282 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



"one used to hear from John Henry Newman fifteen 

 " years ago, when he, copying the Jesuits, was trying to 

 " undermine the grounds of all rational belief and human 

 " science, in order that, having made his victims (among 

 " whom were some of my dearest friends) believe nothing, 

 " he might get them by a ' Nemesis of faith ' to believe 

 "anything, and rush blindfold into superstition. Poor 

 " wretch, he was caught in his own snare. I do not fear 

 " you will be ; for you have set no snare, but spoken 

 " like an honest Christian man ; but this I do fear, with 

 " the editor of this month's Geologist, that you have given 

 " the ' vestiges of creation theory ' the best shove for- 

 "ward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike 

 " to that book ; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting 

 "towards it as I read Omphalos, and especially on 

 "reading one page where I think your argument 

 "weakest, not from fallacy, but from being too hastily 

 "slurred over. You must rewrite and enlarge these in 

 " some future edition — I mean pp. 343, 344. What you 

 " say there I think true, but I always have explained it 

 "to myself in this way — that God's imagining one 

 "species to Himself, before creation, necessitated the 

 "imagining of another, either to take its place in 

 "physical uses, or to fill up 'artistically/ if I may so 

 "speak, the cycle of possible forms. This was my 

 " prochronism ; but I don't see how yours differs from 

 "the transmutation of species theory, which your 

 " argument, if filled out fairly, would, I think, be. 



"This shell would have been its ancient analogue 

 " of the Pleistocene, if creation had taken place at the 

 " Pleistocene era, and that, again, would have been the 

 " Eocene analogue, if creation had happened an aeon 

 " earlier again ; and in that case the Eocene shell would 

 'have been afterward transmuted into the Pleistocene 



