HUGH MILLER 129 



be said emphatically to teach one thing, that the sins of 

 the fathers are visited upon the children. With Cole- 

 ridge, therefore, he regards the Fall as a necessary stage 

 in the history of thought and of man. The creation of 

 the non-absolute gives a pivot without which all subse- 

 quent events would be inexplicable. It gives the true 

 means of colligating the phenomena : Man, if at the 

 Fall he lost Eden, gained a conscience and a moral 

 sense. 



More remarkable is his attempted reconciliation of 

 science and the Mosaic cosmogony. Chalmers had 

 regarded the Biblical account as relating only to existing 

 creations, and believed in the existence of a chaotic 

 period of death and darkness between this present 

 world and the prior geological ages. Pye Smith, on the 

 other hand, had regarded chaos as both temporary and 

 limited in extent, and believed that outside this area 

 there had existed lands and seas basking in light and 

 occupied by animals. But subsequent geological know- 

 ledge had shown that this theory of cataclysms and 

 breaks was without evidence many of the present 

 plants and animals co-existing with those of the former 

 periods ; nor could Smith's theory of light existing 

 round the coasts of the earth be brought to square with 

 the distinct statement of the primal creation of light in 

 Genesis. On the other hand, Miller notices that 

 geology, as dealing not with the nature of things, but 

 only with their actual manifestations, has to do with 

 but three of the six days or periods. The scale of all 



