24 
ON LIFE AND ORGANIZATION. 
planet ; when our globe, as far as imagination can venture to con- 
sider it, must have consisted of a fluid mass, with an immense 
atmosphere, revolving in space round the sun ; and that, by its 
cooling, a portion of its atmosphere was condensed into water, 
which occupied a part of its surface. In this state, no forms of 
life, such as now belong to our system, could have inhabited it ; 
and it is generally supposed that the granite rocks that abound so 
plentifully in our native country, and which contain no vestiges of 
a former order of things, were the results of the first consolidation 
on its surface. Upon the further cooling, the water, which more 
or less had covered it, contracted ; depositions took place, shell- 
fish and coral insects of the first creation began their labour, and 
islands appeared in the midst of the ocean, raised from the deep by 
the productive energies of millions of zoophytes. These islands 
became covered with vegetables fitted to bear a high temperature, 
such as palms and various species of plants similar to those which 
now exist in the hottest parts of the world. As the temperature 
of the globe became lower, species of the oviparous reptiles were 
created to inhabit it ; and the turtle, crocodile, and various gi- 
gantic animals of the same kind , seem to have haunted the bays 
and waters of the primitive land. But in this state of things there 
was no order of events similar to the present : the crust of the 
globe was exceedingly slender, and the source of fire a small dis- 
tance from the surface. 
It would be foreign to my lecture to enter farther into this sub- 
ject. It is enough for my argument, that in the discoveries of the 
geologist in fossil osteology we read, in the successive strata, the 
successive efforts of creative energy, from the sterile moss of pri- 
mitive formation up to the fair and fertile superficies of the globe, 
enriched with animal and vegetable decomposition; and we are 
thus clearly enabled to draw the line between inanimate and or- 
ganized matter, and to perceive that the latter is the result of a 
distinct principle, of something added to the former. Here, then, 
we may contemplate a progressive system of organic being, gra- 
duating towards perfection through innumerable ages, proving to 
a demonstration that life in general is some principle of activity, 
added by the will of Omnipotence to organized structure. 
We are, as l before stated, entirely ignorant of this power — of 
its nature, or whether it be separate and distinct, or a compound ; 
and all the efforts to penetrate its nature have been equally un- 
successful, from the commencement of the world to the present 
time. Thus we find at last, that the philosopher with his anima 
or his subtle and mobile vital fluid, and the chemist wdth his caloric 
and electricity, are just on a level, in respect to the mental process 
by which they have arrived at it, with the 
