28 Doctrine of Progression 



future discoveries tending to support this view. Every fresh dis- 

 covery 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 absolute equality between the organisation of the 

 earliest created beings and those which now exist — exclusive, I 

 mean, of man, whose recent introduction 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 special reference to 

 organised beings, or to analyse the evidence which has been ad- 

 duced with so much ability both in favour of the doctrine of pro- 

 gression 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 evi- 

 dence may call upon us to do so. 



IV. Doctrine of Progression with respect to Inanimate Matter. 



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

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

 inconsistent 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 consistent with the doctrine of non-progression in its ap- 

 plication 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 organised 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 phenomena to causes acting 

 with no greater intensity than those of which we now witness the 

 operation around us. By progression, as applied to the inorganic 

 matter composing our planet, I understand a change, continuous 

 or discontinuous, 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 be- 

 fore us, the surface of the earth has been rendered more fit for 

 the habitation of the higher orders of organised beings. This 

 permanent change of state may have been effected or accompanied 



