1859 LETTER TO LYELL 251 



or that one had not really got to the bottom of the 

 phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary the conditions, 

 if one could take a little silex, and by a little hocus-pocus 

 a la crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one 

 pleased, all the philosopher could do would be to hold 

 up his hands and cry, " God is great." But short of 

 evidence of this kind, I don't mean to believe anything 

 of the kind. 



How much evidence would you require to believe that 

 there was a time when stones fell upwards, or granite 

 made itself by a spontaneous rearrangement of the ele- 

 mentary particles of clay and sand ? And yet the diffi- 

 culties in the way of these beliefs are as nothing compared 

 to those which you would have to overcome in believing 

 that complex organic beings made themselves (for that 

 is what creation comes to in scientific language) out of 

 inorganic matter. 



I know it will be said that even on the transmutation 

 theory, the first organic being must have made itself. 

 But there is as much difference between supposing the 

 passage of inorganic matter into an amoeba, e.g., and into 

 an Elephant, as there is between supposing that Portland 

 stone might have built itself up into St. Paul's, and 

 believing that the Giant's Causeway may have come 

 about by natural causes. 



True, one must believe in a beginning somewhere, 

 but science consists in not believing the having reached 

 that beginning before one is forced to do so. 



It is wholly impossible to prove that any phenomenon 

 whatsoever is not produced by the interposition of some 

 unknown cause. But philosophy has prospered exactly 

 as it has disregarded such possibilities, and has endeavoured 

 to resolve every event by ordinary reasoning. 



I do not exactly see the force of your argument that 

 we are bound to find fossil forms intermediate between 

 men and monkeys in the Rocks. Crocodiles are the 

 highest reptiles as men are the highest mammals, but we 



