266 



EXPLANATIONS 



logical sciences," says he, " has man t een able to arrive at 

 a beginning which is homogeneous with the known course 

 of events. We can, in such sciences, often go very far 

 back, determine many of the remote circumstances of the 

 past series of events, ascend to a point which seems to be 

 near their origin, and limit the hypothesis respecting the 

 origin itself ; but philosophers have never demonstrated, 

 and, so far as we can judge, probably never will be able 

 to demonstrate, what «vas the primitive state of things 

 from which the progressive course of the world took its 

 first departure. In all these paths of research when we 

 travel far backwards, the aspect of the earlier portions 

 becomes very different from that of the advanced part on 

 which we now stand ; but in all cases the path is lost in 

 obscurity as it is traced backward to its starting point : 

 it becomes not only invisible, but unimaginable ; it is not 

 only an interruption, but an abyss which interposes itself 

 between us and any intelligible beginning of things.' 5 * 



Here we have the view of exceptions which is enter- 

 tained by one of the chief writers of the day, and the su- 

 perior of one of our greatest academical institutions. The 

 professional position of Dr. Whewell may be held to im- 

 ply that we should receive from him a view at once lean- 

 ing to the philosophical, and accommodated as far as pos- 

 sible to the prepossessions expected in a large class of 

 persons. It is remarkable, but not surprising, how weak 

 is the barrier which he has raised to stop our course to- 

 wards a theory of universal arrangement by ordinary nat- 

 ural law. 



The necessity alleged by Dr. Whewell for a different 

 set of causes in the early times of our globe, and with re- 

 gard to the formation of that globe, is at the very first 

 liable to strong suspicion, as reminding us much of that 

 well-known propensity of nations, to fill up the first chap- 

 ters of their history with mythic heroes and giants. The 

 subjects of investigation are remote from common research ; 

 they are not, and never could have been, chronicled in the 

 manner of modern facts ; we are in the regions of the 

 comparatively unknown — hence, something more magni- 

 ficent or impressive than ordinary must be supposed. 

 Such is the reasoning, or rather no-reasoning. The point 

 at which extraordinary causes have tc be supposed is evi- 



* Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, npud Indications of ti« 

 Creatoi 



