3372 Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. 



that that acquaintance with bygone creations, each in succession of a higher type than 

 the one which preceded it, which Geology enables us to form, must soon greatly affect 

 the state of arguments employed on the sceptical side, which, framed on the assump- 

 tion that creation is but a "singular effect" — an effect without duplicate — have urged, 

 that from that one effect only can we know aught regarding the producing Cause ? 

 Knowing of the Cause but from the effect, and having experience of but one effect, 

 we could not rationally hold, it has been argued, that that producing Cause could have 

 originated effects of a higher or more perfect kind. The creation which it had pro- 

 duced we knew ; but having no other measure of its power, we could not, it was con- 

 tended, regard it as competent to the production of a better or nobler creation, or, of 

 course, hold that it could originate such a state of things as that perfect future state 

 which Faith delights to contemplate. Now it has been well said of the author of this 

 ingenious sophism, — by far the most sagacious of the sceptics, — that if we admit his 

 premises, we shall find it difficult indeed to set aside his conclusions. And how, in 

 this case, does Geology deal with his premises ? By opening to us the history of the 

 remote past of our planet, and introducing us, through the present, to former creations, 

 it breaks down that singularity of effect on which he built, and for one creation gives 

 us many. It gives us exactly that which, as he truly argued, his contemporaries had 

 not — an experience in creations. And let us mark how, applied to each of these in 

 succession, his argument would tell. There was a time when life, animal or vegeta- 

 ble, did not exist on our planet, and when all creation, from its centre to its circumfe- 

 rence, was but a creation of dead matter. To what effect, in that early age, would 

 have been the argument of Hume ? Simply to this effect would it have borne — that, 

 although the producing Cause of what appeared was competent to the formation of 

 earths, metals, and minerals, it would be unphilosophic to deem it adequate to the ori- 

 gination of a single plant or animal — even to that of a spore or of a monad. Ages 

 pass by, and the palaeozoic creation is ushered in, with its tall araucarians and pines, 

 its highly organized fishes, and its reptiles of a comparatively low standing. And how 

 now, and with what effect, does the argument apply ? It is now found, that in the 

 earlier creation the producing Cause had exerted but a portion of its power, and that 

 it could have done greatly more than it actually did, seeing that we now find it to be 

 a Cause adequate to the origination of vitality and organization in two great types — 

 the vegetable and the animal — as exemplified in pines and araucarians, in fishes and 

 in reptiles. And now, as yet other ages pass away, the creation of the great secondary 

 division takes the place of the vanished palaeozoic; and we find in its few dicotyledonous 

 plants, in its reptiles of highest standing, and in its some two or three comparatively 

 humble mammals, that in the previous, as in the earlier creation, the producing Cause 

 had been, if I may so express myself, working greatly under its strength, and that in 

 this third creation we have a still higher display of its potency. And now yet another 

 creation — that of the tertiary period, with its noble forests of dicotyledonous trees, and 

 its sagacious and gigantic mammals — rises upon the scene; and as our experience in 

 creations has now become very considerable indeed, and as we have seen each in suc- 

 cession higher than that which preceded it, we find that, notwithstanding our assumed 

 scepticism, we had — compelled by one of the most deeply-sealed instincts of our na- 

 ture — been secretly anticipating the advance which the new state of things actually 

 realizes. But applying the argument yet once more, we at least assume to hold, that 

 as the sagacious elephant is the highest example of animal life produced by the ori- 

 ginating Cause, it would be unphilosophic to deem it capable of producing a higher 



