60 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
should be obliged to have recourse to the action of super- 
natural forces; that is, to the interference of miracles in the 
natural course of things. It is only through miracles that 
these revolutions of the earth could have been brought about, 
and it is only through miracles that, after their cessation 
and at the commencement of each new period, a new animal 
and vegetable kingdom could have been created. But 
science has no room for miracles, for by miracles we under- 
stand an interference of supernatural forces in the natural 
course of development of matter. 
Just as the great authority which Linnzus gained by 
his system of distinguishing and naming organic species 
led his successors to a complete ossification, as it were, of the 
dogmatic idea of species and to a real abuse of the syste- 
matic distinction implied by it, so the great services which 
Cuvier had rendered to the knowledge and distinction 
of extinct species became the cause of a general adoption 
of his theory of revolutions and catastrophes, and of the 
false views of creation connected therewith. The conse- 
quence of this was that, during the first half of our century, 
most zoologists and botanists clung to the opinion that a 
series of independent periods in the organic history of the 
earth had existed; that each period was distinguished by 
distinct and peculiar kinds of animal and vegetable species ; 
that these were annihilated at the termination of the period 
by a general revolution ; and that, after the cessation of the 
latter, a new world of different species of animals and plants 
was created. 
It is true some independent thinkers, above all the great 
physical philosopher, Lamarck, even at an early period, set 
forth a series of weighty reasons which refuted Cuvier’s 
