Vestiges Of The Natural History Of Creation Part 5

I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and so full of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usually suggested where life takes its rise without apparent generative means, always appear to me to partake much of the fallacy of the pet.i.tio principii. When, for instance, lime is laid down upon a piece of waste moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no seeds were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been dormant there for an unknown time, and were stimulated into germination when the lime produced the appropriate circ.u.mstances, appears extremely unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as in an authentic case under my notice) the spot is many miles from where clover is cultivated, and that there is nothing for six feet below but pure peat moss, clover seeds being, moreover, known to be too heavy to be transported, as many other seeds are, by the winds.

Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated by their seed; but another mode of raising them, well known to the gardener, is to mix cow and horse dung together, and thus form a bed in which they are expected to grow without any seed being planted. It is a.s.sumed that the seeds are carried by the atmosphere, unperceived by us, and, finding here an appropriate field for germination, germinate accordingly; but this is only a.s.sumption, and though designed to be on the side of a severe philosophy, in reality makes a pretty large demand on credulity.

There are several persons eminent in science who profess at least to find great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable generation. One of these, in the work noted below, {179a} has stated several considerations arising from a.n.a.logical reasoning, which appear to him to throw the balance of evidence in favour of the aboriginal production of infusoria, {179b} the vegetation called mould, and the like. One seems to be of great force; namely, that the animalcules, which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to be produced by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers, not by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies. If it be the nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting or fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a vegetable infusion? Another fact of very high importance is presented in the following terms:- "The nature of the animalcule, or vegetable production, bears a constant relation to the state of the infusion, so that, in similar circ.u.mstances, the same are always produced without this being influenced by the atmosphere. There seems to be a certain PROGRESSIVE ADVANCE IN THE PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF THE INFUSION, for at the first the animalcules are only of the smaller kinds, or monades, and afterwards THEY BECOME GRADUALLY LARGER AND MORE COMPLICATED IN THEIR STRUCTURE; AFTER A TIME, THE PRODUCTION CEASES, ALTHOUGH THE MATERIALS ARE BY NO MEANS EXHAUSTED. When the quant.i.ty of water is very small, and the organic matter abundant, the production is usually of a vegetable nature; when there is much water, animalcules are more frequently produced." It has been shewn by the opponents of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion is debarred from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed up or covered with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced; but it has been said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the air may prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginal development of life--and nothing is more likely. Perhaps the prevailing doctrine is in nothing placed in greater difficulties than it is with regard to the entozoa, or creatures which live within the bodies of others. These creatures do, and apparently can, live nowhere else than in the interior of other living bodies, where they generally take up their abode in the viscera, but also sometimes in the chambers of the eye, the interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and other places having no communication from without. Some are viviparous, others oviparous. Of the latter it cannot reasonably be supposed that the ova ever pa.s.s through the medium of the air, or through the blood-vessels, for they are too heavy for the one transit, and too large for the other. Of the former, it cannot be conceived how they pa.s.s into young animals--certainly not by communication from the parent, for it has often been found that entozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of peculiar and noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, and in very extraordinary circ.u.mstances. A candid view of the less popular doctrine, as to the origin of this humble form of life, is taken by a distinguished living naturalist. "To explain the beginning of these worms within the human body, on the common doctrine that all created beings proceed from their likes, or a primordial egg, is so difficult, that the moderns have been driven to speculate, as our fathers did, on their spontaneous birth; but they have received the hypothesis with some modification. Thus it is not from putrefaction or fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both of these processes are rather fatal to their existence, but from the aggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already organized, or has been thrown from organized surfaces. Their origin in this manner is not more wonderful or more inexplicable than that of many of the inferior animals from sections of themselves. * * Particles of matter fitted by digestion, and their transmission through a living body, for immediate a.s.similation with it, or flakes of lymph detached from surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed nor fall below that simplicity of structure which favours this wonderful development; and the supposition that, like morsels of a planaria, they may also, when retained in contact with living parts, and in other favourable circ.u.mstances, continue to live and be gradually changed into creatures of a.n.a.logous conformation, is surely not so absurd as to be brought into comparison with the Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We think the hypothesis is also supported in some degree by the fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causes which tend to disturb the equality between the secerning and absorbent systems." {182} Here particles of organized matter are suggested as the germinal origin of distinct and fully organized animals, many of which have a highly developed reproductive system.

How near such particles must be to the inorganic form of matter may be judged from what has been said within the last few pages. If, then, this view of the production of entozoa be received, it must be held as in no small degree favourable to the general doctrine of an organic creation by law.

There is another series of facts, akin to the above, and which deserve not less attention. The pig, in its domestic state, is subject to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is free; hence the disease called measles in pork. The domestication of the pig is of course an event subsequent to the origin of man; indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent event. Whence, then, the first progenitor of this hydatid? So also there is a tinea which attacks dressed wool, but never touches it in its unwashed state. A particular insect disdains all food but chocolate, and the larva of the OINOPOTA CELLARIS lives nowhere but in wine and beer, all of these being articles manufactured by man. There is likewise a creature called the PIMELODES CYCLOPUM, which is only found in subterranean cavities connected with certain specimens of the volcanic formation in South America, dating from a time posterior to the arrangements of the earth for our species. Whence the first pymelodes cyclopum? Will it, to a geologist, appear irrational to suppose that, just as the pterodactyle was added in the era of the new red sandstone, when the earth had become suited for such a creature, so may these creatures have been added when media suitable for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take place any day, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the rarity of the rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems to have already undergone the princ.i.p.al part of its destined mutations?

Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which attended various geological eras, it is not easy to see any difference, besides simply that of the scale on which the respective phenomena took place, as the throwing off of one copy from an engraved plate is exactly the same process as that by which a thousand are thrown off.

Nothing is more easy to conceive than that to Creative Providence, the numbers of such phenomena, the time when, and the circ.u.mstances under which they take place, are indifferent matters. The Eternal One has arranged for everything beforehand, and trusted all to the operation of the laws of his appointment, himself being ever present in all things. We can even conceive that man, in his many doings upon the surface of the earth, may occasionally, without his being aware of it, or otherwise, act as an instrument in preparing the a.s.sociation of conditions under which the creative laws work; and perhaps some instances of his having acted as such an instrument have actually occurred in our own time.

I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years ago by Mr. Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a heretofore unknown species of insect in considerable numbers. Various causes have prevented these experiments and their results from receiving candid treatment, but they may perhaps be yet found to have opened up a new and most interesting chapter of nature's mysteries. Mr. Crosse was pursuing some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful voltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of silicate of potash, when the insects unexpectedly made their appearance. He afterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is a deadly poison, and from that fluid also did live insects emerge. Discouraged by the reception of his experiments, Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; but they were some years after pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with precisely the same results. This gentleman, besides trying the first of the above substances, employed ferro-cyanet of potash, on account of its containing a larger proportion of carbon, the princ.i.p.al element of organic bodies; and from this substance the insects were produced IN INCREASED NUMBERS. A few weeks sufficed for this experiment, with the powerful battery of Mr. Crosse; but the first attempts of Mr. Weekes required about eleven months, a ground of presumption in itself that the electricity was chiefly concerned in the phenomenon. The changes undergone by the fluid operated upon, were in both cases remarkable, and nearly alike. In Mr. Weekes'

apparatus, the silicate of potash became first turbid, then of a milky appearance; round the negative wire of the battery, dipped into the fluid, there gathered a quant.i.ty of GELATINOUS MATTER, a part of the process of considerable importance, considering that gelatin is one of the proximate principles, or first compounds, of which animal bodies are formed. From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of the insects in the very act of emerging, immediately after which, it ascended to the surface of the fluid, and sought concealment in an obscure corner of the apparatus. The insects produced by both experimentalists seem to have been the same, a species of acarus, minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles, which can only be seen by the aid of the microscope. It is worthy of remark, that some of these insects, soon after their existence had commenced, were found to be likely to extend their species. They were sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to feed, and occasionally they devoured each other. {187}

The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated very much by the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which the public mind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can be a.s.similated. A novelty, however true, if there be no received truths with which it can be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chance of a favourable hearing. In fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher three hundred years ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which only could harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we cannot doubt that it would have been universally scoffed at in the scientific world, such as it then was, or at the best interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas already familiar. The experiments above described, finding a public mind which had never discovered a fact or conceived an idea at all a.n.a.logous, were of course ungraciously received. It was held to be impious, even to surmise that animals could have been formed through any instrumentality of an apparatus devised by human skill. The more likely account of the phenomena was said to be, that the insects were only developed from ova, resting either in the fluid, or in the wooden frame on which the experiments took place. On these objections the following remarks may be made. The supposition of impiety arises from an entire misconception of what is implied by an aboriginal creation of insects. The experimentalist could never be considered as the author of the existence of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning ignorance. The utmost that can be claimed for, or imputed to him is that he arranged the natural conditions under which the true creative energy--that of the Divine Author of all things--was pleased to work in that instance. On the hypothesis here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being ordained from the beginning, and destined to be realized under certain physical conditions. When a human hand brought these conditions into the proper arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which we execute every day, and which are followed by natural results; but it did nothing more. The production of the insect, if it did take place as a.s.sumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty himself, as if he had fas.h.i.+oned it with hands. For the presumption that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is this to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes's experiment, every care that ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude the possibility of a development of the insects from ova. The wood of the frame was baked in a powerful heat; a bell-shaped gla.s.s covered the apparatus, and from this the atmosphere was excluded by the constantly rising fumes from the liquid, for the emission of which there was an aperture so arranged at the top of the gla.s.s, that only these fumes could pa.s.s. The water was distilled, and the substance of the silicate had been subjected to white heat. Thus every source of fallacy seemed to be shut up.

In such circ.u.mstances, a candid mind, which sees nothing either impious or unphilosophical in the idea of a new creation, will be disposed to think that there is less difficulty in believing in such a creation having actually taken place, than in believing that, in two instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same insects should have chanced to arise from concealed ova, and these a species heretofore unknown.

HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.

It has been already intimated, as a general fact, that there is an obvious gradation amongst the families of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectively up to the highest order of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia.

Confining our attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom--it does not appear that this gradation pa.s.ses along one line, on which every form of animal life can be, as it were, strung; there may be branching or double lines at some places; or the whole may be in a circle composed of minor circles, as has been recently suggested.

But still it is incontestable that there are general appearances of a scale beginning with the simple and advancing to the complicated.

The animal kingdom was divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, or divisions, and these exhibit an unequivocal gradation in the order in which they are here enumerated:- Radiata, (polypes, &c.;) mollusca, (pulpy animals;) articulata, (jointed animals;) vertebrata, (animals with internal skeleton.) The gradation can, in like manner, be clearly traced in the CLa.s.sES into which the sub-kingdoms are subdivided, as, for instance, when we take those of the vertebrata in this order--reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals.

While the external forms of all these various animals are so different, it is very remarkable that the whole are, after all, variations of a fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basis throughout the whole, the variations being merely modifications of that plan to suit the particular conditions in which each particular animal has been designed to live. Starting from the primeval germ, which, as we have seen, is the representative of a particular order of full-grown animals, we find all others to be merely advances from that type, with the extension of endowments and modification of forms which are required in each particular case; each form, also, retaining a strong affinity to that which precedes it, and tending to impress its own features on that which succeeds. This unity of structure, as it is called, becomes the more remarkable, when we observe that the organs, while preserving a resemblance, are often put to different uses. For example: the ribs become, in the serpent, organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended, in the elephant, into a prehensile instrument.

It is equally remarkable that a.n.a.logous purposes are served in different animals by organs essentially different. Thus, the mammalia breathe by lungs; the fishes, by gills. These are not modifications of one organ, but distinct organs. In mammifers, the gills exist and act at an early stage of the foetal state, but afterwards go back and appear no more; while the lungs are developed.

In fishes, again, the gills only are fully developed; while the lung structure either makes no advance at all, or only appears in the rudimentary form of an air-bladder. So, also, the baleen of the whale and the teeth of the land mammalia are different organs. The whale, in embryo, shews the rudiments of teeth; but these, not being wanted, are not developed, and the baleen is brought forward instead.

The land animals, we may also be sure, have the rudiments of baleen in their organization. In many instances, a particular structure is found advanced to a certain point in a particular set of animals, (for instance, feet in the serpent tribe,) although it is not there required in any degree; but the peculiarity, being carried a little farther forward, is perhaps useful in the next set of animals in the scale. Such are called rudimentary organs. With this cla.s.s of phenomena are to be ranked the useless mammae of the male human being, and the unrequired process of bone in the male opossum, which is needed in the female for supporting her pouch. Such curious features are most conspicuous in animals which form links between various cla.s.ses.

As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing at the bottom of the mammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by the rudiments of two ca.n.a.ls pa.s.sing from near the a.n.u.s to the external surfaces of the viscera, which are fully developed in fishes, being required by them for the respiration of aerated waters, but which are not needed by the atmosphere-breathing marsupials. We have also the peculiar form of the sternum and rib-bones of the lizards REPRESENTED in the mammalia in certain white cartilaginous lines traceable among their abdominal muscles. The struphionidae (birds of the ostrich type) form a link between birds and mammalia, and in them we find the wings imperfectly or not at all developed, a diaphragm and urinary sac, (organs wanting in other birds,) and feathers approaching the nature of hair. Again, the ornithorynchus belongs to a cla.s.s at the bottom of the mammalia, and approximating to birds, and in it behold the bill and web-feet of that order!

For further ill.u.s.tration, it is obvious that, various as may be the lengths of the upper part of the vertebral column in the mammalia, it always consists of the same parts. The giraffe has in its tall neck the same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears to have a neck at all. {195} Man, again, has no tail; but the notion of a much-ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not altogether, as it happens, without foundation, for the bones of a caudal extremity exist in an undeveloped state in the os coccygis of the human subject. The limbs of all the vertebrate animals are, in like manner, on one plan, however various they may appear. In the hind- leg of a horse, for example, the angle called the hock is the same part which in us forms the heel; and the horse, and all other quadrupeds, with almost the solitary exception of the bear, walk, in reality, upon what answers to the toes of a human being. In this and many other quadrupeds the fore part of the extremities is shrunk up in a hoof, as the tail of the human being is shrunk up in the bony ma.s.s at the bottom of the back. The bat, on the other hand, has these parts largely developed. The membrane, commonly called its wing, is framed chiefly upon bones answering precisely to those of the human hand; its extinct congener, the pterodactyle, had the same membrane extended upon the fore-finger only, which in that animal was prolonged to an extraordinary extent. In the paddles of the whale and other animals of its order, we see the same bones as in the more highly developed extremities of the land mammifers; and even the serpent tribes, which present no external appearance of such extremities, possess them in reality, but in an undeveloped or rudimental state.

The same law of development presides over the vegetable kingdom.

Amongst phanerogamous plants, a certain number of organs appear to be always present, either in a developed or rudimentary state; and those which are rudimentary can be developed by cultivation. The flowers which bear stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be caused to produce both, or to become perfect flowers, by having a sufficiency of nourishment supplied to them. So also, where a special function is required for particular circ.u.mstances, nature has provided for it, not by a new organ, but by a modification of a common one, which she has effected in development. Thus, for instance, some plants destined to live in arid situations, require to have a store of water which they may slowly absorb. The need is arranged for by a cup-like expansion round the stalk, in which water remains after a shower. Now the pitcher, as this is called, is not a new organ, but simply a metamorphose of a leaf.

These facts clearly shew how all the various organic forms of our world are bound up in one--how a fundamental unity pervades and embraces them all, collecting them, from the humblest lichen up to the highest mammifer, in one system, the whole creation of which must have depended upon one law or decree of the Almighty, though it did not all come forth at one time. After what we have seen, the idea of a separate exertion for each must appear totally inadmissible. The single fact of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for these, on such a supposition, could be regarded in no other light than as blemishes or blunders--the thing of all others most irreconcilable with that idea of Almighty Perfection which a general view of nature so irresistibly conveys. On the other hand, when the organic creation is admitted to have been effected by a general law, we see nothing in these abortive parts but harmless peculiarities of development, and interesting evidences of the manner in which the Divine Author has been pleased to work.

We have yet to advert to the most interesting cla.s.s of facts connected with the laws of organic development. It is only in recent times that physiologists have observed that each animal pa.s.ses, in the course of its germinal history, through a series of changes resembling the PERMANENT FORMS of the various orders of animals inferior to it in the scale. Thus, for instance, an insect, standing at the head of the articulated animals, is, in the larva state, a true annelid, or worm, the annelida being the lowest in the same cla.s.s. The embryo of a crab resembles the perfect animal of the inferior order myriapoda, and pa.s.ses through all the forms of transition which characterize the intermediate tribes of crustacea.

The frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish with external gills, and other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all of which are changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land animal.

The mammifer only pa.s.ses through still more stages, according to its higher place in the scale. Nor is man himself exempt from this law.

His first form is that which is permanent in the animalcule. His organization gradually pa.s.ses through conditions generally resembling a fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attains its specific maturity. At one of the last stages of his foetal career, he exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is characteristic of the perfect ape; this is suppressed, and he may then be said to take leave of the simial type, and become a true human creature.

Even, as we shall see, the varieties of his race are represented in the progressive development of an individual of the highest, before we see the adult Caucasian, the highest point yet attained in the animal scale.

To come to particular points of the organization. The brain of man, which exceeds that of all other animals in complexity of organization and fulness of development, is, at one early period, only "a simple fold of nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into three parts, while a little tail-like prolongation towards the hinder parts, and which had been the first to appear, is the only representation of a spinal marrow. Now, in this state it perfectly resembles the brain of an adult fish, thus a.s.suming in transitu the form that in the fish is permanent. In a short time, however, the structure is become more complex, the parts more distinct, the spinal marrow better marked; it is now the brain of a reptile. The change continues; by a singular motion, certain parts (corpora quadragemina) which had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pa.s.s towards the lower; the former is their permanent situation in fishes and reptiles, the latter in birds and mammalia. This is another advance in the scale, but more remains yet to be done. The complication of the organ increases; cavities termed ventricles are formed, which do not exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds; curiously organized parts, such as the corpora striata, are added; it is now the brain of the mammalia. Its last and final change alone seems wanting, that which shall render it the brain of MAN." {201} And this change in time takes place.

So also with the heart. This organ, in the mammalia, consists of four cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and in fishes of two only, while in the articulated animals it is merely a prolonged tube. Now in the mammal foetus, at a certain early stage, the organ has the form of a prolonged tube; and a human being may be said to have then the heart of an insect. Subsequently it is shortened and widened, and becomes divided by a contraction into two parts, a ventricle and an auricle; it is now the heart of a fish. A subdivision of the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered form, as in the heart of the reptile tribes; lastly, the ventricle being also subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart.

Another ill.u.s.tration here presents itself with the force of the most powerful and interesting a.n.a.logy. Some of the earliest fishes of our globe, those of the Old Red Sandstone, present, as we have seen, certain peculiarities, as the one-sided tail and an inferior position of the mouth. No fishes of the present day, in a mature state, are so characterized; but some, at a certain stage of their existence, have such peculiarities. It occurred to a geologist to inquire if the fish which existed before the Old Red Sandstone had any peculiarities a.s.similating them to the foetal condition of existing fish, and particularly if they were small. The first which occur before the time of the Old Red Sandstone, are those described by Mr.

Murchison, as belonging to the Upper Ludlow Rocks; THEY ARE ALL RATHER SMALL. Still older are those detected by Mr. Philips, in the Aymestry Limestone, being the most ancient of the cla.s.s which have as yet been discovered; THESE ARE SO EXTREMELY MINUTE AS ONLY TO BE DISTINGUISHABLE BY THE MICROSCOPE. Here we apparently have very clear demonstrations of a parity, or rather ident.i.ty, of laws presiding over the development of the animated tribes on the face of the earth, and that of the individual in embryo.

The tendency of all these ill.u.s.trations is to make us look to DEVELOPMENT as the principle which has been immediately concerned in the peopling of this globe, a process extending over a vast s.p.a.ce of time, but which is nevertheless connected in character with the briefer process by which an individual being is evoked from a simple germ. What mystery is there here--and how shall I proceed to enunciate the conception which I have ventured to form of what may prove to be its proper solution! It is an idea by no means calculated to impress by its greatness, or to puzzle by its profoundness. It is an idea more marked by simplicity than perhaps any other of those which have explained the great secrets of nature.

But in this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims to the faith of mankind.

The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of ADVANCES OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DEVELOPMENT, which have depended upon external physical circ.u.mstances, to which the resulting animals are appropriate. I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been in the first place arranged in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, to take place, not only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in s.p.a.ce, under necessary modifications, and as being carried on, from first to last, here and elsewhere, under immediate favour of the creative will or energy. {204} The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form of all organization, we must regard as the meeting-point between the inorganic and the organic--the end of the mineral and beginning of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which thence start in different directions, but in perfect parallelism and a.n.a.logy. We have already seen that this nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature and independent being in the infusory animalcules, as well as the starting point of the foetal progress of every higher individual in creation, both animal and vegetable. We have seen that it is a form of being which electric agency will produce--though not perhaps usher into full life--in alb.u.men, one of those compound elements of animal bodies, of which another (urea) has been made by artificial means.

Remembering these things, we are drawn on to the supposition, that the first step in the creation of life upon this planet was A CHEMICO-ELECTRIC OPERATION, BY WHICH SIMPLE GERMINAL VESICLES WERE PRODUCED. This is so much, but what were the next steps? Let a common vegetable infusion help us to an answer. There, as we have seen, simple forms are produced at first, but afterwards they become more complicated, until at length the life-producing powers of the infusion are exhausted. Are we to presume that, in this case, the simple engender the complicated? Undoubtedly, this would not be more wonderful as a natural process than one which we never think of wondering at, because familiar to us--namely, that in the gestation of the mammals, the animalcule-like ovum of a few days is the parent, in a sense, of the chick-like form of a few weeks, and that in all the subsequent stages--fish, reptile, &c.--the one may, with scarcely a metaphor, be said to be the progenitor of the other. I suggest, then, as an hypothesis already countenanced by much that is ascertained, and likely to be further sanctioned by much that remains to be known, that the first step was AN ADVANCE UNDER FAVOUR OF PECULIAR CONDITIONS, FROM THE SIMPLEST FORMS OF BEING, TO THE NEXT MORE COMPLICATED, AND THIS THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF THE ORDINARY PROCESS OF GENERATION.

Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated to impress a conviction that each species invariably produces its like.

But I would here call attention to a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of natural law which has been brought forward by Mr. Babbage, in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. The reader is requested to suppose himself seated before the calculating machine, and observing it. It is moved by a weight, and there is a wheel which revolves through a small angle round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to his eye successively, a series of numbers engraved on its divided circ.u.mference.

Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c., of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity.

"Now, reader," says Mr. Babbage, "let me ask you how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been so adjusted, that it will continue, while its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers? Some minds are so const.i.tuted, that, after pa.s.sing the first hundred terms, they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms few will doubt, and after the fifty thousandth term the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one, will be almost irresistible. That term WILL be fifty thousand and one; and the same regular succession will continue; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of natural numbers will pa.s.s before your eyes, from ONE up to ONE HUNDRED MILLION.

"True to the vast induction which has been made, the next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one; but the next number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred million and two, is one hundred million TEN THOUSAND and two. The whole series from the commencement being thus, -

1 2 3 4 5 .

99,999,999 100,000,000 regularly as far as 100,000,001 100,010,002 the law changes.

100,030,003 100,060,004 100,100,005 100,150,006 100,210,007 100,280,008 . . .

"The law which seemed at first to govern this series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000. The next term is larger than was antic.i.p.ated by 30,000, and the excess of each term above what we had expected forms the following table:-

10,000 30,000 60,000 100,000 150,000 . . .

being, in fact, the series of TRIANGULAR NUMBERS, {208} each multiplied by 10,000.

"If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by the wheel, we shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a thousand terms, they continue to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers; but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find that this law fails in the case of the 2762d term.

"If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law then coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a different manner, on triangular numbers. This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced which extends over about 950 terms, and this, too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws, which appear at different intervals.

"Now it must be observed that THE LAW THAT EACH NUMBER PRESENTED BY THE ENGINE IS GREATER BY UNITY THAN THE PRECEDING NUMBER, which law the observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred million instances, WAS NOT THE TRUE LAW THAT REGULATED ITS ACTION, and that the occurrence of the number 100,010,002 at the 100,000,002nd term was AS NECESSARY A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ORIGINAL ADJUSTMENT, AND MIGHT HAVE BEEN AS FULLY FOREKNOWN AT THE COMMENCEMENT, AS WAS THE REGULAR SUCCESSION OF ANY ONE OF THE INTERMEDIATE NUMBERS TO ITS IMMEDIATE ANTECEDENT. The same remark applies to the next apparent deviation from the new law, which was founded on an induction of 2761 terms, and also to the succeeding law, with this limitation only--that, whilst their consecutive introduction at various definite intervals, is a necessary consequence of the mechanical structure of the engine, our knowledge of a.n.a.lysis does not enable us to predict the periods themselves at which the more distant laws will be introduced."

It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of this pa.s.sage to the question under consideration. It must be borne in mind that the gestation of a single organism is the work of but a few days, weeks, or months; but the gestation (so to speak) of a whole creation is a matter probably involving enormous s.p.a.ces of time. Suppose that an ephemeron, hovering over a pool for its one April day of life, were capable of observing the fry of the frog in the water below. In its aged afternoon, having seen no change upon them for such a long time, it would be little qualified to conceive that the external branchiae of these creatures were to decay, and be replaced by internal lungs, that feet were to be developed, the tail erased, and the animal then to become a denizen of the land. Precisely such may be our difficulty in conceiving that any of the species which people our earth is capable of advancing by generation to a higher type of being. During the whole time which we call the historical era, the limits of species have been, to ordinary observation, rigidly adhered to. But the historical era is, we know, only a small portion of the entire age of our globe. We do not know what may have happened during the ages which preceded its commencement, as we do not know what may happen in ages yet in the distant future. All, therefore, that we can properly infer from the apparently invariable production of like by like is, that such is the ordinary procedure of nature in the time immediately pa.s.sing before our eyes. Mr. Babbage's ill.u.s.tration powerfully suggests that this ordinary procedure may be subordinate to a higher law which only PERMITS it for a time, and in proper season interrupts and changes it. We shall soon see some philosophical evidence for this very conclusion.

It has been seen that, in the reproduction of the higher animals, the new being pa.s.ses through stages in which it is successively fish-like and reptile-like. But the resemblance is not to the adult fish or the adult reptile, but to the fish and reptile at a certain point in their foetal progress; this holds true with regard to the vascular, nervous, and other systems alike. It may be ill.u.s.trated by a simple diagram. The foetus of all the four cla.s.ses may be supposed to advance in an identical condition to the point A.

M B / D + R / C + F / A +

The fish there diverges and pa.s.ses along a line apart, and peculiar to A itself, to its mature state at F. The reptile, bird, and mammal, go on together to C, where the reptile diverges in like manner, and advances by itself to R. The bird diverges at D, and goes on to B. The mammal then goes forward in a straight line to the highest point of organization at M. This diagram shews only the main ramifications; but the reader must suppose minor ones, representing the subordinate differences of orders, tribes, families, genera, &c., if he wishes to extend his views to the whole varieties of being in the animal kingdom. Limiting ourselves at present to the outline afforded by this diagram, it is apparent that the only thing required for an advance from one type to another in the generative process is that, for example, the fish embryo should not diverge at A, but go on to C before it diverges, in which case the progeny will be, not a fish, but a reptile. To protract the STRAIGHTFORWARD PART OF THE GESTATION OVER A SMALL s.p.a.cE--and from species to species the s.p.a.ce would be small indeed--is all that is necessary.