i88o.] 
On the Unity of Nature. 
6 77 
refuted, and which no errors in detail can in the least 
affedt. 
The position of any planetary body in space, at any 
given moment, is the resultant of all the forces of gravita- 
tion that have afted on it. So, likewise, of all the planetary 
Any particular organism— plant or animal— is the offspring 
and resultant of all the varying conditions of all its ances- 
tors. So, likewise, all the organisms living at any particular 
time are the resultant of all those that have preceded them, 
and from which they have descended. . 
The present geographical and geological configuration and 
structure of the earth are the outcome of all those that 
have gone before, by an uninterrupted succession of gradual 
Thus whilst the present position of the planetary bodies, 
the present organisms that inhabit the earth, and its present 
geographical and geological features may be very different 
from what they were millions of years ago, the great change 
was brought about by a succession of small ones,— each, 
indeed, so small as to be wholly inappreciable, the. one con- 
dition gradually shading into the other. There is thus a 
continuity, unity, or what may be called an individuality, 
pervading each, similar to that which unites the old man to 
the child, but without anything to indicate either youth or 
old age But if this be so with each separate thing, or 
system of things, it will also happen with everything and 
all systems ; in other words, the condition of the whole 
universe at any particular moment will be the outcome or 
resultant of all previous conditions, and, however much it 
may differ to-day from what it was at any former period, 
a thread of continuity or unity will run through the whole. 
We talk very glibly of the beginning of the world, and 
think we have then got to the beginning of the universe ; 
but to say nothing of the enormous antiquity of this world 
itself, compared to which the whole geological record from 
the earliest stratified rocks to the present day is probably a 
mere vanishing point, we would pradtically be no nearer the 
beginning of the universe, even if we could arrive at the 
commencement of this infinitesimal portion of it, counting 
from the time when it maybe said to have had a sepa- 
rate individuality ; for who shall tell the previous history of 
its component parts, and into the structure of how many 
worlds they may not formerly have entered ? Science knows 
nothing of beginnings or endings in an absolute sense, whilst 
relatively it knows of nothing else, each following the other 
