63 



But we likewise, by these investigations, gain a still more im- 

 portant truth, viz. that the phenomena of the world do not succeed 

 each other with the mechanical sameness attributed to them in the 

 cycles of the Epicurean philosophy; for we are able to demonstrate 

 that the different epochs of the earth were attended with corre- 

 sponding changes of organic structure; and that, in all these in- 

 stances of change, the organs, as far as we could comprehend their 

 use, were exactly those best suited to the functions of the being. 

 Hence we not only show intelligence evoking means adapted to 

 the end; but, at successive times and periods, producing a change 

 of mechanism adapted to a change in external conditions. Thus 

 the highest generalizations in the science of organic bodies, like the 

 Newtonian laws of universal matter, lead to the unequivocal con- 

 viction of a great First Cause, which is certainly not mechanical. 



Unfettered by narrow restrictions, unchecked by the timid 

 and unworthy fears of mistrustful minds, clinging, in regard to mere 

 physical questions, to beliefs, for which the Author of all truth has 

 been pleased to substitute knowledge, our science becomes con- 

 nected with the loftiest of moral speculations. 



If I believed, to use the language of a gifted contemporary,-^ 

 that the imagination, the feelings, the active intellectual powers, 

 bearing on the business of life, and the highest capacities of our 

 nature, were blunted and impaired by the study of physiological 

 and palseontological phenomena, I should then regard our science 

 as little better than a moral sepulchre, in which, like the strong 

 man, we were burying ourselves and those around us in ruins of 

 our own creating. 



But surely we must all believe too firmly in the immutable 

 attributes of that Being, in whom all truth, of whatever kind, finds 

 its proper resting-place, to think that the principles of physical and 

 moral truth can ever be in lasting collision 1 . 



1 Sedgwick, Address to the Geological Society, 1831. 



