President's Address. 



201 



mankind existed for ages beyond the commonly-received 

 chronology, few geologists who have studied the question 

 can for a moment have any doubt. But whether this were 

 sixteen thousand or sixty thousand years, we have no means 

 of determining, and all numerical expressions merely excite 

 the hostility of the prejudiced, and provoke unnecessary and 

 retarding discussion. 



Life — Progressive Development. — Lastly, this question of 

 man's antiquity naturally suggests the comportment of geo- 

 logy towards the whole subject of vital development as de- 

 ducible from the facts of palaeontology. Admitting the 

 order of ascent from lower to higher forms (and numerous 

 as the missing links may be, no one has yet denied this 

 order of ascent on the great scale), the question still remains 

 to be solved — and geology, as the originator and establisher 

 of the doctrine of vital progression, is bound to consider 

 it — How, and by what means has this progress from lower 

 to higher forms been effected ? There are two methods, 

 as we have elsewhere observed,* by which the problem 

 seems capable of solution, though both require much more 

 minute and extensive observation than science has yet at 

 her command : first, the changes in the organisms them- 

 selves maybe such as to indicate the manner in which they 

 have been affected, and, by inference, the causes that pro- 

 duced them ; and, second, if there is a law of perpetual 

 progression, it must be still operative on living plants and 

 ; animals, and we might arrive at its nature by a careful study 

 of the variations which existing species undergo, and the 

 proximate causes on which these variations depend. Than 

 these, scientifically speaking, there is no other way of ap- 

 proaching the question. To appeal to the doctrine of crea- 

 tive acts and the will of the Creator, is to put the question 

 beyond the limits of science — to treat it as a matter of faith, 

 and not as a subject of logical investigation. As geologists, 

 it is evident we must deal with the problem as one of natural 

 history — reasoning from result to cause, and from the order 

 of causation to the higher bearings of a general and enduring 

 law. There need be no uneasy tenderness in dealing witli 



* Philosophy of Geology : Blackwood & Sons, 1803. 



