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Ch. ix.] 



Si GEOLOGICAL 



h 



173 



therefore, by geological evidence, of the first intervention of 

 such a peculiar and unprecedented agency, long after other 



par 



ts of the animate and inanimate world existed, affords 



oTOimd for concluding that the experience during thousands 

 of ages of all the events which may happen on this globe, 

 would not enable a philosopher to speculate with confidence 

 concerning future contingencies. 



If then, an intelligent being, after observing the order of 

 events for an indefinite series of ages, had witnessed at last 

 so wonderful an innovation as this, to what extent would his 

 belief in the regularity of the system be weakened ? — would 

 he cease to assume that there was permanency in the laws of 

 nature ? — would he no longer be guided in his speculations 

 by the strictest rules of induction ? To these questions it 

 may be answered, that, if he had previously assumed that in 

 the law which regulated the succession of beings in the ani- 

 mate world, there was no tendency to progress in organisa- 

 tion, instinct, and intelligence, he would be called upon to 

 modify his opinion. But his reliance need not be shaken in 

 the unvarying constancy of the laws of nature, or in his 

 power of reasoning from the present to the past in regard to 

 the changes of the terrestrial system, whether in the organic 

 or inorganic world. 



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