

 by storms and waves of an intensity unknown to us. The 

 soundings in deep seas invariably produce samples of almost 

 intangible ooze. All coarser materials are deposited before they 

 reach regions of such deathlike stillness, and this would always 

 be so. As to the plants, they may have grown within a yard of 

 red-hot gneiss. 



Another class of objections to the line of argument pursued 

 consists in the suggestion that it is impossible to prove that since 

 the creation things always have been as they are. Thus, one 

 man says : ' Ah, but the world and planetary system may have 

 passed through a warm region of space, and then your deduc- 

 tions from the radiation of heat into space go for nothing ; or, a 

 fresh supply of heat and fuel may have been supplied by regular 

 arrivals of comets or other fourgons ; or the sun and centre of 

 the earth may be composed of materials utterly dissimilar to 

 any we are acquainted with, capable of evolving heat from a 

 limited space at a rate which we have no example of, leaving 

 coal or gunpowder at an infinite distance behind them. Or it 

 may please the Creator to continue creating energy in the form 

 of heat at the centre of the sun and earth ; or the mathematical 

 laws of cooling and radiation, and conservation of energy and 

 dissipation of energy, may be actually erroneous, since man is, 

 after all, fallible.' Well, we suppose all these things may be true, 

 but we decline to allow them the slightest weight in the argument 

 until some reason can be shown for believing that any one of 

 them is true. 



To resume the arguments in this chapter : Darwin's theory 

 requires countless ages, during which the earth shall have been 

 habitable, and he claims geological evidence as showing an incon- 

 ceivably great lapse of time, and as not being in contradiction 

 with inconceivably greater periods than are even geologically 



