58 PRIMARY STRATIFIED ROCKS. 
properties of all the material elements, can be 
shown to have undergone no change since 
matter was first created upon our planet; no 
forms of organization such as now exist, or such 
as Geology shows to have existed, during any 
stages of the gradual formation of the earth, 
could have supported, for an instant, the state of 
fusion here supposed. 
We therefore conclude, that whatever beings 
of wholly different natures and properties may 
be imagined to be within the range of possible 
existences, not one of all the living or fossil 
species of animals or vegetables, could ever have 
endured the temperature of an incandescent 
planet. All these species must therefore have 
had a beginning, posterior to the state of uni- 
versal fusion which Geology points out. 
I know not how I can better sum up the con- 
clusion of this argument, than in the words of 
my Inaugural Lecture, (Oxford, 1819, p. 20). 
“ The consideration of the evidences afforded 
by geological phenomena may enable us to lay 
more securely the very foundations of natural 
theology, inasmuch as they clearly point out to 
us a period antecedent to the habitable state of 
the earth, and consequently antecedent to the 
existence of its inhabitants. When our minds 
become thus familiarized with the idea of a 
beginning and first creation of the beings we 
see around us, the proofs of design, which the 
