Mineral Causes. 119 



prosaic thing as cooking ; showing how artificial as 

 well as natural products are subject to the same in- 

 violable laws. 



The importance of time in natural operations has 

 hitherto been ignored, save by evolutionists, yet its 

 causal effects are startling. As a rule, the com- 

 plexity, size, and beauty of a product are in a corres- 

 ponding ratio to the time of its formation. Simple 

 products, because involving few and simple motions, 

 require a short time ; while complex products and 

 organisms, involving innumerable and intricate motions, 

 require a long time. For example, a salt crystal 

 may be deposited in a second, while a baby in its 

 metamorphoses occupies nine months. In pre-evolu- 

 tion days, men credited a Deity with creating a man 

 in an instant by the word of His power; now, we 

 know that the machinery of nature itself would stop 

 before such a miracle could be accomplished. 



(e) The immutability of law and form is well 

 exemplified in crystals, even in seeming exceptions 

 to the general rule. For example, in the hundreds of 

 diverse forms displayed by calc-spar, the parent type 

 is not lost, but hidden, for cleavage invariably reveals 

 it. It is thus worthy of note, that the phenomena of 

 " variation and reversion to an original type " appear 

 for the first time in crystalline production ; a fact 

 conveying a significant bearing on present evolution- 

 ary problems. 



