ORGANIC GEOLOGICAL DYNAMICS. 633 



Geology, forming one of the palsetiological class 

 of sciences, which trace back the history of the 

 earth and its inhabitants on philosophical grounds, 

 is thus associated with a number of other kinds of 

 research, which are concerned about language, law, 

 art, and consequently about the internal faculties of 

 man, his thoughts, his social habits, his conception 

 of right, his love of beauty. Geology being thus 

 brought into the atmosphere of moral and mental 

 speculations, it may be expected that her investi- 

 gations of the probable past will share an influence 

 common to them ; and that she will not be allowed 

 to point to an origin of her own, a merely physical 

 beginning of things ; but that, as she approaches 

 towards such a goal, she will be led to see that it 

 is the origin of many trains of events, the point of 

 convergence of many lines. It may be, that instead 

 of being allowed to travel up to this focus of being, 

 we are only able to estimate its place and nature, 

 and to form of it such a judgment as this ; that 

 it is not only the source of mere vegetable and 

 animal life, but also of rational and social life, lan- 

 guage and arts, law and order ; in short, of all the 

 progressive tendencies by which the highest prin- 

 ciples of the intellectual and moral world have been 

 and are developed, as well as of the succession of 

 organic forms, which we find scattered, dead or 

 living, over the earth. 



This reflection concerning the natural scientific 

 view of creation, it will be observed, has not been 



