204 Professor RaugMon's Geology. 



sideration, and looking only at the positive data furnished by 

 the fossil world from a broader point of view — from that of 

 the comparative anatomist who has made the study of the 

 greater modifications of the animal form his chief business — a 

 surprise of another kind dawns upon his mind ; and under 

 this aspect the smallness of the total change becomes as 

 astonishing as was its greatness under the other." Professor 

 Huxley then points out, that no new ordinal type of vegetable 

 structure has been discovered in a fossil state, and that " no 

 fossil animal is so distinct from those now living as to be 

 arranged even in a separate class from those which contain 

 existing forms." 



A philosophy of geology which takes no notice of this 

 class of fact is deplorably incomplete. It is of the utmost im- 

 portance, when speculating upon the discordance between the 

 organic life of one period and that of another, to consider all 

 evidence, whether negative or positive, that indicates the 

 probability of the change having been of a slow and gradual 

 kind. Professor Haughton does not feel this. He considers 

 that the modifications of the globe from the nebulous to the 

 solid form, and thence through various changes brought about 

 by physical and chemical agencies, to the condition in which 

 we find it, have resulted from the operation of natural laws ; 

 but he refers all changes in organic life to the " arbitrary will 

 of the Creator," by which we presume he means a kind of will 

 distinct from that which is manifested in the operations of 

 unorganized matter, in which law and intelligible order prevail. 

 This is a most unfortunate attempt to place a theological bar- 

 rier in the way of scientific inquiry. It practically tells man 

 that he may profitably endeavour to trace the physical changes 

 of the globe ; in them he will see the operations of a will acting 

 upon methods he may hope to some extent to understand ; but 

 that the moment he comes to the simplest living creature, he 

 is in contact with another kind of will, which being " arbitrary," 

 cannot possibly be understood. Real science makes no such 

 distinctions. It perceives no traces of will without reason, 

 and when it finds itself baffled by the complexity of pheno- 

 mena, it does not conceive that there is anything in them 

 more " arbitrary " than in the more obvious sequences of 

 cause and effect. 



We have cited Huxley on the question of life-changes on 

 the globe, and we dismiss this part of the subject by a parallel 

 quotation from Ramsay, who says, in reference to the relative 

 position of strata and the distribution of life, " I cannot resist 

 the general inference that in cases of superposition, in propor- 

 tion as the species are more or less continuous, that is to say, 

 as the break in life is partial or complete, first in the species, 



