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study of our science, I should then regard it as little better than a 

 moral sepulchre, in which, like the strong man, we were burying our- 

 selves and those around us, in ruins of our own creating. But I 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 col- 

 lision. And as all the branches of physical science are but different 

 modifications of a few simple laws, and are bound together by the 

 intervention of common objects and common principles ; so also, 

 there are links (less visible, indeed, but not less real) by which they 

 are also bound to the most elevated moral speculations. 



At every step we take in physics, we show a capacity and an appe- 

 tency for abstract general truth ; and in describing material things, 

 we speak of them, not as accidents, but as phenomena under the 

 government of laws. The very language we use (and it is hardly pos- 

 sible for us to explain our meaning by any other), is the language in 

 which we describe the operations of intelligence and power. And 

 hence we admit, by the very constitution of our intellectual nature, 

 and even in spite of ourselves, an anima mundi pervading all space, 

 existing in all times, and under all conditions of being. 



But we do not stop here ; for the moment we pass on to that por- 

 tion of matter, which is subservient to the functions of life, we there 

 find all the phenomena of organization : and in all those beings the 

 functions of which we comprehend, we see traces of structure in many 

 parts as mechanical as the works of our own hands, and, so far, differ- 

 ing from them only in complexity and perfection ; and we see all 

 this subservient to an end, and that end accomplished. Hence, we 

 are compelled to regard the anima mundi no longer as a uniform and 

 quiescent intelligence, but as an active and anticipating intelligence : 

 and it is from this first principle of final causes, that we start with that 

 grand and cumulative argument, derived from all the complex func- 

 tions of organic nature. 



Geology lends a great and unexpected aid to the doctrine of final 

 causes ; for it has not merely added to the cumulative argument, by 

 the supply of new and striking instances, of mechanical structure ad- 

 justed to a purpose and that purpose accomplished ; but it has also 

 proved that the same pervading active principle, manifesting its power 

 in our times, has also manifested its power in times long anterior to 

 the records of our existence. 



But after all, some men seeing nothing but uniformity and con- 

 tinuity in the works of nature, have still contended (with what I think 

 a mistaken zeal for the honour of sacred truth), that the argument 

 from final causes proves nothing more than a quiescent intelligence. 

 I feel not the force of this objection. In geology, however, we can 

 meet it by another direct argument; for we not only find in our for- 

 mations organs mechanically constructed — but at different epochs in 

 the history of the earth we have great changes of external conditions, 

 and corresponding changes of organic structure j and all this without 

 the shadow of a proof that one system of things graduates into, or is 

 the necessary and efficient cause of, the other. Yet in all these in- 

 stances of change, the organs, as far as we can comprehend their use, 



