Ixxii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



due caution in forming our opinions, he renders service to the sound 

 progress of speculative views on the subject. But if he goes further 

 than this, and asserts the truth of the opposite proposition, he places 

 himself in a position at least as untenable as that which he combats. 

 If land existed when the earth first became the abode of animate 

 beings, it would seem probable that animals adapted for such a 

 dwelling-place should have been then created, and possibly in much 

 greater numbers than the organic remains of the earlier geological 

 periods might at present seem to indicate ; nor need we be surprised 

 at any future discoveries tending to support this view. Every fresh 

 discovery like those above mentioned brings us a step nearer to that 

 ultimate limit to which our evidence can finally hereafter attain ; but, 

 even if we make many more such additional steps, we must still be 

 cautious how we adopt the opinion that that limit will indicate an abso- 

 lute equality between the organization of the earliest created beings 

 and those which now exist, — exclusive, IJmean, of man, whose recent in- 

 troduction on the earth is admitted equally by the contending parties. 

 It is not here my purpose to advocate the one view or the other in 

 mere especial reference to organized beings, or to analyse the evidence 

 which has been adduced with so much ability both in favour of the 

 doctrine of progression and in opposition to it ; but to insist on that 

 philosophic caution and reserve which may leave us unshackled in 

 our future speculations, and free to modify our opinions so far as 

 future evidence may call upon us to do so. 



So long as we restrict our speculations on the question of progres- 

 sion to organic life, we are in no danger of adopting conclusions in- 

 consistent with what we know of the operation of natural causes, 

 because we are ignorant of those laws by which the succession of 

 organic life has been regulated since its introduction on the earth. 

 Progression in organic structure, or the entire absence of it, may, for 

 aught we know, be perfectly consistent with those laws. But the 

 operations of nature have revealed much more to us respecting the 

 laws which have been appointed for the government of the inorganic 

 world, and it becomes us to examine how far these laws may be con- 

 sistent with the doctrine of non-progression in its application to the 

 inorganic matter of our planet, or how far they indicate a necessary 

 tendency, in the language above-quoted, to *' a gradual improvement 

 in the style and character of the dwelling-place of organized beings." 



And here I would remark that the doctrine of non-progression, in 

 the sense in which I use the term, is independent of that theory 

 which would attribute all geological phsenomena to causes acting with 

 no greater intensity than those of which we now witness the opera- 

 tion around us. By pi'Offression, as applied to the inorganic matter 

 composing our planet, I understand a change, continuous or discon- 

 tinuous, by which that matter has passed in the long process of time 

 from a primitive to its present condition, and may still pass to some 

 ultimate and different state, a change by which, regarded in more 

 especial reference to the question before us, the surface of the earth 

 has been rendered more fit for the habitation of the higher orders of 

 organized beings. This permanent change of state may have been 



