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or combination of the various particles of matter without an intelligent 
operator acting upon it. Unless I were a lunatic, I should be bound to say 
that it displayed human skill and invention. But then I point to works 
which are infinitely greater in their combination of matter and which show infi- 
nitely greater wisdom than man can display, and a greater acquaintance with 
the profound laws of mathematics, and with the profound laws of chemistry 
and every other science ; and I put those works before you and say : — “ I 
have a ten-thousandfold accumulation of proof that I must be a greater 
lunatic if I deny the existence of a superior designer and creator in all this 
than I should be if I denied that the inkstand was a proof of the existence of 
a man with a mind capable of conceiving and executing such a thing.” That 
is the difficulty which we have to get over, and we must always go back to 
these things as our first principles. (Cheers.) 
Mr. Pattison. — I feel like one of those figures in Poussin’s “ Deluge,” 
where the rocks are torn from their beds, and everything is topsy-turvy 
(laughter) ; and I feel that many persons, not excepting Mr. Bradlaugh, will 
look upon my facts as a complete chaos. But, notwithstanding the shafts 
which have been aimed against the old geologists, I must plead guilty to the 
soft impeachment that I am one of them. And I will add to that, that there 
is no fact in modern geology which does not fall in with and supplement the 
facts of old geology. Theories I do not know much about, but with one’s 
hammer in one’s hand, one carves out certain facts which I have attempted 
to bring before you, founding upon them certain conclusions. Mr. Reddie 
says we cannot prove that the earth has eighteen miles’ thickness of strata. I 
have not said that they do exist in any one place, and because of that he says 
they are not so thick as we make them out to be. Now I do not know 
whether it has ever fallen to Mr. Reddie’s lot to help a piece of tart or bread- 
and-butter pudding among his children. (Laughter.) The little ones want 
to know what is at the bottom. The spoon is put in, and part of the pudding 
is turned up, and we soon have evidence of what is at the bottom. 
The Chairman. — But did you ever put your spoon eighteen miles deep ? 
(Laughter.) 
Mr. Pattison. — No, but I say, thank God, He has done it. 'Strata that 
would for ever be buried are broken up and brought to our sight. We 
measure them ; we measure the various layers, trying to exclude all redupli- 
cations and faults ; and those measurements, so far as I can judge, are 
certainly within the truth. But perhaps one is wrong in attempting to do 
more than give the facts ; I was asked for a paper, and I supposed it was 
to have a certain scope, and therefore it is that I took a certain line of 
argument, I tried to make it bear upon a certain conclusion. I did not 
go into the argument from design, because that has been so beautifully done, 
so abundantly done, and so ably done in the Bridgewater Treatises and by 
Hugh Miller. It would have been hopeless to attempt to give you anything 
new on the subject, and impossible to give you anything half so beautiful as 
the works I have referred to. But, seeing the present state of geological 
