THE BELFAST ADDRESS 



29 



of the soul had been so favourite and 

 general a topic of discussion that, when 

 the students of the Italian Universities 

 wished to know the leanings of a new 

 Professor, they at once requested him to 

 lecture upon the soul. About the time 

 of Bishop Butler the question was not 

 only agitated but extended. It was seen 

 by the clear-witted men who entered this 

 arena that many of their best arguments 

 applied equally to brutes and men. The 

 Bishop's argumentswere of this character. 

 He saw it, admitted it^ took the conse- 

 quence, and boldly embraced the whole 

 animal world in his scheme of immor- 

 tality. 



6. 



BISHOP BUTLER accepted with unwaver- 

 ing trust the chronology of the Old Tes- 

 tament, describing it as " confirmed by 

 the natural and civil history of the world, 

 collected from common historians, from 

 the state of the earth, and from the late 

 inventions of arts and sciences." These 

 words mark progress ; and they must 

 seem somewhat hoary to the Bishop's 

 successors of to-day. It is hardly neces- 

 sary to inform you that since his time the 

 domain of the naturalist has been im- 

 mensely extended the whole science of 

 geology, with its astounding revelations 

 regarding the life of the ancient earth, 

 having been created. The rigidity of old 

 conceptions has been relaxed, the public 

 mind being rendered gradually tolerant 

 of the idea that not for six thousand, nor 

 for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand 

 thousand, but for a5ons embracing untold 

 millions of years, this earth has been the 

 theatre of life and death. The riddle of 

 the rocks has been read by the geologist 

 and palaeontologist from subcambrian 

 depths to the deposits thickening over 

 the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon 

 the leaves of that stone book are, as you 

 know, stamped the characters, plainer 

 and surer than those formed by the ink 

 of history, which carry the mind back 

 into abysses of past time, compared with 

 which the periods which satisfied Bishop 

 Butler cease to have a visual angle. 



The lode of discovery once struck, 

 those petrified forms in which life was at 

 one time active increased to multitudes 

 j and demanded classification. They were 

 grouped in genera, species, and varie- 

 ties, according to the degree of similarity 

 subsisting between them. Thus confu- 

 sion was avoided, each object being 

 found in the pigeon-hole appropriated to 

 it and to its fellows of similar morpho- 

 logical or physiological character. The 

 general fact soon became evident that 

 none but the simplest forms of life lie 

 lowest down ; that, as we climb higher 

 among the superimposed strata, more per- 

 fect forms appear. The change, however, 

 from form to form was not continuous, but 

 by steps some small, some great. " A 

 section," says Mr. Huxley, " a hundred 

 feet thick will exhibit at different heights 

 a dozen species of Ammonite, none of 

 which passes beyond the particular zone 

 of limestone, or clay, into the zone below 

 it, or into that above it." In the 

 presence of such facts it was not possible 

 to avoid the question : Have these forms, 

 showing,\though in broken stages, and 

 with many irregularities, this unmistak- 

 able general advance, been subjected to 

 no continuous law of growth or variation ? 

 Had our education been purely scientific, 

 or had it been sufficiently detached from 

 influences which, however ennobling in 

 another domain, have always proved 

 hindrances and delusions when intro- 

 duced as factors into the domain of 

 physics, the scientific mind never could 

 have swerved from the search for a law 

 of growth, or allowed itself to accept the 

 anthropomorphism which regarded each 

 successive stratum as a kind of mechanic's 

 bench for the manufacture of new species 

 out of all relation to the old. 



Biassed, however, by their previous 

 education, the great majority of natural- 

 ists invoked a special creative act to 

 account for the appearance of each new 

 group of organisms. Doubtless numbers 

 of them were clear-headed enough to see 

 that this was no explanation at all that, 

 in point of fact, it was an attempt, by the 

 introduction of a greater difficulty, to 



