Clx PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



cannot be said to be the beginning of life. The true representa- 

 tion of life is rather a succession of open, or, as I may call them, 

 eccentric cometary curves, one springing out of the other, as life 

 begins, not where life ends, but where it is in highest vigour. 



The plant and the animal, even, continue to live long after the 

 new plant or the new animal has commenced its course of life. 

 This, however, does not affect Mr. Gosse's argument, if we assume 

 that the inquiry is limited to a part only of the curve extending 

 from birth to maturity j for if creation were supposed to commence at 

 old age, it would pass below the curve, and would then cease. The 

 physiologist, then, having observed that there is a certain course 

 of operations, of changes, of modifications, or of additions, called 

 growth, in the passage from a seed to a tree, or from an ovum to a 

 full-grown animal, most of which leave marks of their occurrence 

 behind them, — is able to deduce, in the spirit of inductive reasoning, 

 the age, or rather the epoch of existence from the visible marks of 

 growth he finds upon the plant or animal ; boldly therefore he says, 

 This plant, or this animal, was 20 or 30 or more years old. But Mr. 

 Gosse assumes that he has been deceived, because he knew not that 

 this plant or animal had been created only that very morning, and was 

 also ignorant of the great law of prochronic existence, which means 

 (adopting some more tangible explanation than that of ideal existence) 

 that, whilst the Creator was bringing into existence the plant or animal 

 at any point of the supposed cyclical curve, the image of all the stages 

 through which all future animals should pass flitted across His mind, 

 and were incorporated in the new creation as a prophetic indication 

 of what would take place hereafter. It is evident, however, that 

 Mr. Gosse confounds two different things in this idea — namely, the 

 laws which regulated creation, and the laws which regulated the 

 progression and continuance of life. Plants and animals, for example, 

 might have been created, as a statuary forms a statue, not to grow, 

 but to continue permanently in one state of existence ; but when 

 the work of creation had ended, the laws of life were imposed ; so 

 that it is by no means necessary that the newly- created plant or 

 animal should exhibit the workings of laws only required to bring 

 up future organisms, by gradual steps, to the same condition which had 

 been arrived at instantaneously by Divine will. Neither Mr. Gosse, 

 nor any one else, has ever had a glimpse or a revelation of the 

 modus operandi of creation, except in the one instance of the creation 

 of Man, which affords no support to the prochronic theory, and 

 cannot therefore be justified in assuming that it afforded an antici- 

 pation of what would be the product of growth. Indeed, it may 

 be well to remind Mr. Gosse that, whilst he is apparently endea- 

 vouring to conform to the literal words of Scripture, he is seriously 

 departing from the account there given of the first formation of man, 

 which represents the created thing as without life, an inanimate 

 thing, until the breath of life had been breathed into his nostrils ; 

 so that blood, and everything, whether fluid or solid, connected with 

 organic life, were either created or adapted to the purposes of the new 

 animal — not found existing, partly in perfect condition and partly 



