GOSSE S OMPHALOS. 
57 
vious possible existence, which, however, had no real being; or, to use 
a theological illustration—as an Arminian believes that when the Cre¬ 
ator endued man with free will, He voluntarily surrendered part of His 
Divine prerogative of prescience,—so Mr. Gosse forces us to admit that 
when the Creator formed a species, He deliberately stamped it with a 
seal or mark, which, to one unacquainted with the fact of its creation, 
would induce, of necessity, the belief in its eternal pre-existence. 
To use his own language :— 
“ The life-history of every organism commenced at some point or other of its circular 
course. It was created, called into being, in some definite stage. Possibly, various crea¬ 
tures differed in this respect; perhaps some began existence in one stage of development, 
some in another; but every separate organism had a distinct point at which it began to 
live. Before that point there was nothing; this particular organism had till then no exis¬ 
tence ; its history presents an absolute blank ; it was not. 
“ But the whole organization of the creature thus newly called into existence looks 
back to the course of an endless circle in the past. Its whole structure displays a series 
of developments, which as distinctly witness to former conditions as do those which are 
presented in the cow, the butterfly, the fern, and scarlet-runner, of the present day. But 
what former conditions ? The conditions thus witnessed unto, as being necessarily implied 
in the present organization, were non-existent ; the history was a perfect blank until the 
moment of creation. The past conditions or stages of existence in question can indeed be 
as triumphantly inferred by legitimate deduction from the present as can those of our cow 
or butterfly ; they rest on the very same evidences ; they are identically the same in every 
respect, except in this one, that they were unreal. They exist only in their results; 
they are effects which never had causes. Perhaps it may help to clear my argument if 
I divide the past developments of organic life, which are necessarily, or at least legiti¬ 
mately, inferrible from present phenomena, into two categories, separated by the violent 
act of creation. Those unreal developments, whose apparent results are seen in the orga¬ 
nism at the moment of its creation, I will call prochronic , because time was not an element 
in them; while those which have subsisted since creation, and which have had actual 
existence, I will distinguish as diachronic , as occurring during time.”—Page 123. 
We cannot see why Mr. Gosse should not also add a metachronic 
epoch to the history of each organic species, for the law of cycles in 
species looks forward as well as back, and carries us in imagination to 
the eternity a parte post , as surely as to that a parte ante. This is the 
flaw which invalidates all Bishop Butler’s reasoning respecting the future 
life. His Law of continuance applies to brutes and plants as well as 
men, and proves their external past existence as certainly as their 
eternal future life. 
We readily admit, with all its consequences, the statement of Mr. 
Gosse: that without a knowledge of the fact of creation (and of the fact 
of annihilation), a naturalist would necessarily infer that each species 
of organism had already existed, and would continue -to exist for ever; 
or, to use the language of Playfair in reference to the globe itself, “ the 
world shows no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” This is 
the natural and necessary inference of a mind unacquainted with the 
miraculous facts of the creation and annihilation of Organic species. 
Having coerced his readers to agree with him thus far, Mr. Gosse 
informs them, next, that he only wants their assent to a single supposi¬ 
tion as a bare possibility, in order to complete his solution of the Geolo¬ 
gical knot. This supposition may he stated as follows :— Let it be granted 
vol. v.— rev. i 
