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DISCOURSE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 STUDIES OE THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 BY 
 
 ADAM SEDGWICK, M.A., F.R.S., 
 
 WOODWARDIAN PROFESSOR, 
 AND FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE. 
 
 THE FIFTH EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS, 
 
 ANT> 
 
 A PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 JOHN W. PARKER. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : JOHN DEIGHTON. 
 
 M.DCCC.L. 
 
IPrlnteU at tfie ©ntttersltp $ress. 
 
l'?SO 
 
 TO 
 
 THE MASTER, 
 FELLOWS AND STUDENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 AND 
 
 ESPECIALLY TO THOSE AT WHOSE REQUEST 
 IT IS PUBLISHED, 
 
 THE FOLLOWING DISCOURSE 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 BY THEIR AFFECTIONATE AND FAITHFUL SERVANT, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface to the First Edition. 
 
 Preface to the Fifth Edition, 
 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. 
 
 SECT. PAOB 
 
 1 Introductory Remarks on the Doctrine of Final Causes . ix 
 
 2 Theory of Spontaneous Generation, Transmutation of Spe- 
 
 cies, &c xvii 
 
 3 Fcetal Transformations, and their bearing on the Theory of 
 
 Development xxvii 
 
 4 Organic Phenomena of Geology, and general remarks on 
 
 their bearing on the Theory of Development . . . xliv 
 
 5 Animal and vegetable Remains of the Primary or Palaeozoic 
 
 Division lviii 
 
 First Forms of Vegetable and Animal Life as described in 
 The Vestiges, &c lxxviii 
 
 6 Fossils of the Secondary Division, &c lxxxix 
 
 7 Organic Remains of the Tertiary Division, &c. . . . cvii 
 
 8 Materialism. Mechanical and Moral Laws. Laws of 
 
 Chance. Tendencies of Modern Science. Fantastical 
 views of Nature. Evils of rash Generalization. Educa- 
 tion, &c. . . . cxl 
 
 9 Conditions of the Mind that have led men to deny a Per- 
 
 sonal Creator. Atheism and Pantheism. Illustrations of 
 the doctrine of Final Causes. Galvanic and Phrenological 
 Hypotheses, Mechanical Inventions, &c. . . . clxxiii 
 
 10 On the Ideal Theory of Locke — imperfections of his 
 Analysis. Schools of the Idealist and the Sensualists. 
 Mischief of setting up Idealism as the interpreter of 
 material nature, illustrated by the works of Oken, &c. cxcii 
 
 M314134 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 SKCT. PAGE 
 
 11 Digression on some Discoveries of Oken followed out by 
 
 Owen. Archetype of Nature. General Scale of Nature. 
 Never existed at one time in the History of the Earth. 
 The reconstruction of the Scale subversive of the Theory 
 of Development, &c ccvi 
 
 12 Reconsideration of the Argument for Final Causes. Mi- 
 
 racles. Belief in a First Cause, and Moral Conclusions 
 
 from it. Induction the Fountain of all Material Truth, &c. ccxxix 
 
 PART II. 
 
 1 Pantheistic views of Revelation and its Evidences, and 
 
 Comments on the Newtonian Philosophy. Evidences of 
 Christianity, Historical and Prophetical. Moral Purity 
 of the Gospel. Its Propagation and effects on the Pro- 
 gress of Man, &c cclvi 
 
 Arguments from Analogy ccciv 
 
 2 Recent Changes in the University Course. Modern Science 
 
 of Cambridge — Philosophical Society. Modern external 
 improvements. Moral and social character of the Stu- 
 dents, &c cccxxiii 
 
 External Improvements in Cambridge .... cccxliii 
 
 3 Modern religious movements. Principles of the Church of 
 
 England contrasted with those of the Church of Rome. 
 Tracts for the Times, Terms of Communion. Immo- 
 rality of the Tracts. Acts of Apostasy. Causes of error 
 in our estimate of religious and moral questions. True 
 Catholicity. Conclusion ccclxvi 
 
DISCOURSE, 
 
 (pp. 1-94). 
 APPENDIX TO THE DISCOURSE. 
 
 NOTE PAGK 
 
 A Examples of the Method of Induction 95 
 
 B General Diffusion of the Imponderable Agents through Space . 102 
 C Reply to Fanatical Objections against the Study of Physical 
 
 Science 104 
 
 D On the Nebular Hypothesis 118 
 
 E Religious Bearing of the Study of Nature — La Place's Senti- 
 ments on Education — Natural and Revealed Religion — Fana- 
 tical Objections to some passages lh the Discourse . .127 
 
 F Natural Theology — Paley — Examples of Adaptation in Com- 
 parative Anatomy, derived from the Teeth and Jaws of Mam- 
 mals 143 
 
 G Heathen Views of Final Causes. Reasons which have led Men 
 
 to reject the Truth of Natural Theology . . . .150 
 
 H Objections to some passages in Paley's Moral Philosophy . 160 
 
 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 No. 
 
 I. Additional Remarks on the Nebular Hypothesis . . . 176 
 II. Animal Creations by Galvanism 183 
 
 III. On the Placoid and GanoYd Fishes in the Palaeozoic Strata, 
 
 and their places in the Organic Scale 185 
 
 IV. On the supposed Interchange of Vegetable Species — Hybridi- 
 
 zation—Alternate Generations of Steenstrup — Parthenogene- 
 sis of Owen, &c 193 
 
 V. On the Development of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms 
 
 in the oldest known Fossiliferous Strata .... 207 
 
 VI. On the supposed derivation of the Terrestrial Flora from the 
 
 Marine, by a Natural Transmutation of Species . . . 212 
 
 VII. On the Use and Abuse of the word Law ; and on the methods 
 
 by which we rise to a right conception of it among physical 
 Phenomena — Kepler's Laws — Bode's Law — Kirkwood's 
 Law, &c. ib. 
 
 VIII. A Series of Extracts from Oken's Physiophilosophy . . 222 
 IX. Remarks on the Theory of The Vestiges, and on the Author's 
 
 Explanations — Moral and Religious considerations opposed 
 
 to Materialism 247 
 
 X. Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society — The 
 
 Prelude of W. Wordsworth, &c 314 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Preface, p. xviii. 1. 21, for in which read from which 
 
 xxxvii. 1. 20, for a back-bone read a back -bone and spinal 
 
 chord 
 lxiv. 1. 12, for a Cestracion read a Cestraciont 
 lxxxii. second Note, for p. 64 read p. 65. 
 xcii. 1. 28, for Brachiopoda read Cephalopoda 
 clx. Add the following foot-note, 
 
 See Supplement to the Appendix, No. IX. 
 ccxv. 1. 7i for the Radiata read those Radiata 
 cccxii. 1. 8, for evidences our read evidences of our 
 ccclxvi. 1. 15, for Churchman Low read Churchman and Low 
 ccccx. 1. 22, for self-love breed read self-love and breed 
 ccccxv. 1. 6 from the bottom, for It read it 
 lb. last line, for (we dare to say logically) read (we dare to 
 say) logically 
 Appendix, p. 122, 1. 9, for round our own read round their own 
 Supplement to Appendix, p. 178, 1. 16, for infra p. 27 read supra p. 27- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 The substance of the following Discourse was 
 delivered in the Chapel of Trinity College, on the 
 day of the Annual Commemoration in December 
 last, and is published at the request of the junior 
 Members of the Society, to whom it was more 
 immediately addressed. As the long delay in its 
 publication requires some apology, the Author begs 
 leave to state, that the request, on which he is 
 now acting, first reached him during the Christmas 
 vacation, when he was absent from the University ; 
 and that for some weeks after his return he was 
 so much occupied in completing a course of lectures 
 and in passing two memoirs through the press, 
 that the Lent Term had nearly expired before he 
 had time to revise his MS. for the printer. With- 
 out any further delay it was then struck off as far 
 as page 33 ; and he hoped to have published it at 
 the commencement of the Easter Term. 
 
 During its progress through the press he found 
 however that he had undertaken a more difficult 
 task than he had imagined : for having animad- 
 verted with much freedom on some parts of the 
 
X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 Cambridge course of reading, he felt himself com- 
 pelled, before he dared to give what he had written 
 to the public, to enter at more length on a justifica- 
 tion of his opinions. On this account, his remarks 
 on the classical, metaphysical, and moral studies 
 of the University (extending from p. 33 to p. 91) 
 were cast over again, and expanded to at least three 
 times their original length. 
 
 Before this part of his task was completed, an 
 attack of indisposition compelled him for a short 
 time to quit the University ; and on his return 
 the languor of ill health, and a series of engage- 
 ments of which it is not necessary here to speak, 
 prevented him from immediately resuming it : so 
 that the latter part of this Discourse was not printed 
 till a late period in the Easter Term, when most 
 of the junior Members had left the University 
 for the long vacation. On this account he re- 
 solved not to publish before the University reas- 
 sembled in the October Term. 
 
 Lest he should be accused of printing a dis- 
 course too widely differing from the one he was 
 requested to publish, he wishes to state, that (with 
 the exception of mere verbal corrections) it is, as 
 far as p. 33, in the form in which it was first 
 written, and that the conclusion has undergone no 
 change : and in the two parts which have been 
 so much expanded, he has preserved the scope 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XI 
 
 and sentiments, and in many instances the very 
 words, of his first sketch. The notes added in an 
 Appendix are not written to serve any purpose 
 of ostentation. By most academic persons they 
 may be considered unnecessary : but should a single 
 reader find them of use in explaining or enforcing 
 what is stated in the text, the Author will not 
 regret that he has written them. 
 
 He has attacked the utilitarian theory of morals, 
 not merely because he thinks it founded on false 
 reasoning, but because he also believes that it pro- 
 duces a degrading effect on the temper and con- 
 duct of those who adopt it. It is, however, more 
 easy to pull down than to build up ; and he thinks 
 it unfortunate that there is no English work on 
 morals at once unexceptionable in its principles, and 
 cast in such a form as to meet the wants of the 
 University. Bishop Butler's three Sermons on 
 Human Nature and his Dissertation on the Nature 
 of Virtue have lately become subjects of examina- 
 tion in Trinity College. Of their kind, they are 
 works of inestimable value : but they are devoted 
 rather to the discussion of the principles of morality 
 than to the establishment of a system of moral phi- 
 losophy ; and they are considered by most persons, 
 who begin to speculate on such questions, both diffi- 
 cult and uninviting. 
 
 Before concluding this Preface, the Author dis- 
 
Xll PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 claims any notion of holding out the following pages 
 as a formal dissertation on academic studies. Such 
 an attempt would be far above his powers ; not 
 falling in with his usual habits of thought, and 
 requiring research for which he has neither time 
 nor inclination. What is here printed treats of 
 subjects treated of a hundred times before, and pro- 
 fesses no originality, except what it derives from 
 the circumstances under which it was delivered and 
 the persons to whom it was addressed. Should it 
 be the means of leading even a small number of 
 them to think more justly on any of the subjects 
 of academic learning, and to combine moral and 
 religious habits of thought with those severe physical 
 studies, during which the best faculties of the mind 
 are sometimes permitted to droop and wither, his 
 most earnest wishes will be accomplished. 
 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 Nov. 5, 18.33. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 § 1 . Introductory Remarlcs on the Doctrine of Final 
 
 This Edition, with the exception of a few verbal 
 corrections too insignificant to require any formal notice, 
 is a reprint from the text of a Discourse — first pub- 
 lished in 1833. Several additions have, however, been 
 made to the Notes of the Appendix, and their arrange- 
 ment has been changed. Note (D) on the Nebular 
 Hypothesis*, and note (E) in reply to some objections 
 which had been taken to the religious principles of the 
 Discourse, are entirely new. In note (G) I have added 
 a translation of the Greek extract from Xenophon's 
 Memorabilia : and about two pages have been added to 
 note (H) (note (E) of the former editions), on Paley's 
 Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. I do not 
 wish to change one sentence of what I had written on 
 the Utilitarian Theory of Morals ; because my opinions 
 on that subject are unchanged, and I think it not expe- 
 dient to write upon it at greater length. 
 
 As the Discourse and the Notes of the Appendix 
 were written at different times, after long interruptions, 
 and to meet specific objections, I have been led into 
 
 * See the Supplement to the Appendix No. I. 
 S. D. b 
 
 ) 
 
X PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 several repetitions which might be avoided in a more 
 formal treatise : but the very repetitions are not per- 
 haps without their use. During the passage of this 
 edition through the press, I intended, in a concluding 
 note, to discuss some points just touched on in the 
 body of this little work ; and, especially, to notice at 
 considerable length the development of organic forms 
 in the successive strata of the earth. I, however, soon 
 discovered that the subject was far too large for a 
 single note : and had there been no other reason for 
 leaving this part of my task incomplete, the interrup- 
 tions of ill health would have prevented me from giving 
 more than the bare outline of an argument which I 
 hope to fill up at some future time. The outline, such 
 as it is, I have thought it best to subjoin in this Pre- 
 face ; requesting the reader to consider it not so much 
 an attempt at a full and formal argument, as a series 
 of suggestions, which may be, perhaps, hereafter more 
 expanded and better enforced. 
 
 (1) The kingdoms of nature are presented to 
 our senses in a succession of material actions, so adapted 
 to one another as to end in harmony and order. All 
 these changes and movements among the things around 
 us seem to be produced by powers of nature we call 
 second causes: but the mind of man cannot and will 
 not rest content with second causes, and is constrained 
 to look above them to some First Cause. Among the 
 things produced by the hands of man we are able to 
 separate works of accident from works of design : we 
 gain this knowledge by experience, and by reflecting on 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XI 
 
 what passes within ourselves : and it is by taking this 
 knowledge with us in our judgments on the works of 
 God, that we are naturally led to a conception of an in- 
 telligent First Cause, capable of producing all the phe- 
 nomena of the visible world. 
 
 On the other hand, it is said by Geoffroy Saint- 
 Hilaire, and other materialists of the same school, " We 
 ascribe no intention to God, for we do not trust the 
 feeble powers of reason "..."we observe facts, and pre- 
 tend only to the character of historians"..." we cannot 
 make an intelligent being of nature/' &c. &c. There 
 is a latent sophism in all such statements as these ; and 
 were the authors of them true to their own principles, 
 they ought to stop short among individual phenomena, 
 and never ascend to the conception of any general law 
 of nature. 
 
 While they deny the indications of a God, they 
 deify dead matter, by deriving from it works that have 
 all the external characters of things produced by design 
 and high intelligence. We are constrained, by the very 
 law of our common being, to ascend to the conception 
 of some power ordaining and directing the natural 
 movements and changes we see around us. Among 
 these changes we see the most obvious marks of intelli- 
 gence. How are these indications to be accounted for ? 
 We cannot deify dead matter, and make of it an intel- 
 ligent cause. We are, therefore, constrained to speak 
 of an intelligent power superior to nature ; because we 
 cannot, without the assumed existence of such a power, 
 so comprehend the works of nature as to bring them 
 
 b2 
 
Xll PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 into co-ordination with the knowledge we have of our- 
 selves, and our experience of the things around us. 
 
 (2) The doctrine of Final Causes, drawn from the 
 structure of the organic world, has perhaps been stated 
 at sufficient length in the following Discourse, and the 
 Notes of the Appendix. It cannot be better stated than 
 in the homely and graphic argument of Socrates {infra 
 p. 151): The eye is made to see, the ear is made to 
 hear, and the organs of every living being, so far as we 
 can comprehend them, have a design and purpose. 
 Under this point of view " these various organs seem 
 altogether the contrivance of some wise artificer who 
 loves the beings he has created," {infra p. 152). Or- 
 ganic structures give us, therefore, a clear proof of the 
 doctrine of Final Causes ; and these causes have not, 
 according to one of the quaint conceits of Bacon, been 
 unfruitful, like virgins dedicated to God; but in the 
 hands of Cuvier, Owen, and many other great physiolo- 
 gists, have not only rationalized a multitude of known 
 truths, but have also been continually pregnant with 
 new discoveries. 
 
 The same school of materialists, to whom 1 have 
 already pointed, object to our language as well as to 
 our principles. It is true that in all cases we are com- 
 pelled to express our meaning in words which are but 
 the reflexion of our own nature. We know what we 
 mean by our own muscular force, and we apply the 
 same word force, it may be figuratively, to the powers 
 of nature producing mechanical movement. So also we 
 comprehend the meaning of cause and effect, will and 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Xlll 
 
 design, as applied to the works of our own hands : and 
 in like manner we analogically apply these words to 
 organic structures and anatomical designs proceeding 
 from the workmanship of God. But should we gain by 
 any change of the language whereby we describe the 
 phenomena of the organic world as reflected in the 
 mind of man ? While speaking of organic bodies shall 
 we only tell, like the modern materialist school, " of 
 the principle of connexion" — " the elective affinities of 
 organic elements" — "the equilibration of organs,'" — &c, 
 and think that our words are one jot less figurative and 
 more true to nature ? On the contrary, I think them 
 more figurative and incomparably less true to nature 
 than the language in more common use among the natu- 
 ralists and physiologists of this country. The language 
 just quoted is used for the express purpose of keep- 
 ing out of sight an intelligent First Cause ; while those 
 who have invented it are constrained to deify the dead 
 elements ; forgetting all the while that they have on 
 every side of them, and within themselves, the pheno- 
 mena of mind as well as of matter ; and that every 
 material structure or material change produced by man, 
 and bearing any similitude to the mechanical organic 
 structures subservient to life, is the result of design and 
 will. So intimately are the proofs of design and pur- 
 pose woven into the frame- work of organic life, that, 
 spite of themselves, the modern materialists often find it 
 impossible (as they themselves allow) to describe the 
 phenomena before them, without falling into language 
 implying the reality of those very final causes which 
 
XIV PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 they have in theory denied. And let not this fact be 
 ascribed to an imperfection in the words of daily use ; 
 but rather let it be appealed to as a proof of nature's 
 teaching, and a true reflexion of her image by the mind of 
 man, before that mind has been warped by any theory. 
 (3) Of organized beings we know the beginning 
 and the end, and we know the leading purposes to 
 which their organs are subservient. Hence in specu- 
 lating about the functions of organic structures, we may 
 often use the doctrine of Final Cause as the foundation 
 of our reasoning and the source of true induction. 
 This we cannot do in questions that are purely physical : 
 for while we contemplate any great physical law we 
 neither know its beginning nor its end ; neither do we 
 comprehend its whole purpose. Thus, while analyzing 
 the properties of light by direct experiment, we should 
 only desert the true road to discovery were we to turn, 
 aside to consider the adaptation of light to our wants ; 
 or the anatomy of the eye, and its fitness to convey the 
 impressions of light to the visual sense. Bacon saw this 
 distinction clearly, and wrote well upon the misapplication 
 of final causes. Could he have prophetically anticipated 
 the modern discoveries in physiology, perhaps his censures 
 would have been somewhat qualified, or applied with 
 more caution: but philosophers of every sound school 
 will be ready to subscribe to the great truths conveyed 
 in the following sentences {Advancement of Learning, 
 Book ii.) : " The handling of final causes, mixed with 
 the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the 
 severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XV 
 
 causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these 
 satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and 
 prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done 
 not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth on that shore, 
 but by Aristotle, Galen, and others, which do usually 
 likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes."... . 
 " They are indeed but remoras and hinderances to stay 
 and slug the ship from further sailing ; and have 
 brought this to pass, that the search of the physical 
 
 causes hath been neglected, and passed in silence." 
 
 " Not because these final causes are not true, and 
 worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own 
 province; but because their excursions into the limits 
 of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in 
 that track. For otherwise, keeping their precincts and 
 borders, men are extremely deceived if they think there 
 
 is an enmity or repugnancy at all between them;" 
 
 " both causes being true and compatible ; the one de- 
 claring an intention, the other a consequence only." 
 
 (4) While considering the orderly movements of 
 nature, we speak of second causes, and our language 
 defines correctly the manner in which the phenomena 
 of nature are reflected in the human mind. But how 
 did these phenomena begin, and by what power were 
 they first set in movement ? These questions inevitably 
 lead us to a conception of a creative power of nature, 
 quite distinct from the vulgar operations carried on 
 before our eyes : and thus are we led to speak of the 
 creative power, as well as of the sustaining power of God. 
 These ideas are distinct ; and to confound them under 
 
XVI PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 one general expression would only be a denial of our 
 nature, and an utter confusion of thought, in our use of 
 general terms. One expression tells us of the beginning 
 of natural phenomena, the other defines their con- 
 tinuance in subordination to law. 
 
 It may be true that we can form no adequate 
 conception of creative power ; neither, on the other 
 hand, have we any adequate conception of the sustaining 
 power, whereby the order of the natural world is 
 upheld. It may also be true that in the mind and 
 will of the intelligent First Cause there is no distinction 
 between the exercise of a creative and a sustaining power. 
 Of this we know absolutely nothing ; and what do we 
 gain by such a speculation ? It is irreverent, and out 
 of the reach of sound philosophy : for we cannot, to 
 use the words of Bacon, " fly up to the secrets of the 
 Deity by the waxen wings of the senses. 1 '' When 
 applied to nature all our language is inadequate, and 
 but feebly shadows out such ultimate truths of the 
 material world as would express the will and purpose 
 of the great First Cause. But our knowledge is not 
 unreal because it is limited ; provided it be only the 
 expression of that form of truth which defines the 
 reflexion of the natural world in the mind of man, 
 while he is honestly employed upon the materials sur- 
 rounding him, and neither forgets his own faculties, 
 nor oversteps the evidence that is before him. 
 
 To meet such views as these, it has been affirmed, 
 that we behold in nature only a chain of second causes 
 of which we know neither the beginning nor the end ; 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XVH 
 
 that we have no right to speak of a Creator or of a 
 creative power; because the links of nature's chain may 
 be infinite in number, and the order of nature may 
 have been eternal. With such a view of nature we 
 may end in downright atheism ; or, if we accept the 
 indications of intelligence in the natural world, we may 
 perhaps advance one step farther, and try to satisfy the 
 longings of the mind in some cold scheme of pantheism. 
 As a matter of fact, views, like those just pointed at, 
 have been brought forward again and again by men 
 who have denied the being of a God ; or, if they could 
 not bring themselves so far to belie their inner nature 
 as to deny the being of a God, were at least resolved 
 to deprive him of his personality, of his creative power 
 and will, and of his providential government. To 
 combat such opinions is not the immediate purpose of 
 this Preface ; for I wish to deal with facts rather than 
 opinions. Whatever semblance of truth they may have, 
 while we arrest ourselves among the laws of dead 
 matter, they are utterly without meaning when applied 
 to the forms of organic life : for it is now beyond 
 dispute, and is proved by the physical records of the 
 earth, that all the visible forms of organic life had a 
 beginning in time. To have established this point is v 
 the glory of Geology. 
 
 §2. Theory of Spontaneous Generation, Transmutation 
 of Species, fyc. 
 
 To combat or explain away the previous conclusion 
 a new scheme of nature was invented. It was con- 
 
XV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 tended that we know nothing but second causes, and 
 that they are all in all — that the commencement of 
 organic life was nothing more than one of the material 
 changes in the endless cycle of movements going on 
 continually before our eyes — a new material conbination 
 produced by the elemental powers of the natural world ; 
 and as purely natural as any new mechanical deposit 
 or any new chemical combination. This view of the 
 commencement of the organic world was called spon- 
 taneous generation. 
 
 But our theorists were not content to rest at this 
 point. They further assumed that the humblest forms 
 of organic life, having thus begun, had also a natural 
 tendency to breed upwards, so as to ascend (by a law 
 of progressive development) on a natural scale of 
 organic forms : — that a monad thus passed by natural 
 means (and by natural means only) into the more com- 
 plicated form of some zoophyte — the zoophyte into a 
 mollusk — the mollusk, by a like succession of natural 
 steps, into a fish, a reptile, a bird, and a mammal : — and 
 lastly, that by a like natural progression (in which all idea 
 of creative power is excluded) some inferior mammal 
 passed into a monkey, and a monkey into a man. The 
 successive changes, implied in this theory, were not 
 sudden, but slow and gradual, and brought about, during 
 the lapse of ages, by the insensible sliding of one species 
 into another. Thus by the simple operation of second 
 causes we obtain, on the principles of this theory, two 
 classes of phenomena, one defined by the words spon- 
 taneous generation, the other by such terms as progressive 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. , XIX 
 
 development, or transmutation of species : and thus we are 
 supposed naturally to account for all the phenomena of 
 organic life and the whole sequence of animated nature. 
 
 The authors and early defenders of this theory 
 were, perhaps without exception, unbelievers in every 
 form of Revealed Truth. They were materialists in the 
 rankest sense of that term. They denied all distinction 
 between material and moral phenomena — regarding 
 them both as nothing more than the varied mani- 
 festations of the powers of second causes. Most of them 
 formally denied all proofs of design in nature, and all in- 
 dications of an overruling Providence ; and thus struck 
 at the foundation of Natural Religion. But a doctrine 
 may be true, and yet may be turned to evil purposes. 
 The first questions for discussion are the following — Is 
 this doctrine true I Has the animal kingdom been first 
 produced by spontaneous generation, and afterwards per- 
 fected by transmutation and progressive development t 
 
 The Author of the Vestiges of the Natural History si 
 of Creation, has adopted the whole scheme which has 
 been sketched in the preceding sentences ; and to a 
 comment on his principles I must devote a portion 
 of this Preface. His work is written in a dogmatic 
 spirit, and in good language. It is written also in the 
 words of seeming reverence, and takes for granted the 
 indications of a Final Cause ; though its principles and 
 language were invented and affirmed by those who did 
 their best to cheat us out of our conceptions of a 
 Creator, and denied the whole doctrine of Final Causes. 
 The Author proved, by the numerous mistakes of his 
 
XX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 early editions, that he was neither well acquainted with 
 the first principles of physics, nor well read in any 
 sound work on physiology. Hence, his book was re- 
 ceived with no respect and favour by men of science. 
 On this point I can, even now, speak with the utmost 
 confidence. But it was new in the popular literature of 
 this country; and more than this, it was systematical 
 and positive, and seemed to offer to the smatterers in 
 natural science a kind of short and royal road to uni- 
 versal knowledge. By such persons it has been re- 
 ceived with no common favour. 
 
 The Author is not only unacquainted with any of 
 the severe lessons of inductive knowledge, but has a 
 mind apparently incapable of comprehending them. 
 Without this supposition it would be hardly possible 
 to acquit him of insincerity. No moral accusation is, 
 however, brought against him. He writes in good 
 faith, and had imposed upon himself before he un- 
 consciously attempted to deceive others. The misinter- 
 preted facts, to which he first clung to support his 
 argument, may be rescued from his grasp, one after 
 another. But he will not easily change or modify his 
 first opinions : for, speaking of specific transmutations, 
 he has told us — that though there never may have 
 been an instance of it since the beginning of the human 
 race, "yet the doctrine may be shewn, on grounds 
 altogether apart, to have a strong probability on its 
 side."..." And though this knowledge were never to be 
 clearly attained, it would not much affect the present 
 argument, provided it be satisfactorily shewn that there 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXI 
 
 must be some such power within the natural range of 
 things. 1 ' Satisfactorily shewn that there must be some 
 power in nature independent of our experience ! The 
 Author while using this language is speaking of second 
 causes ; and seems never to have learnt that there are 
 not, and never can be, any probabilities in nature that 
 are not suggested by experience. I now pass on to his 
 system. 
 
 (1) He assumes the truth of the Nebular Hypo- 
 thesis. It is his first link in the chain of natural 
 causes. But has this hypothesis been confirmed by the 
 progress of discovery ? Is it passing into the con- 
 dition of a sound physical theory? I think the con- 
 trary. On this subject I request the academic reader 
 (for to such readers the following little work is still 
 addressed) to turn to note (D) of the Appendix (infra, 
 p. 118*.) I cannot pause to notice the author's vio- 
 lation of every rule of sober and severe induction in his 
 extravagant extension of the hypothesis. 
 
 (2) After a series of natural transformations, he 
 at length finds a world fit for the support of animal 
 life, and animal life begins. Spontaneous generation 
 and a gradual transformation of species on an ascending 
 scale are now to bring about all the phenomena of the 
 organic world f. He allows of no creative will distinct 
 
 * See also Supplement to the Appendix No. I. 
 
 •f In using these words I refer to no particular scheme of arrangement 
 for the organic kingdoms. The reasoning of the text applies to every 
 scheme, linear or circular, simple or complicated. Every scheme, however, 
 implies an ascent from beings of a low organic structure to beings of a 
 higher ; and it is a matter of indifference to the argument, whether this 
 ascent take place upon one line or upon a thousand. 
 
XX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 from the vulgar action of second causes — no distinc- 
 tion between mind and matter — material and moral : — 
 and man (with all his powers, physical and intellectual, 
 his responsibilities as a social being, his expectations of 
 moral progress, and his hopes of future good) is, so far 
 as regards causation, a phenomenon of the same order 
 with the incrustation on a culinary vessel, the salt 
 formed in a chemist's laboratory, or the crystal in a 
 mineral vein. Should we gain in clearness of con- 
 ception, or be more philosophical in our use of general 
 terms, by linking together (as the supposed products of 
 a common material causation) phenomena so different 
 in kind, and so widely asunder in every manifestation 
 they make to the mind of man ? Is there any sobriety 
 or truth in such a scheme as this ? On the contrary, I 
 think it shallow, mischievous, and untrue. 
 
 (3) All natural knowledge is based on inductive 
 reasoning. We have learnt to comprehend the mecha- 
 nical movement of the heavens by first learning the 
 laws of motion upon the earth. In like manner, we 
 have learnt to speculate securely on the functions of 
 organized being, during the old conditions of the earth, 
 by first studying the laws of organic life among the 
 phenomena of living nature. In every instance we 
 must begin with what is known and present to us, 
 before we can speculate about what is unknown and 
 remote. To this rule we know of no exception. 
 
 (4) What proof, then, have we of the doctrine 
 of spontaneous generation in the living world ? In 
 replying that we are utterly without proof, I only state 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XX111 
 
 my firm conviction. All the Author's instances are 
 drawn from the dark corners of nature's kingdom, 
 where it is almost physically impossible to trace the 
 progress of her workmanship. Sober philosophy would 
 tell him, in such cases, to be guided by analogy ; and 
 all analogy is against him. We may presume that he 
 has selected such instances as are best suited to fortify 
 his argument. And what are they? — The Hydatid^ 
 which sometimes affects the domestic pig, and is sup- 
 posed not to attack the wild animal ; the Larva of the 
 (Enopota cellaris, which lives nowhere but in wine and 
 beer ; an insect which feeds only on chocolate ; a Tinea, 
 which only attacks dressed wool ; and the Pimelodes 
 cyclopum, which are only found in subterranean lakes in 
 the old craters of the Andes. How are the negations 
 implied in the three first instances to be proved 1 How, 
 for example, is it possible to prove that no wild boar is 
 ever attacked by the Hydatid f The domestic animals 
 are constantly before us, the wild animals are not. The 
 Tinea attacks the fleece, as well as the prepared and 
 manufactured wool. And were the Author's statement 
 true to the letter it would start no new difficulty ; for 
 sheep in the wild state must cast their wool, which, 
 when scoured by the elements, might become a proper 
 nidus for the Tinea, The case of the Pimelodes cyclopurn 
 is only one example, out of many, of animals with a con- 
 fined habitat : neither is it fairly stated ; for those who 
 have described these fishes tell us that they are found 
 in the streams on the mountain-sides as well as in the 
 old craters of the Andes. They are not more difficult 
 
XXIV PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 to account for than the trout and other fishes so com- 
 monly found in the high mountain-lakes of Europe. 
 
 The Entozoa are, beyond comparison, the cases most 
 difficult to account for : but the whole history of many 
 species has been well explained in conformity with the 
 common laws of generation : and, speaking generally, 
 we may ask, if these creatures spring spontaneously 
 without ova, how comes it to pass that nature has pro- 
 vided a means for the continuance of their species, and 
 that some of them are almost incredibly prolific * ? 
 
 But it was affirmed, within the last few years, that 
 a new animal had been produced by a direct galvanic 
 experiment, and without any pre-existing germs of 
 animal life. If so, we should have one instance of the 
 commencement of organic life, in conformity with the 
 hypothesis of spontaneous generation. It turned- out, 
 however, that this new marvel of nature's chemistry was 
 but an old and wellknown species of Acarus, of which 
 the ova, in tens of thousands, probably existed in the 
 dusty corners of the very room where the first experi- 
 ments were carried on. The creatures thus produced 
 were not (as they ought to have been) low in the or- 
 ganic scale, but were of a very complicated structure ; 
 and one of the pretended creations was a female well 
 filled with eggs. If galvanism could thus create animals, 
 no wonder it should also exercise over them a fecun- 
 dating influence ! But is there so much as one good 
 
 * See Professor Owen's Lectures on the Invertebrate Animals (1843, 
 pp. 76—81), and the Edinburgh Review (July, 1845, pp. 68—72). The 
 ova in one individual of the Entozoa amount to sixty-four millions ! 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXV 
 
 physiologist or chemist who now adopts the first in- 
 terpretation of these galvanic experiments ? I believe 
 not so much as one. Ridicule is the only weapon we 
 can condescend to use against the outrage on common 
 sense and universal experience implied in this mockery 
 of a creative power. One thing, however, is proved by 
 this history, that to be an intrepid vindicator of rash 
 hypotheses a man must be first endowed by nature with 
 an ample capacity of belief*. 
 
 (5) Have we any proof of specific transmutations 
 in the living world \ We have not, so far as I under- 
 stand the question, so much as the shadow of any proof 
 of them. The constancy of organic forms — like species 
 producing like according to a fixed law of generation — 
 is the obvious and certain fact. These laws are to the 
 organic world what the laws of elective affinity are to 
 chemical combinations. Varieties there are — the limits 
 of species are not well known — the riches of nature are 
 so great that, in the almost boundless varieties of ani- 
 mal forms created on a common plan, one species often 
 comes close upon another. As an inevitable conse- 
 quence, naturalists have made many blunders ; and their 
 vanity may sometimes have led them to give new spe- 
 cific names, where the new names were not called for. 
 But the mistakes of naturalists alter not the laws of 
 nature. Art has been pushed to the utmost in modify- 
 ing the natural forms of organic life : but not so much \ 
 as one true specific change has been ever brought about, 
 so as to raise the progeny of any known animal to a 
 
 * See Supplement to the Appendix No. II. 
 S. D. c 
 
XXVI PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 higher grade on the organic scale. These are the 
 broad conclusions we arrive at from all the facts and 
 analogies offered to our senses. In this instance it will 
 not serve our purpose to entrench ourselves among the 
 dark corners of the animal kingdom ; where, (as in the 
 case of the Entozoa^) from the inevitable want of evi- 
 dence, we may, by casting away analogy, affirm that 
 generation is ambiguous, and that species are inconstant. 
 The Author's theory demands specific transmutations on 
 the whole ascending scale, from a monad to a man. To 
 suppose that specific transmutations are now going on 
 at the bottom of the scale, where our senses fail us, and 
 we can have no good evidence of the fact ; while no 
 transmutations are going on in the upper steps of the 
 organic scale, where we have good evidence, is to stultify 
 the whole argument, and to suppose an inconstancy in 
 nature^s workmanship, abhorrent from any conception 
 we can form of a true organic law. 
 
 A good theory embodies in verbal propositions our 
 conceptions of natural laws ; and these conceptions are 
 all based on observation, experiment, or good analogy. 
 Does the hypothesis of spontaneous generation and trans- 
 mutation of species deserve the name of a theory ? It is 
 not suggested, but contradicted, by the broad and ob- 
 vious facts of nature ; and I know of no good analogy to 
 help it out. A hypothetical spirit may do good service, 
 provided it urge us on to make new experiments ; but 
 if we rest content with it, and, above all, if it lead us, as 
 it has too often done, to shut our eyes against facts, and 
 to take from nature no response but such as suits our 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXV11 
 
 fanatical belief of what nature ought to be, it must do 
 deadly mischief to the cause of inductive truth. 
 
 $ 3. Foetal Transformations and their bearing on the 
 Theory of Development. 
 
 Are there any other facts in living nature bearing 
 on the hypothesis of development as stated by the 
 Author of the Vestiges f He dwells on the transforma- 
 tions exhibited by every vertebrate animal during its 
 foetal life — from its first existence as an animated germ, 
 to its full maturity of organic structure. If it be true 
 that all the higher animals (of course including man) 
 have, during their early life, gone through a series of 
 transformations whereby they have been made to pass 
 through all the successive inferior Classes in the great 
 ascending scale of nature ; why should we not suppose 
 that in the universal womb of the living world one species 
 may be transformed into another on a similar ascend- 
 ing scale ? Taking it at the very best, the assertion 
 implied in such a question is based only on a vague 
 analogy, which may help us to turn a figurative sen- 
 tence, but can never serve a higher purpose, or take the 
 place of fact as the support of a sound theory. The 
 broad intelligible fact is this: — whatever transformations 
 their progeny may go through while in the foetal state, 
 like species continue to produce their like. " By no 
 artifices of human skill (and artifice has not been want- 
 ing) has the animated ovum of one species been deve- 
 loped into another ; by no artifice has the ovum of any 
 known species been permanently developed into any 
 
 c2 
 
v 
 XXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 new species ; by no continued operation of analogous con- 
 ditions, however carefully conducted, have the ova of 
 different species been developed into animals of one kind." 
 (Dr. Clark.) Nature is true to her work, and will not 
 turn aside to follow the crooked track of an hypothesis. 
 But is it true that the higher animals do undergo 
 during their fcetal state a transformation from one 
 organic class to another, on a regular ascending scale? 
 Is it true, for instance, that the foetus of a man, during 
 the successive periods of gestation, is a monad, a polype, 
 an insect, or a cephalopod? Is it afterwards a fish, 
 a reptile, a bird, a beast, a monkey, and lastly a 
 human being with a permanent organic form * ? It is 
 impossible to discuss such questions to much purpose 
 within the limits of this Preface. All I pretend to 
 
 * This question is discussed, in a very condensed form, through twelve 
 pages of the Edinburgh Review, (July, 1845), to which I may refer the 
 reader. The Reviewer borrowed the best part of his argument from an 
 excellent Memoir on Fcetal Development, read before the Cambridge 
 Philosophical Society by Dr Clark, in the early part of 1845. I cannot 
 withhold an earnest wish that he would publish this Memoir in a 
 somewhat more expanded form, and with anatomical illustrations. 
 Should any Reader wish to consult the Article in the Edinburgh 
 Review, just referred to, I may inform him that it is very carelessly 
 printed, and that its Author seems not to have well understood the 
 mystery of correcting proof-sheets. The following errata will justify 
 this remark — E. R. No. 165, p. 10, 1. 11, for Mackay read Macleay, and 
 1. 18, for analyses read analogies : p. 21, 1. 25, for positions read portions : 
 p. 27, 1. 15, and 1. 32, for Bailey read Baily : p. 31, 1. 16, for original read 
 natural : p. 42, (line 2 from the bottom), for radiata read articulata — the 
 word is correctly written, 1. 19 of the same page: p. 56, 1. 7, for quane 
 read quant; and 1. 8, for cretes read cries : p 59, 1. 34, and 1. 41, for 
 Bimana read Quadrumana ! ! Were not the words written correctly on 
 other pages one might conclude that the Reviewer gave four hands to men, 
 and only two to monkeys : p. 66, 1. 11 from the bottom, for hecomes read 
 become : p. 68, 1. 30, and 1. 33, for Hyatid read Hydatid: p. 74, 1. 24, for 
 spermatazoa read spermatozoa. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXIX 
 
 do is to state a series of fundamental facts, out of 
 which, when illustrated by anatomical designs and 
 properly expanded, the true answers to these several 
 questions may be drawn. 
 
 First. There are certain phenomena which seem to 
 imply a formal or specific character in the very begin- 
 nings of mammal life. I allude to the spermatozoa, first 
 seen at the age of puberty ; ami if they differ speci- 
 fically in different animals, then (whatever may be the 
 office of these mysterious bodies — whether they act 
 as mere stimulants, or in whatsoever way they act) 
 there is an end of all approach to specific identity in the 
 first beginnings of organic life. 
 
 Secondly. Let us suppose animal life to have begun. 
 The first changes of the organic germ within the ovum 
 of a mammal do resemble those observed in what has 
 been called the " fissiparous generation " of the lowest 
 grades of the animal kingdom. But these resemblances 
 soon after cease ; and the organic globules, by some 
 mysterious bond of union unappreciable by microscopic 
 sense, arrange themselves in two nearly parallel rows ; 
 and thus we have the first rudiments of a backbone, and 
 a continuous spinal chord. But during the elaboration 
 of this early organic structure, no anatomist has ever 
 observed any succession of changes bringing the nascent 
 embryo into a true anatomical similitude with the 
 Radiata, Articulata, or Mollmca. Thus are three great 
 Divisions, or Sub-kingdoms, including fifteen Classes in 
 the organic scale (as given in the system of Cuvier) 
 passed over without any corresponding foetal type. 
 
XXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 Assuredly this fact, were there no other, is fatal to 
 a theory of regular progressive transformations ; which 
 starts from this position — that the organic germs of 
 all animals are alike — and that man, and all the other 
 higher animals, pass, while in the womb, through all 
 the successive conditions that are permanent in the 
 lower Classes of the great organic scale of nature. 
 
 Thirdly. There runs through all animated nature 
 a grand unity of plan and purpose ; were it not so, 
 comparative anatomy could never have risen into a 
 science. So much of similitude is found even among 
 animals widely placed apart, that organs subservient to 
 a common purpose may be brought into anatomical 
 comparison, and often described under common names : 
 and this is true not only of the perfect animal frame- 
 work, but is true also of the successive organic changes 
 during the foetal state. But these resemblances produce 
 no confusion of species, nor do they interfere with the 
 clear distinctions between separate organic types. 
 
 There are two very distinct sets of changes, follow- 
 ing in regular succession, during the foetal state of all 
 the higher animals. " In the first set are laid down 
 the animal organs, the nervous system and organs of 
 motion, as well as the intestinal canal and its appen- 
 dages (sometimes called the vegetative organs), and a 
 kind of intermediate system evolving gradually the 
 heart and blood-vessels. The combination of all these 
 is the true embryo state of the animal. The second 
 set of changes produce the perfection of the animal, 
 and determine its sex. These belong to what is called 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXXI 
 
 the larva state. Now the embryo state and the larva 
 state are both passed in ovo by mammals and birds 
 (and some vertebrates of another class) ; but the larva 
 state is passed out of the ovum by batrachians, fishes, 
 and most of the invertebrates*." During the progress 
 of these changes, tufts and gills are gradually formed 
 on the " branchial fissures" of batrachians and fishes ; 
 and when this structure is sufficiently advanced to 
 enable these organs to discharge their offices, the 
 growing animals are forced, by anatomical necessity, 
 to quit the ovum, and begin an independent life. But 
 during the corresponding period in the gestation of a 
 mammal, no tufts or gills are found in the (so-called) 
 "branchial fissures 1 ' of the embyro. No microscopic 
 power has ever shewn the minutest germination of 
 branchial tufts or gills. The extremities of the fcetus 
 are ill-defined, and might in popular language be called 
 fins or paddles : but they have not the anatomical struc- 
 ture of true fins ; and the embryo breathes not, for a 
 single instant, by help of gills. It is not, therefore, 
 true, that the foetus of a man, or any other mammal, 
 ever passes through the animal conditions of a fish : and 
 here again the theory of progressive foetal development, 
 from one corresponding germ through a succession of 
 common types, breaks down, and is untrue to the work- 
 manship of nature. 
 
 Fourthly. Do men, or any other of the higher ani- 
 mals, pass, during their foetal growth, through the condi- 
 tions of reptile life ? The grand distinctions between the 
 
 * Memoir, by Dr Clark. 
 
XXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 organic life of a reptile, and that of a bird or mammal, 
 arise out of the modifications of the heart. This truth 
 becomes obvious when we consider that the nutriment 
 of the whole body, and the secretions of every organ, 
 are drawn directly or indirectly from the blood. No 
 reptile has the perfect double heart of a bird or mammal. 
 What, then, are the organic transformations in the 
 hearts of birds and mammals during their foetal growth I 
 To prevent mistake, I will again quote the Memoir of 
 Dr. Clark : " The first rudiment of the heart appears 
 in a single tube, and it gradually becomes bent like an 
 Italian S ; and it then makes three swellings which are 
 afterwards, in mammals and birds, to become the two 
 auricles, the two ventricles, and the aorta with the pul- 
 monary artery. This led to the belief that the swelling 
 for the auricles was first divided into two compartments 
 by a septum ; and that the swelling for the ventricles 
 was divided at a later period of foetal life. This belief 
 is, however, contrary to fact. The septum is formed in 
 the swelling corresponding to the ventricles a consider- 
 able time before it is formed in that corresponding to 
 the auricles. So that, for a period, the heart of a human 
 foetus (as well as that of other mammals and birds) has 
 one auricle and two ventricles. Hence it does not pass 
 through the form which is permanent in the Amphibia; but it 
 does pass through a form not found permanent in any known 
 creature. This grand correction of an old mistake we owe 
 to the concurrent labours of Valentin, Rathke, and 
 Bischoff, who stand in the first rank of discoverers; 
 and no good anatomist has pretended to contradict 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXX111 
 
 them. The hearts of birds and mammals do not, there- 
 fore, pass through forms which are permanent in fishes and 
 reptiles* ." Again, therefore, the theory of progressive 
 foetal development breaks down ; and whatever sem- 
 blance of reality it may have in the eyes of those who 
 amuse themselves with tracing similitudes among the 
 ill-defined and immature organs of foetal life, the theory 
 is anatomically untrue. 
 
 Fifthly. As the foetal forms of the higher animals 
 approach maturity, and become gradually capable of 
 breathing air, and supporting an independent existence, 
 they are still bound up in anatomical conditions which 
 are essential to their continued life, and fix an impass- 
 able barrier between one species and another. " At the 
 period of foetal life, when frogs and fishes are beginning 
 to breathe by branchial tufts and gills, other amphibia 
 and birds are breathing by allantoid ; and never, for an 
 instant, breathe by gills. At the same period of foetal 
 development hot-blooded quadrupeds are breathing by 
 allantoid and placenta jointly ; while man is breathing 
 by placenta alone. These are essential foetal differ- 
 ences connected with the last perfection of animal struc- 
 ture ; and they form a wide anatomical separation, so as 
 to bar all interchange or confusion of organic type." 
 (Dr. Clark). To make these assertions clear would 
 
 * The above passage first appeared in the Edinburgh Review, July 
 1845, p. 80 ; and I am happy to quote it here on account of its great 
 value, and also because it contained, 1 believe, the first allusion, made by 
 an English writer, to a very remarkable discovery of the German anato- 
 mists. I need not, perhaps, inform the reader that, in the normal type, a 
 fish's heart has one ventricle and one auricle, and that a reptile's heart has 
 one ventricle and two auricles. 
 
XXXI V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 require a series of good anatomical drawings : but 
 enough has been stated for my purpose. I have no 
 wish either to extenuate or exaggerate the dealings of 
 nature : but what has been stated crushes to atoms 
 the theory of The Vestiges, so far it as has been drawn 
 from the progressive forms of foetal life. 
 
 There is one grand fallacy which has warped all the 
 descriptive writings of our Author's school. To serve 
 the purpose of an hypothesis they have described the 
 foetus, in the successive stages of its growth, only by its 
 central portions ; and not by its whole mass, including 
 its organic appendages. But it cannot be separated 
 from these appendages without instant death, unless it 
 have reached that maturity of structure which will 
 enable it to maintain an independent life. Had they 
 reference only to existing conditions of foetal life, we 
 might perhaps suppose, with a semblance of reason, 
 that different Classes of the animal kingdom were not 
 merely laid down upon the same general plan, but that 
 they passed, by insensible gradations, into one another. 
 As a matter of fact, however, to which there is no ex- 
 ception, these fcetal appendages are not defined by 
 existing conditions. Their office is to perfect the ani- 
 mal form ; they are true prospective contrivances, im- 
 plying, under strict anatomical necessity, a subsequent 
 and more perfect condition of organic life. We cannot 
 hatch a rat from a goose's egg (one of the Author's 
 pleasant dreams) ; because, during every stage of incu- 
 bation there are organic contrivances within the egg 
 which have a prospective reference only to the struc- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXXV 
 
 ture of a bird, and apply not to that of any mammal. 
 There is, therefore, so far as we can comprehend it, no 
 obscurity in this part of nature^ workmanship, nor any 
 semblance of confusion or structural interchange be- 
 tween the different Classes of the living world. 
 
 Again, there is no intelligible contrivance for the 
 production of a new species during the progress of 
 foetal growth. Many larvae (for example the tadpole) 
 can, for a time, support an independent life. But such 
 animals are immature, and, without one exception, 
 unfruitful. Their life may be destroyed, or, within 
 limits, may be lengthened. They may be well or ill-fed, 
 they may be large or small, but we cannot change their 
 nature. Speaking of the tadpole, our author tells us 
 that (under artificial treatment) "this progeny of a 
 Reptile literally becomes a Fish; and transition of 
 species is thoroughly realized, although in retrogres- 
 sion *." We deny that in this (or any similar) instance 
 there is even an approach to a specific transmutation. 
 The tadpole contains not the organs most essential to 
 the structure of a perfect fish : and if its organs be 
 defective on the one hand, so are they excessive on the 
 other ; for it contains within the framework of its body 
 certain organic appendages from which it cannot be 
 separated without death; and these appendages, by a 
 strictly anatomical necessity, produce in due time the 
 mature organic structure of a frog. The loose un- 
 scientific statement of the Author may be fitted to 
 startle a superficial reader, but it contains not the 
 
 * Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, 6th Edition, p. 226. 
 
XXXVI PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 elements of exact truth, and is only an example of that 
 grand anatomical fallacy to which I have before alluded. 
 
 Again, the Author tells us (p. 224), " that we see 
 nature alike willing to go back and to go forward. 
 Both effects are simply the result of the operation of 
 the law of development in the generative system." No 
 one denies the great modification of specific types from 
 a change of external conditions : but when he appeals 
 to a law of development in the generative system which 
 produces a change of species, either on the ascending or 
 descending scale, we can only state in reply, that we 
 utterly deny the existence of any such law, or of a 
 single fact whereon to build it. So far from being 
 based on a wide induction of facts, (and without such 
 induction the verbal expression of a material law is no 
 better than a mockery), the Author has not advanced 
 so much as one unequivocal instance in support of it. 
 The voice of all nature is against him. 
 
 But he has published his Explanations, a Sequel to 
 the Vestiges, fyc, wherein he attempts to vindicate his 
 views on the foetal question. However much I may 
 wish to avoid details, I will notice these Explanations 
 in a few sentences. 
 
 (1) Has he answered the Reviewer's statement — 
 that, in the very beginning of foetal life there are phe- 
 nomena that seem of themselves to imply definite and 
 specific differences \ He has not, I believe, even made 
 the attempt. 
 
 (2) Has he answered the objection of the Re- 
 viewer — that, during the early progress of foetal life, in 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXXV11 
 
 animals of the higher grade, three great Divisions of 
 the animal kingdom are passed over without any cor- 
 responding foetal type ? He has made the attempt, and 
 failed. We learn, he tells us, from the Bridgewater 
 Treatise of Dr. Roget, that animals of a high grade 
 exhibit, during their early fcetal progress, u a marked 
 resemblance to the lowest animals of the same series." 
 This may be true in a popular sense ; but it is not 
 anatomically true that these resemblances produce any 
 confusion of species. The quotation proves nothing to 
 the Authors purpose, and I know that Dr. Roget 
 repudiates its application. 
 
 Again, he tells us, " the Reviewer states what is 
 not true, if any faith is to be placed on the first 
 authorities of the age ... for have we not seen Mr. Owen 
 affirming that the human embryo is first vermiform?" 
 In the sentence from which this word is taken Professor 
 Owen wrote in figurative language, and never meant to 
 be anatomically exact. The first " organic streak " (or 
 rudiment of a back-bone) may well be called vermiform : 
 but it has not the structure of a worm ; and it has ap- 
 pendages, that are as true a part of the nascent foetus 
 as the " streak," and involve a development of the 
 higher grades of animal life. I have consulted Professor 
 Owen, more than once, on the very point in question, 
 and he confirmed every atom of the Reviewer's state- 
 ment : nay, so exactly did his language agree with that 
 of the Reviewer, that one seemed almost the echo of 
 the other. With the interpolation of one single word 
 (to prevent a quibble) I can, with the utmost confidence, 
 
XXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 repeat the assertion of the Reviewer — that among the 
 vertebrata, during the early fcetal progress, " no physio- 
 logist has observed the shadow of any change assimi- 
 lating (anatomically) the nascent embryo to any of the 
 Radiata, Articulata or Mollusca." 
 
 (3) Has the Author replied to the statement of the 
 Reviewer — that the foetus of a mammal never breathes by 
 gills, and is never, for an instant, in the true anatomical 
 condition of a fish I He has done no such thing. He 
 has contented himself with repeating his early blunder. 
 
 (4) Has he replied to the argument of Dr. Clark ; 
 and especially to his statement respecting the fcetal 
 changes in the heart of a mammal ? He has not, so 
 far as I know, even made the attempt ; and in his sixth 
 edition (Vestiges, p. 207) he has gravely repeated his 
 old blunder, forgetting the labours of the great anato- 
 mists formally quoted against him by Dr. Clark ! 
 
 (5) Has he replied to the concluding remarks of 
 Dr. Clark on the apparatus supplied by nature for 
 the full maturity of the fcetal form ! They are all 
 passed over. But he informs us (Explanations, p. 1 08) 
 that his theory has been misrepresented. He only 
 meant to state that " there is a resemblance in general 
 character between the particular embryotic state of 
 being and the mature condition and form of the appro- 
 priate inferior animal, V &c. He is, undoubtedly, the 
 best interpreter of his own words : but they sounded 
 differently in the ears of all who read them ; and by him- 
 self they were applied, again and again, as if they were 
 used in the very sense given to them by the Reviewer. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XXXIX 
 
 While speaking of the foetal changes of a man, the 
 Author tells us, in his last edition, " that the organic 
 structures pass through conditions generally resembling 
 a worm, a fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mam- 
 malia," &c. But he has not always expressed his 
 meaning with like caution ; and I may remark that 
 " general resemblances" will not serve his purpose. His 
 scheme of development supposes that the foetus passes 
 through the ascending organic scale — that it may be 
 thrown off by abortion, and live and propagate its 
 likeness on an inferior grade — that a Reptile, in this 
 way, may produce a Fish, or a Mammal may produce 
 a Reptile. On the other hand — that by improved incu- 
 bation or gestation the offspring may rise on the organic 
 scale above the parent's grade — that a goose's egg 
 (for example) may produce a rat. This theory (if it 
 deserve the name of theory) has no meaning, unless we 
 take for granted that the foetal changes of a mammal 
 do produce something more than general resemblances. 
 They must produce foetal conditions identical with the 
 several grades of animal life, which they are, by the 
 hypothesis, assumed capable of generating. It was 
 against this view that Dr. Clark's argument was di- 
 rected : and, so far as I know, not the shadow of a 
 reply has been given to it. But the Author adheres 
 to his scheme, and will adhere to it so long as a new 
 hypothesis can give it any semblance of consistency. 
 Should every alleged fact be smothered under the 
 weight of opposing evidence it matters not. The doc- 
 trine of specific transmutations, and of a generative law 
 
XI PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of foetal development, whereby a pair of animals may 
 produce a progeny either lower or higher than them- 
 selves on the great organic scale of nature, may still 
 be upheld by our Author : for he ventures to tell us, 
 " though no such changes have taken place since the 
 beginning of the human family, and though this know- 
 ledge were never to be clearly attained, it would not 
 much affect his argument, provided it be satisfactorily 
 shewn that there must be some such power within the 
 natural range of things ! " I need not tell the academic 
 reader that this is not written in the spirit of in- 
 ductive truth. To strive against it would be a waste 
 of strength. We cannot wrestle with a cloud. 
 
 I will endeavour to conclude this part of my Pre- 
 face with the following general summary. From the 
 harmony and order of the material world, we infer the 
 existence of an intelligent power superior to the dead 
 matter which surrounds us. This is admitted by the 
 Author of the Vestiges : but in making this admission 
 he is in direct antagonism with the whole school from 
 which he borrows his philosophy. From the adaptation 
 of the several parts of nature to one another, we infer 
 a prescient wisdom in the great First Cause. This First 
 Cause we clothe with personal attributes ; we compre- 
 hend them all under our conception of the Godhead ; and 
 in this way we refer all the phenomena of the visible 
 world to the fiat of his will, and the continued exercise 
 of his sustaining power. In drawing this conclusion 
 we use the voice of Nature, and we only speak of her 
 as she is reflected in the mind of man. For man, by 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. xli 
 
 the exercise of his own forethought and will, can pro- 
 duce a series of orderly phenomena — feebly resem- 
 bling the works of God, however inferior to them in 
 vastness, in complexity, and in the sure indications of 
 power and wisdom : and humble as man's faculties may 
 be, he does know how to separate such phenomena, 
 wheresoever he meets with them, from the results of 
 accident, and from the rude effects of second causes 
 that come not under law, and are unmodified by the 
 prescient will of beings like himself. 
 
 In no part of nature are the wisdom and provident 
 care of God more clearly seen than during the pro- 
 gress of foetal life. The eye is formed in the dark 
 recesses of the womb before light has ever touched the 
 nerves of sight. The ear also is prepared in dark- 
 ness, while the nascent being is surrounded by water, 
 and before the pulsations of the air have ever reached 
 its bodily substance. Neither the immediate wants of 
 the growing embryo, nor the conditions of the sur- 
 rounding matter, imply, by any conceivable necessity, 
 the existence of such organs as the ear and the eye : 
 and we but mock the intellect of man when we tell 
 him that they are produced only by " the elective af- 
 finity of organic elements,'' 1 and that they may be com- 
 pared (as phenomena of the same order) to the mecha- 
 nical actions of matter upon matter, or to the results 
 of a chemical combination. Whatever there may be 
 that is either chemical or mechanical in our fcetal 
 organs of sense, they shew prospective contrivances 
 which enter not into our conceptions of what is chemi- 
 s. d. d 
 
Xlii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 cal or mechanical, and have reference only to future 
 conditions of life after the foetus has passed into what 
 may be truly called a new living world. In like man- 
 ner, while in the foetal state, neither man nor any 
 mammal has need of a double heart. The foetus is 
 resting in a dark chamber surrounded by a watery 
 fluid ; and a simple heart we believe (on the analogy 
 shewn to us by the hearts of fishes) would best suit 
 its state of being. A simple heart is given to it, not 
 however the heart either of a fish or a reptile ; but a 
 heart with a structure of its own, and with appendages 
 — a true and inseparable portion of itself — whereby 
 a new double heart is gradually laid down and per- 
 fected. When this complicated apparatus has reached 
 perfection, and the foetus becomes capable of support- 
 ing an independent life, then it passes into the air, and 
 the double heart begins from that moment its predestined 
 organic movements. I have only stated facts which 
 have been stated a thousand times before. I have stated 
 them as plainly as I can ; and I have given them their 
 true physiological and moral meaning. Thine eyes did 
 see my substance yet being imperfect, and in thy book all my 
 members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, 
 when as yet there was none of them. This is the voice 
 of inspiration, and reaches the profoundest depths of 
 true philosophy. The knowledge of man can neither 
 add to its meaning nor diminish its strength. It 
 teaches not that the moral parts of our nature are 
 sunk under the material ; neither does it tell us that the 
 material are beneath the contemplation of the moral ; 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. xlift 
 
 but it unites together the moral and material in bonds 
 which the power of man will never tear asunder. 
 
 All living Nature then, so far as I can understand 
 her language, or can read the interpretations of it 
 by other men, contradicts the theory of spontaneous 
 generation and progressive development. Spontaneous 
 generation (in our Author's sense) has not one good 
 unambiguous fact to rest upon. The theory of develop- \ / 
 ment has no firmer support in^nature: and the only 
 pretended fact which has any clear and unequivocal 
 bearing on the question, and is put forth by the Author 
 of The Vestiges, with the view of destroying the separa- 
 tion between vegetable species, turns out to be nothing 
 better than a misconception and a blunder*. 
 
 It has been said, however, that animals undergo 
 a progressive development while they pass through 
 their successive foetal conditions in the womb. True ! 
 and many of them, while in the larva state, leave 
 the ovum, and are enabled for a time to support an 
 independent life. But larvw, when they leave the 
 ovum, have no sexual development ; and can never 
 without a miracle (for what is a miracle but a viola- 
 tion of an ascertained law of nature ?) have the power 
 of generating any new continued forms of animal 
 being. And were it true, by a miracle in nature, that 
 any one of them were suddenly endowed with this 
 power, the development would then be on a descend- 
 ing, and not on an ascending scale. Again, we have 
 been told that animals may, under favourable conditions, 
 
 * Supplement to the Appendix No. IV. 
 
 d 2 
 
xliv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 and by a longer period of gestation, produce some being 
 of a higher order than themselves : that a beast (for 
 example) may in this way be hatched from a bird's 
 egg; and that woman may hereafter make perfect the 
 organic scale, by producing some being of higher attri- 
 butes than man ! What beings may be produced out of 
 the abortive imaginations of the human brain, is not a 
 question worth one moment's pause. So far as nature 
 is concerned, philosophy has nothing to do with what 
 may be, but with what is. 
 
 $ 4. Organic Phenomena of Geology, and general remarks 
 on their bearing on the Theory of Development. 
 
 Leaving the consideration of living nature, another 
 question may be started : Are there, among the old de- 
 posits of the Earth, any traces of an organic progres- 
 sion among the successive forms of life ? I think there 
 are such traces ; and to explain my meaning, I will 
 quote an extract from an Anniversary Address read by 
 myself before the Geological Society of London, in 1831. 
 " I think that in the repeated and almost entire changes 
 of organic types in the successive strata of the earth — 
 in the absence of mammalia in the older, and their very 
 rare appearance (and then in forms entirely unknown 
 to us) in the newer secondary groups — in the diffusion 
 of warm-blooded quadrupeds (frequently of unknown 
 genera) in the older tertiary system ; and in their great 
 abundance (and frequently of known genera) in the 
 upper portions of the same series — and lastly, in the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. xlv 
 
 recent appearance of man on the surface of the Earth 
 (now universally admitted) ; — in one word, from all 
 these facts combined, we have a series of proofs the 
 most emphatic and convincing, — that the existing order 
 of nature is not the last of an uninterrupted succes- 
 sion of mere physical events derived from laws now in 
 daily operation : but on the contrary, that the ap- 
 proach to the present system^, of things has been 
 gradual, and that there has been a progressive develop- 
 ment of organic structures subservient to the purposes 
 of life. 
 
 " Considered as a mere question of physics (and 
 keeping all moral considerations entirely out of sight), 
 the appearance of man is a geological phenomenon of 
 vast importance — indirectly modifying the whole surface 
 of the earth — breaking in upon any supposition of zoo- 
 logical continuity — and utterly unaccounted for by what 
 we have any right to call the Laws of Nature. If by 
 the laws of nature we mean only such manifestations of 
 power as seem good to the Supreme Intelligence, then 
 there can be no matter for dispute. But in physical 
 questions such terms as ' the laws of nature, 1 have a 
 proper reference only to second causes ; and I may ask, 
 by what operation of second causes can we account for 
 the recent appearance of man*?" 
 
 I wish to make no change in the previous extract. 
 Its language might be improved, and brought into more 
 exact accordance with the advance of knowledge during 
 the last twenty years : but it expresses, with sufficient 
 clearness, what may be called a great historical truth ; 
 
 * Proceedings of the Geological Society. London, Vol. i. p. 305. 
 
Xlvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 and the words " progressive development" have (in the 
 sentences just quoted) no reference to any theory either 
 true or false. At the time it was written I neither be- 
 lieved in the spontaneous generation, nor in the specific 
 transmutations of any portion of the animal kingdom. 
 Let no one, therefore, quote this passage without allow- 
 ing its author to define the meaning of his own words'*. 
 
 Three great divisions of the fossili/erous strata. Con- 
 sidered under the most general and simple point of 
 view, the fossil-bearing strata of the earth admit of 
 an arrangement into three great divisions ; the Primary, 
 or Palaeozoic ; the Secondary ; and the Tertiary. — In 
 the lowest groups of the Primary division neither land- 
 plants nor air-breathing marine animals have yet been 
 found ; but other marine animals are found in abund- 
 ance, and some of them are of the very highest organic 
 type. In the upper groups of the same division we 
 have a noble terrestrial flora; and coeval with that 
 flora were Insects and Reptiles. In the very highest 
 group (the Permian) bones of Reptiles had long been 
 discovered : but remains of the reptile Class have lately 
 been found also in the Carboniferous strata. 
 
 Among the Secondary rocks — including under that 
 name all the formations, from the new red sandstone 
 
 * A historical development is, or ought to be, a record of successive 
 facts in the past phenomena of the organic world. A theory of develop- 
 ment may be true or false ; but must not be confounded with a mere 
 statement of the successive facts on which it is supposed to rest. In the 
 remaining portions of this Preface the word development may sometimes 
 be used historically ; but the words theory of development are always used 
 with an expressed or implied reference to the hypothesis of a progressive 
 natural development by specific transmutations. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. xlvH 
 
 (Trias) to the chalk inclusive — we have, in addition 
 to all the lower grades of the animal kingdom, a few 
 Birds and Mammals. But the Birds and Mammals are 
 so few and far between, that we can arrange them chro- 
 nologically on no regular organic scale. Two strange 
 genera of terrestrial Mammals shew themselves among 
 the fossils of the lower oolites : but not one remnant 
 of a terrestrial Mammal has been yet discovered among 
 the higher Secondary rocks. No cetacean bone has yet 
 been found in the lower oolites. One doubtful example 
 of a cetacean bone occurs in the middle division of the 
 oolites ; but this form of organic life disappears again ; 
 and during the long epoch of the cretaceous series 
 (forming a prelude to the tertiary system, in which 
 mammals' bones are abundant) not one cetacean bone, 
 or one fragment of any other marine Mammal, has yet 
 been found. 
 
 In the Tertiary division bones of Mammals occur in 
 abundance ; and in the highest beds of the series we 
 are introduced to many existing types of the organic 
 world: but the remains of Man have not yet been 
 discovered even among the highest of the regular ter- 
 tiary deposits. 
 
 It is true that the phenomena of geology are widely 
 separated, broken, and disjointed ; and the progress of 
 knowledge may compel us to modify some of our pre- 
 sent conclusions, so far at least as they are built upon the 
 assumption of negative facts. In an advancing science, 
 our theory may be true or false, perfect or imperfect : 
 but as it professes to start from ascertained pheno- 
 
xlviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 mena, so must it continue to be in co-ordination with 
 such facts as come before us during our progress, or it 
 is good for nothing. 
 
 Do, then, the ascertained phenomena of geology sug- 
 gest a theory of development based on any known law of 
 organic nature ? So far as the theory is concerned the 
 real questions for discussion are such as follow. — Are the 
 animal remains of our successive groups of strata pre- 
 sented to us in such an order as to suggest a theory of 
 natural development by transmutation from one organic 
 form to another 8 Are the Genera and Families of the 
 old world so ill defined as to pass one into another by 
 insensible gradations ? Are the organic intervals be- 
 tween the different Orders and Classes of the animal 
 kingdom so far interpolated by new forms of nature, as 
 to lose all semblance of reality and permanence, and to 
 shew that all our systematic lines of separation are but 
 the artifices of immature knowledge — that Order may 
 spring from Order, and Class from Class, in the way 
 of natural generation ? Do the organic types of the 
 old world follow one another chronologically, in such a 
 manner as to arrange themselves on any conceivable 
 organic scale, whether simple or complicated ? To all 
 such questions I can do no more than return a most 
 unqualified negative : and I may add, that the Genera 
 and Families of the old fossil world are more abruptly 
 defined, and exhibit fewer connecting links, than in 
 existing nature. But it is, I fear, impossible for me, 
 within the limits of this Preface, to discuss such ques- 
 tions effectually. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. xlix 
 
 The materialist school must, in some form or other, 
 give an affirmative answer to these questions. And 
 how have they given even the semblance of truth 
 to their dogmatic theory of development? By first 
 discarding the pregnant facts of living nature — by ex- 
 plaining the known by the unknown, and thereby con- 
 founding the very nature of true inductive evidence. — 
 By reconstructing, hypothetically, a chain of being out 
 of the organic fragments of the old world ; and then 
 taking this chain, every link of which is hypothetical, to 
 bind together their system of nature ; thereby discarding 
 the first principles of sound logic. — By pretending to 
 rescue nature from the province of miracle and fable, 
 while their system at every step is both fabulous and 
 miraculous : for neither is it historically true to nature, 
 nor is it grounded on any ascertained natural law. The 
 imperfection of our knowledge may be a good reason 
 for withholding any attempt at theory : but if we do 
 venture to theorise it must be in conformity with such 
 results as science has established by firm evidence. 
 And, assuredly, the imperfection of our knowledge can 
 never justify us in publishing our idle dreams, and then 
 trying to make all nature bend before them. 
 
 The materialists have not, however, stopped short 
 in the exhibition of bad logic : they have given us both 
 an imperfect, and an erroneous enumeration of facts 
 and phenomena : and, worse still, they have so dis- 
 turbed the chronological order of phenomena, as to 
 gain a response from Nature the very opposite to that 
 which she addresses to our senses. I accuse not this 
 
1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 school of bad faith ; but I do accuse them of a spirit 
 nearly touching on fanaticism. With incomparable cre- 
 dulity in the admission of any story that seems to make 
 for the honour of their idol, they are deaf to the plain 
 speaking voice of Nature. Hypothesis is to be upheld, 
 while facts are to be kept in abeyance. 
 
 " My system may be true," says the Author of The 
 Vestiges, M though one half the illustrations presented at 
 its first appearance should be wrong.'" Such a sentence 
 could never have been written by a man who had any 
 sober conception of the nature of inductive truth. He 
 exhibits, in his own person, the very worst faults of 
 the school in which he has enrolled his name : for he is 
 credulous in the admission of supposed facts, careless in 
 the analysis of physical evidence, and throughout the 
 pages of his book exhibits a more intrepid use of " the 
 circular logic " than is to be met with in the works of 
 any other English writer on a subject of modern science. 
 When convicted of an imperfect enumeration and false 
 arrangement of geological phenomena, it is not enough 
 to tell us in reply that he borrowed his facts from 
 others : if he adopted them without marks of reference 
 or quotation, interpolated them with observations of 
 his own, and drew his own conclusions from them ; 
 then was he, from first to last, as responsible for them 
 to the public, as if they had all been of his own 
 invention. 
 
 The real question at issue is this ; Do the organic 
 types of the old world, when taken with all the condi- 
 tions under which nature has placed them before our 
 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. ll 
 
 senses, suggest the "theory of development?" My 
 negative reply to this question would be of small value 
 were it not confirmed by the conclusions of those who, 
 during the last thirty years, have been labouring in the 
 field. They tell us that this theory is neither proved, 
 nor made probable, by the phenomena of Geology. 
 On the contrary, they affirm, almost with one voice, 
 that the organic phenomena elaborated in the past his- 
 tory of the earth throw most formidable difficulties in 
 the way of this theory ; even admitting that it is made 
 probable (which it assuredly is not) by a fair induction 
 from the phenomena of living nature. They are a body 
 of hard-working and truth-loving men, who, on points 
 where men may reasonably differ, exhibit many shades 
 of opinion ; but on the present question they appear to 
 speak with one consent. 
 
 So far from starting with any natural prejudice 
 against this theory, one large section of their body has 
 boldly adopted views which would gain in harmony and 
 consistency by its acceptance. The Huttonians tell us 
 that there is a mechanism within the earth which ex- 
 plains all past changes in the distribution of land and 
 sea, and brings under one natural system of causation 
 all the successive deposits of Geology. Could they 
 point out to us any corresponding material cause that 
 so modified the successive types of animated nature as 
 to bring the organic and mechanical changes of the 
 earth into a good natural co-ordination, their system 
 would then be theoretically perfect. I need not tell J 
 the reader that Sir Charles Lyell has, in this country* 
 
Hi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 long stood at the head of the Huttonian school, and 
 directed the best efforts of his life to its illustration. He is 
 no timid speculator; yet he rejects the theory of organic 
 development (however gracefully it would lend itself to 
 his general views) because he finds it untrue to nature. 
 Authors who have only glanced at the vestiges of 
 our ancient monsters, and never dared to track so much 
 as one of them to its lurking-place, may, perhaps, tell 
 us that Geologists are in fetters — that they are so 
 embarrassed by a load of facts that they have no power 
 of onward movement — that they have so dimmed their 
 sense in the dark chambers of the earth, that they can 
 hardly endure the light of day. Is there then "no 
 speculation in their eyes?" Are they so cowardly a 
 body that they dare not look beyond the material forms 
 to which they cling ? Their history tells us a far differ- 
 ent story ; and we learn from it that they have too 
 often grasped at consequences beyond the reach of the 
 ground on which they stood ; and that their besetting 
 sin has too often been a rash and intemperate spirit of 
 speculation. 
 
 Who have been the great leaders in our know- 
 ledge of the laws that govern the material world ? We 
 may reply : the men without exception, who have been 
 great observers themselves, or (at the very least) have 
 learned to appreciate, and embody in their own know- 
 ledge, the labours of the great observers who have 
 gone before them. Every new fact is a spark fitted to 
 kindle in the mind of man some new train of general 
 thought ; so that the best experimenters have ever 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. liti 
 
 been the most successful speculators. Theory is not 
 the idol, but the animating soul of advancing know- 
 ledge ; and is then only mischievous when it is set up 
 that it may be worshipped, as if it contained the 
 highest truth ; though it be built on an untried foun- 
 dation, and raised only to the level of our shallow know- 
 ledge. Most of all is it mischievous when it teaches us to 
 turn away from, and, it may be, laugh at the toils of 
 those who are working onward, in good hdpe, along the 
 only road that has ever led to the discovery of material 
 truth. 
 
 But it may be said that our practical geologists 
 are wanting in that knowledge of natural history and 
 physiology which would make their opinions of decisive 
 value on the theoretical question of development. To 
 such a remark I would oppose the great works of 
 Cuvier, who, after twenty years of labour in deciphering 
 the extinct organic forms of the tertiary rocks of 
 France, came to the conclusion that, in accordance with 
 no known law of nature, could the extinct animals of the 
 tertiary period be regarded as the true progenitors of 
 the nearest analogous forms of animal life in the present 
 world. He did not overlook the theory of develop- 
 ment ; but he denied its truth. In like manner, Agas- 
 siz ; after classifying with consummate skill, and arranging 
 in chronological order more than a thousand extinct 
 species of fossil fishes, derived from all the successive 
 deposits, (commencing with the primary, and ending 
 with the newest tertiary strata,) found that his suc- 
 cessive fossil groups, when so arranged, belonged to no 
 
llV PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 natural ascending scale, and that no one group could be 
 derived, on any known law of generation, from the 
 group which went before it. He, therefore, (whatever 
 may have been his early opinions, of which it would be 
 unfair to judge from a few figurative sentences) re- 
 jected the theory of transmutation and development, as 
 both inadequate and untrue. Owen, again, was a com- 
 parative anatomist of consummate skill before he turned 
 his thoughts to the study of palaeontology. How 
 greatly he has added to our knowledge of the extinct 
 forms of animal life, during the ancient epochs in 
 the history of our globe, need not be stated here : 
 but we know, from his published works, that he also 
 repudiates the theory of development as both inade- 
 quate and untrue. 
 
 Were the theory true in the living world, geology 
 would oppose to it, at every step, the most formidable 
 difficulties. Take, for example, the chronological ar- 
 rangement of the Reptile Class, so far as we can collect 
 it from the works of Owen; and when so arranged 
 the several Orders, Genera, and Species, cannot be 
 brought into accordance with any conceivable ascending 
 organic scale, whether simple or complicated ; neither 
 are the organic groups so arranged that the species 
 of one epoch can (by any rational law of transmutation) 
 be derived from those of the epoch immediately pre- 
 ceding it. 
 
 Lastly, I may here refer to the published works 
 and well-known opinions of Professor E. Forbes. He 
 has long been known as an accomplished and philoso- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lv 
 
 phical naturalist, and as a most unwearied and original 
 investigator into the causes that have modified the dis- 
 tribution of our living organic types. For a few years 
 he has devoted the best efforts of his skill to some of 
 the vital questions of Geology, by labours in the field 
 as well as in the closet : and taking as his guide the 
 great facts that influence the distribution of the living 
 inhabitants of the sea, he has so explained and har- 
 monized the distribution of organic types in the old 
 strata of the earth, as to put them in an intelligible 
 sequence, and to modify the views and language in 
 which the successive phenomena of geology must now be 
 placed before us. It adds a great value to his opinions 
 on the theoretical question of development, that he has 
 personally examined some of the oldest fossil-bearing 
 strata of the geological series, and has seen the order 
 in which the earliest known organic types are arranged 
 by the hand of nature : and assuredly it is among these 
 old deposits, if any where on earth, that the theory of 
 development ought to derive its most unambiguous 
 illustrations. No one can doubt his knowledge of the 
 extreme modifications to which animal life is now ex- 
 posed by a change of physical conditions ; and no one 
 will doubt his boldness as a theorist, or his capacity for 
 the apprehension of the highest form of physical truth. 
 Guided by facts, and the analogies of living nature, he 
 denies the reality of any development whatsoever di- 
 rectly depending upon time. He contends, that no 
 modification of specific types, and no rational theory 
 
lvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of transmutation, can account for such a succession of 
 organic types as is seen in the old strata of the earth. 
 The succession implies nothing less than a creative 
 power bringing the forms of organic life into co-or- 
 dination with the successive physical conditions of the 
 earth. It is not my wish to misrepresent his views, 
 and I believe that I have stated them correctly. 
 
 In one sense it may be true that time has influenced 
 the development of organic life. For during past epochs, 
 the superficial temperature of the globe, the distribution 
 of land and water, and, in one word, all the great phy- 
 sical causes which modify the distribution of the animal 
 and vegetable types, appear to have undergone a succes- 
 sion of slow, gradual changes : and while we are con- 
 templating these changes, we seem to be ascending step 
 by step to the conditions of the existing period. On 
 this view we might naturally expect the organic types 
 of the old world to exhibit a development towards the 
 forms of living nature : not, however, simply as an 
 effect of time ; but rather as an effect of physical con- 
 ditions brought about gradually during the long lapse 
 of time. And we may remark by the way, that this 
 conclusion is equally true whichever theory we adopt ; 
 whether we affirm that new forms of animal life were 
 produced by physical necessity out of the conditions, 
 or that a creative power adapted these new forms to 
 the gradually changing conditions. 
 
 As no fauna can exist without some flora to sup- 
 port it, we might conclude, without any further evidence, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Ivil 
 
 that some species of the vegetable kingdom must have 
 preceded the animal. In like manner, however im- 
 perfect may be our ancient organic records, we might 
 conclude that some of the herbivorous tribes of the 
 mammal class must have preceded the carnivorous. 
 Reasoning of this kind may be admitted without scruple, 
 because it is based on what we know of existing nature ; 
 and the facts of geology, notwithstanding the imperfec- 
 tion of its documents, seem to be m accordance with these 
 sure elements of our knowledge Admitting, however, 
 all which has been stated — that vegetables preceded 
 animals ; and, so far as we have physical evidence bear- 
 ing on the question, — that fishes came into being before 
 reptiles, — reptiles before mammals — and that man is 
 one of the last beings in the order of creation; what does 
 all this prove for the theory of development ? Absolutely 
 nothing ; unless it can be farther shewn that the genera 
 and species of the several Classes have been produced suc- 
 cessively on some natural, ascending scale. And were this 
 proved, (which it is not,) how shall we ascend by any- 
 natural means from Class to Class, unless we can shew 
 some connecting links between them, indicating a slow 
 chronological progression, and a series of "modest steps," 
 whereby one Class may seem to slide into another. 
 Geologists, with one voice, deny that there is any such 
 evidence of progression. They point to continual breaks 
 in the organic scale; and they believe that the highest 
 development of each Class is a fact not dependent upon 
 time, but upon physical conditions. With these remarks 
 I might end this imperfect comment on the theory of 
 s. d. e 
 
lviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 development: but physical truth depends not upon 
 authority, and the reader may ask for an enumeration 
 of, at least, some of the facts that have a direct bearing 
 on the question in debate. 
 
 $ 5. Animal and vegetable Remains of the Primary 
 or Palaeozoic Division. 
 
 Oldest fossil groups, — Have geologists discovered any 
 denned group of strata marking the period when or- 
 ganic life first began ? We shall never, I think, be able 
 to give any thing better than a doubtful answer to such 
 a question as this. Sir R. I. Murchison thinks he has 
 seen such a group in Scandinavia. It contains Fucoids, 
 rests unconformably on crystalline or metamorphic 
 rocks, and underlies all the other palaeozoic deposits of 
 the country. This discordancy of position proves a 
 want of continuity in the geological sequence, and 
 therefore greatly damages the conclusion, that this 
 group contains the earliest traces of organic life. 
 
 Better evidence bearing on this question is, perhaps, 
 found in Cumberland ; for in the Skiddaw slates, at an 
 enormous depth below the Silurian groups, are found 
 certain strata with impressions of Fucoids and Grapto- 
 lites. These are, perhaps, the oldest fossil beds of the 
 British Isles ; and below them are other beds of great 
 thickness, not metamorphic, and fit for receiving im- 
 pressions of organic remains, yet without any traces of 
 animal or vegetable life. These lower strata finally pass 
 into a metamorphic condition, and rest on Granite. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Hx 
 
 No unequivocal traces of this group are found in North 
 Wales, nor is it, I believe, enumerated (as a distinct 
 group or system) in the vast descending series of 
 palaeozoic rocks in North America : and it certainly 
 appears not in any of the well-described portions of the 
 continent of central and western Europe*. Such are 
 our meagre details respecting this supposed protozoic 
 group. Should its place be ever established, we may 
 then expect to find within it the traces of that ancient 
 flora which formed the necessary base of the first 
 germs of animal life. 
 
 Leaving all hypotheses respecting the most ancient 
 traces of animal or vegetable life, we may next inquire 
 in what form the types of the animal kingdom present 
 themselves in our older Palaeozoic strata. — Commencing 
 with the well-defined upper Silurian strata, and de- 
 
 * This note is addressed only to geologists, and would be quite out 
 of place were I to introduce any details. 
 
 In the year 1824 I found one or two places where the Skiddaw slates 
 were stained with carbon, which was probably of vegetable origin : and 
 about two years since J. Ruthven, of Kendal, at my request, re-examined 
 these carbonaceous slates, and found in them the fossils above mentioned. 
 I wish to bring the old dark-coloured slates of the Menai Straits into co- 
 ordination with the Skiddaw slates, but the comparison is defective from 
 the want of fossil evidence. The older palaeozoic sequence in North 
 America is almost identical with that of the British Isles. This opinion 
 was confirmed, in the early part of the present year, by Professor H. D. 
 .Rogers (one of the greatest American authorities), who personally examined 
 the Woodwardian collection, in which a very large series of British palaeo- 
 zoic fossils is arranged stratigraphically. During the past year I examined 
 the border-chain of Scotland that runs from St Abb's Head to the Mull 
 of Galloway. The evidence given by the fossils is not comparable in clear- 
 ness and fulness to that derived from Cumberland, Wales, and the noble 
 sections of North America: but I believe that Mr M'Coy, after very 
 carefully sifting the evidence, has seen enough to prove that the animal 
 sequence in this border-chain, so far as it goes, is almost identical with 
 that given in the great works of the United States Geological Surveyors. 
 
 e2 
 
lx PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 scending to the lowest beds containing traces of animal 
 remains, we have in the British Isles a series of de- 
 posits not less than twenty or thirty thousand feet in 
 thickness ; and below them all are beds of great 
 thickness (not crystalline or metamorphic), in which 
 animal remains seem gradually to disappear. This 
 description, with a very slight verbal modification, may 
 also be applied to the older palseozoic deposits of the 
 North of Europe and North America. In some beds 
 of North Wales (at a vast depth below the Upper 
 Silurian strata) are found Lingular, Tellinomyce, and 
 Graptolites ; and a very little higher are Trilobites and 
 Graptolites. These are among the lowest animal remains 
 of the British series; and no Crinoidea and no stony 
 Corals (though admirably fitted for fossil preservation) 
 have been found among them. This little group would 
 hardly deserve a separate notice were it not true that 
 Lingular and Tellinomyce are among the lowest animal 
 fossils of North America. 
 
 We have seen that the lowest well-marked animal 
 remains discovered in this Island are Graptolites, Telli- 
 nomyw, Lingular, and Trilobites. Among rocks, appa- 
 rently of the same age, in America, are Lingular and 
 other Brachiopoda, followed by Tellinomyw, Orthoceratites, 
 &c. ; but without Trilobites. Should we from this infer 
 that Trilobites came sooner into being in England than 
 in North America ? Certainly not. The evidence offered 
 by our earliest fossil-bearing groups is far too imperfect 
 to bear out any such conclusion. But (says the Author 
 of The Vestiges, Explanations, p. 39,) " The remains of 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxi 
 
 inferior animals may be found on some lower level, in 
 some as yet unexplored place not far off, so that a time- 
 interval may then appear to allow for progressive de- 
 velopment." True ! Such animals may he hereafter 
 found, whether the theory be true or false. The 
 question at issue is this. Do the organic phenomena 
 of geology suggest the theory of development? We 
 meet the question by a direct jjenial, and an appeal 
 to facts. And it is no reply to tell us, in return, that 
 other facts may hereafter he brought to light so as to 
 modify the nature of the evidence before us. This is 
 the inevitable condition of every advancing science, and 
 is an excellent reason for using much caution in the 
 propagation of any positive dogmatic theory. 
 
 Leaving the necessarily doubtful evidence respecting 
 the first vestiges of organic life, we have an enormously 
 thick ascending series of deposits, terminating with the 
 Llandeilo and Caradoc groups of the Silurian system. 
 After what has been stated, it would be somewhat 
 incongruous to call the whole series Protozoic, but, pro- 
 visionally, I may call it Cambro-Silurian ; and it includes 
 all the oldest known fossil-bearing groups of North 
 America, and of the north of Europe, under whatsoever 
 names they may hereafter pass. In this vast series we 
 have many portions without fossils, and many wherein 
 they abound. Some of the species ascend from the 
 lowest groups to the highest ; but new species appear to 
 have been gradually added, so that the higher groups 
 are, on the whole, more fossiliferous than the lower. 
 Cephalopods and Crustaceans are seen among the lower 
 
Ixii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 groups. It is not true that the Crustaceans are all of 
 a humble type. It is not true that the first Cephalopods 
 are small and of a lower type than those which follow 
 them among the higher Palaeozoic groups. In North 
 America some of the very old Cephalopods are almost 
 gigantic. Neither is it true that the fossil species, 
 considered as a whole, conform chronologically to any 
 natural ascending scale of animated nature. Bivalves 
 and univalves are seen together ; and though the former 
 as a general rule, abound more than the latter, yet 
 in certain spots the univalves take the lead. Professor 
 E. Forbes explains this fact by reference to local con- 
 ditions, which produce an analogous distribution among 
 the living inhabitants of deep seas. There is no con- 
 fusion of species. Those which first existed do not 
 slide into those which are superadded, by insensible 
 gradations, either on an ascending or a descending 
 scale ; and many of the species have a great vertical 
 range without the least modification of their spe- 
 cific characters. On the other hand, while on the 
 same geological line, and among deposits of the same 
 date, certain fossils (without changing their specific 
 types) do undergo, like the kindred animals of the 
 present sea, certain variations of form arising out of 
 changes of marine depth, or changes in the nature 
 of the marine bottom. The hard Radiata are rarely, 
 if ever, found in the very lowest groups; but are in 
 great abundance in the upper : and the different 
 Families in this division of the animal kingdom do not 
 appear in any natural order of development. When 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxHi 
 
 we place them chronologically, as they shew themselves 
 among the ascending deposits, their arrangement is not 
 anatomically natural, and is sometimes on an inverted 
 scale. The same remark applies to the other groups 
 of the animal kingdom. It has been said that the 
 Cephalopod may perhaps be derived by natural trans- 
 mutation from the Pteropod, and that such an arrange- 
 ment would fall in admirably with the theory of deve- 
 lopment. Unfortunately for this theory, the Cephalopod, 
 so far as we have any direct evidence to rest upon, 
 appeared before the Pteropod. 
 
 Do I then affirm, from such facts as these, that 
 we know the exact order of creation ? I make no such 
 assertion : but I do affirm, and with great confidence, 
 that the organic sequence, brought to light among our 
 oldest palaeozoic strata, does not, when closely examined, 
 suggest the theory of development. Were the theory 
 proved, or made probable, among the phenomena of 
 living nature, it might then, with some show of reason, 
 be taken as our guide while we are endeavouring to 
 unite together the organic fragments of an older world ; 
 and we might endeavour, by help of it, to explain away 
 what we thought anomalous in the order of our oldest 
 fossil types. But to take this theory for granted, while 
 living nature is in most positive antagonism with it ; 
 and, by help of it, to interpolate our oldest geological 
 documents, (sometimes without any pretended evidence, 
 and sometimes in the very teeth of most positive con- 
 flicting evidence,) so as to obtain from them a natural 
 ascending scale in accordance with the scheme of deve- 
 
Ixiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 lopment ; and, when we have done all this, then to go 
 back to the phenomena of living nature, and to apply 
 this theory to their interpretation, is as flagrant an 
 instance of bad logic as is to be found in the whole 
 catalogue of human fallacies. 
 
 The first appearance of fossil fishes may, in the 
 next place, be noticed. In the " Silurian system " we 
 have a description of several species derived from the 
 upper Ludlow rocks, which appear at the base of the 
 Old red sandstone. Collectively, the species belong to 
 a very high organic type, and among them are two 
 Cestracionts. A Cestracion was afterwards found by Mr 
 Brodie in the Wenlock-shale. 
 
 The extreme rarity of such remains in our oldest 
 fossil-bearing groups, and their entire absence from 
 some of them, is accounted for by Professor E. Forbes, 
 on the supposition (plainly indicated by the whole 
 Fauna of the period), that our oldest Palaeozoic strata 
 were the deposits of a deep ocean ; and probably below 
 the descending limit within which Fishes are found to 
 inhabit our present seas. Be this as it may, all our 
 most ancient fossil Fishes belong to a high organic 
 type ; and the very oldest species, that are well-de- 
 termined, fall naturally into an Order of Fishes which 
 Owen and M tiller place, not at the bottom, but at 
 the top of the whole Class. No man living is infallible, 
 whatever may be his knowledge of nature ; but it is ut- 
 terly incredible that these two great anatomists (with no 
 hypothesis to warp their judgment, and in a classification 
 founded, not upon one character, but upon a combina- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxV 
 
 tion of all the united characters which minister to the 
 perfection of an organic type,) should have so egre- 
 giously blundered as to mistake the whole order of 
 precedence, and to place the lowest grade of Fishes at 
 the top of their ascending scale*. 
 
 Respecting some of the oldest families of fossil fishes, 
 it may be said that our evidence is founded on nothing 
 better than general analogy. JBut how are we to ad- 
 vance one step in the way of physical truth if we shut 
 our eyes to the evidence of analogy ? In the case of 
 the Cestracionts we are not, however, left to mere 
 analogy ; for that family exists in our present seas ; and 
 its anatomy is perhaps as well known as that of any 
 living fishes with which we are most familiar. 
 
 Anatomical details, are unfit for the nature of this 
 Preface ; but the facts just noticed were too important 
 to be passed over in silence f. They prove that Fishes 
 of the very highest organic type existed during the 
 
 * Agassiz divides the whole Class of Fishes into four Orders dependent 
 on the exo-skeleton, or the scales. The system is obviously artificial; but 
 is excellently adapted to the classification of fossil fishes, of which (with 
 limited exceptions) the exterior portions only are subjects of examination. 
 His four orders are called Placoids, Ganoids, Ctenoids, and Cycloids. 
 Miiller and Owen have attempted a more natural classification, founded 
 on the collective character of all the nobler organs, whether internal or ex- 
 ternal. In the scheme of Owen (who very nearly follows Miiller), fishes 
 are divided, on an ascending scale, into eleven Orders and six Sub-orders. 
 The highest Order (No. 11 ) includes the whole tribe of Sharks, at the top of 
 which stands the Cestracion — one of our very oldest fossil fishes. The 
 eighth Order includes some of the most remarkable Ganoids of Agassiz, 
 which are characteristic of the Old Red-Sandstone. See Owen's Lectures on 
 Comparative Anatomy, Vol. n., read before the College of Surgeons in 
 1846. 
 
 •f For a short abstract of the evidence on which depends the high organic 
 place of the Cestracion, see the Supplement to the Appendix, No. III. 
 
1XV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 period of some of our old Palaeozoic strata ; and no Fishes 
 of an inferior organic grade have been found below them. 
 Facts more in antagonism with the theory of develop- 
 ment could hardly be expressed in written language. 
 
 With some of these facts the author of The Ves- 
 tiges was acquainted before he published his Explan- 
 ations, and the more recent editions of his work. 
 And what has he stated in reply ? Absolutely no- 
 thing that has any bearing on the question of classifi- 
 cation. It is true that some living cartilaginous Fishes 
 are very low in the organic scale ; but what has that 
 fact to do with the place of Sharks and Cestracionts ? 
 It is also true that Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals, have 
 hard bones ; for their muscular structure requires the 
 support of a hard skeleton. But who would dream of 
 arranging them on any scale dependent on the percent- 
 age of phosphate of lime, or of any other earthy salt 
 a chemist might extract out of their bones ? A natural 
 classification, to have any meaning, must depend, for 
 its true support, on the collective relations of all the 
 nobler organs — the very principle adopted by M tiller 
 and Owen in their arrangement of the whole Class of 
 Fishes*. 
 
 * I will endeavour in this note to put before the reader one or two 
 remarkable passages in Owen's Comparative Anatomy of Fishes, " Why, 
 (says this great anatomist, when discussing the true organic place of sharks 
 and other Plagiostomous fishes) the gristly skeleton should be, as it com- 
 monly has been pronounced to be, absolutely inferior to the bony one, is 
 not obvious. The ordinary course of age and decrepitude is associated with 
 a progressive accumulation of earthy and inorganic particles, gradually im- 
 peding and stiffening the movements, and finally stopping the play of the 
 vital machine ; and I know not why a flexible vascular animal substance 
 should be supposed to be raised in the histological scale, because it has 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxvii 
 
 From a consideration of such facts as have been 
 above stated, Professor E. Forbes concludes, that the 
 
 become impregnated, and as it were petrified, by the abundant intus-suscep- 
 tion of earthy salts into its areolar tissue. It is perfectly intelligible that 
 this accelerated progress to the inorganic state may be requisite for some 
 special office of such calcified parts in the individual economy; but not, 
 therefore, that it is an absolute elevation of such parts in the series of ani- 
 mal tissues." (p. 146.) 
 
 Again : M The predaceous sharks are the most active and vigorous of 
 fishes : like birds of prey they soar, as it were, in the upper regions of their 
 atmosphere.... They are the fishes in which the instruments of voluntary 
 motion are the best developed, and in which the cerebellum presents its 
 largest size and most complex structure" (pp. 147 and 188.)..." The gristly 
 skeleton is in prospective harmony with this mode and sphere of life."... 
 "Lightness, toughness, and elasticity, are the qualities of the skeleton most 
 essential to the shark.. ..To have had their entire skeleton consolidated and 
 loaded with earthy matter would have been an incumbrance altogether at 
 variance with the offices which sharks are appointed to fulfil in the economy 
 of the great deep. — Yet there are some who would shut out, by easily com- 
 prehended but quite gratuitous systems of progressive transmutation and 
 self-creative forces, the soul-expanding appreciations of the final purposes 
 of the fecund varieties of animal structures by which we are drawn nearer 
 to the great First Cause. They see nothing more in this modification of 
 the skeleton, which is so beautifully adapted to the exigencies of the high- 
 est of organized fishes (the sharks), than a foreshowing of the cartilaginous 
 condition of the reptilian embryo in an enormous tadpole, arrested at an 
 incomplete stage of typical development. But they have been deceived by 
 the common name given to the Plagiostomous fishes. The animal basis 
 of the shark's skeleton is not cartilage; it is not that consolidated jelly 
 which forms the basis of the bones of the higher vertebrates ; it has more 
 resemblance to mucus ; it requires 1000 times its weight of boiling water 
 for its solution; and it is neither precipitated by infusion of galls, nor 
 yields any gelatine upon evaporation" (p. 147.) 
 
 In the next paragraph (pp. 147 and 148) he combats the opinion that 
 Ganoid fishes are of a low organic type because of their hard dermal skele- 
 tons. "It is true that in the lowest class of Vertebrata we have the most 
 numerous examples of a hard exterior skeleton. But some anatomists, in 
 their zeal to trace the serial progression of animal forms, seem to have lost 
 sight of all the vertebrate instances of the bony dermal skeleton, except 
 those presented by the Ganoid and Placoid fishes. He must have been 
 sunk to the low conception — that nature had been limited to a certain 
 
 allowance of the salts of lime in the formation of each animal's skeleton 
 
 who could affirm, that in the higher Vertebrata the internal articulated 
 skeleton takes all the earthy matter for its consolidation." He then 
 
lxviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 oldest truly aquatic and marine fauna, of which we find 
 traces among the monuments of geology, is, when taken 
 collectively, not less noble than the corresponding fauna 
 of our present seas ; and that it offers not the shadow of 
 any ground whereon to build a theory of development. 
 The animals of this ancient fauna were created in ac- 
 cordance with the surrounding physical conditions ; but 
 did not, so far as we have any positive evidence, come 
 into being in any natural organic sequence ; neither have 
 we the semblance of a proof that the several types of 
 the animal kingdom underwent, during the long lapse 
 of ages, any gradual elevation by specific transmutations 
 on any ascending scale: and if all evidence for the 
 theory fail us among the most ancient strata, in vain 
 shall we seek it among the organic phenomena of any 
 more recent epoch*. 
 
 Three great systems of deposits — the Devonian or 
 Old red sandstone, the Carboniferous, and the Permian 
 — follow the upper Silurian rocks in a regular ascending 
 order, and complete the whole Primary or Palaeozoic 
 division of our fossil-bearing strata. In passing from 
 one system to another, we perceive a great change 
 in the old inhabitants of the sea ; and where these 
 
 quotes the examples supplied by the Glyptodon and the Armadillos, which 
 have internal skeletons as perfectly ossified as any other mammals ; and 
 concludes — "that the organizing energies, which perfect and strengthen 
 the osseous internal skeleton, do not destroy, or in any degree diminish, 
 the tendency to calcareous depositions on the surface, when the habits of 
 the warm-blooded quadruped require a strong defensive covering." These 
 extracts, combined with the notes in the Supplement to the Appendix, 
 No. III., are, I trust, sufficient for their purpose. 
 * See the Supplement to the Appendix, No, V. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxix 
 
 changes are greatest and most sudden, we find (almost 
 without exception) distinct traces of vast physical revo- 
 lutions which must have modified all the conditions 
 bearing on the distribution of the organic types. For 
 example : the upper Silurian rocks are not unusually 
 deposited on the broken edges of the older groups. The 
 Old red sandstone (or Devonian system) followed some 
 of the greatest external movements that ever affected 
 the surface of our globe. Many of its strata are made 
 up of abraded fragments torn from the older rocks and 
 deposited on their broken edges. The physical separa- 
 tion between the Devonian and Carboniferous systems 
 is less complete ; and in some places they seem to pass 
 one into the other by almost insensible gradations. 
 Lastly we have, as a general rule, a great physical 
 break, and a very great organic change, as we pass from 
 the Carboniferous to the Permian groups. 
 
 What conclusions may we draw from facts like these ? 
 That the great organic changes were brought about, 
 not by gradual transmutation wrought among the spe- 
 cific types during a long lapse of ages, but by altered 
 conditions to which the organic types were successively 
 adapted. Time, considered as a separate element, and 
 independently of changes in the physical conditions 
 bearing on the distribution of organic life, does not 
 appear, so far as we can reason on the evidence, to have 
 produced any specific changes in the old kingdoms of 
 animated nature. 
 
 I have no wish to describe at any length the three 
 highest systems of the Palaeozoic series enumerated in 
 
1XX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 the preceding paragraphs ; but I may be permitted 
 to detain the reader, while alluding, through a few 
 pages, to the Fishes of the Devonian system, . and 
 to the plants of the Carboniferous. Fishes abound in 
 some parts of the Old red sandstone (Devonian sys- 
 tem), and their natural history may be studied in 
 the monograph of Agassiz. In the first four editions 
 of The Vestiges we were told — " that the earliest fishes 
 partook of the character of the lower sub-kingdom, the 
 articulata," — that the Cephalaspis resembled a Trilo- 
 hite — that the Coccosteus had a jaw like the nipper of a 
 lobster, its mouth opening vertically, contrary to the 
 usual mode of the vertebrata — and that such facts 
 compelled us to place these Fishes near the Crustaceans. 
 
 Now these supposed facts (as remarked in the Edin- 
 burgh Review,) " were only blunders and guesses made 
 by the first observers before any good evidence was 
 before them." And what reply has the Author given 
 (in his Explanations, and his new editions of The Ves- 
 tiges) to the Reviewer's comment ? Nothing but a sneer 
 at a clerical blunder committed in a single sentence 
 where Radiata had been written for Articulata ; and a 
 strenuous reassertion of what is not anatomically true — 
 that the Devonian fishes are low in the organic scale. 
 
 The whole strength of the Reviewer's comment 
 consists in this statement; — that the fossil Fishes, both 
 of the Devonian and Silurian strata, are of a high 
 organic type, and that some of them exhibit the highest 
 type of their whole Class ; " and that in none of them 
 is there the most remote affinity to Crustaceans or any 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxxi 
 
 other Artieulata."..." On the contrary, that in many- 
 respects they make an approach to the higher Class of 
 Reptiles — for example, in their dentition, and some 
 of them in their ball -and -socket -jointed vertebrae." 
 (Review, p 35.)* 
 
 It is in vain to tell us that 30,000 species of fossil 
 Fishes may be hereafter discovered, and so arranged as 
 to fall in with the theory of development. I advance no 
 dogmatic theory ; I simply appeal to facts, and affirm 
 that they do not suggest the theory of development. 
 On the contrary, they oppose to it, in the present 
 condition of our knowledge, an evidence as strong 
 as can be expressed in written words. The whole 
 blame of a rash dogmatic hypothesis rests with my 
 opponent. A theory is worse than nothing if it reflect 
 not back the present condition of our knowledge. If 
 it tell of laws, neither proved nor suggested by the 
 lessons of experiment and observation, it is nothing 
 better than imposture. It is not true, as was rashly 
 stated in former editions of The Vestiges, that our earliest 
 fishes were imperfect and half-abortive forms linked to 
 the lower Class of Artieulata: neither is it true, as con- 
 tinues to be stated by the Author, that the earliest fishes 
 known to geologists were of a humble organic type. 
 Neither is it true, so far as I have any knowledge of 
 the subject, that the fossils, in any part of the world 
 in which the Palaeozoic strata have been well examined, 
 
 * It is impossible to discuss questions of this kind without details 
 which are ill fitted for this Preface. I have, therefore, thrown into a note 
 some additional facts bearing on the classification of our oldest fossil Fishes. 
 Supplement to the Appendix, No. III. 
 
lxxii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 follow one another chronologically in any true accord- 
 ance with the hypothetical law of development. Such 
 are the facts on which I join issue with a dogmatic 
 hypothesis. The facts bear out my negative conclu- 
 sion ; they lend not support to the hypothesis, but 
 flatly contradict it. 
 
 Vegetable Types of the Palaeozoic Period, Sfc. In 
 order to speculate securely about the first beginnings 
 of vegetable life, we ought to know more of the pri- 
 meval condition of the Earth than is, or ever will be, 
 revealed to us by direct physical evidence. Our oldest 
 Palaeozoic strata appear to have been deposited in a 
 deep ocean ; and in such formations we have no right 
 to look for the vegetable spoils of the land, even though 
 we hypothetically admit their existence in as great 
 abundance as during any after period. 
 
 Again, the first elevated land may have presented 
 nothing but a surface of bare rock utterly unfit to 
 support any of the higher forms of vegetable life ; yet, 
 during the same early period, we can conceive it 
 possible that marine plants may have flourished in 
 abundance, and given support to the first animal in- 
 habitants of the ocean. 
 
 Through the whole Palaeozoic series we find innu- 
 merable examples of animal remains, entombed in the 
 very spots where they once flourished, and exhibited to 
 us in the very succession in which they once lived at 
 the bottom of the sea, generation after generation. On 
 the contrary, many of our vegetable fossils have been 
 drifted from a distance ; and on this account the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxxiU 
 
 successive organic types are far less clearly put before 
 us in the vegetable kingdom than in the animal. In 
 the midst of much doubt and uncertainty, one thing, 
 however, is clear — that some forms of vegetable life 
 must have flourished at the commencement of our very 
 oldest Palaeozoic strata ; for no fauna could possibly 
 exist without them : and, as a matter of fact, we do 
 find, among our oldest known Palaeozoic beds, occasional 
 traces of fucoids and other marine plants ; and the fre- 
 quent absence of all such traces among our very ancient 
 rocks may be accounted for when we remember, that 
 marine plants, from the want of hard ligneous fibre, are 
 but ill fitted for fossil preservation. 
 
 The oldest groups of our Palaeozoic rocks are of 
 enormous thickness — a fact which in itself explains 
 their consolidation, and partially metamorphic structure. 
 For we have only to bear in mind that they are many 
 thousand feet in thickness — that each bed once formed 
 the bottom of the sea — and that for every hundred 
 feet of descent below the solid surface of the Earth, 
 we have a right to suppose an increment of temper- 
 ature of more than one degree of our common scale. 
 In this way we may, without any appeal to a more 
 direct Plutonic action, account for a great internal ter- 
 restrial heat — sufficient perhaps (when continued for 
 long periods of time, and aided by enormous pressure) to 
 solidify, and entirely mineralize, some of these ancient 
 deposits. Mineral changes of this kind have, no doubt, 
 obliterated innumerable traces of organic life; and I 
 believe every sober-minded geologist will allow that 
 s. d. / 
 
Ixxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 the first commencement either of animal or vegetable 
 types (and more especially of terrestrial plants) is 
 wrapped in impenetrable darkness. I wish not to 
 disturb the reader by ill-timed speculations on the 
 most obscure and difficult points of Geology. What 
 I wish to impress upon him is — that we cannot for 
 a moment reason, with security, on the organic phe- 
 nomena of any period, without taking into account 
 the contemporaneous physical conditions of the Earth's 
 surface. 
 
 Many of the upper Silurian rocks were formed in 
 a shallow sea ; and during the Devonian period (that 
 followed immediately afterwards) we find traces of very 
 widely-expanded deposits, which appear to have taken 
 place near ancient shores, and in comparatively shallow 
 water. The organic remains belonging to both these 
 periods, whether of mollusks or fishes, bear out this 
 inference. 
 
 Among the Devonian rocks of the continent of 
 Europe land-plants, nearly agreeing with the Carbonifer- 
 ous type, were drifted abundantly from the neighbouring 
 shores ; and among the deposits of this age in the Rhe- 
 nish provinces I found Coniferous wood, forms nearly 
 allied to Lepidodendra, and Calamites. Some of the 
 Calamites had the external portions so well preserved 
 as to enable Mr M'Coy, in 1847, to determine their 
 dicotyledonous structure*. In the British Isles this 
 evidence is less complete ; yet within them are spots, 
 
 * This determination has been since verified by Mr Dawes (Geo- 
 logical Journal, May 1848). 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxXV 
 
 as we have already hinted, where we hardly know 
 how to draw a line between the rocks of the Carbo- 
 niferous and Devonian epochs. 
 
 Through the Carboniferous period plants were in infi- 
 nite abundance : and from the facts of Geology we learn, 
 that the ancient sea was then studded with great tracts 
 of elevated land surrounded by vast swamps that were 
 covered with forests like those of. a tropical jungle. In 
 the part of the globe now occupied by North America 
 there were, during this period, two great jungles, each 
 of which was spread continuously over an area almost 
 as great as the whole surface of the British Isles. It 
 was not a continued period of repose. Changes of level, 
 both of elevation and depression, destroyed the ancient 
 forests, and buried them under fresh accumulations of 
 drifted matter ; and new forests grew over those which 
 were buried under the new surface of the land. This state 
 of things went on for unnumbered ages, till at length 
 the Carboniferous formations were interrupted by newer 
 changes, and perhaps still greater movements, which 
 brought in the deposits of another system. 
 
 Judging from the vegetable types, the Carboniferous 
 climate was tropical ; and these types stretched so far 
 north as to pass within the limits of our Arctic seas. 
 Conditions so widely differing from those of existing 
 nature implied, by physical necessity, a widely different 
 flora from that now decorating the earth : and the modi- 
 fying causes were not simply geographical ; for the atmo- 
 sphere must have gradually changed by the submergence 
 of so many great forests and their fixation in successive 
 
 /2 
 
lxxvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 coal-beds. But was this flora of an imperfect or half- 
 abortive type, as if nature were only in the agonies of 
 a struggle towards something higher and better? No 
 such marks of imperfection are stamped on it ; and we 
 believe it to have been a perfect flora, in accordance 
 with the conditions of its time. The several species, so 
 far as we can reason on them through the analogies of 
 living nature, shew no marks of imperfection : and many 
 of the species and genera, which flourished in infinite 
 abundance during the Carboniferous epoch, and never 
 lived afterwards, are of strange but most complicated 
 organic structure ; so that some of our best botanists 
 were long in doubt whether to place them among the 
 monocotyledonous or the dicotyledonous divisions of their 
 flora. If they be monocotyledonous, then are they 
 among the very highest types that ever existed in that 
 division of the vegetable world. 
 
 Again, we derive not, from this ancient flora, any 
 proof that monocotyledonous plants preceded the dico- 
 tyledonous ; for fragments of pine-trees are found among 
 some of the older Carboniferous rocks. Still less have 
 we any proof that monocotyledonous plants were, in pro- 
 gress of ages, transformed into dicotyledonous. On the 
 contrary, we believe, on good analogy, that the two great 
 divisions of the vegetable world, after they were called 
 into being, went on, side by side, on two separate 
 organic lines ; the numerical proportions between the 
 two depending, during all epochs, upon physical con- 
 ditions. In some of our present tropical forests we 
 have a great preponderance of monocotyledonous trees ; 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxXVH 
 
 while, in climates like our own, all the forest-trees are 
 dicotyledonous. Should we then conclude that the pre- 
 sent tropical forests are both of a lower organic type, and 
 of an older date, than those of our own climate ? We 
 know that such a conclusion would be false. Why then 
 should we venture to affirm a similar conclusion while 
 we are reasoning on the Carboniferous flora f Analogy, 
 our best guide while we are deprived of any other* 
 rather tells us, that the numerical proportions among 
 the organic types of the Carboniferous flora depended 
 not on the time that had elapsed after the several 
 species had come into being, but on the physical con- 
 ditions under which they flourished. 
 
 But great injustice is sometimes done to the rank 
 of the Carboniferous flora while we are comparing it with 
 that of the living world. The ancient flora is but a 
 mere fragment of an organic series produced during one 
 almost unvaried set of conditions; while the present 
 flora consists of species, counted by tens of thousands, 
 and derived from every condition of climate, from the 
 arctic to the tropical, compatible with vegetable life. 
 No wonder, then, that the present flora should seem to 
 lord it over the older, and give an appearance of inferi- 
 ority to the ancient types, which belongs not to their 
 collective nature because they are ancient ; but depends, 
 more probably, on the conditions under which they 
 grew, and on the mutilated state in which we find their 
 scattered fragments. 
 
 Conclusion. — In this section of the Preface I have 
 endeavoured to shew in what manner geologists try to 
 
lxxviil PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 clear their way among the broken fragments of a for- 
 mer world. They examine these fragments one by one, 
 and learn to arrange them, in the exact order of their 
 history : and taking the analogies of living nature as 
 their clew through the dark labyrinths of the earth, 
 they do their best to interpret the past by help of the 
 present — what is dark by what is light — what is un- 
 known by what is known. They are not anxious to 
 form any theory : and if as a matter of speculation they 
 do construct a theory, they profess to base it on allowed 
 facts, and not on vague assumptions, which the progress 
 of knowledge may prove to be untrue ; and at every mo- 
 ment of their progress they are ready either to modify 
 it, or to abandon it altogether, as new phenomena rise 
 up before them. 
 
 First Forms of Vegetable and Animal Life as described 
 in " The Vestiges," &c. 
 
 Let us now cast an eye over the shorter method 
 by which the Author of The Vestiges professes to 
 give colour to his hypothesis, and to bring the successive 
 organic types, whether animal or vegetable, into a seem- 
 ing accordance with it. I wish not to misrepresent 
 him, and I should gain nothing by the attempt. 
 
 First, he supposes that the humble vegetable types 
 of the sea were the oldest of their Class. This conclu- 
 sion may be true ; but, as we have seen, it rests not on 
 good direct evidence. 
 
 Secondly, he supposes the vegetable types to have 
 undergone a gradual transmutation, during a long lapse 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxxix 
 
 of ages — to have come out from the sea, and to have been 
 spread over the dry land under modified organic forms. 
 Of this derivation of our earliest land-plants we have no 
 proof. Its assumption is nothing better than a begging 
 of the whole question in debate ; and it is both gratuit- 
 ous and unnecessary to the hypothesis of development. 
 It certainly accords not with any phenomena of our liv- 
 ing flora. We have innumerable opportunities on our 
 own coasts of testing the truth of this rash hypothesis. 
 We find marine and land-plants growing side by side. 
 In a few years the sea gains upon the land, and marine 
 plants now grow where only land-plants grew before. 
 In other cases the sea retires, and we now find land- 
 plants where before we only found either marsh-plants, or 
 those that were purely marine. But who, that is in his 
 senses, refers such changes to specific transmutations? 
 Or who that has seen marine and land-plants struggling 
 side by side, as they have done for centuries, under con- 
 ditions unfavourable to both, will dare to tell us that 
 one set gradually gets the mastery by specifically trans- 
 forming and naturalizing the other*? 
 
 Thirdly, he assumes that monocotyledonous plants 
 passed by gradual transmutation into dicotyledonous — 
 that the Carboniferous flora was of an humble and im- 
 perfect type — and that its antiquity and inferiority is 
 proved by the excess of its monocotyledonous types. 
 Of this part of the scheme we may affirm that it is de- 
 fective in the statement of fact and erroneous in infer- 
 ence ; and it derives no probability from the succession 
 
 * See Supplement to the Appendix No. IV. and No. VI. 
 
]XXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of organic types in our older strata. The succession 
 of vegetable types is, however, so broken and imperfect 
 as to be of comparatively small value to the argument. 
 Most of our Palaeozoic rocks are marine ; and among 
 them, as before stated, we have no right to look for, 
 nor do we find, any thing like a continued sequence of 
 such plants as might have grown contemporaneously on 
 the land. If there be any show of probability in the 
 application of our Author's scheme to the Palaeozoic 
 epochs, it must be derived analogically from some dif- 
 ferent source. The theory is not shadowed forth among 
 the vegetable phenomena of the Secondary or Tertiary 
 rocks ; and I know not of any source of good evidence, 
 bearing upon the question, beyond that which flows 
 from the vegetable kingdoms of the present world. 
 
 Let us next glance at our Author's method of in- 
 terpreting the history of the animal kingdom, from 
 succession of organic types among our oldest Palaeozoic 
 strata. In the first four editions of The Vestiges he 
 stated, without any reserve, that the animals of the old 
 world appeared, among the successive strata, in a natu- 
 ral ascending organic scale ; and what he asserted then 
 he now only insinuates. " The first animals, (as he tells 
 us, Vestiges, 6th Ed. p. 52), we are called on to notice, 
 are Polyparia" — the creatures producing coral-reefs. 
 Next he notices Graptolites; and then Crindidia. 
 Now Graptolites do appear at the base of our known 
 organic series ; but the Polyparia which produce coral- 
 reefs do not ; neither do Crindidia. When he after- 
 wards adds, that these latter animals may hereafter 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Ixxxi 
 
 be discovered in the place he has given them, he 
 writes in the language of theory, and not of chro- 
 nological history. — " Of the Articulata we have,' 1 (he 
 says, p. 54), "first a few examples of its lowest class, 
 the Anellides or sea- worms ;" and he quotes the well- 
 known case of the Lampeter species. These Lampeter 
 Anellides are undoubtedly of great antiquity ; but they 
 belong not to a low type of Anellides, but to the high- 
 est type of their class ; and tnere are found in Wales 
 other creatures of far higher organization, such as Trilo- 
 bites, and Cephalopods, several thousand feet below them*. 
 
 He adds, " that Trilobites stand low in the Crus- 
 tacea; nor were there any higher animals of the order 
 (such as crabs and lobsters) yet in existence." I 
 have never seen Crabs among the fossils of the great 
 Cambro-Silurian groups ; but the gentlemen of the 
 Government Survey tell me that they have. 
 
 He then notices the Brachiopoda, Pteropoda, Gas- 
 teropoda, and Cephalopoda, in their natural order on 
 an organic scale ; and he reasons on this order as if 
 it were historically true. A Brachiopod (Linguld) is 
 one of our oldest known Mollusks ; but it occurs, as 
 stated above, along with the Tellinomya, which is a 
 Lamellibranch ; and the Cephalopods are found quite as 
 
 * In the frontier chain of Scotland I found sixteen species of Grapto- 
 lites. Four of them are new ; the others (with one exception) are described 
 by Hall (Palaeontology of New York) from the Utica slate. These Grap- 
 tolites of Scotland are associated with Anellides ; and they are, beyond 
 doubt, of great antiquity, and perhaps not far from the parallel of the 
 Lampeter fossils. They are, I think, not so old as the Graptolites found in 
 the Skiddaw slate. (Supra, note p. 59.) The species have been care- 
 fully determined by Mr M'Coy ; and the specimens in the Cambridge 
 Museum prove, beyond any doubt, that Graptolites belong to the Order of 
 Hydroida, as was first asserted by Neilson. 
 
lxxxii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 low as, and I believe much lower than, the Pteropods. 
 — Lastly, he tells us " that during the lower Silurian 
 era, there was as yet no fish nor any other kind of 
 vertebrated animal, nor any creature which lived on 
 dry land."... Giving him all the benefit of these asser- 
 tions, (which it would be very hard to establish on 
 mere negative evidence), I reply, that we have no right 
 to expect land-animals, or even fishes, among the 
 fossils of a very deep sea : and that fishes of the vert/ 
 highest organic type are found near the upper limit of 
 our older Palaeozoic groups. When facts are told histo- 
 rically, what becomes of the theory of development ? 
 Be it true or false, it is not suggested by Geology ; 
 and we can see no signs " of the comparative newness 
 of life"" among these most ancient fossils *. 
 
 Passing on to the Devonian Fishes (Placoids and 
 Ganoids), he tells us, " that they are manifestly inferior 
 to the two other Orders — Ctenoids and Cycloids — 
 which afterwards came into existence" (p. 64). What is 
 so manifest to the Author is not true to nature. The 
 reader has some of the evidence before himf. The 
 very highest families of Sharks, and Ganoids of the 
 noblest type and close upon the Class of Reptiles, are 
 found among the Devonian Fishes. — It is not true 
 that all these Ganoids have their backbones imper- 
 fectly represented by a continuous cartilaginous chord. 
 Some of them at least (and perhaps most of them) 
 had as true vertebral joints as any living Fishes ; and 
 they do not all conform to the embryonic type of 
 
 * Supplement to the Appendix, No. V. 
 
 -f Note supra p. 64, and Supplement to the Appendix, No 111. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxxxitt 
 
 hard-boned Fishes. It is not true that in all the Fishes, 
 without exception, which have been found in the strata 
 of the Palaeozoic period, the caudal fin is truly heterocer- 
 cal, (p. 66). And were this true, it would only prove 
 the worthlessness of any attempt to arrange the organic 
 rank of Placoids and Ganoids by an appeal to the 
 embryonic tails of the Fishes of another Order *. 
 
 Finally, we are taught (p. J)9) — "that, overlook- 
 ing possible exceptions of a very dubious and narrow 
 kind, we meet with no traces of land-plants" during the 
 Devonian period. — I must state in reply, that the ex- 
 ceptions are neither dubious nor small in number — that 
 land-plants are found among the Devonian deposits of 
 our Island, — and that among the rocks of that age in 
 the Rhenish provinces, such plants are numerous. 
 
 If the reader believe the previous statements, and 
 I wish not to deceive him, he will at once see how 
 widely different is the history given in the unerring 
 book of nature from the fabulous narrative in some 
 written records of creation. 
 
 Leaving what we may call the Author's historical 
 narrative, let us next examine his more general views on 
 the origin of animated nature. Bearing on this sub- 
 
 * I know that my opinion is of little value, but I have often wished 
 certain strange monsters, such as the Pterichthys and Coccosteus, to be 
 taken from the other Ganoids, and placed in some natural Order by them- 
 selves. This has been done (and in no compliancy with any suggestion of 
 mine) by Mr M'Coy, who arranges these and kindred Genera in his Order 
 Placodermata(An. Nat. Hist. 1846.) Some of them, at least, have as per- 
 fect vertebrae as any fishes : and as we find the noblest Ganoids running 
 towards the Lacertian type ; so these singular fishes, cased in an exo- 
 skeleton of great osseous plates, may perhaps be found to range toward the 
 type of the Chelonians. Be this as it may, they certainly link not on, 
 as was at first conjectured, to the Articulata. 
 
lxxxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ject, I will first quote a very characteristic passage 
 from his Explanations (p. 151): "In an arbitrary 
 system," (meaning by these words any system that 
 does not imply the theory of development), "we have 
 scarcely any reason to expect mammals after reptiles ; 
 yet in this order they come. The Edinburgh Re- 
 viewer speaks of animals as coming in adaptation to 
 conditions; but this is only true in a limited sense. 
 The groves which formed the coal-beds might have 
 been a fitting habitation for reptiles, birds, and mam- 
 mals, as such groves are at the present day; yet we 
 see none of the last of these classes, and hardly any 
 trace of the two first, in that period of the earth. 
 Where the iguanodon lived, the elephant might have 
 lived : but there was no elephant at that time. The 
 sea of the Lower Silurian era was capable of support- 
 ing fish ; but no fish existed. It hence forcibly appears 
 that the theatres of life must have lain unserviceable, or in 
 the possession of a tenantry inferior to what might have 
 enjoyed them, for many ages. There surely would have 
 been no such waste allowed in a System where Omni- 
 potence was working upon a plan of minute attention 
 to specialities." I have not time to point out the bad 
 logic, the unwarranted assertions, and the positive mis- 
 takes of this passage : but I may return to the con- 
 cluding sentence, which is mischievous and irreverent. 
 
 In the same spirit he writes in the last edition of 
 The Vestiges, (p. 159 — 168): but my limits compel 
 me to abridge the extracts from this work. " Organic 
 beings came not at once, as they might have been 
 expected to do if produced by some special act on part 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxXXV 
 
 of the Deity .... They came in a long succession in the 
 order of progressive organization. 1 ' What might have 
 been expected I profess not to tell : but if we are to 
 trust our senses they did not follow in such an order as 
 to suggest a natural derivation, one from another. 
 Again, M At the beginning of geological investigation 
 it was thought that some intermediate external con- 
 ditions ruled the appearance- of particular classes of 
 animals at particular times .... But it is now seen 
 that the progress of the animal world was in its main 
 features independent of such circumstances." We may 
 ask in reply, By whom has this been seen? Not by 
 the geologists who are now doing the best service 
 in the field. They, every day, see more and more 
 proofs of the modifying influence of conditions ; and 
 some of them deny that there are any features of 
 animal progress which are independent of conditions. 
 He then tells us, " It was a dream of the dawn of true 
 geology that fresh creations of animals were connected 
 with great physical revolutions of the surface .... but 
 
 this idea is likewise passing away In short, it is 
 
 becoming more and more clear that organic progress 
 depended not by any means wholly or immediately 
 upon external circumstances, but in a great part upon 
 time."" (p. 161.) What the Author means by the 
 "dawn of geology," I profess not well to understand: but 
 I affirm it as certain truth, that the greatest changes 
 of organic types among our strata are connected with 
 physical revolutions ; and that it is by a change of con- 
 ditions, and not, properly speaking, by a lapse of time, 
 
lxXXVi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 that we can rationally interpret the organic sequence 
 of the old world. *' All this," the Author adds, " looks 
 unlike either special working or special willing on the part 
 of the Creator." Having given us a history of nature, 
 not warranted by fact, he then tells us this history 
 is inconsistent with the idea of any exercise of a Provi- 
 dential and Creative will. I shall return to this last 
 inference in another part of the Preface : my present 
 business is with our Author's history, and the physical 
 theory he pretends to found upon it. 
 
 How he is to reconcile all the previous extracts to 
 the expression of his more general views, I profess not 
 to understand. Thus, he tells us, (p. 154), "that life, 
 as it were, pressed in whenever and wherever there 
 were suitable conditions : " yet within a few pages he 
 tells us, as we have seen, that the phenomena of orga- 
 nic development "depended comparatively little upon 
 conditions, but in a great part upon time." Again, he 
 teaches us, " that the oolitic continents, where only rep- 
 tiles roamed, could equally have supported mammalia 
 .... yet mammalia came not." (p. 161.) Now had these 
 unqualified statements been true, Mammals ought, on 
 his own principles, to have been developed in great 
 abundance before the end of the Oolitic and Cretaceous 
 periods : for Mammals did come into being during the 
 deposit of the Stonesfield slate, not far from the base 
 of the great Oolitic group ; and this at least is true, 
 that not so much as one fragment of a terrestrial 
 Mammal's bone has yet been discovered in the higher 
 parts of the Oolites, the Wealden beds, or the Chalk. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxXXVH 
 
 But after the period of the Chalk, and in the lowest 
 division of the great Tertiary series, terrestrial Mammals 
 appeared again ; and in a comparatively short lapse of 
 time, so far as we can judge from the evidence, they 
 multiplied in Genera and Species, and flourished in 
 great abundance. Such facts seem to prove (whether 
 the transmutation scheme be true or false), that con- 
 ditions, far more than time, have, in all ages influenced 
 the progression of animal types. 
 
 I will give the reader another example of the 
 Author's logical skill ; and it exhibits one of those 
 cases of plausible, verbal sophistry, which have so often 
 cheated men, ill acquainted with facts, into unwarrant- 
 able conclusions. After informing us "that (while we 
 are examining the successive deposits of geology) the 
 total mass of animal creation puts on, more and more, 
 the appearance which it now bears," — he proceeds to 
 ask us, u if this does not seem to imply that the present 
 system of things is essentially connected with the 
 past ; in which case, if the present is a natural system, 
 we have an additional proof that the past was a na- 
 tural system also?" (p. 162.) No one has ever denied 
 that the whole geological sequence presents a series 
 of true historical monuments. We believe that the 
 successive deposits, of all periods, were formed by 
 natural means ; and that the animals entombed within 
 them performed all the functions of life as animals 
 perform them now, and that they flourished under 
 conditions which were in fit accordance with their 
 organic structure. But the words, natural system, 
 
lxXXViii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 have two very different meanings in the previous ex- 
 tract. In the first instance, they only mean that natural 
 sequence of organic life which is going on before our 
 eyes from one generation to another : but in their 
 second use they are meant to imply that the animal 
 types of one geological period produced (in the way of 
 natural generation) the new animal types of the next 
 period ; and so on, in a regularly ascending order, till 
 we reach the present system of nature, in which species 
 do not change. In other words, that mollusks pro- 
 duced fishes, that fishes generated reptiles, that rep- 
 tiles generated birds, that birds became mammals, and 
 that monkeys (the highest type of old mammals) be- 
 came the natural parents of the human family. By a 
 slippery use of the words, natural system, the Author 
 imposes on the careless reader, and perhaps imposes 
 on himself. If this pedigree be true, we may well 
 ask, as Cuvier did nearly forty years since, pourquoi les 
 entrailles de la terre n'ont-elles point conserve les monu- 
 mens d'une genealogie si curieuse f He found no traces 
 of it among the rocks above the Chalk ; and since his 
 time geologists have spared no pains to discover and 
 interpret the oldest records of creation ; and, so far as 
 they have read them, they find not one leaf of this 
 monstrous genealogy ; nor is its possible existence sug- 
 gested by any hint which they have derived from their 
 ancient documents. Here I conclude my remarks on 
 the organic series of the Palaeozoic rocks, so far as it 
 bears on the theory of development. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. lxxxix 
 
 fi 6. Fossils of the Secondary Division, fyc. 
 
 While we ascend from the Palseozoic (or Primary) 
 to the lowest Secondary groups, we continually meet 
 with proofs of great internal movements and altered 
 physical conditions. Beds piled on one another, and 
 sometimes in a discordant position — great heaps of 
 conglomerate — abraded fragments ground down into 
 beds of sandstone, marl, and mud, generally of a deep 
 red colour — these are the physical monuments of the 
 period ; and they may be traced through the European 
 Continent, and the British Isles, and (with some change 
 of mineral type) through wide tracts of North America. 
 Volcanic action on a vast scale may, perhaps, have 
 supplied the materials whereby the sea in many places 
 became of a deep red colour ; and whereby the older 
 types of marine organic life were, through many re- 
 gions, utterly destroyed. Trees, however, flourished 
 during this time upon the land, and were sometimes 
 washed down into the sea and saved from entire de- 
 struction ; for we, here and there, find their petrified 
 trunks among these red deposits. Tortoises, gigantic 
 Batrachians, and other strange Reptiles, were, during 
 this tumultuous period, crawling near the margin of 
 the sea ; for we sometimes (though rarely) find their 
 bones, but more frequently the marks of their foot- 
 steps, on strata deposited at this period between the 
 high- and low-water level. 
 
 The whole series of the deposits above noticed is 
 called Trias, and has been divided, by the geologists 
 s. d. g 
 
XC PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of Germany, into three groups — the Bunter-sandstein, 
 the Muschel-kalk, and the Keuper — which are followed 
 in a regular ascending order by the Oolitic series and 
 the Chalk. The middle group of the three {Muschel- 
 Jcalh) abounds in fossils; and it gives us one good 
 marine fauna between the Palaeozoic rocks and the Lias 
 which forms the base of the Oolites. 
 
 Unfortunately this middle group is not found in 
 the British Isles. Its absence may, I think, be ex- 
 plained by the fact, that all those parts of the sea, 
 out of which in after times rose up our Island, were 
 turbid and deeply tinged by the continued agency of 
 volcanic fires : and that great changes of level did take 
 place at this time, is proved by the fact, that the upper 
 part of the New red-sandstone of England is not unusu- 
 ally deposited on the broken edges of the upheaved red 
 beds which we find below them. Be this explanation 
 right or wrong, the sea was for a time less turbid in 
 that part of the world where we now find central Ger- 
 many and an adjacent part of France, and the con- 
 temporaneous deposits were of a more ordinary colour : 
 and in conformity with these conditions there flourished 
 the noble marine fauna of the Muschel-lcalJc. But this 
 fauna was in its turn destroyed — the sea again became 
 red and turbid ; and the Keuper of France and Ger- 
 many became physically identical with those beds of 
 our New red-sandstone which form the top of the whole 
 series here described, and are packed immediately under 
 the Lias beds and Oolites. 
 
 The fossils of the Muscliel-kalk give us therefore 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XC1 
 
 the first distinct organic step among the marine deposits, 
 after we leave the Palaeozoic rocks, and begin our ascent 
 among those of the great Secondary division. What 
 then are the organic types we find in this fauna of the 
 Muschel-kalk ? I will answer this question in the 
 words of the Edinburgh Reviewer : " We do not here 
 find so much as one single species with which we are 
 familiar in the Palaeozoic series; All the older Families 
 and Orders have disappeared, and even the Saurians 
 differ in Order from those of the preceding epoch. It 
 is not too much to say that nature has destroyed all 
 her old moulds of workmanship, and begun a new work 
 on a different plan. Yet is there (in those parts of 
 the world where we find the Muschel-kalk) no break 
 or interruption in the regular sequence of deposits. 
 We accept these facts of nature as we find them. The 
 physical conditions of the earth were changed, and 
 Creative Wisdom called into new being organic struc- 
 tures to suit the change. With this we are content ; 
 and we defy any man living, whatever may be his 
 knowledge, to prove that in these steps of the great 
 ascending series 'the stages of advance were very 
 small' — 'only a new stage in the progress of gestation, 
 an event simply natural ' — ' a development from species 
 to species/ — ' phenomena of a simple and a modest cha- 
 racter ! ' Assertions more opposed to the works of 
 ancient nature were never before recorded in the writ- 
 ten language of a gratuitous hypothesis*." 
 
 * See Edinburgh Review, No. clxv. p. 52; and Vestiges, &c. 3rd 
 Edition, p. 231. 
 
 9% 
 
XC11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 I entreat the academic readers, to whom the fol- 
 lowing Discourse is more immediately addressed, to 
 examine for themselves, in the cabinets of the Wood- 
 wardian Museum, (thanks to Mr M'Coy, now in 
 excellent arrangement,) the organic sequence of the 
 Primary and Secondary series ; and they will there see 
 good evidence for these strong affirmations of the Re- 
 viewer; to which, indeed, nothing has been opposed 
 but vague hypotheses. It may perhaps be urged, that 
 the intervening and connecting types might have ex- 
 isted in some remote seas from which they passed by 
 migration to that part of the ocean out of which central 
 Germany was elevated in after times : but we have 
 neither positive facts nor probable presumption for the 
 hypothesis : for there is neither gradation nor mingling 
 of Species, so far as we know, between the newer 
 Palaeozoic types and those of the Muschel-Jcalk : nor 
 are there in those parts of Germany and France where 
 we find the Muschel-Jcalk any indications of break or 
 interruption among the deposits which might suggest to 
 the mind a notion that some great links of the organic 
 chain have been lost. Again, certain organic families 
 (for example Orthoceratites) are found, in a few rare 
 instances (for example, among the Alps), straggling 
 beyond their ordinary bounds into the lower parts of 
 the Secondary groups : but they shew no deviation from 
 their normal structure, nor any passage towards the 
 known Secondary types of Brachiopoda. They offer no 
 argument for the theory of development: but they do 
 seem to shew, that in all cases, both the beginning 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XC111 
 
 and the end of organic families depended rather upon 
 physical conditions than upon time*. 
 
 Lastly, it might perhaps be urged, that allowing 
 nature to have broken her ancient moulds of workman- 
 ship when she commenced with the fauna of the Mus- 
 chel-kalk, we have a right to suppose that she began her 
 work afresh, and completed it in the way of natural 
 development. If so, we ought jto see some traces of 
 this mode of working among the successive beds ; — but 
 we find no such trace ; for the fossils of the group are 
 not produced, one above the other, in the approximate 
 order of any conceivable organic scale. Well may we 
 again (in the words of Cuvier) ask those who affirm the 
 theory of development, " Pourquoi les entrailles de la 
 terre rCont elles point conserve les monumens <Pune genea- 
 logie si curieuse ?" 
 
 After we have ascended from the Muschel-kalk to 
 the Lias we find ourselves in a new fauna. The great 
 series of fossils derived from the two formations are 
 seen, side by side, in our Museum, and do not inter- 
 change so much as one single species. It is, however, true, 
 that there is what might, in popular language, be called 
 a family-likeness between the two faunas; and the fossils 
 of the Muschel-kalk are much nearer to the organic types 
 
 * We have many examples of this fact among the Secondary groups. 
 For example — Some most characteristic fossils of the Oxford clay are cut 
 off by the coral-reefs and stone -beds of the middle Oolite, and do not re- 
 appear in the overlying Kimmeridge clay. But in other places, where 
 the reefs are wanting, and the ancient bottom of the sea presents a con- 
 tinuous series of similar conditions, the characteristic fossils of the Oxford 
 clay rise up into the Kimmeridge clay, and there abound along with 
 fossils characteristic of the upper formation. 
 
XC1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of the Lias than they are to the types of the newest 
 Palaeozoic rocks. Still there is a great organic interval 
 between the two fossil groups, which no theory of natural 
 development can explain, without some new intervention 
 of hypothesis. And the same difficulties meet us again 
 and again as we ascend, step by step, through the several 
 deposits till we have reached the upper limits of the 
 Chalk where the Secondary deposits end. The facts of 
 Geology supply us therefore with a great cumulative 
 argument against the theory of development. But 
 I must forbear. Were I to describe the successive 
 Secondary groups, and attempt to enumerate their most 
 characteristic fossils, this Preface must change its form, 
 and become a treatise of Geology. This, at least, I may 
 affirm, that the phenomena, when considered in detail, 
 do not suggest the theory of development. 
 
 Let me, however, crave the reader's patience while 
 I give a short synopsis of the facts which bear on the 
 historical development of the four highest Classes of 
 the animal kingdom to the end of the Secondary period : 
 viz. Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals. 
 
 Fishes. — It appears that the very oldest fossil-fishes 
 of which we find traces among the Palaeozoic strata, 
 are of a very high organic type ; and that in not one 
 of them is there the remotest proof (as was once 
 supposed) of such near affinities to Crustaceans or any 
 other Articulata, as to imply a natural passage from 
 one Class to the other : and the same might be said of 
 all other organic types below the Class of Fishes. The 
 several Classes are as abruptly defined as they are in 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XCV 
 
 the living world, and do not graduate one into another. 
 These ancient Fishes have therefore no true organic 
 base to rest upon; and there are no anterior forms of 
 nature, brought to light by geologists, from which we 
 can suppose them, even on the theory of development, 
 to have sprung in the way of natural generation. 
 
 Again, the Fishes of the Secondary period are 
 eminently characteristic ; and distinct species are found 
 in nearly all the subdivisions of the whole series from 
 the bottom of the Lias to the top of the Chalk. " Even 
 allowing (for the sake of argument) the change of Spe- 
 cies by development, the supposition will not help us ; 
 for we shall afterwards be compelled, on this hypothesis, 
 to ask for many sudden changes from Family to Family, 
 and from Order to Order. And surely this would be 
 thought a little too much for ' the simple and modest 
 advances' of nature*." Those who wish to follow out 
 this subject may consult the Poissons Fossiles of Agas- 
 siz, and especially his historical scheme of development 
 given in his first volume (p. 170). All the Fossil- Fishes, 
 described in that great work, till we reach the base of 
 the Cretaceous groups, are either Placoids or Ganoids : 
 and they are divided into Families, Genera, and Species. 
 Some of the Families begin from the earliest times, and 
 still survive (though after many changes of specific type) 
 in our present seas. Others flourish and expand during 
 one or more periods, and then decay. Several Families, 
 after playing an important part in the past history of 
 nature, disappear altogether on the ascending scale, and 
 
 * Edinburgh Review, p. 53. 
 
XCV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 are seen no more. But in this great scheme, which 
 places before the eyes the true historical progress of 
 nature, there is no confusion of family types, nor any 
 obliteration of the organic intervals between them. 
 
 One more quotation will complete all that I need 
 state on the present question. " Let us next come to 
 the Cretaceous system, and analyse the phenomena 
 in the same manner. This deposit indicates a great 
 change in the physical condition of the old sea ; and, in 
 accordance with this fact, we also find a great change 
 in many of the organic types. It is here that we have 
 the first traces of animal species still living, and they 
 belong to Infusoria; but all (or very nearly all) the 
 nobler organic forms of the Chalk are of extinct Genera 
 or Species. But we will confine ourselves to fossil 
 Fishes. (1) We find four Families which, commencing 
 among some of the older systems, pass into the Chalk, 
 (with changes of generic and specific type ;) and after- 
 wards (with corresponding changes) pass into our pre- 
 sent seas. Two of these Families (Squalus and Ray) go 
 on continually increasing as we ascend. (2) The two 
 Orders of Cycloids and Ctenoids now make their appear- 
 ance for the first time, in not less than eighteen goodly 
 Families I They are separated by a wide organic inter- 
 val from all the older Families and Orders ; and they are 
 the Fishes with which we are now most familiar among 
 the living forms of nature. All these eighteen Families 
 (but with various generic or specific changes) pass 
 through the Tertiary period into the modern seas ; and, 
 in addition, there are a few Families which began during 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XCV11 
 
 the Tertiary periods, and are still living in our own 
 times. How are we to account for all this on any 
 theory of development, which gives us only * a simple 
 and modest' change from one species to another? 
 Allowing, for the sake of argument, the possibility of 
 specific changes in a Genus of one Family — how are we 
 to account for the sudden appearance of two new Orders 
 and eighteen new Families ? The facts of nature are 
 in direct antagonism with the theory. They crush it 
 to atoms." (E. B. p. 55.) ' 
 
 At the end of his great work, and after a philoso- 
 phical survey of the whole history of fossil Fishes, which 
 he had studied in the book of nature, from x the oldest 
 chapter to the newest, M. Agassiz deliberately records 
 his opinion of the theory of development in the follow- 
 ing words : u II faut necessairement remonter a une 
 cause plus elevee, et reconnoitre des influences plus puis- 
 santes, exercant sur la nature entiere une action plus di- 
 recte, si Von ne veut pas se momoir eternellement dans un 
 cercle mcieucc. Quant a moi, fai la conviction que les 
 especes ont tie crees successivement a differentes reprises ; 
 
 et que les cliangemens quelles ont subis durant une 
 
 tpoque geologique ne sont que tres secondaires, et ne tiennent 
 qu'a leur plus ou moins grande fecondite, et a des migra- 
 tions subordonnees a des influences de Vepoque? 
 
 Beptiles. — Within the last three or four years, one 
 or two obscure, but undoubted fragments of Reptile 
 skeletons, have been discovered among the old Carbo- 
 niferous strata of Europe and America : but no traces 
 of such fossils have yet been found among the Carbo- 
 niferous rocks of the British Isles, notwithstanding the 
 
XCV1U PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 enormous excavations which are daily carried on among 
 them. Three Genera of Reptiles — the Thecodonts, the 
 Palseosaurs, and the (so-called) Monitors of Thuringia 
 — are found in the {Permian) group of rocks which 
 overlies the Carboniferous system, and forms the highest 
 limits of the Palaeozoic Division. These three Genera 
 belong to the Lacertilian Order of Owen, and are 
 therefore of a high organic type. 
 
 Ascending next to the base of the Secondary series 
 (represented in England by the New red-sandstone and 
 saliferous marls ; and more perfectly on the Continent 
 by the Triassic system) we find within it many traces 
 of the Reptile Class. Among them are Chelonians 
 and gigantic Batrachians. The Rhynchosaur and the 
 Dicynodon appear, on the best evidence we possess, to 
 have belonged to this period. The former is like a 
 Chelonian in having mandibles without teeth ; but in 
 its general bony structure it is a true Lacertian. The 
 latter has two large tusks (like those of a Walrus) 
 fixed in its upper jaw ; but its cranium and skeleton 
 are of the true Saurian type. 
 
 Other organic remains belonging to this period 
 have, no doubt, escaped notice ; but in addition to the 
 traces above mentioned, I may add — that numerous 
 Reptiles left their foot-prints, which are still seen on 
 the muddy and sandy beds that were formed on the 
 ancient shores; and imperfect as the evidence is, it 
 justifies us in drawing the conclusion — that during the 
 period of the New red-sandstone many cold-blooded 
 monsters were crawling on the land, and on the shores 
 of the ancient estuaries. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XC1X 
 
 During the epoch of the Muschel-Jcalk (the middle 
 division of the Triassic system) Enaliosaurs seem to have 
 abounded. They are of a low organic type, and were 
 incapable of walking on dry land : and of all known 
 Reptiles they make the nearest approach to Fishes. 
 New Genera of the same reptilian Order swarmed in 
 the seas during the epoch of the Lias and the Oolites, 
 and disappeared, so far as we haye evidence, near the 
 base of the Chalk. Side by side with these Reptilians 
 of a more humble type flourished Crocodilians and other 
 Reptiles of a very high organic grade ; and contempo- 
 raneously with these flourished also Reptilian Orders 
 (such as Pterodactyls and Dinosaurs), to which we find 
 no analogous types in the living world — The Pterodac- 
 tyls, as the name implies, were true Reptiles with mem- 
 braneous wings, like those of a bat. — The Dinosaurs 
 were creatures of gigantic stature, with marrow-bones 
 and ponderous muscular limbs like those of Pachy- 
 derms, and exhibited, in their collective anatomical 
 characters, the noblest forms of Reptile life that ever 
 were created: yet they all seem to have perished 
 before the period of the Chalk. Lastly, the collective 
 Saurian fauna of the Chalk is of an inferior grade to 
 the corresponding fauna of the Oolitic series. 
 
 On a review of all these facts we may affirm, that 
 several Genera of Reptiles were called into being near 
 the end of the Palaeozoic period — that three of these 
 Genera (at the least) were of a high organic type — 
 that new Genera and new Orders were successively 
 added till the Saurian Class reached its most perfect 
 
C PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 development — and that it afterwards underwent a de- 
 cline before the end of the Secondary period, both in 
 the number of its Orders and in the grade of its 
 highest organic types. Facts such as these throw no 
 difficulties in our way, while we see, during every step 
 we take in the natural world, the marks of Creative 
 Intelligence. They simply tell us that successive or- 
 ganic types were adapted to successive conditions of 
 the earth : but they are at open war with the theory 
 of development ; which refers all these organic changes 
 to mere material causes — affirms them to be progressive 
 — and to have been brought about not so much by a 
 change of conditions as by a long lapse of time. 
 
 What was the earliest form of Reptile life? The 
 true answer to such a question may, from the nature 
 of the evidence, for ever remain in doubt. Within the 
 last four years the grounds of evidence have shifted, and 
 may shift again. But I will, merely for the sake of ar- 
 gument, assume it as a fact proved, that the first Rep- 
 tiles were Enaliosaurians. Could, then, the humblest 
 type of these animals spring, in the way of natural 
 generation, from Fishes? Professor Owen gives to this 
 question a negative reply. It is a subject on which 
 he is better informed than any living physiologist ; and 
 he tells us, i( that through no known forms of fossil 
 animals can we diminish the wide interval which divides 
 the Sauroid Fishes from the Ichthyosaurus."" As the 
 subject is one of vital import to the theory of develop- 
 ment, I have also consulted M. Agassiz (whose labours in 
 the anatomical examination of fossil Fishes are so well 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CI 
 
 known) on the answer we must give to the previous 
 question, and his reply is now before me. He consi- 
 ders the Ichthyosaurus as the best generic Reptilian 
 type to bring into near comparison with Fishes, and 
 concludes in the following words : " Enfin, y a-t-il quel- 
 ques raisons de considerer les Icthyosaures comme des de- 
 scendans des poissons Saurides anterieurs a Vapparition 
 de ces reptiles f Pas la moindre. Je considererais meme 
 tout naturaliste, qui poseroit au serieux cette question, 
 comme incapable de la discuter et de la juger. II se met- 
 troit en dehors de toute realite, et raisonneroit seulement 
 sur une base de sa creation et non point par induction? 
 After this reply I will not insult the reader by asking 
 him whether the three or four Genera of Lacertilians 
 in the Magnesian Limestone can be considered as the 
 immediate progeny of Sauroid Fishes. 
 
 Secondly, can we give any colour of truth to the 
 theory of transmutation by taking many independent 
 lines of organic ascent from the first humble types ? 
 By assuming the truth of this hypothesis we gain no- 
 thing for the theory ; for it helps us not towards any 
 true historical development of the animal kingdom. If 
 we take a thousand lines of assumed organic ascent 
 from the primeval types, and suppose the changing 
 forms on each line to be brought about in the way of 
 natural generation, we must further suppose that the 
 organic changes on this ascending linear scale are made 
 by "modest steps" — by the gradual sliding of one 
 species into another. Without some such conception 
 as this we cannot give the similitude of natural truth 
 to our hypothesis. Now if this genealogy be true, we 
 
Cll PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ought to find some traces of it among nature's works : 
 but we look for it in vain ; and at every turn we may 
 ask, in the words of Cuvier, " pourquoi les entrailles de 
 la terre n'ont elles point conserve les monumens d"*une 
 genealogie si curieuseV Taking the whole aggregate 
 of fossil Species and grouping them chronologically, we 
 cannot construct out of them so much as one single 
 ascending organic line without such breaks of con- 
 tinuity as are in deadly antagonism with the theory 
 of development. If we begin with some of the best 
 marked families of Badiata t we find them arranged on 
 no organic scale that is chronological. The same re- 
 mark applies to many of the Articulata and Mollusca ; 
 and the same negative fact is still more impressively 
 brought before us in the Class of Fishes. 
 
 But to return to the Reptiles. We find not the 
 ancient Genera and Species in any true order of natural 
 development ; and looking at the whole collective Class 
 during the Secondary period, it is, as we have seen, at 
 one time progressive and afterwards retrogressive: and 
 if we descend to the consideration of single lines of sup- 
 posed organic ascent, (such, for example, as the Ena- 
 liosaurian,) we are no nearer to the assumed hypothesis. 
 So far as our present evidence goes we find the type 
 of the Plesiosaur preceding that of the Ichthyosaur : yet 
 the Ichthyosaur is on a lower organic grade than the 
 Plesiosaur. Again, if we take the Batrachian line, 
 and suppose it derived from Fishes by a natural law 
 of transmutation, we may ask — Are the oldest known 
 Batrachians of a lower and more fish- like type than 
 our living frogs or toads ? I believe the contrary. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Clll 
 
 The oldest known Batrachians are not, as Owen tells 
 us, " elevated Fishes, but degraded Crocodiles." But I 
 must forbear ; as all illustrations that depend for their 
 value upon details, are unfit for this Preface. 
 
 Thirdly, it may be asked, Can we not account for 
 the varying organic forms of the old world, by a lateral 
 expansion of our ascending lines — thereby breaking 
 down the boundaries between Genera and Orders, and 
 gradually producing an apparent confusion in the 
 arrangement of the successive animal types ? We reply, 
 that there is no confusion in nature to justify the rash 
 hypothesis this question implies. The Orders and Ge- 
 nera of the fossil Reptiles are quite as sharply defined 
 as they are among the Reptiles of the living world ; 
 and there is no confusion in their organic types. To 
 derive hypothetically one Reptile Order, or one Genus, 
 from another, might prove a man disqualified to discuss 
 or pass a judgment on any question in physiology ; 
 but could prove nothing else. The hypothesis would 
 have no resting-place in nature; and would involve 
 an absurdity not less than that of pretending to breed 
 a rabbit from a rhinoceros, or a hog from a hippo- 
 potamus. 
 
 Birds. — All the supposed traces of Birds among 
 the Palaeozoic rocks have so far turned out to be 
 apocryphal : but impressions of the footsteps of animals 
 of this Class abound in some parts of North America, 
 among rocks of the age of our New red-sandstone ; and 
 the most remarkable and abundant Species seem to 
 have been Struthionidw and Grallce. According to 
 
CIV PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 the development theory, the Class ought to have 
 started with the aquatic and natatorial families ; but 
 the evidence, if we are to square our theory with facts, 
 rather points to a contrary conclusion. A very few 
 obscure fragments of the skeletons of Birds appear 
 among the Oolitic groups ; and, lastly, one or two well- 
 marked bones of aquatic Birds have been found in the 
 Chalk. — Such is the meagre evidence we derive from 
 Birds during the long Secondary period — assuredly of 
 little value for any theory, and far too broken and im- 
 perfect to tell us the exact epoch when this Class came 
 into being, or the manner in which the Genera were 
 gradually developed. Their existence is, however, a 
 fact ; and, how are we to account for it I According to 
 the theory of development, they must have sprung from 
 some preceding vertebrate type in the way of natural 
 generation : but not the shadow of any proof has been 
 given in support of this genealogy. By none of the 
 ancient forms of organic life has the wide interval be- 
 tween Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds, been so interpolated 
 as to place the boundaries between them in any doubt. 
 These boundaries are as plain in the ancient as in the 
 living world : and while we assert that Birds sprang 
 from Reptiles or from Fishes, we assume a fact that 
 violates the whole economy of nature, is at open war 
 with all the analogies of the living world, and of 
 which Geology gives us not one scrap of evidence. 
 And thus, while we pretend to base our hypothesis 
 on the evidence of Geology, we explain away that 
 evidence by the mere assumption of our hypothesis. The 
 

 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CV 
 
 ends of inductive truth can never be advanced by such 
 a wretched abuse of reasoning. — Let it not be said in 
 reply, that we find winged Reptiles among the Secondary 
 rocks. In the present condition of our knowledge we 
 have as good a proof that Pterodactyls came into being 
 after Birds, as we have that Birds came into being 
 after certain Genera of Reptiles : and were it now 
 proved that Pterodactyls preceded Birds, the theory 
 would not advance one step ; for these winged Reptiles 
 shew no near organic affinities with Birds. Their 
 most important organic affinities point in a different 
 direction. Taking, therefore, known facts and analogies 
 for our guide, we affirm that the earliest Birds of the 
 old world have no natural zoological base to rest upon. 
 How then were Birds called into being ? We reply, 
 that they were created. The word expresses the exact 
 condition of our knowledge. It assumes the existence 
 of an Intelligent Power in nature acting with pro- 
 spective wisdom ; and it tacitly affirms, as a negative 
 fact, that we comprehend not the manner in which 
 this form of organic life began. It was exactly by 
 like reasoning from the Class of Fishes that Agassiz 
 arrived at a similar conclusion. He was wearied by 
 an eternal movement in a vicious circle, and was con- 
 tent to express his knowledge in modest terms, which 
 rightly defined its boundaries ; and he did not blindly 
 venture to soar higher still by casting down the steps 
 whereby he had mounted so far, and by discarding all 
 the analogies which had hitherto guided him to the 
 conception of general truths. 
 
 s. d. h 
 
CV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 Mammals. — The remains of no Mammals, either 
 terrestrial or marine, have been yet found below the 
 Oolitic system. In the lower part of the British Oo- 
 lites (the Stonesfield slate), portions of the jaws of two 
 Genera of Marsupials were long since discovered ; and 
 these are the oldest known Mammals. A single Cetacean 
 bone (probably derived from the Kimmeridge clay) was 
 found by myself, some years since, near Ely ; and it 
 is, I believe, a solitary example of a Mammal's bone 
 from the upper Oolites. Lastly, the bone of no Mam- 
 mal, either terrestrial or marine, has, so far as I know, 
 been yet found in any part of the Cretaceous system. 
 Such is our very meagre evidence respecting the early 
 types of the Mammal Class. Two questions offer them- 
 selves for our consideration. (1 st.) Does this evidence give 
 us any proof of a supposed fact (assumed by the author 
 of The Vestiges)^ that marine Mammals preceded the ter- 
 restrial ? So far as the evidence goes it proves just the 
 contrary. (2dly.) Can we derive, in the way of natural 
 generation, the two Genera of Marsupials from any 
 known anterior form of organic life \ J willingly adopt 
 the words of Agassiz (given by him in reply to a ques- 
 tion not one jot more unreasonable) : " Je considere- 
 rois menie tout naturaliste qui poseroit au serieux cette 
 question, comme incapable de la discuter et de la juger. 
 II se mettroit en dehors de toute realite" One who 
 has told us of hatching a rat from a goose's egg, 
 may think it but a modest miracle to hatch a Stones- 
 field Marsupial from a Triassic Struthio — a Kangaroo 
 from a Cassowary : till he has performed his first miracle 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CVH 
 
 we may well be allowed to doubt the second. I 
 affirm, then, that the Stonesfield Marsupials are phe- 
 nomena unexplained by the theory of development ; 
 that their genealogical line is broken ; and that they 
 have no true organic base to rest upon. Are we to 
 talk of " modest steps " as we advance towards the 
 theory of development, while at every moment we are 
 taking immodest strides which carry us out of the 
 bounds of the natural world? To make the theory 
 probable we must seek for some evidence that widely 
 differs from that which is offered by the organic forms 
 of our Secondary series. At the very lowest estimate 
 of all the evidence derived from the organic remains 
 of the Secondary rocks, we may affirm that it suggests 
 not to any sober mind the theory of development. The 
 conclusion might be pushed much farther ; but, for the 
 present, I am content to leave it here. 
 
 § 7. Organic Remains of the Tertiary Division, &c. 
 
 It now remains for me to notice the third and high- 
 est Division of our great geological deposits — including 
 all groups of regular strata posterior to the Chalk, and 
 anterior to the modern, or historic period. These de- 
 posits, which are of great aggregate thickness, and are 
 extended over wide surfaces of all our Continents, admit 
 of three primary subdivisions — Eocene — Miocene — and 
 Pliocene : and these three names imply, that in the 
 lowest subdivision (Eocene) we find only the dawn of 
 living Species — that in the next subdivision, living 
 Species, though more abundant than before, still form 
 
 k2 
 
CV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 the minority — and, lastly, that in the upper subdivi- 
 sion (Pliocene) extinct Species decline in number, and 
 living Species form the majority. In a certain sense this 
 grouping is artificial, but it is based on observed facts ; 
 and since it was first published by Sir C. Lyell, has 
 generally passed current among Geologists : and it now 
 forms the basis of more complicated subdivisions, made 
 necessary by the progress of discovery. 
 
 To describe these deposits is not my object ; but 
 I may add the following short notice of them. — 
 (1) They were preceded by great continental movements 
 and changes of marine level ; from which it follows, 
 that they are not, as a general rule, co-ordinate with 
 the rocks on which they rest, or form any structural 
 passage into them. (2) They generally seem to mark 
 the commencement of new physical conditions. (3) 
 They were elaborated during a long period of ages 
 and during very different conditions of temperature. 
 Thus, the fauna of the Eocene period invariably indi- 
 cates a sub-tropical temperature ; while the fauna of 
 some of our upper Tertiary beds indicates a climate in 
 temperature apparently below that of England. (4) 
 The passage from one subdivision to another is not 
 always gradual, but more frequently seems to mark 
 some sudden change of conditions. (5) The upper 
 Tertiary groups give us no well-defined links, whereby 
 we may connect them with the deposits of the modern, 
 or historic period in which we trace the works of man. 
 As we ascend from one Tertiary group to another 
 we find little difficulty in the interpretation of nature's 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. C1X 
 
 record : but when we attempt to rise still higher on 
 the scale, so as to connect the past with the present, 
 we meet with documents so mutilated, and written in 
 characters so obscure, that we almost despair of inter- 
 preting them, so as to draw from them any /true, con- 
 nected history. While making this attempt, we en- 
 counter continual indications of shifting marine levels — 
 we find marine terraces high upon*" our mountain-sides, 
 and raised sea-beaches far above any modern coast- 
 line — we find proofs of a long period when glaciers 
 filled our high valleys, and when great masses of rock 
 were drifted across the country on icebergs, and some- 
 times perched on our mountain-tops — and we find 
 proofs of diluvial currents, which, descending from 
 higher to lower levels, dragged with them enormous 
 masses of gravel and superficial rubbish containing 
 broken specimens of Mammal's bones and abraded frag- 
 ments of all the older strata. — To rationalize and 
 arrange in historical order phenomena such as these, is 
 perhaps the hardest task that has yet been submitted 
 to Geologists*. 
 
 Leaving then all questions that are strictly geolo- 
 gical, I will next consider the organic phenomena of 
 the Tertiary division ; and I will commence my task with 
 
 * This task has been attempted in a great original Memoir by Profes- 
 sor E. Forbes, (Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 
 Vol. I.) If he has not succeeded in clearing away all difficulties, and if 
 some of his positions be considered doubtful, or untenable — it must, at 
 least, be admitted, that he has brought, with no common skill, a vast mass 
 of facts to bear upon the very difficult questions discussed, and that lie 
 has the undisputed honour of having taken the first firm steps towards 
 a right conclusion. 
 
CX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 a long extract from the Edinburgh Review, because it 
 gives a condensed account of some of the leading facts 
 that bear on the true development of organic life ; and, 
 still more, because it has formed the subject of some 
 comments to which I must reply. 
 
 " On the theory of development, 'the stages of 
 advance are in all cases very small — from species to 
 species," and the phenomena, ' as shewn in the pages of 
 geology, are always of a simple and modest character." 
 Let us test these assumptions by one single step from 
 the Chalk to the London-clay, or any other Tertiary 
 deposit. Among the millions of organic forms, from 
 Corals up to Mammals, of the London and Paris basins, 
 we find hardly so much as one single Secondary species. 
 The humble Infusoria have been already noticed ; and 
 in the south of France it is said that two or three 
 Secondary species straggle into the Tertiary system ; 
 but they form a rare, and almost evanescent exception 
 to the general rule. Organic nature is once more on a 
 new pattern — plants as well as animals are changed. 
 It might seem as if we had been transported to a new 
 planet ; for neither in the arrangement of the Genera 
 and Species, nor in their affinities with the types of an 
 older world, is there the shadow of any approach to a 
 regular plan of organic development. Our limits forbid 
 us to enter on details, and in truth they are unne- 
 cessary ; for if the chain of development be made of 
 broken links, and if its first links were never bound to 
 nature, (and we have proved already that they were 
 not,) then must the last links inevitably want all 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXI 
 
 semblance of material support. But to convey to our 
 readers some notion of the flora and fauna of the 
 oldest subdivision of this new period, we may tell them 
 in a few words, that we find in it the remains of a 
 noble flora — coniferous trees, palm-trees, and thousands 
 of drifted seed-vessels of very many new Species, but all 
 of a tropical or sub-tropical type. To these we may 
 add more than a thousand Molluscs, all new, yet 
 making an approach to the types of living nature ; and 
 with them are two or three modern Species. We find 
 Crocodilians greatly differing from the Secondary types, 
 and conforming to the modern, yet not specifically 
 agreeing with them — Serpents approaching the great 
 Boa — Tortoises and Turtles in great abundance, but of 
 extinct Genera — Fishes of the same general structure 
 with the newer Families of the Chalk, but of different 
 Species, and along with them at least two Families of a 
 new type — Birds of nearly all the living Families, but 
 the Species probably different. And lastly, we find a 
 noble series of Mammals — especially Pachyderms ; but 
 including Carnivora, Quadrumana, and other Orders. 
 Among the Mammals described by Cuvier from this 
 lowest division of the Tertiary system, all the species 
 are of extinct Genera. Some exceptions to this rule 
 may have been found since ; but, at least, all are of 
 extinct Species. These different Orders and Classes are 
 not arranged on any ascending scale. Carnivora are as 
 old as Pachyderms, so far at least as we have any 
 evidence bearing on the question ; and Quadrumana 
 (monkeys) are found in this division — thus contra- 
 
CX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 dieting and stultifying the upper end -of our Author's 
 grand creative scale. 
 
 "As we ascend towards the middle divisions of the 
 series, there is a development of nature's kingdom 
 nearer and nearer to living types. But it is not a 
 development after our Author's scheme. It follows the 
 law of the rise, progress, and decline of the organic 
 Families of the older world, already pointed out. We 
 have no confusion of Genera and Species, and no shades 
 of structure to make dim their outlines. In the great 
 Tertiary basin of the Lower Rhine, we find, in a few 
 small quarries near Mayence, more Vertebrate remains 
 than have been found in the Paris and London basins. 
 Many Genera and Species are new, and among them are 
 old Species of Elephant and Rhinoceros. We seem to 
 have taken one upward step towards the living world ; 
 but we have no confusion of Species. Again, a vast 
 menagery of old Asiatic Mammals, and lower Verte- 
 brates, (collected with vast labour, and in part also 
 described by Falconer and Cautley,) are now in the 
 British Museum. Some of the types are strange and 
 new, and all of them shew the riches of these ancient 
 kingdoms of nature. But not one of them (and the 
 question has been battled out at Paris) offers the 
 shadow of a proof of specific transmutation, or oblite- 
 rates the clearness of nature's record. The documents 
 of a newer date found among the British rocks are 
 few and imperfect. We have already spoken of them, 
 and we cannot follow the subject any further, as our 
 narrow limits forbid it. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CX111 
 
 " Returning, then, to the lowest division of the Ter- 
 tiary system, as seen in the London and Paris basins, 
 and confining ourselves to the Pachyderms, we may 
 ask — from what anterior forms of organic life are we to 
 derive them by any possible law of common nature I 
 The creatures of the older world, which made the 
 nearest approach to Mammals, (excepting the Marsu- 
 pials of the lower Oolites,) were the Dinosaurs ; and they 
 died away (if we are to trust Geology) ages before the 
 end of the Chalk. These Mammals (and the same 
 remark applies to all the other remains of the Class) 
 have no zoological base to rest upon. They were 
 therefore not called into being by any known law of 
 nature, but by a power above nature. They were 
 created by the hand of God, and adapted to the con- 
 ditions of the period. This is the conclusion of Agassiz 
 and Owen, on better evidence than Cuvier possessed : 
 and this was in substance the grand conclusion of 
 Cuvier ; for if, as he again and again affirms, the 
 extinct fossil Species which he reconstructed with admi- 
 mirable skill, were not produced by any continued 
 natural organic law from other Species, then must they 
 have been created. His first proposition is this — les 
 especes per dues ne sont pas des varietes des especes vimntes. 
 But there are some, he tells us, qui pensent qu'avec 
 des siecles et des habitudes toutes les especes pourraient se 
 changer les unes dans les autres, ou resulter d*une seule 
 d'entre elles. And what is this but the theory of 
 transmutation and development ? But he replies — 
 pourquoi les entr allies de la terre rfont-elles point con- 
 
CX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION 7 . 
 
 serve les monumens d'une genealogie si curieuse*? He 
 wrote on the evidence before him, and it was enough. 
 His conclusions were contested at every point. Ancient 
 tombs were ransacked to obtain evidences of some 
 change in the human type. Animals were dissected in 
 cases where, by domestication and all the artifices of 
 breeding, the varieties of Species had reached their 
 widest limits. Hybrid monsters were produced by 
 cross-breeding, (such are never produced in wild un- 
 tamed nature ;) but they were fruitless ; or, (as is said 
 in one or two cases,) after two descents, they returned 
 to one of the first types. All the experiments and 
 dissections were in vain — nature was true to her own 
 work — and Species were found, in living nature, to be 
 permanent. To this law not one exception has been 
 found. But there are some good anatomists at Paris 
 — misled, we believe, by false views respecting the 
 grand zoological sequence of geology — who cling to the 
 theory of development ; and some of these hypothetical 
 interpreters have presumed to scoff at these great con- 
 clusions, and to talk of la cloture du siecle de Cmier. 
 Such persons we would remind of the fable of the old 
 lion, and leave them to make its application." {Edinburgh 
 Review, p. 58 — 61.) 
 
 Such is the statement of the Reviewer : and what is 
 the reply given by the Author of The Vestiges 9 " The 
 more rational explanation (he tells us,) of the appearances 
 is one suggested by actual facts observed in the strata, 
 
 * " Discours Preliminaire to the Ossemens Fossiles ; and the same 
 sentiment is repeated more than once in the different dissertations in 
 that great work." 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXV 
 
 that the final cretaceous beds were deposited in seas 
 more than usually deep, and which were therefore no 
 proper habitat for the animals previously existing — that 
 an interval of time afterwards took place, which is not 
 represented by any strata which have been discovered — 
 and that by the time the tertiary formation commenced, 
 the usual modifying influences having never ceased, the 
 fauna had undergone such an amount of change as 
 naturalists are accustomed to describe (their language 
 being wholly arbitrary) as a renewal of species*." 
 
 This argument is made up of three distinct pro- 
 positions ; the first of which is not true : the second, at 
 the very least, is doubtful ; and the third is in the 
 highest degree improbable and out of all co-ordination 
 with what we observe in nature : and no seeming 
 probability can be given to it except by begging the 
 whole question in debate. The theory of development 
 is not suggested or made probable by the phenomena 
 of living nature : but, say the materialists, it is sug- 
 gested and made probable by the facts of geology. 
 In reply, we appeal to such facts as are given in the 
 previous extract from the Review ; and what is the 
 rejoinder? That the whole change between the Se- 
 condary and Tertiary fauna had been brought about 
 " by the usual modifying circumstances which had never 
 ceased." The theory of development is proved (we are 
 told) by the facts of Geology ; and when we appeal to 
 the facts of Geology as they are written in nature's 
 
 * Vestiges of Creation, &c. 6th Edition, p. 128. See also Explana- 
 tions, &c. pp. 91—103. 
 
CXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 book (the true records of creation), we are then told 
 to interpolate and rationalize them by an audacious 
 assumption of the very theory which is in discussion ! 
 Such a scheme of logic is no better than a cheat, and 
 an insult on the reader's understanding. 
 
 Not, however, to comment any longer on this dis- 
 eased logic, let us dare to look honestly to nature for 
 our basis, and appeal to such facts as have a true 
 bearing on the question. 
 
 In the first place, it is not true, " that the final 
 Cretaceous beds were deposited in seas unusually deep." 
 The Green-sands, and other beds, forming the base of 
 the Cretaceous system, are certainly not the deposits of 
 a very deep sea. The innumerable shark's teeth, cop- 
 rolites, echinites, and other fossils of the Chalk, point, 
 I think, towards the same conclusion. In the British 
 Isles the highest Cretaceous beds are wanting : but in 
 some parts of the European continent (e.g. Maestricht, 
 coasts of Denmark, &c.) we meet with a great superior 
 group (a true part of the Chalk formation), which was 
 unquestionably deposited in a shallow sea. Again, 
 though in France and the British Isles there is a great 
 break between the upper Secondary and lowest Ter- 
 tiary deposits, yet are they so developed in some other 
 parts of Europe that we know not how to draw any 
 line between them that is marked out by any decided 
 change of physical conditions*. Hence I venture to 
 
 * Since this part of the Preface was written, several Papers have been 
 read before the Geological Society of London, by Sir R. I. Murchison, 
 wherein he shews-r-that through the Eastern Alps, and in some other parts 
 of Europe, there is no physical break between the upper Secondary and the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXVll 
 
 affirm that we 1iave neither proof, nor probable evidence, 
 of that enormous lapse of ages, between the periods of the 
 upper Chalk and the lower Eocene deposits, which the 
 Author's theory demands, in order that he may find time 
 to join together the broken links of his organic chain. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there is an enormous organic 
 interval between the fauna of the Cretaceous period 
 and that of the lower Tertiary deposits ; and numerous 
 terrestrial Mammals were, by some means or other, 
 drifted into these deposits, and there became entombed : 
 and we have a right to conclude that, during the same 
 period, Mammals in thousands lived on the dry land 
 and perished without leaving any monuments of their 
 existence. But how came these multitudinous tribes of 
 Mammals on the dry land ! We say they were created, 
 and the word describes the true condition of our know- 
 ledge. If they were not created, what was their genea- 
 logy ! In no part of the Cretaceous system do we find 
 the Ceteosaurs, which our Author (led astray by a mere 
 name) regards as a generative link between Reptiles 
 and Whales : neither do we find the Dinosaurs, which 
 make some approach to the structure of Pachyderms. 
 All these links are wanting, and so far the theory of 
 development is wanting in all appearance of support. 
 
 But we are told, some of our Carnivora and Pachy- 
 dermata may have sprung from Cetacea and Phocidw* . 
 
 lower Tertiary series. They seem to pass one into the other. But he has 
 not found intervening organic types to fill up the gap between the Secon- 
 dary and Tertiary fauna ; or to give any colour to the hypothesis that the 
 latter is but the transmuted progeny of the former. 
 » Vestiges, 6th Edit. pp. 336—340. 
 
CXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 For the sake of argument, let us admit the possibility 
 of such a parentage ; but where is the geological evi- 
 dence for its truth ? Seals and whales certainly did not 
 abound in any part of the great Cretaceous system. Not 
 so much as one fragment of any marine Mammal has, 
 I believe, yet been found among the Green-sands at the 
 base of the Chalk. No such fossils have been found 
 among the widely- excavated Chalk formations of the 
 British Isles ; and, I believe, no mention of any Mam- 
 mal's bone appears in the catalogues of the upper 
 Cretaceous fossils of the Continent"*. Had the Ceteo- 
 saurs and Dinosaurs abounded in the Cretaceous system, 
 and had their remains been found mingled with those of 
 Seals, Whales, or other marine Mammals ; then would 
 there have been in our Authors hypothesis something 
 with at least a similitude to truth. A positive dogmatic 
 statement ought to have some positive facts to rest 
 upon : but there are no positive facts to give colour to 
 his statement, while there is a vast accumulation of 
 negative evidence most plainly opposed to it. We may 
 therefore dismiss it as an empty dream. It is utterly 
 untrue as an exhibition of the powers of nature, if we 
 are to appeal to living nature as our guide, and it is 
 not suggested by the facts of Geology. 
 
 Again, were it true (which it is not) that the high- 
 est Reptile forms, and the highest types of marine 
 Mammals that ever existed since organic life began 
 upon the face of the earth, were all crowded into 
 
 * In his last copious Catalogue of Cretaceous Fossils Geinitz mentions 
 not any Mammal's bone. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CX1X 
 
 the upper Chalk and formed a prelude to the part 
 afterwards taken up by the Mammals of the Tertiary 
 period, how much nearer should we be to any proof of 
 the theory of development ? By what process, founded 
 in anything we learn from the book of Nature, were 
 Seals to breed into Lions? How were the Ceteosaurs 
 to strip off their haunch-bones and hinder legs so as to 
 pass into Whales ? And, supposing that we have thus 
 fabricated Whales, how are we again to invest them with 
 pelvic bones and hind legs; and teach them to floun- 
 der out of the sea upon the dry land, so as to become 
 gigantic Pachyderms ? We have Seals, Lions, Reptiles, 
 Whales, and Pachyderms, performing all the functions of 
 life before us ; and we know that Nature has put a wide 
 barrier between these different Orders, so that one can- 
 not now pass into another. Supposing that like organic 
 types existed in an older world, we must accept the 
 same negative conclusion, or desert the only sure foun- 
 dation on which material science ever has been or ever 
 can be built. 
 
 While our Author steers clear of facts he is so far 
 consistent with himself that he seldom makes a wreck 
 of his arguments ; but the moment he reasons on details 
 he inevitably blunders — partly because he is not well 
 acquainted with the facts about which he ventures to 
 reason ; and, still more, because neither in her broad out- 
 lines nor in her detailed workmanship will Nature conform 
 herself to his hypothesis. By way of illustration, I will 
 take one example from his Explanations (p. 96, 97) : 
 u I meet (the Reviewer) again," he tells us, " on special 
 
CXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 grounds. Many of the animals of the Tertiary period 
 are of large bulk. We have not only huge examples 
 of the pachyderm Order"... 4 ' but we have equally vast 
 creatures belonging to the rodent, the edentate, and 
 other Orders. These huge mammals are the signal 
 forms of this period"..." Now, if we take the living 
 pachyderm Order, we shall find that the largest species 
 are of the lowest organization. For example, the 
 elephant, with its short metatarsus, is a low form com- 
 pared with the horse, in which the heel is raised so 
 much above the ground. This is a progress of cha- 
 racter which could be shewn in many other families. 
 It is a progress which may be generally described as 
 passing from the phocal form of the hind extremities 
 through the plantigrade to the digitigrade. Now this 
 progress is coincident with the distribution of the various 
 lines of animals in physical geography; for while the 
 first are marine, the second are generally found in con- 
 nexion with shores, rivers, and low grounds ; and the 
 last (always the smallest) with the more varied surface 
 of the interior. When we find, then, animals of the 
 second kind most conspicuous in this (tertiary) period, 
 we have actual phenomena remarkably in accordance 
 with the scheme of development. We look in, as it 
 were, upon the world, or at least its chief zoological 
 province, at the time when the lines had attained to 
 the terrestrial mammal forms fitted for fluviatile and 
 jungle life ; and ere from these had yet sprung the whole 
 of the smaller but more highly organized denizens of 
 nature's common." 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXX1 
 
 This is a most characteristic passage, and my com- 
 ment on it shall not be long. 
 
 (1) Is there any proof that the largest Pachyderms 
 are of the lowest organization ? I believe there is not 
 the shadow of any proof for this assertion : and it can 
 only raise a smile when we find our Author, in some 
 of the early editions of The Vestiges, contending for 
 the humble and undeveloped type of certain Animals, 
 only because they were diminutive*. 
 
 (2) Have we any show of reason for putting the 
 horse above the elephant, because the horse's heel-bone 
 is farther raised above the ground? By such a test 
 the Ruminant Order must come above the Carnivorous : 
 and Man himself, whether we place him on his hind 
 legs or make him crawl on all-fours, must come below 
 both Ruminants and Pachyderms. 
 
 (3) Have we any proof that the gigantic Mammals 
 of the " ancient jungles" were the progenitors of " the 
 smaller denizen's of nature's common ?" None what- 
 soever. I will appeal to one example in illustration 
 of this point. In South America we find the remains 
 of gigantic Sloths (such as the Megatherium, the My- 
 lodon, &c.) entombed in the superficial drift and other 
 deposits through which the rivers now cut their way 
 into the sea : and, on the sides of the same rivers, 
 we find, among the waving branches of the forests, the 
 
 * Thus in his early editions he contended that the first Fishes were of 
 very small size, and he argued as if this (supposed) fact were an indication 
 of an inferiority of type. In like manner (when speaking of Molluscs) 
 he still tells us, what is not agreeable to fact, that our oldest Cephalopoda 
 are of small size and inferior organization. 
 
 S. d. % 
 
CXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 diminutive modern Sloths of at least two Genera. Are, 
 then, these living Sloths of a superior organic type to 
 that of the ancient giants which lived before them? 
 And can we, without a mockery of sober sense, derive 
 in the way of natural generation, the dwarf Sloths from 
 the Megatherium or any other forms of the gigantic 
 Edentata that lived in a former period I We can meet 
 such questions only with an unqualified denial. 
 
 (4) It is quite certain that the greater part of 
 the terrestrial Mammals found in our Tertiary de- 
 posits (whether marine or lacustrine), must have been 
 drifted from the neighbouring shores into the beds 
 where we meet with their remains. But what does this 
 obvious fact prove respecting the mammals of the same 
 date that were living at a higher level, or at a greater 
 distance from these ancient shores ? Mammals of other 
 Orders may have lived, and probably did live, con- 
 temporaneously with those of which the remains are 
 entombed in our Eocene deposits. Neither is it true 
 that the Mammals of the Eocene period are by any 
 means confined to Species fitted only for fluviatile or 
 jungle life. I appeal to the lists of Cuvier's Ossemens 
 Fossiles ; and I may appeal to a specimen of the Order 
 Carnivora, in the Cambridge Museum, which I obtained 
 during a visit to the plaster-pits of Paris. There is, I 
 think, good probable evidence to shew that terrestrial 
 Carnivora of a high organic type existed before any of 
 the gigantic Pachyderms (such as Elephant, Mastodon, 
 or Dinotherium), which our Author seems to consider 
 of the lowest organization of their Order. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXX111 
 
 (5) We have no proof whatsoever, from the facts of 
 Geology, that marine Mammals of the Tertiary period 
 preceded the terrestrial. Marine Mammals may have 
 abounded during the period of some Eocene deposits; and 
 we know on more direct evidence that they did abound 
 in some of the upper Tertiary groups. But the bones 
 of terrestrial Mammals abound also in some Eocene 
 deposits : — a fact which is the more impressive when we 
 consider, that these animals were not the natural deni- 
 zens of the beds where we find them; and that every 
 bone and every skeleton must have been drifted from 
 a distance. Among marine deposits we may naturally 
 expect to find the traces of marine Mammals if such 
 existed at the time ; but we have far less reason to look 
 for the traces of contemporaneous terrestrial Mammals. 
 Hence, on sifting the whole evidence, we are at least 
 justified in concluding, that during the Eocene period 
 terrestrial Mammals were as abundant as the marine. 
 
 (6) However broken and imperfect may be our direct 
 evidence, we are certain that of our terrestrial Mam- 
 mals some of the graminivorous Families must have been 
 called into being before any of the carnivorous. This 
 fact carries with it its own evidence, and is independent 
 of all theory. The carnivorous tribes must have had 
 flesh to feed upon. But if it be inquired what Order of 
 graminivorous Mammals first flourished, either on land 
 or in the sea, during the Tertiary epoch, we can give 
 nothing better than a conjectural reply. Pachyderms 
 were certainly -very old, and may have been the very 
 oldest of the terrestrial Mammals of this epoch : and, 
 
 • 2 
 
CXX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 if we are to trust our evidence, one of the oldest groups 
 of this Order — that found among the Eocene deposits 
 of the Paris basin — did not contain one animal of 
 gigantic stature ; but was made up of several Genera 
 and of many Species, of beautiful organic types ; the 
 smallest of which was not larger than a Guinea-pig, 
 while the largest only reached the stature of a small 
 Rhinoceros. There is no ambiguity in the Species, nor 
 is there any sign of imperfection or immaturity in these 
 very ancient Pachyderms ; and if we are disposed to 
 apply our Author's heel-bone test, we must place some 
 of them on the very highest pinnacle of their Order. 
 
 (7) Lastly, (before I quit my comment on the 
 previous extract), I may state that the huge Mammals 
 to which our Author alludes seem to have been called 
 into being, not during the oldest, but rather during the 
 middle Tertiary period. 
 
 I will conclude this notice of the Tertiary Mammals 
 with some extracts from a Letter written by Dr. Fal- 
 coner to myself not many days before he left England. 
 It was sent in reply to some questions I had proposed 
 to him respecting that magnificent collection of fossil- 
 bones before alluded to (made by Major Cautley and 
 himself from the Sivalik hills, that skirt the great 
 Himalaya chain of Upper India), which is now placed by 
 them in the British Museum. I need not tell the reader, 
 that the recent work of Dr. Falconer (wherein he de- 
 scribes the fossil Proboscidea) is the fruit of great labour 
 and consummate skill, and that its publication forms 
 an epoch in the progress of Palaeontology. But what 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXXV 
 
 bearing have the great discoveries, made by himself 
 and his fellow-labourer, upon the discussions of this 
 Preface? I will answer this question in his own words. 
 
 " The best reward for the labour of reconstructing 
 so many forms, is the light which is reflected on the 
 very points to which you refer. The group of the Pro- 
 boscidea is now so complete in serial links of Species, 
 and the line through which they range so extensive 
 (viz. from the Miocene of Eppelsheim to the Modern), 
 that they furnish the best elements I know of, among 
 the Mammalia, for testing the doctrine of ' progressive 
 development.'* 
 
 "1. There is a clear and distinct organic gradation, 
 or serial line of affinities, among the Species — such as 
 we meet with in every well made out and extensive 
 group in nature : but the appearance of the Species 
 in time, and their distribution in space over the globe, 
 do not correspond with their organic affinities as nearly 
 allied forms*. Thus the Mastodon Ohioticus of North 
 America is the extreme link of the chain at one end 
 (and nearest in structure to the Dinotherium), while the 
 Mammoth of Siberia (or Elephas primigenius) forms 
 the extreme link at the other end. About twenty 
 species are interpolated between them ; yet these two 
 forms were contemporaneous in the same post-Pliocene 
 Fauna of North America. The Dinotherium of Eppels- 
 heim became extinct perhaps millions of years before 
 the appearance of one of its nearest affinities — the 
 
 * See the plates of outline heads at the end of No. 5. of Falconer's 
 Fauna Antigua Sivalensis. 
 
CX XVI PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 Mastodon Ohioticus : but the Mastodon Longirostris 
 of Eppelsheim, which belongs to a more distant sub- 
 generic group, was a contemporary of the Dinotherium. 
 I could quote many other similar instances as to the 
 discord between the appearance of the Species in time, 
 and their structural succession as allied forms. 
 
 " 2. The Species, on the other hand, shew no gra- 
 dation of organic rank correspondent with their suc- 
 cessive appearance in time. The oldest are not the 
 lowest in type — nor are those of the newest strata 
 of a more noble degree. Species from all the five sub- 
 generic groups are irregularly intercalated in the new 
 strata as well as in the old. 
 
 "3. With respect to their geographical distribution; 
 the Species most nearly allied in affinity are often the 
 most wide apart in geographical position. The Elephas 
 nomadicus of India is excessively near, in the most 
 essential point of dental affinity, to the Elephas meridi- 
 onalis — the pliocene-fossil Elephant of England — yet 
 their geographical habitats are seven thousand miles 
 apart. 
 
 "4. Further : the Species which are excessively near 
 in dental affinity frequently divaricate, in the most 
 surprising manner, in other leading points of their 
 external form : thus the same Elephas nomadicus of 
 India had an excessively short head with a singular 
 protuberance like the coil of a turban ; while its allies 
 are characterized by a very long brow and flattened 
 forehead. 
 
 " 5. Every point in the case goes to prove, that 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXXV11 
 
 the Species were created of distinct organic types — that 
 they have been continued distinct by propagation within 
 a range of differences and varieties which is very slight. 
 There is not the shadow of any proof or induction, that 
 the forms we call Species are the offsets, by gradual 
 transmutation, from a smaller number of original types. 
 The combined demonstrations derived from the pheno- 
 mena of their appearance in time and space, and their 
 affinities, clearly point to the reverse. They were 
 created distinct, and they have descended distinct. 
 
 "6. Geoffroy St Hilaire's assertion was — that the 
 Sivatherium was the progenitor of the Giraffe. But 
 so far from being allied, they are singularly contrasted, 
 and the Giraffe was a contemporary of the Sivathe- 
 rium, in the same Fauna. The Sivatherium does not 
 break down the distinction between Ruminant and 
 Pachyderm. It is a true and typical Ruminant with 
 four horns" 
 
 With this quotation from Dr Falconer's letter I 
 bring to an end all details on the successive traces of 
 organic life that appear in the authentic records of 
 creation ; but I may remark, while passing onwards, 
 that the same insuperable difficulty we meet with in 
 attempting to connect (in the way of natural genealogy) 
 the Tertiary fauna with the Cretaceous, is repeated 
 again when we attempt to derive the Cretaceous fauna 
 from the Oolitic. This difficulty has been already 
 pointed out by an allusion to the Fishes of the Chalk : 
 but all, or nearly all, the Species (of whatever Class) 
 are changed in like manner as we take a single step 
 
CXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 from the upper Oolitic beds to the lowest Cretaceous 
 deposits. — The organic interval is enormous, and can 
 best be comprehended in a well-arranged museum. A 
 thousand links are wanting to give the appearance of 
 support to any supposed organic genealogy, nor can so 
 much as one single link be supplied without virtually 
 begging the whole question under debate. 
 
 Resting, then, on no hypothesis, but guided by 
 the evidence of the animal types that mark many 
 successive epochs in the natural history of the earth, 
 and carry us back through countless ages before the 
 existence of man or any of his fellow-beings, and in- 
 terpreting these types by the rules of analogy and sound 
 induction, I adopt in all its fulness the conclusion of 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer, — " that Geology — not seen 
 through the mist of any theory, but taken as a plain 
 succession of monuments and facts — offers one firm 
 cumulative argument against the hypothesis of de- 
 velopment." — This is not the enunciation of a positive 
 dogmatic theory. It is but an humble negative conclu- 
 sion, wherein we cast away from us the words of boast- 
 ing, and do our best to place our language on the same 
 level with our knowledge. 
 
 lit is true that our knowledge of the organic se- 
 quence in the old world is imperfect : and this may be 
 a very good reason for not risking the cause of truth 
 by deserting the plain road of laborious observation, 
 and pandering to the senses with the unsubstantial 
 visions of a premature cosmogonyTT Many of the con- 
 clusions of Geology are however built on too wide a 
 
PREFACE TO THE FTFTH EDITION. CXX1X 
 
 basis, and too severe an induction from well-observed 
 facts, to be ever shaken. From time to time, during 
 the progress of discovery, some of our verbal proposi- 
 tions may require a partial change — some of our boun- 
 dary lines may require a new adjustment — and some of 
 our supposed evidence (so far as it is negative) may be 
 invalidated or utterly destroyed : but the great mass 
 of positive facts must still remain ; and the current of 
 new evidence, brought to light during the labours of the 
 last three or four years, has, on the whole, set in one 
 direction, and added new force to the great cumulative 
 argument against the theory of development*. 
 
 When the Author of The Vestiges first published his 
 theory, we were told that the scheme of gradual deve- 
 lopment (from the first germs of organic life in our 
 oldest strata, to the full perfection of animated nature 
 as we see it now before us), required but " simple and 
 modest" steps — a gradual sliding from one species to 
 another. Authors were quoted, and sometimes mis- 
 quoted, so as to pervert their meaning- — the uncer- 
 tainty of many supposed Species, and the endless 
 subdivisions introduced by the (sometimes perhaps 
 perverted) ingenuity of naturalists, were dwelt upon — 
 and the modifications of individual types, from the lapse 
 
 * In confirmation of this remark, I make one of my last appeals to the 
 organic phenomena of the old world, by referring to the discovery of fossil 
 Fishes of the very highest Order in the lower divisions of the Palaeozoic 
 rocks — to the very near agreement of the Palaeozoic series in England and 
 North America, as proved by the great State-Surveys — to the Memoirs of 
 Professor E. Forbes regarding the distribution of certain organic forms 
 among our very oldest fossil-bearing strata — and lastly, to the great dis- 
 coveries of Falconer and Cautley. 
 
CXXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of time, the changes of climate, and other external 
 conditions, were put before us with plausible skill. 
 But all this was done to little purpose. — As the 
 constancy of material laws is the foundation of all 
 natural science, so is the constancy of animal forms 
 (within the narrow limits of specific variations) not 
 only the obvious fact, but the foundation of all physio- 
 logy and natural history. 
 
 Mr Babbage's calculating machine was then ap- 
 pealed to (with what seems to me an almost incredible 
 misconception of the nature and meaning of mechanical 
 evidence), as if it offered us some presumption that 
 Species may change, and that the transmutation theory 
 may be true. 
 
 It was admitted by the Author, that the living world 
 throws little light upon his theory, and raises in most 
 minds a strong prejudice against its truth. To the facts 
 of Geology he therefore appealed, and on them appar- 
 ently he rested his greatest strength. The organic 
 phenomena of a former world were all marshalled in due 
 theoretical order ; and we were told, without hesitation 
 or reserve, and in edition after edition, that such was 
 the order made out from Nature's own records. And 
 when he was afterwards informed that he had been 
 leaning on a broken reed — that the order he had put 
 forth was not the order of Nature's records — and that, 
 while vindicating his grand position, he had crowded 
 into his little book more positive and palpable mistakes 
 than were ever before seen in any pretended book 
 of science within the range of the English language, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXXX1 
 
 did he then withdraw his theory ? This was too much 
 to look for from one who had matured his theory before 
 he was even moderately acquainted with the facts 
 on which only it could securely rest. It was the 
 reflexion of his own mind ; and he had an evidence, con- 
 vincing to himself, that was not derived from his know- 
 ledge of the outer world. 
 
 But he has another argument in continual reserve ; 
 and he now appeals to hypothetical facts which may 
 hereafter be discovered, rather than to the positive facts 
 already made out by geologists who have patiently 
 deciphered and interpreted the true enduring records of 
 creation. While doing this, he turns aside from the old 
 inductive road to higher truth, and scorns the labours of 
 those who are content to toil along that old dull road ; 
 and from their judgment he ventures, in no ambiguous 
 terms, an appeal to the suffrage of the multitude. 
 
 I have no wish to misrepresent either our Author's 
 scheme of Nature or his reasoning ; and in vindication 
 of the previous comment I will, notwithstanding the 
 weary length of this Preface, add one or two extracts 
 from his published works. 
 
 " Of the transitions or transmutations implied in the 
 development theory, the greatest or most violent are 
 those few which took place in the passage from the 
 invertebrate animals to fishes, from fishes to reptiles, 
 and from these to the higher classes. This we might 
 expect ; as at such points the phenomena had nothing 
 to do with external circumstances, but wholly depended 
 on the internal development-force — each stage being 
 
CXXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 one of that limited number of periods into which the 
 long-enduring gestation of Nature was divided. Here 
 accordingly we shall always find the affinities less dis- 
 tinct than elsewhere; and yet in all of them some 
 connexions are visible, leaving the general fact of the 
 transition indubitable *." 
 
 My notes on this strange passage must be short. 
 (1) He imposes on his reader, as well as on himself, 
 by turning a mere rhetorical figure into an argument. 
 The long-enduring gestation of Nature ; the universal 
 womb of Nature ; and other like expressions that are 
 scattered through his pages, may help us in turning a 
 sentence : they mean nothing, however, at any given 
 period of time, but all the wombs of all the living things 
 in the vast kingdoms of animated Nature. We cannot 
 so much as conceive any combined power of gestation 
 differing from that which is shewn in the gestation of 
 the individuals composing Nature. And where have 
 we, in animated Nature, any indication of fits and starts, 
 and new phenomena in the powers of internal deve- 
 lopment? The assertion is but the covert assumption 
 of a theory; and to test the theory we appeal to 
 Nature, and she does not give us so much as one fact 
 to lend it support. And here, at least, the ambiguity 
 of Species, or, to speak more correctly, the useless mul- 
 tiplication of certain supposed Species through ignorance 
 or vanity, will not serve our Author's purpose ; for the 
 question involves the transmutation of the Orders and 
 Classes of the animal world. (2) When he states that 
 
 * Vestiges, 6th Edit. p. 283. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXXX111 
 
 the phenomena in question had nothing to do with ex- 
 ternal conditions, I believe he is mistaken as to the fact ; 
 and I am certain that the phenomena of Geology do 
 not give colour to the assertion. All, or nearly all, the 
 greatest changes in the old organic types are marked, 
 on the very spots where we find them, by great changes 
 of conditions. (3) He once told us that his theory 
 required only " modest steps'' 1 — a kind of gradual sliding 
 scale, whereby one Species passed into another. He 
 " had taken existing natural means, and shewn them to 
 have been capable of producing all the existing organ- 
 isms." He now deserts his old position, and tells us of 
 a new internal development, and of " leaps in the deve- 
 lopment-process," which are out of harmony with all we 
 know of Nature, and jar against any rational conception 
 we can form of a true material law. One who has any 
 just notion of the grand simplicity of Nature's onward 
 movements will turn away with loathing from this new 
 saltatorial philosophy. The modest steps of Nature, 
 to serve a purpose, must be urged into most immodest 
 bounds — something like the fabled strides of old Ocean's 
 God, which thrice repeated would carry us beyond the 
 limits of the world. (4) One thing the extract, above 
 quoted, seems to prove — that a man who can surrender 
 his faith to an hypothesis before he is well acquainted 
 with the facts, on which only it can be built, has a mind 
 ill qualified to grapple with any exact question of 
 science ; and that, while under the delusion of his 
 hypothesis, he may see indubitable proofs of connexion 
 even where the links of his ideal chain have been 
 
CXXX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 snapped asunder, and when all the facts of the living 
 world of nature are in conflict with his system of belief. 
 I will conclude this protracted discussion on the 
 development of organic life during the Tertiary period 
 with one or two illustrations of our Author's very singular 
 modes of reasoning. My first is taken from a passage 
 of the Explanations, too long to be extracted entire 
 (pp. 153 — 158), which ought, one might think, to be 
 severe and logical, as it follows a long quotation from 
 the stern Logic of Mr Stuart Mill. We may admit 
 that certain Species (very small, however, in number) 
 have lived without change from the early Tertiary 
 period to our own days. Our technical language is 
 constructed on this assumption, which is taken as a 
 fact, and not as an hypothesis : and in all such cases 
 we naturally conclude that the living Species are the 
 lineal progeny of the same Species that lived before 
 them. The conclusion is built upon our knowledge of 
 the actual world, and the organic laws by which it is 
 governed. Next let us suppose, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, that some animal, such as the Ursus priscus, 
 though considered by the best anatomists of an extinct 
 Species, is the natural progenitor of the living Bear: 
 and what will this prove except that naturalists have 
 blundered among the specific types of one Genus 5 Shall 
 we, from this or any other hypothetical blunder, dare 
 to conclude that Species, and Genera, and Orders, have 
 no fixed place defined by the laws of organic nature \ 
 This is our Author's pretended logic : and it will not 
 serve his purpose without many transcendental leaps 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXXXV 
 
 that are a mockery of all the steps of sober reasoning. 
 Therefore, he concludes, all the present Mammals are 
 but modifications, by transmutation, of the Mammals 
 of the Eocene period ! On a scheme like this, there is 
 neither sobriety in nature's movements nor constancy 
 in her laws. We are called on to believe that Geese 
 may hatch Rats, and that Cassowaries may hatch Kan- 
 garoos — that Seals may breed into Lions, and Whales 
 into Elephants — and that Monkeys through good- 
 breeding may become Men. This scheme calls on us to 
 believe in a congeries of miracles (for what is a miracle 
 but a violation of the orderly course of nature ?) ; and it 
 puts our language out of all true co-ordination with our 
 knowledge. We use the word law to define the ascer- 
 tained orderly movements in nature, whether animate 
 or inanimate ; and the successive changes we contem- 
 plate are connected in our minds under the ideas of 
 material cause and material effect. But the moment 
 we are led to speculate on the beginning of things — 
 whether it be the beginning of a Solar System or the 
 beginning of some new Order of organic life — we are 
 inevitably led to a conception of the First Cause, and 
 we define the fact now under contemplation by the 
 word creation. 
 
 The word creation has a negative meaning so far 
 as it regards ourselves ; and implies, that we pretend 
 not to climb to heaven, like the fabled Giants, by piling 
 mountain upon mountain — that we pretend not to scan 
 the whole workmanship of God, and ask why his creative 
 power was only exercised at one time or place, and not 
 
CXXXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 at another time and in another place — that we dare 
 not define the act of God in beginning a new order of 
 things, by a word which only defines our knowledge of 
 some law and order already established in time before 
 it became an object of human thought. The order of 
 nature is seen, and may be partially understood by 
 patient study, and the phenomena may be linked to- 
 gether under some rational conceptions of effect and 
 cause, and then we define our knowledge by the word 
 law. Our knowledge, thus defined, does give us some 
 glimpse of God's dealings during a time which is but a 
 moment of eternity, and through a space that is but an 
 atom of infinity : but it gives us no conception of the 
 mysterious operations of his everlasting will, which 
 moved him either to create or to withhold his creating 
 power. 
 
 In another sense the word creation has a meaning 
 that is positive. It implies our belief in a fact ; and 
 it also implies our belief that such fact was the offspring 
 of prescient thought and design — it implies, in one 
 word, the personality of the Godhead. Many, I know 
 well, will deny the positive reality of any such belief; 
 but this remark applies not to our Author ; who some- 
 times forgets his theory, strips himself of the beggarly 
 elements of his material scheme, and writes both with 
 good sense and good feeling on the great mysteries of 
 creation. 
 
 But to return again to the question before us. He 
 tells us* that the few shells of the Secondary period which 
 
 * Explanations, p. 157. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXXXV11 
 
 straggle, without any change of specific type, into the 
 Tertiary system, give us a proof " in rigid reasoning, 
 that all the Tertiary Species were descended from the 
 Secondary ." While we accept the fact, we repudiate 
 the conclusion. Because one or two Species have un- 
 dergone no change during a very long period, and the 
 last of these unchanged Species are considered as the 
 legitimate progeny of the first ; therefore we are to con- 
 clude (in what he pleasantly calls "rigid reasoning") 
 that new Species, new Genera, new Orders, and new 
 Classes, are derived in the way of natural generation 
 from certain humbler Species that lived before them ! 
 Nay, we are told that the cultivators of science must 
 accept this conclusion, if they " only allow themselves to 
 follow the dictates of reason, against the behests of pre- 
 judices unworthy of them and their age !" What is this 
 assertion but the enunciation of an hypothesis that is 
 neither based on any observed law of nature, nor sug- 
 gested by the facts of Geology ? While he presumes to 
 sneer at a set of truth-loving men, in whose researches 
 he has never joined and whose reasoning he does not 
 comprehend, he gives us not the sober conclusions of 
 inductive evidence ; but a scheme of nature, the evidence 
 for which is only found within himself, springs out of the 
 peculiarities of his own mind, and leads him to the hypo- 
 thetical conception of an order different from that of 
 nature. The cause of physical truth can never gain by 
 such an outrage against sober inductive reasoning. 
 
 From the newest Tertiary strata we pass na- 
 turally to a consideration of the great changes the 
 s. d. h 
 
CXXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 earth's surface is daily undergoing from causes both 
 aqueous and igneous, and from active forces whether 
 chemical or mechanical : and it is only by a laborious 
 study of these forces, and the effects produced by them 
 during known periods of time, that we can form any 
 true notion of the dynamical powers residing in the world 
 as it now is. Again, we have the living world before us, 
 and from it we derive all our fundamental knowledge of 
 the organic laws that govern the living world. Starting 
 with this knowledge, we pass onwards, and draw forth 
 more extended truths by irresistible analogy, and by the 
 application of principles well-established in the natural 
 world. This has been the true order of all solid 
 geological induction. While touching on this subject, 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer briefly alludes to certain ani- 
 mals that have disappeared, or are fast disappearing, 
 from the more thickly-peopled parts of Europe; and he 
 takes for his examples the skeletons of Bears, Beavers, 
 Wolves, &c, which are found under the bogs of the 
 Bedford Level. " Had the traditions of Europe (he 
 tells us) been lost, and we had known nothing of its 
 early inhabitants, we might very properly have referred 
 these remains to a newer Pliocene period ; and had we 
 taken up a theory, like that of our Author, we might 
 have speculated on some of these extinct forms, and 
 asked into what living Species they had passed by trans- 
 mutation. As a matter of fact, we know that they 
 perished by natural means — by the loss of shelter as 
 the forests were cleared away, by the drainage of the 
 bogs, and by the hand of man. And why not apply 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXXX1X 
 
 this reasoning to the old world ? We say, on good ana- 
 logy, that in the Fauna of any old period {e.g. the 
 Oolitic) Species were gradually exterminated by the 
 changes of physical conditions, or by the invasion of 
 animals of greater power, and not by any transmutation 
 into other Species. This kind of reasoning starts, at 
 least, from something we know to be true ; but it 
 professes not to account for creation ; nor can any 
 natural means, within the ken of our senses and the 
 limits of our knowledge, give us the least help in 
 accounting for it*." 
 
 Some may think this argument of small value ; but 
 it has served one purpose — it has called forth one of 
 the most striking illustrations of our Author's peculiar 
 form of reasoning. " The removal (he tells us) of old 
 Species is the result, by our Critic's own shewing, of 
 law ; and laws for the extinction of Species are in 
 operation at the present day. Can we well suppose the 
 rise of new Species to be a phenomenon of an essentially 
 different character? for here is the whole question at 
 issue. I say, No : any ideas I have acquired of philo- 
 sophy, as an expression of our ascertainment of the 
 order of nature, or Providence, forbid me to form 
 such a conclusion." (Explanations, p. 95.) If here be 
 the whole question at issue, let it be decided here : 
 and when I appeal to any man of common sense, whose 
 mind is not distorted by an hypothesis, he will tell 
 me, I am well assured, that the extinction of wolves 
 and beavers by the hunter and forester, and the pro- 
 
 » E. R. p. 50. 
 
 k2 
 
cxl 
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 duction of new Species (whether by creation or trans- 
 mutation matters not) are " phenomena of an essentially 
 different character.'" If we choose to define by the word 
 law the extinction of beavers and wolves through the 
 operations of the forester and the hunter, and then 
 by the same word law, define that sequence of the animal 
 kingdom which geology puts before us, we only shew the 
 poverty of our language ; for we use the same word in 
 two incongruous senses. An author who quotes a work 
 of logic ought to know, that in all deductive reasoning, 
 a middle term of comparison must have the same con- 
 gruity with its two extremes, or it will lead to nothing 
 but confusion of thought or palpable sophistry. 
 
 $ 8. Materialism. Mechanical and Moral Laws. Laws 
 of Chance. Tendencies of Modern Science. Fantas- 
 tical mews of Nature. Evils of rash Generalization. 
 Education, fyc. 
 
 In this Section of the Preface I have to deal no 
 longer with the Authors pretended facts, but I must 
 shortly discuss his adopted philosophy ; and my remarks 
 apply to the whole school of modern Materialists, so 
 far as I comprehend their doctrines. I wish the reader 
 to bear in mind, that by the words " spontaneous gene- 
 ration" and " progressive development,'' is implied 
 something more than a theory which deprives Genera 
 and Species, Orders and Classes, of all permanent reality. 
 The high boast of this theory is, that it does away all 
 distinctions between material and moral. It tells us that 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cxli 
 
 the soul of man is but a material mechanism — that all 
 the complicated acts of his volition are but the natural 
 results of a stern physical necessity, sometimes ap- 
 preciable by numerical formulae — and that they differ 
 not essentially from the most vulgar sequence of second 
 causes, or the calculated effects of mechanical impulse. 
 So far as I can comprehend it, this is the inevitable 
 and legitimate consequence of the theory. If in its 
 first assumptions it be utterly untrue to nature, in its 
 application it destroys the very essence of moral re- 
 sponsibility : for it takes away all semblance of human 
 liberty, and thereby breaks down the barriers between 
 right and wrong. It is, therefore, when accepted with- 
 out reserve, mischievous, immoral, and antisocial. But 
 it deserves not the name of theory. It is a rash hypo- 
 thesis, and nothing better. A theory must be based 
 on well-observed facts, or it is worse than nothing. 
 For theory is but the embodying of facts and pheno- 
 mena under the form of general propositions, drawn out 
 in accordance with the laws of our intellectual nature : 
 and as our knowledge advances, whether we be led to 
 extend or limit the meaning of our first propositions, 
 by the test of observation or experiment must they 
 stand or fall. 
 
 A unity of plan reigns through all nature. A simple 
 law of mutual attraction produces all the complicated 
 movements of the heavenly bodies. A few simple laws 
 (not comprehended under our first conceptions of mutual 
 attraction, but co-operating with it) regulate the move- 
 ments of the elastic and non-elastic fluids that surround 
 
Cxlii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 the solid earth ; and thereby minister to its fertility, 
 to all the diversified effects of climate, and to all the 
 physical wants of the countless beings that dwell upon 
 it. A few simple laws regulate the movements of an 
 elastic ether which is coextensive with the visible uni- 
 verse, and thereby produce the phenomena of light, and 
 seem to wrap in one common element the remotest 
 bodies of the known world. But more than this — all 
 these several laws work together without conflict or 
 collision, and end in beauty and harmony and order. 
 This we comprehend under a law of adaptation, or a 
 unity of will in that central Power which ordained 
 all things ; and thus we naturally rise to a conception 
 of the unity of the Godhead. 
 
 The moment we pass, in thought, from dead matter 
 to other portions of matter endowed with life, we see 
 a new nature superadded to the old, and worked out 
 of it, but not comprehended in it. If we apply the 
 word law to the orderly movements of bodies held in 
 our system by gravitation, or grouped together in 
 definite combinations by the laws of chemical affinity, 
 we use the word in a true and definite meaning, which 
 changes not so long as the course of nature shall endure. 
 But the same word law does change its meaning when 
 we speak of the organic development and economy of 
 the animal kingdom. We now contemplate organic 
 structures, and cycles of material movements confined 
 within themselves, and governed by laws adapted only 
 to the conditions of an individual form of life. We see, 
 in short, a complicated mechanism adapted only to the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cxltti 
 
 wants and functions of a sentient being. But this is not 
 all : the whole mechanism is put in its ordained move- 
 ments by sensations and volitions — by appetencies and 
 wants — which have no similitude, either in their be- 
 ginning or their end, to the attractions of dead matter 
 on dead matter, or to the elective affinities of material 
 elements. Orderly movements and combinations in the 
 animal world imply some corresponding laws ; but dif- 
 ferent laws from those out of which spring the move- 
 ments and combinations of dead and inorganic matter. 
 Again, when we rise to the contemplation of man, 
 and all his operations, whether animal or intellectual, 
 we find them amplified by new inherent capacities, 
 governed by new laws, and urged onwards by super- 
 added motives. He alone rises to a conception of the 
 laws of nature, and of some Intelligent Power that 
 ordains and upholds the laws to which every faculty 
 of his mind and body are in bondage. He finds him- 
 self under a moral government ; he forms a conception 
 of right and wrong ; and this conception pervades his 
 language, and modifies, or ought to modify, every act 
 of his social existence. His imagination often rules 
 his course of life ; and his hopes of future good make 
 him bear and overlook the pressure of his animal wants. 
 In his animal framework, considered merely as a me- 
 chanism ordained for a special organic purpose, he is 
 not one jot more noble than the worm whereon he 
 tramples ; but in his moral and intellectual attributes 
 he is widely separated from all other parts of the living 
 world, and far above them. 
 
CXHV PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 In our contemplation of nature we behold, there- 
 fore, a world not governed by one, but by many laws ; 
 and each law so adapted to all the rest as to end 
 in harmony and order. All this implies a unity of will 
 in the great central and sustaining Power of the uni- 
 verse : and we thus ascend to a conception of one 
 great Intelligent Cause ruling over all nature, dead, 
 sensitive, moral, and intellectual. This belief, to every 
 son of man, is the " mother of his peace and joy : " 
 and it is no less the anchor and stay of every civilized 
 community. Man is a religious being. Without re- 
 ligion he is in a state of savage darkness or moral 
 mutilation : and whether the form of his religion be 
 derived from a pure or a corrupted tradition, or 
 spring from within himself, is immaterial to my pre- 
 sent purpose ; for I am not now asking what is the 
 form of true religion : and however distorted it may 
 be through ignorance and bad training, or the caprices 
 of his fancy, or the pestilent vapours of moral taint, 
 still the sentiment is there : — and though his ill-guided 
 strivings to grasp the councils of his Maker be as 
 powerless as the efforts of an infant in the nurse's arms, 
 while stretching out its hands to catch the moon, still 
 the sentiment remains an inherent part of himself : nor 
 will all the powers of sophistry and darkness ever root 
 it out, so long as there is a principle of Causality 
 dwelling within his soul, leading him to the conception 
 of general truth, binding the elements of his know- 
 ledge together, and thereby giving them strength and 
 
 * Explanations, p. 34. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cxlv 
 
 meaning — so long as he has any feeling of a law of 
 conscience — so long as he has any perception of a law 
 of moral government — so long as he has a conception 
 of futurity, and a longing for future good. 
 
 Universal law and universal order we allow in the 
 widest sense that can be given to the words of man : 
 but because our language is poor, and we are con- 
 strained by this poverty, often to use the same word for 
 things essentially different, we do not on that account 
 impudently dare to limit God's power to one form 
 of manifestation. So far as we have any glimmering 
 conception of nature's laws, material or moral, we be- 
 lieve that they work together to a common end — we 
 believe that their seat is in the bosom of the one 
 unchangeable God, and " that their voice is still heard 
 in the harmonies of the world." The reader will, I 
 trust, pardon this seeming digression ; for it has a 
 direct bearing on certain passages that are scattered 
 through The Vestiges, and have an early and more 
 formal place in the Author's Explanations. 
 
 " We find," he tells us, " mechanical laws at one 
 end of the system of nature : if we turn to the mind 
 and morals of man we find that we have equally fixed 
 laws at the other : the human being, a mystery con- 
 sidered as an individual, becomes a simple and natural 
 phenomenon when considered in the mass*," &c. And 
 how is all this proved ? By the statistical tables of M. 
 Quetelet of Brussels. He then adds, (p. 26) "that 
 morals — that part of the system of things which seemed 
 
 * Explanations, p. 24. 
 
Cxlvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 least under natural regulation or law — is as thoroughly 
 ascertained to be wholly so as the arrangement of the 
 heavenly bodies." .... " I am at the very first struck,' 1 
 (he says, p. 27) "by the great a priori unlikelihood that 
 there can be two modes of Divine working in the 
 history of nature ; namely, a system of fixed order and 
 law in the formation of globes, and a system in any 
 degree different in the peopling of these globes with 
 plants and animals." The obvious inference then is — 
 that as at one end of nature we have fixed laws that 
 are material and mechanical, at the other end of nature 
 (the intellectual) we can only have fixed laws that are 
 material and mechanical. 
 
 If by nature we understood that mere atom of the 
 universal world of which we know the material laws by 
 observation and induction, it is true that all parts of it 
 are bound together in a system of fixed law and order. 
 But the grand unity of plan proves not the unity of 
 means ; for we know that many different laws may be so 
 fitted together as to combine to a common end. If we 
 are to trust our senses and our reason, there are not only 
 two modes, but there are many modes of Divine working 
 in the history of nature. But there is an infinity be- 
 yond what we see. After all that we have done, we have 
 made but a few feeble steps towards the Fountain of all 
 Light and Power. We know but an atom of the uni- 
 verse ; and who shall dare to say that in the infinity 
 beyond our ken nature has nothing more in store for 
 higher orders of intelligence? Words give not the 
 sense of sound to the deaf, or of light to the blind : 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 cxlvii 
 
 and who shall dare to say that the God of nature 
 may not have seen good to work out the purposes of 
 his will, in a thousand ways which we neither com- 
 prehend under the conditions of our being, nor could be 
 made to know and understand through any powers of 
 written language, or through any form of material sym- 
 bols acting upon our senses? These thoughts ought, 
 I think, to impress our mind with the extreme folly and 
 arrogance of daring to adopt any form of a priori rea- 
 soning among the works of the God of nature; or of pre- 
 tending to any knowledge of his attributes except what 
 he has deigned to give us, or we have been permitted 
 to discover by the honest interpretation of his works. 
 Bold, dogmatic, a priori reasoning is a fault that taints 
 the pages of the whole materialist school. While they 
 profess to worship nature, they turn away from her 
 and listen not to her oracles : and then they fall down 
 before a stunted semblance of divinity which is modelled 
 after their own fancy, and wrought into form by their 
 own hands. 
 
 When it is said that the mind and morals of man 
 are under the regulation of fixed laws, we admit the 
 truth of the statement ; for we believe that every law, 
 material and moral, is ordained and upheld by a 
 prescient, all-powerful, and unchangeable God. But 
 when we take another step, and pretend to break down 
 the distinction between material and moral law ; and 
 then go on to affirm "the simple fact, that morals — 
 that part of the system of things which seemed least 
 under natural regulation or law — is as thoroughly ascer- 
 tained to be wholly so as the arrangements of the heavenly 
 
CXlviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 bodies T the proposition, as applied to man's know- 
 ledge, is most palpably false. The word chance has 
 no meaning when applied to the supreme, prescient 
 Intelligence; but it has a meaning when applied to 
 many departments of human knowledge. It has laws 
 of its own worked out by rigid demonstration, and its 
 results resolve themselves into numerical formulae. But 
 these formulae, though mathematically true, tell us only 
 of probabilities, and define not the certainty of any 
 material events. Again, we can determine the nu- 
 merical value of a man's life by the help of statistical 
 tables; and thousands are acting, with wisdom and 
 prudence, on this numerical knowledge : but it makes 
 not the life of an individual one jot more certain : it 
 gives a simple probability, and nothing else. And this 
 knowledge is of a different order from that undeviating 
 certainty with which we can define the results of a 
 chemical experiment from our knowledge of the laws 
 of elective affinity, or the movements and future posi- 
 tions of the heavenly bodies from the known mecha- 
 nical laws of gravitation. Still wider are the limits 
 of uncertainty when we come to speculate on the social 
 acts of man — disturbed, as they are, by the wayward 
 caprices of his will, and the perturbations of evil passion. 
 That man, as a moral and social being, is under law, 
 we believe true ; but when it is affirmed that this 
 law, as comprehended by ourselves, is of the same 
 order with the mechanical laws that govern the unde- 
 viating movements of the heavenly spheres, we believe 
 the affirmation to be utterly untrue. 
 
 In the sight of God every act of man, from childhood 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cxlix 
 
 to old age, is, we believe, as certain as the ordained 
 movements of the heavenly bodies ; and we all allow 
 that the Maker of the universe can work out the ends 
 of his prescient will by the actions of responsible and 
 moral beings. Out of this conception of the God 
 of nature spring some dark unsolved questions on fate 
 and free will, by which the reason of man may well 
 be staggered : but he finds his^ solace and support in 
 a knowledge that is enough for his practical guidance 
 through life — in the hopes of higher knowledge and 
 future good — and in a belief (it may be, after he has 
 strained his soul to thoughts of almost insufferable 
 tension) that he is still at an immeasurable distance 
 from any real conception of the Godhead. He dares 
 not, therefore, advance beyond the narrow boundaries 
 of his own knowledge, and tell of the first movements 
 of the prescient will of God, in ordaining the laws 
 of creation. He disclaims all a priori reasoning on 
 such a question ; and where he sees but in part he 
 is humbly willing to resolve all seeming contradictions, 
 if such there be, and all moral difficulties, into his own 
 immeasurable distance from the everlasting Fountain of 
 Light and Truth. 
 
 We know that men have a common nature, are 
 governed by common material and moral laws, and are 
 exposed to common temptations. There is therefore 
 a common similitude in their actions and their fortunes 
 in life. We want not the statistics of crime to prove 
 this : but the statistics of crime have a great value ; for 
 they put before us, in a tangible form, the desolating 
 
Cl PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 effects of bad government, of ignorance, of irreligion, and 
 of superstition. Hence they may be of the greatest 
 value as a guide to the best objects of human polity. 
 But their tabulated results confound not our conceptions 
 of moral and material laws. The effects of a moral law 
 admit of palliation or change, aggravation or diminu- 
 tion — Not so can we change a material or mechanical 
 law. Its operation ends not in averages, but in unde- 
 viating certainties. Uncertainty and choice enter no 
 longer in as elements of our thoughts, and a stern un- 
 bending necessity rules over our calculated results. 
 
 I affirm then that the moral conduct of man (what- 
 soever it may be in the eye of God) is not, like the 
 movements of the heavenly bodies, bound up in any 
 conception of a constant, undeviating law; and that the 
 Author of Nature, so far as we can rise to a conception 
 of his attributes, either from his works or from his 
 word, has not ordained one only, but many different 
 laws for the government of the world *. 
 
 In the midst of an astonishing congeries of blunders 
 on questions of fact, and of reasonings, perhaps, peculiar 
 to himself, there is one topic of consolation for the 
 Author of The Vestiges. " The question lies not (he 
 tells us) between two philosophical theories ; but between 
 one philosophical theory and a view of nature which 
 does not profess to look to Nature for a basis. As 
 a system, moreover, which finds none of the previous 
 labours of science shaped or directed in favour of its 
 illustration, but all in the contrary way, it obviously 
 
 * See Supplement to the Appendix No. VII. 
 

 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. cli 
 
 calls for every reasonable allowance being made for its 
 defects. It may be a true system, though one-half the 
 illustrations presented by its first explication should 
 be wrong *." It is not historically true, that he is the 
 first expositor of the theory : he is but a humble fol- 
 lower of a very ancient school. There may be new 
 illustrations, and there are bold assertions in his book 
 which, I ca.n well believe, wej*e never made before 
 by any well-informed physiologist ; but it contains not 
 one new principle that has any true bearing on the 
 questions in debate. In proof of this assertion, I appeal 
 to an excellent little Work by the Master of Trinity 
 College (composed of extracts from a Work published 
 before the first appearance of The Vestiges), wherein all 
 the leading doctrines of transmutation and development 
 are met on philosophical grounds and ably refuted^. 
 It is, however, true that the Author of The Vestiges is 
 the first popular expositor of this theory in the English 
 tongue. This u bad eminence' 1 he has reached ; and I 
 envy him not the possession of it. But I deny that his 
 scheme is philosophical ; for it is not built upon so much 
 as a pretended basis of fair induction ; nor has he the 
 remotest right to tell us of looking to nature for a basis, 
 while he closes his mental vision against the moral and 
 intellectual elements of our nature, which are as much 
 a part of ourselves as our limbs and organs of sense. 
 His scheme is shallow, one-sided, and inadequate — 
 a dull materialism that takes no proper philosophical 
 
 * Explanations, p. 181. 
 
 f Indications of a Creator. London, 1845. 
 
clii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 notice of the grandest phenomena of nature — that 
 confounds physical and moral evidence, and virtually 
 shuts out from us those principles, which in all ages of 
 our history, and in all fluctuations of opinion, have 
 been the good man's stay and guide. If it be false in 
 its pretended proofs, it is also mischievous in its appli- 
 cation ; and there is neither truth, nor modesty, nor 
 good taste, in the shallow statement — in one form 
 or other, many times repeated — that there is no true 
 philosophy out of the scheme adopted in The Vestiges. 
 
 With all the flaws and imperfections in his pretended 
 reasonings, he is, I doubt not, sincere in his narrow 
 views, and I wish not to misrepresent him. I will 
 therefore endeavour to justify the language of the pre- 
 vious paragraph, by one or two extracts from his Ex- 
 planations, "One after another (he tells us) the pheno- 
 mena of Nature, like so many revolted principalities, have 
 fallen under the domination of order and law ; but here 
 (i. e. in the organic kingdom) is one little province still 
 faithful to the Boeotian government ; and as it is nearly 
 the last, no wonder it is so vigorously defended." (p. 1 42.) 
 
 "The whole question (he adds) stands thus. For 
 
 the theory of universal order — that is, order as presiding 
 in both the origin and administration of the world — we 
 have the testimony of a vast number of facts in Nature, 
 and this one in addition — that whatever is reft from 
 the domain of ignorance, and made undoubted matter 
 of science, forms a sure support to the same doctrine. 
 The opposite view, once predominant, has been shrinking 
 for ages into a lesser space, and now maintains a footing 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. cliH 
 
 only in a few departments of Nature which happen to 
 be less liable than others to a clear investigation. The 
 chief of these, if not almost the only one, is the origin 
 of the organic kingdom. So long as this remains 
 obscure, the supernatural will have a certain hold upon 
 enlightened persons. Should it ever be cleared up in a 
 way that leaves no doubt of the natural origin of plants 
 and animals, there must be a complete revolution in the 
 view which is generally taken of our relation to the 
 Father of our being." (p. 149.) 
 
 Where is the man (we reply) among the cultivators 
 of science who denies that the whole of nature (material 
 and moral) is under the dominion of law and order ? 
 Ever since the days of Galileo (and we might go farther 
 back) the most patient intellects have been employed in 
 tracing the order of nature and discovering her laws. 
 Nor is there either truth or meaning in the ignorant 
 sneer — that the laws of the organic kingdoms of nature 
 (which our Author seems to consider but a little province 
 of human thought) are still under a Boeotian govern- 
 ment : — or that the best expounders of these laws (the 
 great anatomists and physiologists of the last three 
 centuries) have been guided by principles in antagonism 
 with those which have led to the highest generalizations 
 of material science. Whatever is reft from the domain 
 of ignorance and empiricism, and brought under the 
 true domain of science, forms, beyond all doubt, another 
 proof of the universal empire of law and order. Where 
 is the Boeotian school of philosophy (whether material 
 s. d. I 
 
Cliv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 or moral) that does not assert, and believe in, this great 
 doctrine ? I know of none. 
 
 If it be affirmed that the origin of the organic 
 world has been determined by law, we believe the 
 proposition true : — partly on the strength of what seems 
 a sound analogy ; for if the organic world be governed 
 by law, we cannot believe that it commenced without 
 law : — partly on its obvious adaptation to the existing 
 laws of the inorganic world : — partly, also, on the 
 ascertained historical development of the forms and 
 functions of organic life during successive epochs, which 
 seems to mark a gradual evolution of Creative Power 
 manifested by a gradual ascent towards a higher type 
 of being. But when it is affirmed, that the successive 
 parts of the great organic sequence are related to one 
 another only in the way of material cause and material 
 effect, we test the proposition by an appeal to facts and 
 experiments— the last appeal on all questions of natural 
 science — and on the strength of this appeal we deny 
 the truth of the asserted proposition. It is not merely 
 not proved, but it has no similitude to an ascertained 
 truth : and it involves, moreover, the monstrous, and 
 one might have thought the incredible, absurdity, of 
 comprehending things material, moral, and intellectual, 
 in one incongruous category. 
 
 There may arise another question. Does our pre- 
 vious negative conclusion put our knowledge of the 
 organic world out of harmony with the other portions 
 of our sound inductive knowledge? We reply, No. 
 The origin of organic laws, and the origin of all other 
 

 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. civ 
 
 material laws, are wrapped in the same inexplicable 
 mystery. Human philosophy leads us not to any real 
 conception of the beginning of things, or the commence- 
 ment of phenomena. Her province is to interpret laws 
 already established by a power superior to all things 
 whether animate or inanimate, and to which no mortal 
 can ever soar " on the waxen wings of sense :" for 
 between ourselves and the Fountain of all power and 
 intelligence there is a gulf no less than infinite, which 
 neither created eye can pierce, nor imagination fathom. 
 Those who exclude from their creed all conception 
 of a personal and intelligent God of nature, must believe 
 that dead, inanimate matter may, without external aid 
 and by its own inherent powers, work itself into what is 
 vital, sensitive, and intellectual. They may maintain, 
 that what we call law is mere material order, and 
 nothing else ; that what we call adaptation is but 
 a dream of fancy ; that what we call intellect and mind 
 is but a form of material manifestation ; that conscience 
 is but a material weakness ; and that the hopes of 
 future good are but an idle material dream : and in all 
 this they are, at least, consistent. But if, on the other 
 hand, we do see law and order and harmony in the 
 world, whether animate or inanimate, and if we discern 
 within it proofs of adaptation, wisdom, and goodness — 
 then, whether we reflect on the world without, or trace 
 the laws of thought and intelligent act by reflecting on 
 our own internal consciousness, we do gain a firm grasp 
 of what is meant by the sustaining, as well as the crea- 
 tive power of God. One of these words (to repeat what 
 
 1<H 
 
Clvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 has been said before) defines our conception of the orderly 
 movements of the world and of the second causes where- 
 by they are upheld ; and implies also, in conformity with 
 our internal consciousness, a personal sustaining Power. 
 The other word refers to the beginning of things, and (in 
 like conformity with our nature, and without pretending 
 to limit or define the first movements of Creative Power,) 
 refers to our conception of a great First Cause of all 
 things — moral or material, organic or inorganic. To 
 this belief we are constrained by what we see without us, 
 and what we feel and know within ourselves : nor can we 
 cast away this belief, unless we strip off those inner 
 elements of our nature without which no sound system of 
 philosophy ever has been, or ever can be, built up by man. 
 One s*reat truth is, however, contained in the con- 
 cluding sentence of the previous extract. If the 
 Author's scheme be right, " there must be a complete 
 revolution in the view of our relation to the Father of 
 our being." Man must be shorn of his highest attributes 
 and his best hopes. The God of nature must lose His 
 personality — He is no longer, in any moral or christian 
 sense, our Father ; but we must look for our paternity 
 among chattering monkeys and old sea-monsters. Mo- 
 rality and the acts of a responsible will have no meaning ; 
 for acts and events are wrapped up in an inexorable 
 material fatalism. Religious homage is rank folly ; for 
 who can utter any prayer against events chained together 
 in the unvarying sequence of material causes ? And if, 
 on this material scheme, we be so inconsistent as to 
 believe in a Creator, we must believe Him reposing far 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. civil 
 
 from us in a sublime " tranquillity altogether new ;" 
 and our contemplations, at the very best, must be like 
 the moping homage of a Buddhist priest. 
 
 But in one thing at least our Author is mistaken. 
 A creed like this is not "altogether new." In the 
 latter years of the past century it had its priests and 
 apostles ; it spread and was believed ; and it was car- 
 ried out in the acts of civil government. When religion 
 changed its object, things and acts changed also their 
 name and nature : rapine took the name of justice ; 
 bloodshed took the name of philanthropy ; and the 
 groans of a fellow-creature were a mockery to a new 
 priesthood, who told their victims that they were but 
 lulled to eternal sleep, and must bear the axe with 
 patience ; for their elements, though dissipated now, 
 would soon rise again under some new, and perhaps 
 better, material combination. 
 
 Is it true (as our Author dreams) that the pro- 
 gress of science tends towards a confirmation, and 
 consequent reception, of his hypothetical scheme ? I 
 think the very contrary. A bold idealism animates 
 the philosophy of one large section of the German 
 school, and may perhaps have sometimes led to physical 
 discoveries : but it has, too often, ended in fantastical 
 notions of the powers of nature, and in idle and false 
 views of material knowledge. Under many aspects, how- 
 ever, it is in direct contrast with the stunted scheme 
 of rank materialism. — That a rank materialism has 
 prevailed among some eminent teachers of France, can- 
 not be denied. But even now, they neither, I believe, 
 
Clviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 form the majority ; nor are they the " lords of the 
 ascendant " in progressive knowledge : and any sober 
 Englishman, who studies the works of the late leaders 
 of the opposing schools of France, must be struck with 
 the clear inductive logic, good taste, and manly sense of 
 Cuvier, when put in contrast with the hazy and mystical 
 pomposity of St Hilaire. I am not here comparing the 
 anatomical discoveries of these two great physiologists : 
 I speak only of their taste, and the manner in which 
 they put their general views before us. In America 
 the progressive sciences shew us, I believe, no general 
 phase that sets them apart from the sober views of the 
 philosophers of this country. 
 
 Our Author tells us, that in his scheme of nature 
 " he finds none of the previous labours of science shaped 
 or directed in favour of its elucidation ; but all in a 
 contrary way. 11 It is no doubt true that a book of 
 natural science (like certain chapters of The Vestiges) 
 might be drawn up in the language of an hypothesis; 
 and that the animal kingdom, including both the ex- 
 tinct and living forms of life, might be arranged in some 
 preconceived order of natural development. And if this 
 arrangement were accompanied by a new dogmatic and 
 technical language — implying and taking for granted 
 that, on the whole ascending scale (no matter whether 
 composed of one or a thousand lines of natural ascent,) 
 each part of the ascending series was derived, in the 
 way of common generation, from that which went be- 
 fore it — our narrative would have at least the symmetry 
 and external form of a true history. But, after all, it 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clix 
 
 would be but a physical romance, and a work of ima- 
 gination ; and its language would be no better than a 
 downright cheat : for neither would it, as a system, 
 have its base in true induction (the only historical evi- 
 dence of science) ; nor would its successive chapters 
 fall into any true accordance with those ancient chro- 
 nicles which were written in successive times, on the 
 enduring monuments of the earth, by the hand of 
 nature. 
 
 It is, however, by no means true that none of the 
 labours of physiologists have been directed to an eluci- 
 dation of a system of rank materialism : but it is true 
 that the whole body of material science, as we now 
 behold it, has a shape and substance that has no family 
 likeness to the ill-formed progeny of our Author's brain. 
 And who (we may ask) have been the labourers that, for 
 the last three centuries, have given the present shape 
 and substance to the great body of physical truth? 
 Not men who built only on theory ; but men who, at 
 every turn of thought and opinion, did look to nature 
 for a basis. Some of them were atheists, and some 
 were deists; some were sober believers in religious 
 truth ; and a few of them were mystics and fanatics : 
 but guided by nature, and believing (and ever since 
 the days of Bacon constrained to this belief by the 
 strong opinion of thoughtful men) that material know- 
 ledge must rest on fact and experiment, they followed 
 their onward course, and the whole body of science be- 
 came what it now is : and if it have a shape (as our 
 Author tells us) that favours not the elucidation of the 
 
Clx PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 theory of development, then is the theory untrue to 
 nature, and must be cast away among the dreams of 
 an unsound philosophy. 
 
 But he has another arrow in his quiver. While he 
 ridicules, with some show of truth, the minute philo- 
 sophy of the present day, he forgets that true material 
 science calls nothing little which is found in the record 
 of nature's works ; and that some of the noblest gene- 
 ralizations of the human mind have been suggested by 
 minute experiments. But all our philosophers, both 
 small and great, are to be included in one category of 
 folly. They are dull guides, and blind interpreters of 
 nature ; and all their combined labours " offer no right 
 preparation of the mind to receive with candour, or to 
 treat with justice, a plan of nature like that presented 
 by The Vestiges of Creation. No, it must be before 
 another tribunal that this new philosophy is to be truly 
 and righteously judged !" (Explanations, p. 179.) 
 
 This is the last formal quotation from the Author 
 of The Vestiges with which I shall detain the reader 
 of this Preface : and it well deserves to be the last ; 
 for, spite of its solemnity, it is more rife with folly 
 than any other passage of his book. It virtually dis- 
 cards all ultimate appeal to physical nature in our 
 adjustment of questions that are physical ; and, at the 
 same time, counts for nothing the opinions of men who 
 for ages past have been toiling onwards — slowly, it 
 may be, but steadily — while deciphering the obscure 
 phenomena of nature, and bringing the material world 
 under a right conception of universal law and order. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxi 
 
 There is in the human mind an eager craving for 
 general truth, which, when rightly tempered and di- 
 rected, is of inestimable worth ; but, when left to itself, 
 makes us overstep the modesty of nature, and ends in 
 one-sided and incongruous theories. Ignorance ever 
 has been the parent of rash, abortive generalizations, 
 which have been mischievous because untrue ; and have 
 been chiefly mischievous because they have stood in 
 the way of a right onward movement. Men have ever 
 delighted tc repose in the luxury of speculation who 
 could ill brook the repulsive toil of analyzing pheno- 
 mena, and cutting their way, step by step, through the 
 solid rock on which stands the temple of material 
 truth. A Satanic bound over the fences of Paradise 
 (meet matter for the imagination of a poet) is far more 
 grateful to the neophytes of a bad philosophy, than 
 a loyal obedience to nature, sanctioned by a patient 
 study of her laws and, therefore, based on true know- 
 ledge. Hence schemes of Cosmogony had their being 
 long before Geology was heard of; Astronomy was 
 drawn into Systems two thousand years before its first 
 mechanical principles were comprehended ; and in every 
 part of Physics men were willing to appeal to the 
 theoretical jargon of their schools rather than to a 
 response drawn from direct experiment. 
 
 After a long dark age of science the half torpid 
 powers of man became reanimate, and a goodly crop 
 sprang up from a better culture ; but a crop of rank 
 weeds sprang up with it. Alchemy, Astrology, and 
 other fooleries of a former age, seemed to rise up with 
 
clxii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 fresh vigour, when the mind of man, after a long 
 fallow, began to germinate with new luxuriance : and if, 
 during the last three hundred years, Philosophy has 
 moved on with steady strides, Folly with his cap and 
 bells has ever been seen and heard by the side of 
 Philosophy. Some of the fooleries of former years 
 were laughed out of sight by the robust satire of Ben 
 Jonson : but folly, like the moon, has its days of wax- 
 ing and waning, and then comes round again : and 
 though it may change its name, and call itself the 
 harbinger of wisdom, and though it shift the colours of 
 its motley, it passes through no organic transmutation 
 or specific change. 
 
 Let us but condescend to look at the old Poet's 
 picture of the solemn, fashionable fooleries of his own 
 day* : 
 
 Subtle. 
 
 Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then 
 
 Proceeds she to the perfect. Of that airy 
 
 And oily water mercury is engender'd; 
 
 Sulphur of the fat and earthy part ; the one 
 
 Which is the last, supplying the place of male, 
 
 The other of the female, in all metals. 
 These two 
 
 Make the rest ductile, malleable, extensive. 
 
 And even in gold they are; for we do find 
 
 Seeds of them, by our fire, and gold in them ; 
 
 And can produce the species of each metal 
 
 More perfect thence, than nature doth in earth. 
 
 Beside, who doth not see in daily practice 
 
 Art can beget bees, hornets, beetles, wasps, 
 
 Out of the carcasses and dung of creatures ; 
 
 Yea, scorpions from an herb being rightly placed ? 
 
 And these are living creatures, far more perfect 
 
 And excellent than metals 
 
 * The Alchemist. Act IX. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxtii 
 
 Surly. 
 
 Pray, you, Sir, stay : 
 
 Rather than I'll be bray'd, Sir, I'll believe 
 That Alchemy is a pretty kind of game, 
 Somewhat like tricks o 1 the cards, to cheat a man 
 "With charming 
 
 Folly seems immortal; and what quackery and 
 foolery of the old Poet's day is not rife in ours? It 
 may have changed its name, but it has not changed its 
 nature ; and, like all other thingg of this living world, 
 it gives the lie to the theory of transmutation :— 
 " Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then pro- 
 ceeds she to the perfect" — and what is this, in other 
 words, but our theory of development ? The old Poet 
 tells us of the daily practice of breeding scorpions from 
 herbs. We are mpre mechanical, and breed mites and 
 raise carrots by the fecundating touch of a galvanic 
 wire. He tells us of breeding metals from the elements, 
 and transforming them at the bidding of our fancy. 
 Our transcendental theorist has a higher flight. He 
 now teaches us to sow oats and reap rye — to breed 
 rats from geese — kangaroos from cassowaries — lions 
 from seals, and elephants from whales. And not con- 
 tent with this, he takes a loftier bound, and turns dead 
 matter into living mind, and jabbering monkeys into 
 thinking men ! What folly of the days of Alchemy 
 shews not itself now with its family physiognomy and 
 the stamp of its true pedigree ? 
 
 It is rank folly, in matters of science, to trust to 
 authority and discard experiment : but the rankest of 
 all folly is to discard both experiment and authority, 
 by an appeal to the suffrage of the multitude ; and 
 
dxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 thereby to make philosophy a matter for brawling and 
 ignorant declamation. On a question of personal in- 
 terest an uninstructed man, of common sense and 
 honesty, may be a good judge : but on a question of 
 general science an uninstructed man is no judge at all : 
 for, as a fact of general experience, first impressions are 
 often false, and first generalizations are often rash and 
 incompatible with the broader and higher views of 
 nature. A poet and a satirist may laugh at the fan- 
 tastic visions of a false philosophy, and call them " a 
 pretty kind of game like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a 
 man with charming :" but there is a solemn reality 
 in the ills inflicted on the human family by the Father 
 of lies, in whatsoever shape he may shew himself, 
 which cannot long be a fit matter for mere scorn and 
 mockery. 
 
 The present is a period of progress and change. 
 All things, without us and within us, partake of a 
 common movement. — Forms of government — schemes 
 of material science — theories of just economy in the 
 state — systems of psychology, and theories of moral 
 sentiments — new-fangled forms of religious worship — 
 the whole outward garb and fashion of society — all things 
 seem ready to launch on the wild ocean of untried 
 experiment. It is, we trust, the will of Providence 
 that some good should spring out of this universal 
 fermentation : and as in the material world no new 
 combinations can arise without the play of some higher 
 affinities than those which held together the forms of 
 matter that went before : so, we may hope, that in the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxV 
 
 social and moral world, there may arise out of this 
 spirit of change and movement some more enduring 
 elements of political combination — some closer and 
 more abiding laws of brotherhood and good will. 
 But, alas ! all great social changes are not from worse 
 to better : and change itself, at least for a time, is a 
 trying evil. 
 
 Ignorance ever has been the^parent of much mis- 
 chief, and there seems no safer way of putting down the 
 Father of lies, than by setting up the empire of truth 
 and reason. But how is this to be brought about ? By 
 the diffusion of sound knowledge. On this point there 
 seems to be little difference of opinion in the world. 
 There is, however, in the human breast that which, 
 on social and moral questions, too often gives the 
 apostles of mischief a mighty advantage over the honest 
 and sober teachers of truth : and if that appetency for 
 knowledge which our Creator has made a part of our- 
 selves, must and ought to have its fruition through 
 a good training brought within the reach of every mem- 
 ber of the state, whether high or low ; it is also true 
 and certain, that knowledge, like everything else, may 
 be turned to moral evil and social mischief : and it is no 
 mere allegory, but a truth of religion, confirmed by 
 historical experience, that the miseries of the human 
 family first sprang from a search after knowledge by 
 unlawful means, and by overleaping the fences set round 
 it by the God of nature. 
 
 When all men are taught, many must be smatterers 
 in learning ; and these smatterers will often turn out 
 
Clxvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 the rashest theorists and the boldest teachers. Our 
 voyage cannot be safe and prosperous, if we spread our 
 sails before we have waited to take in our ballast. — In 
 the conquest over the material world, men but ill 
 informed in the higher physics may be of first-rate 
 service as light troops ; and may sometimes take the 
 lead in great discoveries. But they cannot theorize 
 consistently on the. great mysteries of Nature without 
 knowing what Nature is ; and it is in vain for them to 
 do the duties of the phalanx without its ponderous 
 armour. In mechanical inventions, and in arts bearing 
 on the utilities of social life, they may bring to the 
 common stock results of inestimable worth. — Again, in 
 many provinces of human science the wisest men are 
 but smatterers and learners, and a man may sometimes 
 be strong in one province who is a mere child in all the 
 rest ; and such a man may do good service, if he but 
 learn to know himself, and step not beyond the narrow 
 bounds of his own knowledge. But it is, at the same 
 time, most true and certain, that, in the higher pro- 
 vinces of science, no man can see farther than those who 
 have gone before him, unless he mount higher than 
 they have done ; and he cannot mount even to their 
 level without a long endurance of patient thought and 
 toil. Men, however, forget all this, through purblind 
 vanity, and the love of noise, and the hate of toil, and 
 the fond hope of reaping the harvest before they have 
 either turned the soil or sown the seed. 
 
 It is true that physical science has advanced, and 
 is advancing, with rapid strides : but it is also true, that 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxvii 
 
 false theories and portentous quackeries have kept pace 
 with this movement. Within the last few years (not 
 to mention a long catalogue of antisocial paradoxes and 
 schemes of polity which, if carried out, could only end 
 in another Jacquerie, and a barbarous levelling of the 
 whole fabric of christian civilization) experiments have 
 been impudently exhibited in our Capital which have 
 far outdone the ancient tricks qf magic — which have 
 far outfooled the more sober follies of Astrology — and 
 have shewn us transmutations that have put to shame 
 the more modest changes wrought in the furnace of the 
 Alchemist. What was the second-sight of the poor 
 uninstructed Highlander to the mesmeric visions of his 
 well-instructed Lowland representative sitting on the 
 tripod of clairvoyance ? What old compounds of adver- 
 tising quackery could be named with the nostrums 
 of a modern son of JEsculapius, who can lull to sleep a 
 patient in another hemisphere, and feel the pulsations 
 of his heart by touching one of the hairs of his head 
 brought, by the last steamer, across the Atlantic ? 
 What tinkling of the old cap and bells ever came up 
 to the music of our days given out by the mesmerized 
 organs of Phrenology ? 
 
 Nor does all the mischief of science, falsely so 
 called, end in these outbreaks of impudence and folly — 
 these foul blotches and eruptions on the surface of 
 Philosophy. Men soon learn to be dupes of their own 
 impostures ; and nothing is more common than for 
 a man who begins by cheating others, to end by cheat- 
 ing himself, and so to pass from an impostor to a 
 
clxviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 fanatic : and fanaticism, whatever be its type, is as catch- 
 ing as the plague; for men will never learn that sincerity, 
 however good and graceful in itself, is but a sorry test 
 of truth and reason. 
 
 A mawkish religious sentimentality breaks out 
 among the writings of our modern Materialists. It was 
 just so in the days of Alchemy ; and the initiated in the 
 older transmutations formed a kind of mock priesthood 
 who had their religious illuminations and solemnities. 
 We are now told that we are to be humane to brutes, 
 for we are of their blood, and that materialism is the 
 fountain-head of charity, which is the end and aim 
 of all religion. Hypocrisy puts on the mask of virtue 
 to cheat its neighbours : but it is a great mistake to 
 suppose that it does not often cheat itself, by mistaking 
 the theatrical emotions of an actor for the test of an 
 abiding inner principle. Materialism, without giving us 
 one new motive for humanity, makes humanity ridi- 
 culous ; and it deprives charity of its best meaning and 
 its most exalted sanction. 
 
 Bacon hardly ever gives us a general precept that 
 is not full of meaning ; for the kind of inspiration that 
 made him the prophet of physical science, animates 
 also his practical maxims and moral sentiments — gives 
 them the look of perpetual youth, and makes them live 
 unchanged in defiance of time and the fluctuations of 
 opinion. He tells us, in an early part of his immortal 
 work on the Advancement of Learning, " it is an 
 assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a 
 little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxix 
 
 the mind of man to Atheism, but a farther proceeding 
 therein doth bring a man back again to religion : for 
 in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, 
 which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves 
 to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may 
 induce some oblivion of the highest cause : but when 
 a man passeth on farther, and seeth the dependence 
 of causes and the works of Providence ; then, according 
 to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that 
 the highest link of Nature's chain must needs be tied 
 to the foot of Jupiter's chair." Farther on he writes 
 as follows : " Another error is the impatience of doubt, 
 and haste to ascertain without due and mature suspen- 
 sion of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation 
 are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken 
 of by the ancients : the one plain and smooth in the 
 beginning, and in the end impassable ; the other rough 
 and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair 
 and even : so it is in contemplation ; if a man will 
 begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts ; but 
 if he be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in 
 certainties." 
 
 If these be the words of truth and wisdom, then, 
 during the more general diffusion of material know- 
 ledge, must we look not merely for a plenteous crop 
 of follies such as we have pointed out ; but for deadlier 
 mischiefs which may spring up into some form or fashion 
 of infidelity, or it may be, into rank Atheism. Among 
 the smatterers of science, our modern Materialists do 
 profess, as a fundamental principle of their faith, "to 
 s. d. m 
 
J 
 
 clxX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 dwell and stay among second causes, which are next 
 unto the senses," and they never presume to rise above 
 them ; and if, through inadvertency, they speak of 
 Providence, they tell us of some principle far beyond 
 the reach of nature, " and reposing in a tranquillity 
 altogether new." They do begin with certainties. Their 
 theories are set before us like Minerva starting full 
 armed from the head of Jupiter, and all men must 
 bend before them and do them homage: and, assuredly, 
 (if there be truth and reason in the words of Bacon) 
 their certainties shall end in doubts. 
 
 Let a shallow writer, like the Author of The Vestiges, 
 teach and make popular among the smatterers in ma- 
 terial knowledge, that inductive science is but philoso- 
 phy in leading strings — that the accumulated wisdom of 
 past ages is but a kind of milk meet only for babes, and 
 unfit for the food of full-grown man — that there is no 
 difference between soul and body — that man is the 
 progeny of beasts — that all nature (dead and living) 
 is wrapped in undeviating mechanical laws — that acts 
 are the undeviating effects of material organs — that the 
 organs we inherit are drawn from nature's wheel, where 
 we have as good a chance as our fellow-men, and there- 
 fore have no right to grumble at our lot — and that all 
 conceptions of what is supernatural and immaterial are 
 false, superstitious, and but the fogs of a Boeotian brain : 
 and let this belief become current in society, and accepted 
 by the multitude as true. What then will follow ? The 
 reader may judge for himself: I can see nothing but 
 ruin and dire confusion in such a creed. It is not 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. dxxi 
 
 grounded on the evidence of material nature when sifted 
 by a true inductive spirit ; and on that account I believe 
 it false. If current in society it will undermine the 
 whole moral and social fabric, and inevitably will bring 
 discord and deadly mischief in its train ; and on this 
 account also (having a belief in the harmony of nature 
 and in an overruling Providence) I believe it utterly 
 untrue. An honest Materialist may mean no mischief to 
 his fellow-men; but that belief proves not his doctrines 
 to be innocuous. He may be sincere ; but sincerity, I 
 repeat, is not the test of truth, whether we turn our 
 thoughts to things material or immaterial. 
 
 Because advancing philosophy is fruitful in rash 
 and foolish theories, is knowledge, therefore, to stand 
 still? Because tares may spring up with the wheat, 
 are we therefore to leave the ground unturned, and 
 the seed unsown ! To questions such as these no man 
 in his senses will now dare to give an affirmative reply. 
 But he will affirm with sober confidence that popularity 
 is no test of right and wrong — that in many parts of 
 teaching evil is far more powerful than good — and that a 
 flattering philosophy is not necessarily true : — and he 
 will conclude that unmixed good is not to be looked for 
 in any general scheme of national training — and that a 
 one-sided training must produce narrow-mindedness and 
 bigotry, and other consequences of deadly mischief. 
 In any good scheme of national teaching the material, 
 moral, and religious parts of nature must all have their 
 proper nutriment, or the body politic will fall into 
 deadly disease, or imbecility. — But how these good 
 
 m2 
 
Clxxii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ends are to be brought about in the struggles of party 
 — among the crooked ways and crooked visions of 
 narrow-minded men — amidst moral fanatics and ma- 
 terial fanatics, and men who are too cold-hearted and 
 selfish to be fanatical in any thing — is a question far 
 too hard for this Preface. But there is, we have good 
 hope, a power in high principle and truth that will 
 work its way ; and an overruling Providence that 
 knows how to bring much good even out of much evil ; 
 and guided by this good hope we heartily apply the 
 noble words of Bacon, not merely to the spread of 
 knowledge among those who are called fortune's favour- 
 ites or men of high station, or among men of academic 
 leisure, but to the diffusion of sound learning among all 
 the members of the state of whatsoever condition, whe- 
 ther high or low. — "Let no man, upon a weak conceit 
 of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation, think or main- 
 tain that a man can search too far, or be too well stu- 
 died in the book of God's word or in the book of God's 
 works — divinity or philosophy : but rather let men en- 
 deavour an endless progress or proficience in both : only 
 let men beware that they apply both to charity, and not 
 to swelling ; to use, and not to ostentation ; and again, 
 that they do not unwisely mingle or confound these 
 learnings together. 11 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxxiti 
 
 $ 9. Conditions of the Mind that have led men to 
 deny a Personal Creator — Atheism and Pantheism — 
 Illustrations of the doctrine of Final Causes — Galvanic 
 and Phrenological Hypotheses, Mechanical Inventions, 
 $c. 
 
 It may perhaps be well to consider, through a few 
 pages, under what conditions of .the understanding men 
 have been led to deny the evidence of a great personal, 
 creative, and sustaining Power through the whole world 
 of nature. 
 
 Atheism is at least consistent with itself. If a man 
 believe not in God, he cannot believe in a Creator ; but 
 I stop not to argue with an avowed Atheist. I pause 
 only by the way, to express my conviction that there is 
 a proof (sometimes called a priori) of the being of a 
 God, derived from the mind of man and the right ex- 
 ercise of its inner powers, which no one can gainsay 
 without renouncing his reason, and its supreme autho- 
 rity in judging of truth and falsehood : and if this 
 proof be not accepted, or be little suited to our habits 
 of thought, there is assuredly a proof a posteriori, based 
 on our experience of what passes within ourselves, and 
 on our observation of what is external to us, that 
 brings, or ought to bring, conviction irresistible to the 
 human heart. But this question has been discussed 
 at sufficient length at the beginning of this Preface and 
 in the following Discourse, and I must not dwell on it 
 here. 
 
 There is another form of unbelief, very nearly allied 
 
Clxxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 to Atheism, though passing under the less odious name 
 of Pantheism. True Theism demands a personal pre- 
 ordaining Power. It demands a cause for all the 
 phenomena of the universe, whether of mind or matter : 
 it requires, in one word, a personal, intelligent God and 
 Creator. Pantheism will perhaps allow all we under- 
 stand in our first conceptions of mind and matter. It 
 will sometimes tell us, and in goodly language, of the 
 material and moral adaptations of the universe — of its 
 beauties, its harmonies, and its laws. But it denies 
 the personality of the Godhead. It is not, on this 
 scheme, true that God created all nature ; but that all 
 nature is God ; and the word God becomes no longer 
 a personal term defining our conception of a Creator 
 and Ruler over the world ; but an abstract collective 
 term to define and comprehend all the phenomena of 
 the universe. In its grosser, and perhaps most com- 
 mon type, Pantheism deifies the dead elements, and 
 advances not one single step beyond sensual phenomena. 
 Man is the highest type of being — nothing but matter 
 at its highest point of development. Material and 
 moral are to be comprehended under one category. 
 All within him and all without him is sensual ; and 
 his loftiest conceptions and highest abstractions are 
 but marks of an inner and mechanical creative power. 
 His ideas of external nature may have some archetype 
 in the world without ; but his noblest conceptions are 
 but abortive dreams without substance or reality. He 
 has no knowledge of Cause beyond that which is sug- 
 gested to him sensually by the mere sequence of events 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. dxXV 
 
 within his own narrow material experience : and his 
 higher conceptions of eternity, of infinity, and First 
 Cause, are no reflexions of the being and attributes of 
 a God ; but are the material, and, it may be, the 
 diseased creations of his own organic system. And as 
 his organic structure, and all the powers residing 
 therein, have sprung out of the combinations of dead 
 material elements by progressive, development ; so out 
 of this material development may spring something 
 higher still : and hence (for something like this I have 
 read of among the crazy dreams of a gross material 
 Pantheism) though God did not create nature, yet 
 nature may in the end evolve a personal God, fore- 
 shadowed now in nature's womb by god-like man ! 
 
 But there is an opposite philosophical creed which 
 has been called ideal. It denies the very existence of 
 external material nature, and, in a certain sense, may 
 be said to spiritualize the universe. This strange form 
 of metaphysical belief has indeed been adopted by 
 some good religious men. But whatever is contrary 
 to nature must be false; and the almost inevitable 
 fruit of such a creed is universal scepticism ; or a form of 
 ideal Pantheism, in which the material world is almost 
 shut out from thought, and the mind of man is deified. 
 Under such a creed, men have been taught that all 
 religion derived from any authority external to themselves 
 is no better than a dream — that all forms of belief are 
 but types of the development of the mind of man, 
 evolved by himself out of himself, and not given to him 
 by his Maker as a rule of life. And if we take for 
 
clxxvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 granted the fundamental truth of the ideal scheme, 
 this conclusion seems inevitable : for external teaching 
 can only come to the mind through the senses ; and 
 if we begin by denying the evidence of sense, how can 
 we admit the authority of any form of external 
 teaching ? 
 
 Lastly, there is one oriental form of Pantheism, 
 still, I believe, held by many millions of our fellow- 
 creatures, which makes God the only true personal 
 existence, of which all the complicated phenomena of 
 mind and matter are but the simple attributes. In this 
 creed man has no true enduring personality; absorption 
 into the substance of the Godhead is the end of all 
 religion, and annihilation is the supreme good. Bud- 
 dhism absorbs man into the Godhead, and thereby 
 destroys all right conception of Creation and Creator. 
 Pantheism, in one form of its extravagance, seems to 
 absorb God into man ; and, in all its forms, it con- 
 founds the God of nature with the natural world which 
 is the work of his hands. 
 
 It is not my object to describe at any length the 
 religious aberrations of the human mind. I have no 
 capacity for such a task; but I may remark, by the 
 way, how very little there is of novelty in many of the 
 modern metaphysical forms of unbelief. Some of our 
 modern pantheistic Rationalists have deserted the induc- 
 tive onward track of truth and reason, and have gone 
 back into the dreary labyrinths of ancient folly. In their 
 zeal to uproot what we think the sure foundations of 
 our religion, they have dared to mythicise the plain and 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxXVH 
 
 simple narrative of the gospels, and to scatter to the 
 winds the best elements of historic truth. And what 
 is a fundamental part of the system of the most daring 
 and subtle apostle of modern ideal Pantheism? Very 
 little more (as shewn by Dr Mill*) than a revival of 
 one of the ancient forms of oriental Pantheism. The 
 Sabseans, and other old inhabitants of the oriental plains, 
 seem to have worshipped the celestial bodies and the 
 elements. But they endowed the elements with life 
 and personal attributes; and their creed, rude and 
 ill-informed as it was, shewed at least a striving to- 
 ward the God of nature ; and so far were they wiser 
 and better than a Pantheist. Atheism brutalizes our 
 manhood. Pantheism is but Atheism tricked out in 
 the semblance of religion. It is in the natural world 
 what rank idolatry is in the religious — a worshipping 
 of stocks and stones. It does, indeed, acknowledge a 
 sentiment of religion, and gives it a verbal homage : 
 but it degrades the object of religion, and thereby 
 degrades our manhood. For the true nobility of man 
 is that he can rise in thought above the phenomena of 
 the universe to the conception of law and order ; and 
 higher still to the conception of a personal, intelligent 
 Power, the Ordainer of all law and order — that he 
 knows himself to be the offspring of that Power, and 
 therefore the child of God, with all the hopes and 
 duties that arise out of such an exalted parentage. 
 
 Atheism and Pantheism strip us of one of the best 
 elements of our intellectual nature. There is a prin~ 
 
 * See the first Christian Advocate Essay, by Dr Mill. Cambridge, 1840. 
 
Clxxviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ciple of causality within us without which we could 
 never ascend to any conception of general truth, or of 
 law and order, whether material or immaterial. By 
 what means we rise to the abstract conception of Cause 
 is perhaps of little moment to my present inquiry. I 
 pretend not to discuss the theories of Hume or Brown, 
 of Kant or Cousin, or of any school of psychology that 
 professes to analyse the steps by which we rise to a 
 general conception of Cause. The idea of cause may 
 be in part suggested by the sequence of material phe- 
 nomena ; and it may be more emphatically suggested 
 by the immediate acts and consequences of our own 
 volition. But the succession of material phenomena, 
 and the acts of his own volition, would never lead a 
 man to the highest form of truth were there not a 
 principle within himself, a part of his very being, 
 whereby he is led to something far above what he 
 knows and learns by his own experience. 
 
 It may indeed be said that we observe an unde- 
 viating sequence of material phenomena, and thence 
 derive our first ideas of some connecting material 
 Cause : but if we examine the origin and progress of 
 our knowledge, it will, I think, be found that we have 
 an earlier and firmer conception (however imperfect it 
 may be) of a personal, intelligent, and designing cause. 
 For in childhood, when we first begin to reason, we 
 often endow the material things around us with life 
 and volition. And in advancing age, after we have 
 learnt to modify our first impressions, whenever we de- 
 scribe the order of material organic nature, we almost 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxxix 
 
 of necessity clothe our meaning in words expressive of 
 the acts of a prescient and designing power. 
 
 When, with admirable skill, our countryman Layard 
 laid bare the ancient palaces of Nineveh, and saw its 
 sculptured stones and monuments, he doubted not that 
 they were the works of a designing hand, though he 
 neither knew the letters of the stone-graven legends, 
 nor the events recorded in the sculptures. Among 
 these stones were some which had been broken by what 
 we commonly regard as accidents — others, which by long 
 exposure during ancient and unknown times, had un- 
 dergone decay from the corrosive action of the elements 
 — many that were in the very places where they had 
 been first fixed by the builder's hands. All the pheno- 
 mena had their natural place and meaning, whether they 
 were the results of accident, of material law, or of 
 intelligent design. In every instance the philosophical 
 observer referred each phenomenon to its appropriate 
 cause ; nor could his mind rest satisfied without draw- 
 ing this inevitable conclusion. 
 
 Precisely like this is the conduct of the mind while 
 studying the external world. Philosophically speaking, 
 there are no accidents in nature. What we call acci- 
 dents are the contingent effects of second or material 
 causes ; and are of such a nature that we can conceive 
 these causes to be ordained, and to exist, without the 
 production of the accidents we contemplate; or at 
 least without any special reference to their production. 
 In this sense the word accident is but an acknow- 
 ledgment of our ignorance ; and there is along with it 
 
C1XXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 a tacit acknowledgment, within the mind, of some 
 higher order of material causation, which we define by 
 the words material law. The deposit produced in a 
 dirty kennel after a thunderstorm, is, we believe, as 
 truly the effect of material laws, as the movements of 
 the heavenly bodies are the natural consequences of a 
 law of universal gravitation. And if we be constrained 
 by a law of our being to ascend from the humblest 
 conception of material cause to something higher and 
 more general ; so are we constrained from a conception 
 of the general laws of nature to ascend higher still — to 
 a conception of personal intelligence and design. The 
 same reasoning that leads us to true historical concep- 
 tions among the monuments of old catacombs and pa- 
 laces, leads us also to a conception of the higher truths 
 of nature in our study of the works of nature. We 
 see among the works of nature the contingent effects of 
 natural laws which none but an intelligence of a higher 
 order than our own could predict, analyse, and define. 
 Such effects we may call accidents. We do also see 
 effects we comprehend more perfectly, and can bring 
 at once into subordination to material laws. We can 
 study these laws, and we can sometimes predict their 
 material effects with undeviating certainty ; and we see 
 them fitted together, with all the evidence of consum- 
 mate skill, in the framework of the universe. , More 
 than this, we see examples, by tens of thousands, in 
 which special material laws appear to be ordained for 
 special objects ; and hence we naturally rise to a per- 
 ception of personal design, and intelligent causation. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxxxi 
 
 The eye is made to see, the ear to hear, and the heart 
 to propel the blood through the whole framework of 
 the body ; and the double heart is prepared in the 
 womb, not to supply an existing want, but to meet a 
 future want under a coming condition of the animated 
 being ; and thus we reach a higher conclusion still, (the 
 highest of which the mind is capable, and in which it 
 rests content) in the conception^ of a Supreme and 
 Provident Intelligence. It is from this high point of 
 view, and this only, that we can look back on our 
 whole intellectual ascent, and rise in thought towards 
 a right comprehension of law, and order, and cause ; 
 and thus bring all nature into harmony. 
 
 Rank materialism, as a scheme of nature, is shal- 
 low, inadequate, and false. It is the foundation of 
 Atheism, Pantheism, and almost every modification 
 of psychological delusion in our views of nature. We 
 know that mechanical action and material motion may 
 exist in countless combinations without sensation ; and 
 sensation is not a mere material conception. If there be 
 sensation there must be life and a sentient being. And 
 were we to allow that sensation is a mere material phe- 
 nomenon, it would not help us to account for our general 
 conception of cause, or for any of the higher abstractions 
 of the mind. All general truth is made up of abstrac- 
 tions generalized (or created, we might say figuratively), 
 in subordination to psychological laws within the mind 
 itself. The mind is that principle whereby our thoughts 
 cohere and have a personal unity within ourselves ; and 
 we have a truer conception of mind than we have of 
 
clxxxil PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 external material nature. The external world is first 
 known to us by our sensations : but we rest not in our 
 sensations. We are compelled, by the very law of our 
 being, to project our sensations, as it were, back on 
 the external world — to create (as has been said figura- 
 tively) the outer world anew — to clothe it with colour, 
 and form, and attributes, and powers, which are given 
 to it by the activity of the mind working in strict sub- 
 ordination to the law of its existence. To deny the 
 existence of a principle in nature utterly unlike the mere 
 organic implements of our bodies, or the action of ma- 
 terial laws indicated by the sequence of material events, 
 appears to me as rank folly as ever entered into the 
 soul of man. To deny the existence of the material 
 world is to strip the mind of its innate principle of cau- 
 sality, and to deprive it of an element of its being with- 
 out which it never could have comprehended general 
 truth or have reasoned either of cause or consequence. 
 To deny the existence of mind, as something in its very 
 essence distinct from matter, is to deny that of which 
 we all are conscious. We have a personal will, a per- 
 sonal consciousness, a personal feeling of responsibility, 
 a personal magazine of abstract thought, which we can- 
 not confound with the material elements around us, 
 without an audacious abuse of words, and a casting away 
 of what we know of ourselves and of our inner nature. 
 I can conceive one of my limbs to be lopped off, to be 
 separated into ten million atoms, and to rise up again in 
 the grass of the field : but I cannot so much as conceive 
 the decomposition of the mind ; for the idea of personal 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxXXui 
 
 self is simple and uncompounded. I can conceive, I can 
 speculate, I can abstract and generalize, I can reason of 
 right and wrong — of truth and falsehood. But still, in 
 this varied multiplicity of personal acts there is a cen- 
 tral unity in the soul itself, that admits of no decom- 
 position into separate parts. The God that made it 
 could destroy it, if such were his will. This I can con- 
 ceive ; but I cannot, by any effort of the imagination, 
 conceive my personal self to be so decompounded that 
 its several functions should be resolved like the dead 
 elements of a material body, and made to pass, one by 
 one, into a new and separate form of conscious exist- 
 ence. 
 
 To analyse and separate our ideas, is one of the 
 indications of an advanced knowledge. To confound 
 things essentially separated, is a mark of uninstructed 
 ignorance, of stupid indifference, or of audacious folly. 
 Atheism, Pantheism, and rank Materialism, all labour 
 under the same radieal principle of falsehood. They 
 pretend to build upon knowledge ; but the knowledge 
 on which they pretend to build never could have risen 
 into substantial form without the existence of a prin- 
 ciple of causality, which they virtually deny : and we 
 may assume it as an axiom that such a form of reason- 
 ing can end in nothing but falsehood and incongruity. 
 Pantheism (which is Atheism clothed with a decent 
 covering), and rank Materialism, its twin sister, invert 
 the whole order of that intellectual nature by which we 
 reach the comprehension of general truth. They give us 
 a pretended lever, but without a fulcrum — a building, 
 
Clxxxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 without a foundation — an effect, without a cause. The 
 mind of man will not, and cannot, be content thus 
 to dangle in mid-air : but we find our resting-place and 
 refuge in our belief in the power and providence of an 
 intelligent God and Creator of all nature. 
 
 Rank materialism is so full of moral mischief, and is 
 so well fitted to play its part in popular delusion, that 
 it may be worth while to notice three of its supposed 
 modern illustrations. Those who can only admit "the 
 real existence"" of what is material, have sometimes 
 compared the action of the mind to that of the galvanic 
 fluid, pouring its current along the wires of an adjusted 
 battery. With this they have been content ; and have 
 inferred, that mind is nothing more, or very little more, 
 than one of the forms of electricity, and is, therefore, 
 material. 
 
 Now let us admit (and it is, I think, a very large 
 admission) that the first knowledge of external nature 
 is conveyed to the mind by nothing more than a gal- 
 vanic action running along the nerves of sense to the 
 central nervous battery or brain ; and let us further 
 suppose, that the intentions of the will are conveyed 
 outwards by a kind of reversed action of this battery, 
 through a distinct series of diverging nervous chords, 
 conducting a galvanic fluid from the brain to those or- 
 ganic implements whereby we communicate with the 
 external world. In this view of material nature (if it 
 be real) we may have made a new step in physiology ; 
 but, as to the philosophy of the mind, we leave it exactly 
 where it was before ; and we have not taken one step 
 

 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. clxXXV 
 
 towards its comprehension, or thrown out one spark of 
 light for its illumination. Mechanism is not sensation — 
 understanding — thought. Material action, however 
 subtle, is not Will. In that kind of muscular action we 
 are now considering, we find not the essence of the Will ; 
 we find but the manifestation of the Will, acting on us 
 and on the outer world, through the intervention of 
 material organs, and in subordination to material laws. 
 
 In the noblest mechanical adaptation of material 
 knowledge to the rapid interchange of thought — the 
 electric telegraph — what is the intelligible history? 
 First, there are certain galvanic phenomena appre- 
 hended by sense, and then moulded by the mind, 
 inductively, into the form of a material law. And this 
 conception of law is an intellectual act that bears 
 no similitude to any act that is material. Secondly, 
 there is an intellectual act, whereby we conceive the 
 fabrication of a mechanism to give effect to our previous 
 knowledge. Thirdly, there is a will to ordain and 
 perfect its construction. Fourthly, when this is done, 
 we have a mechanism perfect for its purpose : but 
 we have not an animated or a thinking mechanism. To 
 give it meaning, there must be a mind exterior to the 
 mechanism to set it in its appropriate movements ; and 
 there must also be another mind, exterior to the me- 
 chanism and able to comprehend its movements. A 
 mechanism of this kind may perhaps throw some light 
 on the muscular activity of the bodily frame : but it 
 throws no light on our sensations — on our abstract 
 apprehensions of material laws — on our abstract con- 
 s. d. n 
 
clxXXvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ceptions of the outer symbols of thought — or on the 
 movements of the will. 
 
 But this mechanism might perhaps have its moral 
 use in helping to teach us our position in the world 
 of Nature. It is by a conducting power in the mechan- 
 ism of the material world that we learn the existence of 
 the remote bodies in the heavens. At one end of this 
 mechanism is man, with organs of sense enabling him 
 to know that a direct message is sent down to him, 
 and to perceive the distant spheres ; and he has a mind 
 so formed as to interpret the material symbols of this 
 message, and by their help to comprehend, in part, the 
 laws whereby the heavenly spheres are governed, and 
 carried round in their ordained movements. There 
 must then (if we but follow out an analogy suggested 
 by the works of our own hands) be some external 
 mind to contrive and lay down this mechanism, and 
 an external will to set it in its ordained movements. 
 There must, in one word, be an intelligent God of 
 Nature. Thoughts of this kind, though they throw 
 not the feeblest light on many of the higher ques- 
 tions of psychology, may perhaps be of some moral 
 use in helping us to grasp more firmly our conception 
 of the ubiquity of the Godhead, and of his never- 
 ceasing power, manifested in the material laws of the 
 natural world and in their adaptation to the mind 
 of man. 
 
 The Phrenological hypothesis has been put forth as 
 another illustration or proof of materialism ; and in 
 this light it seems to be regarded by the Author of 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. dxXXVii 
 
 The Vestiges. I do not believe in this hypothesis ; for it 
 is not based on anatomical proof, nor does it give 
 us any true analysis of the higher operations of the 
 mind. The brain is a most complicated coil of continu- 
 ous nervous chords ; and it has no separation into parts 
 resembling the distinct muscular integuments that sur- 
 round the bones and act on them, as the levers of the 
 body, by a distinct and separate ^contraction, which we 
 can define mechanically, and of which we comprehend the 
 function. The Phrenologists have not shewn us any cere- 
 bral structure resembling this. They tell us of distinct 
 cerebral organs, but have not proved their existence by 
 the evidence of dissection. The fundamental phenomena 
 of the system are certain external configurations of the 
 skull, which are supposed to indicate a corresponding 
 configuration of the outer parts of the brain in imme- 
 diate contact with the skull. These external configura- 
 tions (or organs) are assumed, on a supposed inductive 
 evidence, to indicate a greater or less development of 
 certain faculties of the mind, and to guide us to a true 
 system of psychology. But the supposed organs are at 
 once arbitrary and ill-defined. There is absolutely 
 nothing in the skull itself to indicate a separation 
 of the brain into thirty or forty distinct organs sub- 
 servient to as many separate faculties of the mind. 
 The prominent faculties of the mind must have been 
 first known and separated by other and more appro- 
 priate evidence, or Phrenology could never have been 
 thought of ; for, unquestionably, there is no symbolical 
 significance in the external form of the skull ; nor does 
 
 n 2 
 
clxXXvili PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 it lead us naturally to any knowledge of the anatomy of 
 the brain or of its functions. I contend, therefore, 
 in limine, that Phrenology (taking all its first principles 
 for granted) is in no way fitted to help us in a true 
 psychological analysis of the mind. The faculties of 
 the mind (or, to speak figuratively, the intellectual 
 organs) may be discriminated by a true psychological 
 analysis ; and if this be done, we can conceive it possible 
 that these faculties may be somehow or other connected 
 with certain modifications of cerebral structure, and con- 
 sequently with certain modifications of the external skull. 
 Should this be proved by good induction, we might 
 then reason deductively from the external organ to an 
 intellectual function. But let the reader bear in mind 
 how much has been taken for granted in arriving at 
 this conclusion. And should we admit the conclusion, 
 let us also bear in mind, that, in the view here taken, 
 the scheme of Phrenology may be an advance in cerebral 
 physiology, but offers us no true advancement of Psy- 
 chology. This kind of knowledge (if it were based in 
 nature) would, however, have its psychological use; for 
 it might teach us where lies our hidden strength, and 
 so might direct us to our best course of intellectual 
 training. But all these good effects are beyond rea- 
 sonable hope ; for the whole system is hypothetical, and, 
 I think, devoid of anatomical proof. 
 
 Coming back to the question of materialism, and 
 admitting, for the sake of argument, the whole system 
 of Phrenology to be true, I affirm that it offers no 
 shelter to the materialist. Cerebral organs are no more 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. dxxxix 
 
 thought and feeling than the pipes of a church-organ 
 are music and harmonious sound. Cerebral organs (on 
 this hypothesis) may be recipients of transmitted know- 
 ledge from the world without; or, in their higher office, 
 they may be a kind of leverage on which the mind acts, 
 and whereby it communicates its knowledge and the 
 purposes of its will to the outer world, whether animate 
 or inanimate. But the eye that sees all things else, sees 
 not itself; and the mind and will, though they lurk 
 behind the organs of the brain, are not to be confounded 
 with those material implements with which they are 
 united by the God of Nature, and over which they have 
 dominion and control. 
 
 One instance more, and I have done. The cal- 
 culating machine of Mr. Babbage is brought forward 
 in every edition of The Vestiges, and has been quoted 
 for like purpose by other authors, as if it gave a 
 practical illustration of the theory of development, and 
 some support for a scheme of Materialism. Wonderful 
 as is this mechanism, it only abridges the labour of 
 thought ; and, like the pen which is now tracing the 
 characters I am writing, it is but an instrument to 
 express in symbols the anterior conceptions of the 
 inventor's mind. 
 
 A machine neither thinks nor makes itselfT This is 
 a plain truism ; but it is a truism some men appear to 
 have overlooked. A great mechanical invention implies 
 a high intellect and great skill in the inventor. And the 
 very principle that leads us to this conclusion among 
 the works of men, leads us also to a belief in a great 
 
CXC PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 First Cause among the works of nature. So far our 
 reasoning is safe, because it is natural and in true ana- 
 logy with our experience. 
 
 A very child in mechanical knowledge might ima- 
 gine some combination of wheels which would shew us 
 recurring numbers, and at the end of ten million turns 
 would shew them in a new order. The great merit of 
 Mr. Babbage was not in any first, simple conception of 
 this kind ; but in contriving a mechanism to evolve 
 numerical results of almost incredible complexity, and 
 to abridge the labours of scientific men, by putting 
 tangibly before them* results that were known to them 
 before only under the form of untranslated mathematical 
 symbols. The common sliding-rule is a machine of the 
 same kind, though of incomparably less power. But, 
 after all, a calculating machine produces only recurring 
 numbers : and what light can recurring numbers throw 
 upon the commencement of life — the passage of inorganic 
 into organic — the transmutation of Species — or the 
 passage of a Beast into a Man ? Besides, were all this 
 granted, where is there any show of evidence that there 
 does exist, within the organic mechanism of the world, 
 a prospective material contrivance for the shifting of 
 one Order of animals into another ? 
 
 A material Pantheist may tell us of the mechanical 
 evolution of one Species from another, till he finally 
 pretends to evolve a being like Man, whom he blasphem- 
 ously calls a God. But in every step of this ideal advance 
 he leaves out the contriving mind that is exterior to 
 the mechanism ; and he thereby virtually leaves out of 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXC1 
 
 sight the highest principles of his own rational nature ; 
 and his ideal progress is out of all analogy and harmony 
 with the knowledge of experience. Has Mr. Babbage, 
 or any other philosophical mechanist, contrived a set of 
 wheels and axles which shall, by their own inherent 
 powers of rotation, evolve and put together another 
 set of wheels and axles, and thereby produce another 
 machine of still higher inherent power ? The very concep- 
 tion of such a machine is out of the reach of the mind of 
 man. As a matter of fact, Mr. Babbage is now employed 
 in completing a new design for a calculating machine 
 of much higher powers than belong to the one he first 
 designed and in part constructed. From the mecha- 
 nical works of man, feeble and imperfect as they are, 
 we can rise to a conception of design in the grand 
 mechanism of the natural world ; and whenever, in this 
 train of thought, we are led to the contemplation of 
 a new set of organic phenomena, we are also led, by 
 a just analogy, to the conception of a new creative act 
 by the Author of organic nature. 
 
 But our objections rest not here. It is only among 
 things of like kind that we can institute true mechanical 
 comparisons. One machine may imitate another, and 
 in a mechanism of our own contrivance we may imitate 
 a mechanism working naturally within the framework 
 of our bodies. But mechanism is not all in all, and 
 explains not our animal sensations and volitions. Still 
 less can any material mechanism throw light upon 
 our moral and intellectual conceptions — such as law, 
 and conscience, and duty — our sense of right and 
 
CXC11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 wrong — our apprehensions of eternity, and our hopes 
 of future good ? What has dead material mechanism 
 to do with thoughts such as these? Yet are they, by 
 God's law, bound up in personal consciousness within 
 the framework of our bodies. Of all the material illus- 
 trations of our Author's work, the most worthless incon- 
 sequential and absurd, are, I think, those he professes 
 to draw from the calculating machine^ of Mr. Babbage. 
 
 $ 1 0. On the Ideal Theory of Locke — imperfections of his 
 Analysis. Schools of the Idealist and the Sensualist. 
 Mischief of setting up Idealism as the interpreter of 
 material nature, illustrated by the works of Often, $c. 
 
 I have endeavoured, in the following Discourse*, 
 to point out some of the imperfections in the great 
 Essay of Locke on the Human Understanding. We 
 readily admit that there is, in the uninformed mind, no 
 innate knowledge of external nature, and no innate 
 universal propositions expressing human judgments an- 
 terior to all acquired knowledge. But there are born 
 with us many well-defined, inherent principles and ca- 
 pacities whereby, in every human being of sound mind, 
 knowledge resolves itself into certain forms of thought, 
 and certain natural judgments of things without us : 
 and these forms of thought are as much a part of our 
 nature as our conceptions from the sense of sight. 
 The mind of man, in the reception of its first elements 
 
 * Infra, pp. 4,5 — 56. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXC111 
 
 of knowledge, cannot with any truth be likened (as has 
 been done by Locke) to a sheet of blank paper. The 
 analogy would be far more true were the mind of man 
 likened to a sheet of paper, prepared by chemical skill, 
 which shews some picture or design the moment the 
 light is made to shine upon it. 
 
 Neither do I believe in the " ideal theory" of Locke, 
 if by these words he meant anything beyond the first 
 natural perceptions we derive from the impressions on 
 our senses. With the exception of the sense of sight, 
 there is nothing like an intervening picture between 
 any object that impresses our senses and the first con- 
 ceptions we form of it. And in the sense of sight, the 
 picture on the expanded filaments of the optic nerve 
 is nothing more than a material impression on the 
 organ subservient to the sense : and there is no inter- 
 vening idea, or form, between that impression and the 
 first perceptions we derive from the sense of sight. 
 Our first perceptions derived through the senses are 
 our first ideas. Neither is it, I believe, true that the 
 mind is really passive in the acquisition of its first 
 sensual perceptions or ideas. From first to last the 
 mind is active, though acting in subordination to the 
 rigid laws of nature. Neither is there any truth in 
 the " ideal theory," in the sense in which these words 
 have been so often used ; nor can the mind in any 
 parts of its progress, from the first glimmerings of its 
 knowledge, be compared, with a show of truth, to a 
 dead sheet of blank paper on which ideas are traced, 
 independently of the mind itself, by the hand of nature. 
 
CXC1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 On these questions we owe, I think, a very deep debt 
 of gratitude to the common-sense metaphysical school 
 of Scotland*. 
 
 I know, full well, the imperfection and feebleness 
 of the metaphysical parts of the following Discourse ; 
 and to any academic reader who wishes to follow out 
 the subjects I have hardly touched on, I would recom- 
 mend the critical discussion of Locke's Essay in the 
 Lectures of Victor Cousin ; which may perhaps be 
 used both as a guide and a safeguard, should he wish 
 to pass onwards to the higher transcendental specula- 
 tions of the German school f. The works of this 
 writer have, by some men, been sneered at and under- 
 valued because they are critical and eclectic. But this 
 may be, and often is, a first-rate merit. There can be 
 no end to the motley forms of science if every succeeding 
 author is to give us a new system. Because we reject 
 some part of the scheme of Locke, or think that the 
 common-sense, inductive school of Scotland has fallen 
 short of a perfect system : — because we think that the 
 idealism of the German school may have been pushed 
 too far, by shutting from our view the true foundations 
 
 * Brown contends — that Locke has been misunderstood — that by the 
 word idea he never meant to affirm that there was, except perhaps in the 
 sense of sight, a real picture or image between an external object and the 
 percipient mind — that he only used the word idea figuratively ; his lan- 
 guage being that in current use, and tinged, sometimes unconsciously to 
 himself, by opinions (not his own) of the philosophers who had gone before 
 him. Cousin takes a contrary view. The discussion of this point is of no im- 
 portance to my present purpose : but I may state, by the way, that Locke 
 has often expressed himself ambiguously and incautiously, if he did not 
 hold the views attributed to him by Reid and Cousin. 
 
 f LSHistoire de la Philosophies Vol. n. Lecture vi. to Lecture xxv. 
 Paris, Edition 1829. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXCV 
 
 of that great mass of material knowledge which rests 
 on the evidence of our senses, and is, therefore, fun- 
 damentally empirical or sensual : — because we believe 
 all this, it follows not that we are to deny the good 
 that is already done, or to close our eyes to the great 
 truths that have been in part unfolded. No system of 
 psychology has perhaps yet been published, or ever will 
 be published, in such a form as^to contain the whole 
 essence of metaphysical truth. 
 
 When I addressed the members of Trinity College 
 at the Annual Commemoration of 1832, I had not read 
 the Lectures of Professor Cousin, and I hardly knew 
 his work by name : but the following sentence (from 
 the conclusion of his twenty-second Lecture) contains 
 a kind of summary of his views, and expresses very 
 simply some of the truths shadowed forth in the fol- 
 lowing Discourse. " II rCy a pas cTidees innees, il tCy 
 a pas de propositions innees, attendu qu'il rCy a ni idees 
 ni propositions reellement existantes ; et encore, il n'y a 
 pas oVidees et de propositions generates, universellement et 
 primitivement admises sous la forme oVidees et de pro- 
 positions generales ; mats il est certain que Ventendement 
 de tous les hommes est gros en quelque sorte de jugemens 
 naturels, et que Von peut dire innes, en ce sens qu'ils sont 
 le developpement primitif, unwersel et necessaire de Ven- 
 tendement humain? 
 
 We all admit the comprehensive truth of the old 
 adage as applied to material science, Nihil in intellectu 
 quod non prius in sensu. Experience is the beginning 
 and occasion of all knowledge : but it is not knowledge 
 
CXCV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 before it has been moulded into a new and better form 
 by the innate powers of the mind itself. The adage 
 taken in its nakedness tells us but half the truth. To 
 give it its full meaning we must add another clause, 
 first given to it by Leibnitz, and it then stands as 
 follows, and is pregnant with truth and meaning : 
 Nihil est in intellects, quod non prim in sensu propter 
 intellectum ipsum. The very knowledge we first acquire 
 by experience, forces us, by a true logical necessity, 
 towards a contemplation of certain indwelling faculties 
 of the mind which must exist before all experience ; 
 and without which (as is well observed by Kant and 
 Coleridge, and the whole modern school of Idealists,) 
 experience itself would be impossible. 
 
 In the following extract Professor Cousin describes, 
 in very clear terms, the difference between the two op- 
 posed schools of psychology (the idealist and the sensual 
 or empirical) ; and at the same time indicates the weak 
 points of both : — l En general, Fidtalisme neglige plus ou 
 moins la question de Vorigine des idees, et ne les envisage 
 guere que dans leurs caracteres actuels. Se pla^ant 
 tfabord au faite de Ventendement developpe comme il 
 Vest aujouroVhui, il nen recherche pas les acquisitions 
 successives et le developpement historique . . . .il part de la 
 raison et non de V experience. Locke, au contraire, pre- 
 occupe de la question de Vorigine des idees, en neglige les 
 characteres actuels, confond leur condition chronologique 
 avec leur fondement logique, et la puissance de la raison 
 avec celle de V experience, qui la precede et la guide, mais 
 ne la Gonstitue pas. — L' experience, mise a sa juste place, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXCV11 
 
 est la condition, non le fondement de la connaissance. 
 Va-t-elle plus loin, et pretend-elk constituer toute la con- 
 naissance 9 Ce n'est plus alors q'un systeme, un systeme 
 incomplete exclusif, mcieux ; c'est Vempirisme. ou V oppose 
 de ridealisme." He then tells us wherein lie the weak 
 points of idealism : " C'est Vexageration de la puissance 
 propre de la raison ; I 'usurpation de la raison sur Inex- 
 perience ; la destruction ou VoublLde la condition chro- 
 nologique et experimental de la connaissance, dans la 
 preoccupation exclusive de ses principes logiques et ra- 
 tionnels*," &c. 
 
 On Locke's system, all ideas and all knowledge 
 spring only from sensation and reflexion. It is true 
 that many ideas take their rise in sensation ; but it is 
 not true that these ideas, as they exist in the mind, 
 even in their first elements, derive their forms only 
 from sensation ; for they are accompanied by certain 
 judgments that belong not to merely sensual impres- 
 sions. 
 
 Again, some may perhaps contend, that by the word 
 reflexion we are to understand all the inner powers and 
 capacities of the mind, whereby it moulds into shape the 
 first materials of thought, and thence rises to the high- 
 est forms of general truth. By such a use of the word 
 reflexion we might indeed bring the two schools (the 
 
 * V Ilisloire de la Philosophie, Vol. n. end of Lecture, xvn. It is 
 a very extensive work ; but the discussions on Locke's Essay occupy only 
 a part of one volume. They may be read in a translation (by Dr C. S. 
 Henry, of the United States) entitled Elements of Psychology by Victor 
 Cousin, to which are added some very good explanatory notes. This trans- 
 lation is now, 1 believe, a text-book in some of the Colleges in North 
 America. 
 
CXCV11I PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ideal and the sensual) more nearly into a verbal agree- 
 ment : but while there is a difference in principle, a 
 mere verbal agreement is worse than nothing. If it be 
 true, that although our knowledge begins with experi- 
 ence, its after form and type does not spring from ex- 
 perience, but from certain innate powers of the mind, 
 which work on the first materials of thought and 
 mould them into a shape bearing no resemblance to 
 mere sensual experience — then to include all these 
 inner powers and acts of the mind under the word re- 
 flexion (in the sense in which the word reflexion is used 
 by Locke) is only to stop short in our intellectual ana- 
 lysis, and to stifle all inquiry into the real history and 
 workings of the human mind. It neither tells us 
 what knowledge is, nor how the mind becomes stored 
 with it. 
 
 To shut out from thought all the innate powers 
 and capacities of the mind, and then to deduce all 
 knowledge from sensation and reflexion, is a large ad- 
 vance towards a sensual and material philosophy ; but 
 Locke was not a Materialist. How far he is to be 
 blamed for the mischievous conclusions men have pro- 
 fessed (it may be erroneously) to build upon his sys- 
 tem, I do not pretend to say. But, as a matter of 
 history, this at least is true — that many were misled 
 by the imperfection of his analysis and the ambiguity 
 of his language, and, above all, by hi3 one-sided dis- 
 cussions on innate ideas : — and that, pretending at least 
 to build upon his system, they learned at length to 
 resolve all knowledge into sensation : and thus became 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CXC1X 
 
 established an empirical or sensual school, which led 
 the way to a rank materialism. 
 
 One extreme naturally begets another. The ex- 
 travagant materialism of some of the followers of Locke 
 produced, perhaps, the extravagant idealism of Berke- 
 ley, who denied the material existence of the external 
 world. The idealism of Kant and his followers of the 
 German school was, in its first conception, incomparably 
 more rational and noble than that of Berkeley. But 
 it was soon followed by one transcendental flight after 
 another, till it soared far out of sight of all the helps 
 and suggestions of experimental knowledge*' 5 ". 
 
 The highest material truths derive their form from 
 the mind itself. Therefore, says the modern Idealist, 
 it is in the pure reason that we are to seek for the 
 foundations of all knowledge ; and thus may we become 
 almost free from the drudgery and toil of experimental 
 labour. On this system the experimenter, it should 
 seem, is to be instructed in his highest principles, and 
 to be taught, by one who soars above the earth into the 
 regions of pure reason, how he is to reach his highest 
 conclusions, without the labour of experiment ; and all 
 the truths of nature are at length to be evolved from 
 their inborn archetype in the mind of man. Pushed 
 to its extreme consequences, this scheme ends in ideal 
 Pantheism. 
 
 Such are the extravagances of the mind of man 
 
 * There is an excellent and condensed view of some of the positions of 
 this Transcendental Philosophy in a paper by the Master of Trinity Col- 
 lege, read before the Cambridge Philosophical Society (Nov. 13, 1848. 
 See Transactions Cam. Phil. Soc. Vol. vm. Part v.) 
 
CC PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 when left to its untamed licentious movements. — On 
 one side a sensual philosophy leading to the rankest 
 Materialism, and ending in material Pantheism; — on 
 the other, an Idealism, ending in practical opinions not 
 less destructive of the higher interests of the human 
 family, and in a rejection of those very principles 
 which are the necessary foundation of all material 
 knowledge. 
 
 Our conception of a law of gravitation is, no doubt, 
 so far ideal that it is gained by an ideal act of the mind. 
 But how is it gained ? Not by a flash of ideal inspira- 
 tion, unguided and unsuggested by experience ; but by 
 observation upon observation, and by experiment upon 
 experiment, gradually suggesting to the mind one of 
 the forms of general truth. It is by an inductive effort of 
 the mind that our knowledge, which is experimental and 
 particular, is made to pass into the form of knowledge 
 which is ideal and general. But this ideal and general 
 form of truth never could have had any being with- 
 out a previous knowledge that is sensual and experi- 
 mental. Neither can this ideal knowledge ever be- 
 come independent of the experimental. For after we 
 have evolved from the mind what we suppose an ideal 
 truth (expressed in a formal proposition that defines 
 a supposed material law), we are bound to test it, again 
 and again, by new experiments : and should these new 
 experiments fail in their aim, then our ideal truth 
 breaks down, and either loses its very being as a natural 
 truth, or must be so modified in form as to comprehend 
 within itself all the facts of our last experiments. To 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CC1 
 
 assume that we can evolve from the mind the general 
 truths of material science without experiment, is to 
 desert the plain beaten road of inductive truth, and to 
 seek our way in an impenetrable wilderness. 
 
 A general would be mad, were he to mount his 
 artillery on an air-balloon. A miller would be mad, 
 were he to set his machinery in movement, and pretend 
 to grind flour for the food of man, without a supply of 
 corn for the operation of his mill. A manufacturer 
 would be mad, who should pretend to make some fabric 
 for our use by the mere rotation of his mechanism, and 
 without supplying it with any of the raw material 
 on which his mechanism is to do its work. And not 
 one jot less mad is the transcendental Idealist who 
 pretends to work out the general truths of physical 
 science without an experimental appeal to nature, and 
 without first resting on its evidence. 
 
 Few Englishmen have offended in this way. Their 
 madness has run more in the sensual stream ; but there 
 are some signs among us of this kind of ideal lunacy ; 
 and the translation of the Physio Philosophy of Oken, 
 and its publication by the Ray Society, is one plain 
 symptom of the malady. The great radical fault of 
 his Philosophy is — that it gives the logic of induction 
 to the winds — that it overlooks (or seems to overlook) 
 those very means and methods by which, since the days 
 of Galileo, the fabric of material knowledge has been so 
 nobly and so firmly reared. The author plunges at 
 once, and with hearty faith, into the transcendental 
 speculations of Idealism,, and begins his system with 
 s. d. o 
 
CC11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 a string of propositions that have not one glimmering 
 of meaning without an assumption of principles which 
 as yet have hardly found an entrance into the sober 
 minds of Englishmen. 
 
 No doubt there are many natural analogies which 
 a laborious experimenter may overlook ; and no one can 
 tell, without trial, which of them is, or is not, important. 
 Hence it is not only bad taste, but very bad philosophy, 
 to laugh down a scheme of Nature (such, for example, 
 as the Circular System), merely because it comes not 
 within our preconceived views of a natural arrange- 
 ment. Every scheme that professes to build on facts, 
 deserves to be severely tested and examined. Again, 
 such are the riches of Nature, that a man, who at first 
 sight seems only to be indulging his imagination, may 
 strike on some new mine of thought that may be of 
 inestimable worth, if he condescend to follow out his 
 views in the honest spirit of an experimentalist. Kepler 
 was a man of this kind. The principle of causality was 
 strong within him ; and he had a firm faith in the 
 universal harmonies of Nature. Hence he was led to 
 great discoveries, though, in their specific direction, his 
 first views were guided by a false analogy. At the 
 same time he was a laborious and never-tired observer 
 and experimenter : and the love of law and of material 
 harmonies led him onwards, in good hope, to very great 
 material discoveries. But he did not torture his dis- 
 coveries to make them bend to his first ideal notions ; 
 but he made his ideal notions bend to his discoveries, 
 which he announced in the simple form of material 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CC111 
 
 inductive truths. And let no man be led astray by his 
 history, who has not the same temper and the same 
 simple love of truth. If an imagination, like that 
 of Kepler, have led to nature's secrets, because it was 
 tempered by a willing submission to experimental evi- 
 dence, let us remember, at the same time, that a rash 
 spirit of generalization is one of the marks of ignorance, 
 and that premature theory has A too often clogged the 
 progress of physical truth. Of all material sciences, 
 Geology offers perhaps the wildest field for speculation ; 
 yet, in its true history and progress, no science is more 
 practical and inductive. I believe that the premature 
 theories of Werner's school retarded its progress by 
 more than twenty years. 
 
 A philosophy to be useful should, above all things, be 
 clear in its first principles ; but in the work of Oken, 
 principles are set forth as if they were axioms, which 
 are one, almost unmixed, compound of wild, unintelligible 
 extravagance. I have done my best to find some of the 
 principles of sound reason in his fundamental proposi- 
 tions. He tells us, in the first page of his Work, " that 
 Physio-Philosophy has to shew how, and in accordance 
 with what laws, the Material took its origin ; and there- 
 fore how something derived its origin from nothing.' 
 Woe betide all human philosophy, if such is to be its 
 beginning and its aim ! I have read his Work, and I 
 have striven to perceive some glimmerings of steady light 
 among the mists of his first sixty or seventy pages ; and 
 nothing have I seen but an ignis fatuus playing, here and 
 there, on a darkness that is palpable and impenetrable. 
 
 02 
 
CC1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 I complain also of the intolerable dogmatism of his 
 Philosophy. Among his most doubtful propositions I 
 find not a syllable of doubt or hesitation. Nor is this 
 all. He is not merely unintelligible, it may sometimes be, 
 from clothing his meaning in words derived from a psy- 
 chological theory, ill comprehended by his reader ; but 
 he is often untrue to Nature in the assertion of material 
 facts, about which any man of common sense may judge, 
 if he but choose to use his senses. Some pages I may 
 not have comprehended, because I am not one of the 
 initiated in the mysteries of transcendental philosophy. 
 But there are points in Oken's volume on which I dare 
 to give a very positive opinion. All his pages on the struc- 
 ture of the Earth give us little more than a compound 
 mass of error, involved in a succession of assertions 
 poured out with the utmost dogmatism, and without one 
 syllable of reserve. Almost everything that he tells us 
 of Geology, and much that he tells us of Mineralogy, 
 must come under this unmitigated censure. His Geology 
 is false to Nature in its beginning, and its middle, and 
 its end*. 
 
 But it is said that there is a proof of great know- 
 ledge in the works of Oken, and many bright original 
 ideas, which may be, and have been, carried out in the 
 illustration of dark and difficult questions of comparative 
 anatomy and physiology. One who aims at everything 
 must needs hit something, and I believe it true that he 
 has done good service ; nor would any one grudge him 
 his honour for all that he has done in the cause of 
 
 * See Supplement to the Appendix, No. VIII. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCV 
 
 science ; at least, those parts of science which he has 
 studied practically and knows experimentally. His 
 fault is — that after experimental studies of the sternest 
 kind, after amassing knowledge, from observation, with 
 no common skill ; and after exhibiting in his own person 
 that kind of philosophical inspiration which loves to 
 soar from physical facts to physical theories — from par- 
 ticular to general truths ; he then chooses to turn round 
 upon us and to deny the nature of his own material 
 fabric ; and to teach us, only through the mists of Ideal- 
 ism, that very knowledge which he had gained as an 
 experimentalist, or learned from the experimental know- 
 ledge of other men, and which he never could have 
 gained by any other method. 
 
 The general truths of physics are, it may be said, 
 the ideal forms of material truths made out by observa- 
 tion and experiment. But what becomes of any gene- 
 ral truth if the foundation of experiment be away ? It 
 is then but a castle in the air. True physical induc- 
 tion implies a previous series of consistent observations 
 or experiments ; and so far must we range ourselves 
 with the Sensualist. But the verbal expression of 
 a law, and the inductive power by which we ascend to 
 the general conception of the law, is an act of a different 
 kind, and brings us to the side of the Idealist : but if 
 we choose to remain there, then must there soon be 
 an end of all farther physical progress. Great deductive 
 truths have, no doubt, been brought to light by pure 
 reason from well established laws of nature; but such 
 truths have their limit, and deal only with the conse- 
 
CCV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 quences which follow of necessity from laws already 
 known ; but if we wish for a wider grasp of material 
 nature and to rise higher than we have yet done, we 
 must again become the pupils of the empirical school. 
 We must quit our high position, and again condescend to 
 make experiments ; which may perhaps only strengthen 
 the position we had already gained ; or may give us a 
 better insight into the universal harmonies of nature, 
 and a conception of higher laws than those which 
 could be expressed under the former condition of our 
 knowledge. 
 
 () 11. Digression on some Discoveries of Oken followed out 
 by Owen. — Archetype of Nature — General Scale of 
 Nature. Never existed at one time in the History of 
 the Earth. The reconstruction of the Scale subversive 
 of the Theory of Development, fyc. 
 
 The translation of the Physio-Philosophy of Oken, 
 and the recent publications of Professor Owen, impose 
 on me the necessity of detaining the reader with a 
 short digression on the discoveries of these two great 
 physiologists, so far as they have any bearing on the 
 discussions of this Preface*". 
 
 All animated nature is formed on a plan, and every 
 new discovery gives but a fuller proof of this great admit- 
 ted truth. Now in any Division of the animal kingdom 
 is there an archetype, or ideal form, to which all other 
 
 * Other names should be mentioned were I to attempt any thing like a 
 history of these discoveries : but my only wish is, that my sketch may be 
 understood ; and I profess not to state facts in their full or historical order. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCVU 
 
 animal forms of the same Class are subordinate ? This 
 is a fair inductive question, suggested by the pregnant 
 facts of nature ; and it can be answered only by the 
 inductive method. The question never could have 
 entered into the mind of man had it not been first 
 suggested by the facts of nature ; and it never could 
 have been answered without continued and patient 
 observation. 
 
 In every vertebrate animal there is (as the name 
 implies) a back-bone made up of many parts that are 
 closely joined together. Every joint of this back-bone 
 has a cylindrical or central portion, which helps to give 
 rigidity to the body and support to the limbs, and has 
 many other important offices in the animal economy. 
 On the upper part of these several cylinders are certain 
 projecting bones (called processes or apophyses) that unite 
 together, and form a protection to the great nervous 
 chord which descends down the back: and on a lower 
 part are also similar processes, which cover the great 
 descending artery and other vital organs of the body. 
 Now if we examine the several joints of the back-bone 
 of any vertebrate animal, from the top of the neck 
 to the end of the tail, we find that, however different 
 they may be in form and in apparent office, they 
 are made up of homologous parts — that is, of parts 
 which tally one to another, and may be described 
 by common names. In the neck we find not ribs ; 
 but we do find the rudiments of ribs. The neck 
 requires free motion, and would be injured in its move- 
 ments by a stiff collar of ribs. In the back the lower 
 
CCV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 bony processes of the cylindrical joints are elongated 
 into ribs, which are united in front by the sternal bones, 
 and thus form a kind of hollow bony cylinder for the 
 protection of the heart and lungs, and the great descend- 
 ing arteries. In the loins, the ribs or lower processes 
 again become degenerate, and again allow a more free 
 movement to the body. In the haunches these lower 
 processes of the back become once more confluent with 
 bones that form a cylindrical covering for the softer 
 vessels, and offer a strong fulcrum for the lower limbs. 
 In the tail we find not ribs ; but we do find a set of 
 lower processes that embrace certain blood-vessels, and, 
 however different in form, are strictly homologous to 
 the ribs. For if we take one joint of the tail, and, in 
 the same skeleton, compare it with a joint of the back 
 united to its ribs and sternal bones (or cartilages), we 
 find on this comparison that the several parts of the two 
 joints are so strictly homologous that they tally one by 
 one, and that an anatomist can describe them by com- 
 mon typical names. But how have these analogies been 
 made out ! Not by mere theory, nor by any ideal 
 scheme of nature unsuggested by experiment. The 
 facts I have stated were made out in the way of honest 
 and laborious induction. The structure of the back- 
 bone, and the general analogies of its parts, were as- 
 suredly well known to Oken, before he published his 
 original views respecting the typical relations of the 
 skull to the other parts of the skeleton, or advanced a 
 step beyond the anatomists who went before him. 
 
 Let us now pass on to the cranium of the same 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CC1X 
 
 skeleton. It is joined to the back-bone as if it were 
 but another vertebra, and it performs one of the impor- 
 tant offices of a vertebra ; for the spinal chord passes 
 within it, and is surrounded by it. But the spinal 
 chord now becomes expanded into that spherical mass we 
 call the brain ; and the bony envelope, corresponding 
 with it, seems to lose all appearance of vertebral appen- 
 dages, and to pass into that great spherical mass of bone 
 we call the skull. The skull, however, is made up of 
 many parts that may be separated one from another ; 
 and may not these several parts be so arranged as to 
 tally naturally, one by one, with the central cylinder 
 and the processes of a single vertebra, or of more than 
 one ? This seems to be a very natural inductive question : 
 and thousands may have proposed it to themselves in 
 thought, though they saw not their way to its true 
 answer. Oken, in whom the inductive power was strong, 
 and who was well skilled in the analogies of the verte- 
 brate skeleton, went far towards a right solution of the 
 previous anatomical question. Owen, following in his 
 leader's track (for in this question Oken was his leader), 
 has, in the opinion of our best anatomists, now resolved 
 our doubts, and shewn that in the whole vertebrate 
 Sub-Kingdom (from the lowest type in Fishes, to the 
 highest type in Man), the cranium is made up of parts 
 corresponding to four vertebrae ; and that these cranial 
 parts tally, one by one, with the corresponding parts of 
 a true typical vertebra. — Nay, he has gone farther still: 
 for by following in the same inductive train, and not in 
 one step guided by any theory that was not suggested 
 
CCX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 by known facts, and comparing experimentally one part 
 of nature with another, he has endeavoured to eliminate 
 the true rational archetype of every vertebrate skeleton 
 of whatsoever Class. 
 
 An Idealist may perhaps tell us by what powers of 
 reason this long inductive train of thought was brought 
 to its accomplishment : and it would be great blind : 
 ness for any one to deny the part performed by pure 
 reason in the ideal construction of an archetype. The 
 archetype is but the creature of reason ; but let us not 
 therefore be told that it is from pure reason we are to 
 seek for physical truth, a priori, and not by the help of 
 our senses, guided and urged on by the inductive in^ 
 stinct. If we are to seek for practical wisdom, we must 
 be first guided by the experience of those who have 
 gone before us ; and if we gain strength by the labour of 
 treading in their steps, it may be our high privilege to 
 advance somewhat farther than they have done. But 
 we only mistify ourselves, and those around us, if we 
 think to explain the secrets of nature by the oracles of 
 pure reason untutored by experience. To deny the 
 reality of knowledge derived inductively from the senses, 
 is utterly to deny our nature : and we do not exalt pure 
 reason, but degrade it, and make it worthless and 
 impotent, if we deprive it of experience, which is both 
 its guide and minister*. 
 
 * In this, and the preceding section, I have endeavoured to shew that 
 the physiological discoveries of Oken are not ideal or transcendental, but 
 strictly inductive. The same opinion is well given by M. Jobert, in his 
 Outlines of a New System of Philosophy, (London, 1848, 1849), as will 
 appear from the following extract : — " However great was the merit of this 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCX1 
 
 I have done my best to explain, with as little use 
 of technical language as possible, the general views of 
 Oken and Owen. They elevate our conceptions of Crea- 
 tive Wisdom ; for they bring under the domain of law 
 what was before less perfectly comprehended in it. 
 All the former proofs of design, so far as they were 
 clearly seen and unfolded, they have left exactly where 
 they were before. The eye has the same adaptation 
 to the vibrations of light, and the ear to the pulsations 
 of the air, whatsoever may be the homologies of the 
 skeleton. But these new discoveries do add very greatly 
 
 discovery (viz. of the cranial homologies), which according to Professor 
 Owen, would, alone, have conferred immortality on the name of Oken ; 
 it is to be wondered how philosophers can have been deluded into the 
 belief that it was an idea a priori, whilst the whole process of deductive 
 argumentation is most evident in the naive narration of the author himself. 
 First, he sees a bleached skull ; then, he regards it intensely ; and, now, he 
 perceives that it is composed of parts. A man who had never seen a vertebra, 
 or a series of vertebrae, or even a common anatomist, could not have guessed a 
 possible relation of similarity between this head and a vertebral column. But 
 Lorenz Oken, a man of genius, a great comparative anatomist, who has 
 spent part of his life in seeing and handling vertebrae, after seeing, picking 
 up, turning round, and regarding intensely something, which reminds him 
 of another thing that he has very often seen before, immediately thinks that 
 it is like a vertebral column, and concludes that all the heads he has seen, 
 and which he could ever see, must be composed of parts whose type is the 
 vertebra. All this is very natural as a pure process of induction from facts 
 previously observed. There is nothing a priori or mysterious in it, for, 
 since the idea struck him only after he had picked up the skull and regarded 
 it intensely, I cannot see how any argument could be drawn from this in 
 favour of the doctrine, that great generalizations are necessary truths, which 
 cannot be learnt from experience." (p. 55—63.) I cannot, in a note like 
 this, give any general criticism of a work, which concisely touches nearly 
 all the disputed points of Psychology. But I may remark, by the way, that 
 it is short, clear, and logical, and written in good and forcible English: — 
 a fact that is truly astonishing when we learn that the Author, but a few 
 years since, came into this country, when he was not able to speak a syl- 
 lable of our language. Before he came to this country he was, however, 
 well known in France, by his published works, as a man of science. 
 
CCX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 to the proofs of design, by giving us new proofs of 
 adaptation. For if there be a well-understood plan in 
 nature, and if in all parts of the animal kingdom that 
 plan or archetype be so modified as to become adapted 
 to peculiar wants and conditions — then is that very 
 modification in itself a sure indication of design ; and 
 we may give a great extension to that kind of argu- 
 ment which I have endeavoured to exemplify in one of 
 the notes of the Appendix*. 
 
 These general views help us also to explain and 
 rationalize certain well-known phenomena, such as 
 abortive or rudimentary organs. These organs may 
 have a muscular use which in some cases we do 
 not comprehend. However this may be, they form 
 a part, and an essential part, of a great scheme ; and 
 they help us to understand the pattern of nature's 
 workmanship. One use, at least, they have ; they 
 tend to complete the order and plan of nature : and 
 this, moreover, we may venture to affirm, that the 
 Author of Nature manifests, in examples without num- 
 ber, a love of order and harmony and beauty, which 
 is altogether independent of our conceptions of mere 
 vulgar use. 
 
 But what is to be the effect of these discoveries on 
 our previous discussions on animal development and 
 transmutation ? They may, perhaps, help to give us a 
 more philosophical and natural arrangement of the 
 animal kingdom; but they give us no help in dis- 
 cussing any question on the origin of life, or on the 
 
 * Appendix, note F. infra, p. 143. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCX111 
 
 transmutation of one Species into another. These 
 questions belong, first of all, to fact, and not to theory. 
 The proper business of science is with second causes ; 
 and we admit not Specific Transmutations among 
 acknowledged second causes. And as for the origin of 
 life, or the first origin of any connected series of natural 
 phenomena, we believe the discussion is out of the 
 province of inductive science ; for however high it may 
 ascend from the sensual into the ideal, it dares not to 
 start with the ideal ; and (unlike the Physio-Philosophy 
 of Oken) it presumes not to tell us " how something 
 derived its existence out of nothing ! " The early parts 
 of this Preface were written before I had read the 
 Physio-Philosophy of Oken, or the several works of 
 Owen, to which I have here referred*. I have read 
 them now ; and in revising the early parts of this 
 Preface, during its progress through the press, I have 
 not, in consequence of these new lights, been compelled 
 to change one word of what was written. 
 
 " To what natural or secondary causes the orderly 
 succession and progression of such organic phenomena 
 may have been committed, we as yet are ignorant. But 
 if, without derogation to the Divine power, we may 
 conceive the existence of such ministers, and personify 
 them by the term 'Nature,*' we learn from the past 
 history of our globe that she had advanced with slow 
 and stately steps, guided by the archetypal light, 
 amidst the wreck of worlds, from the first embodiment 
 
 * Physio-Philosophy of Oken. Archetype and Homologies of the 
 Vertebrate Skeleton. Owen, 1848. Discourse on the Nature of Limbs. 
 Owen, 1849. 
 
CCX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of the Vertebrate idea under its old Ichthyic vestment, 
 until it became arranged in the glorious garb of the 
 human form*." 
 
 Had I not known the opinions of this great 
 comparative anatomist, as they are expressed in many 
 of his recent works, I should, perhaps, have thought 
 that in this passage he meant to indicate some theo- 
 retical law of generative development from one animal 
 type to another along the whole ascending scale of 
 Nature. But such is not the opinion to which he 
 would give the sanction of his name. 
 
 An historical development, as a matter of fact, is 
 one thing — a development by natural law, or by second 
 causes we can comprehend, is another. There is no 
 material law to explain the beginning of life, sensation, 
 and volition. And were such phenomena begun, and 
 so far under our control as to fall in with our concep- 
 tions of a material law, and were capable of being 
 reproduced experimentally, still there would not be the 
 semblance of any generative law to explain the passage 
 of one organic Order or organic Class into another. 
 
 Natural philosophy deals only, I repeat, with second 
 causes. The beginning of any one of Nature's laws 
 belongs not to the province of man's contemplation, 
 except so far as it is a question of mere history based 
 on observed facts, and not upon a priori reasoning. 
 Not only are we "as yet ignorant," but we ever must 
 be ignorant, of those hidden causes which moved the 
 Creative Will to exercise or to control its creative 
 
 * Owen, On the Nature of Limbs, p. 86. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXV 
 
 power. On the waxen wings of sense it has not been 
 given us to soar thus high. 
 
 If there be an archetype in the Vertebrate Division 
 of animated nature, we may well ask whether there may 
 not be a more general archetype that runs through the 
 whole kingdom of the living world. In a certain sense 
 there is. All animals, if we except the Radiata which 
 come close to a Vegetable type, .are bilateral and sym- 
 metrical, have double organs of sense, and have a nervous 
 and vascular system with many parts in very near 
 homology, even when we put, side by side, for compari- 
 son, the animal forms taken from the opposite extremes 
 of Nature's scale. And even among the Radiata, where 
 we, at first sight, seem to lose all traces of the vertebrate 
 type, many of the Genera, on a better examination, are 
 proved still to be bilateral and symmetrical*. 
 
 In every successive Fauna of Geology we find the 
 same kind of animal subordination we meet with now in 
 the living world ; and the very earliest Genera and 
 Orders were not organically inferior to the Genera and 
 Orders of this day which we derive from corresponding 
 grades in the scale of Nature. Nay, sometimes the 
 primeval Genera and Orders are organically superior to 
 their corresponding types in the living world. Again, 
 the general organic plan of Nature has been at all times 
 not merely analogous, but identical. If Genera, Or- 
 ders, and Classes be now distinct and separate, they 
 
 * I here refer to the descriptions of Echinoderms and Corals, by Pro- 
 fessors Agassiz and Dana ; and, I may add, to the arrangement of the 
 Corals in the Woodwardian Museum by Mr. M'Coy. 
 
CCXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 were equally distinct and separate in all periods of 
 the old world. There is no development on the lines 
 of organic ascent such as to produce confusion : but 
 if the theory of development were true, there must be, on 
 some parts of the organic scale, such a blending and 
 penetration of types as would blot out and obliterate 
 our lines of separation between Genera and Orders and 
 Classes. But we look in vain for any semblance of such 
 obliteration : and if we try to complete our present scale, 
 by interpolating within it the organic types of the old 
 world, we find no incongruity in our task. The oldest 
 types fall into their place in the general scale, as natu- 
 rally as the newest. We may, by this interpolation, 
 improve and perfect our general scale ; but we break 
 not down the barriers between Genera and Orders and 
 Classes. They continue as strong and as abruptly 
 marked as they were before. 
 
 The elevation of the Fauna of successive periods 
 was not therefose made by transmutation, but by cre- 
 ative additions ; and it is by watching these additions 
 that we get some insight into Nature's true historical 
 progress. Judging by our evidence (and by what else 
 have we any right to judge ?) there was a time when 
 Cephalopoda were the highest types of animal life. They 
 were then the Primates of this world ; and, correspond- 
 ing to their office and position, some of them were of 
 noble structure and gigantic size. But these creatures 
 were degraded from their rank at the head of Nature, 
 and Fishes next took the lead : and they did not rise up 
 in Nature in some degenerate form, as if they were but 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXV11 
 
 the transmuted progeny of the Cephalopoda ; but they 
 started into life (if we are to trust our evidence) in the 
 very highest ichthyic type that ever was created. Fol- 
 lowing our history chronologically, Reptiles next took 
 the lead at the head of Nature — not by transmutation, 
 but by creative addition — and (with some almost eva- 
 nescent exceptions) they nourished during the countless 
 ages of the Secondary Period a»- the lords and despots 
 of the world ; and they had an organic perfection cor- 
 responding to their exalted rank in Nature"^ kingdom ; 
 for their highest Orders were not merely great in strength 
 and stature, but were anatomically raised far above any 
 forms of the Reptile Class now living in the world. We 
 have seen, however, that this Class was, in its turn, to 
 lose its rank at the head of Nature ; and what is more, 
 we have seen that it underwent (when considered collec- 
 tively) a positive organic degradation before the end of 
 the Secondary Period, and (if we may trust our evi- 
 dence) this took place countless ages before terrestrial 
 Mammals of any living type had been called into being. 
 Mammals were added next (near the commencement of 
 the Tertiary Period), and seem to have been added sud- 
 denly. Some of the early extinct forms of this Class, 
 which we now know only by ransacking the ancient 
 catacombs of Nature, were powerful and gigantic; and 
 we believe they were collectively well fitted for the place 
 they filled. But they, in their turn, were to be degraded 
 from their place at the head of Nature ; and she became 
 what she now is, by the addition of Man. By this last 
 addition she is more exalted than she was before. Man 
 s. r>. p 
 
CCXVlll PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 stands by himself the despotic lord of the living world : 
 not so great in organic strength as many of the despots 
 that went before him in Nature's chronicle, but raised far 
 above them all by a higher development of the brain — 
 by a framework that fits him for the operations of mecha- 
 nical skill — by superadded reason — by a social instinct 
 of combination — by a prescience that tells him to act 
 prospectively — by a conscience that makes him amenable 
 to law — by conceptions that transcend the narrow 
 limits of his vision — by hopes that have no full fruition 
 here — by an inborn capacity of rising from individual 
 facts to the apprehension of general laws — by a concep- 
 tion of a Cause for all the phenomena of sense — and by 
 a consequent belief in a God of Nature. 
 
 Such is the history of Creation. It is not the dream 
 of a disordered fancy, but an honest record of successive 
 facts that were stamped by Nature's hand on the chroni- 
 cle of the material world. Where our chronicle is broken 
 and defective, we may acknowledge our ignorance and- 
 be silent ; or we may speculate analogically on points 
 where true historical evidence is wanting. We may, in 
 part at least, endeavour to explain what is unknown by 
 what is known ; for we believe that Nature has been 
 consistent with herself. We are certain that there have 
 been great successive changes in the surface of the 
 earth — that some of these changes were slow and 
 gradual — that others were brought about by the sudden 
 eruption of the pent-up powers of Nature, and were 
 comparatively rapid and violent. But each change was 
 in subordination to the general laws of material Nature, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCX1X 
 
 and was, we believe, but a prelude to the material 
 conditions which followed, till physical Nature became 
 what she now is. We also believe that the successive 
 creations of the organic kingdoms were in harmony with 
 these physical changes in the surface of the Earth — and 
 that the Fauna of each period formed a kind of prelude 
 to the Fauna that was to follow, till living Nature 
 became what she now is. Nay, we can sometimes 
 discern this kind of organic relationship or analogy, not 
 merely in a broad statement of facts (like some of those 
 above enumerated), but in a closer comparison of the 
 Genera and Orders that enter into the Fauna of two 
 successive periods. Thus the gigantic Edentata (the 
 Glyptodons and JVtylodons, &c.) in the superficial drift 
 of South America, formed a prelude to the part taken 
 up, in our days, by the burrowing Armadillos and 
 the climbing Sloths; and the gigantic Marsupials in 
 the caverns of New Holland have a like relation to the 
 Kangaroos now bounding on the surface of the country. 
 But, while we admit all this, we are not so mad as to 
 affirm that the giants of the former period were the 
 natural progenitors of their dwarfish representatives in 
 the living world. What we do believe is, that the past 
 history of Nature, as it is seen in her Geological records, 
 though strange and altogether unanticipated in the 
 speculations of human reason, is consistent and cohe- 
 rent; and that, before the creation of all worlds, there 
 was an archetype of Nature (dead as well as living, past 
 as well as present) in the prescient mind of God. 
 
 Independently of any evidence we derive from 
 palaeontology, a conception of this kind is so grateful 
 
 p 2 
 
CCXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 to the imagination, and is so obviously suggested by 
 the clear gradations of living nature, that an ideal 
 organic scale has, for ages past, been a subject of 
 speculation. I profess not to trace its history : but 
 Dr. Johnson tells us that it took its rise among the 
 Oriental metaphysicians and physiologists. In the 
 former half of last century it was a favourite theme 
 with our moralists and poets. It was adorned by the 
 beautiful prose of Addison, and the glittering poetry of 
 Pope ; and it was tortured into the service of infidelity 
 by Bolingbroke. Lastly, it was taken up by Soame 
 Jenyns in his acute and elegant, but very unsatisfactory 
 Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. But the 
 links of his ideal chain of nature were snapped asunder, 
 and its fragments were crushed to atoms by the weighty 
 and indignant criticism of Johnson*. 
 
 In the hypothetical scheme of the Authors just 
 alluded to, "the Universe is a system whose very essence 
 consists in subordination — a scale of beings descending by 
 insensible degrees, from infinite perfection to absolute 
 nothing; in which, though we may justly expect to find 
 perfection in the whole, could we possibly comprehend it ; 
 yet would it be the highest absurdity to hope for it in 
 all its parts, because the beauty and happiness of the 
 whole depend altogether on the just inferiority of its 
 
 parts," &c " It is moreover highly probable (we 
 
 are told), that there is such a connexion between all 
 ranks and orders by subordinate degrees, that they 
 mutually support each other's existence ; and every one 
 in its place is absolutely necessary towards sustaining 
 
 * Review of a Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXX1 
 
 the whole vast magnificent fabric." " That no link 
 
 in the chain can be broken," &c. 
 
 Such, in a few words, is the ideal scheme of Nature ; 
 to which Johnson replies as follows : "Our discoverers 
 tell us the Creator has made beings of all orders, and 
 that therefore one of them must be such as man. But 
 this system seems to be established on a concession 
 
 which, if it be refused, cannot t>e extorted." "It 
 
 does not appear, even to the imagination, that of three 
 orders of beings the first and third receive any ad- 
 vantage from the imperfection of the second, or that 
 they may not equally exist, though the second had 
 never been, or should cease to be ; and why should that 
 be concluded necessary which cannot be proved even to 
 
 be useful ? v "The scale of existence from infinity 
 
 to nothing cannot possibly have being. The highest 
 being not infinite must be, as has been often observed, 
 
 at an infinite distance below infinity" "Nor is 
 
 this all. In the scale, wherever it begins or ends, are 
 
 infinite vacuities So that, as far as we can judge, 
 
 there may be room in the vacuity between any two 
 steps of the scale, or between any two points in the 
 cone of being, for infinite exertion of infinite power,'"' 
 &c. This reply is perfect for its purpose, and needs 
 not perhaps the addition of a word. 
 
 But Johnson was not a great naturalist ; and we now 
 know, by a far higher evidence than had fallen under 
 his contemplation, that there never was a scale like 
 that above described. It never was made up of parts 
 so mutually dependent, that one link could not exist 
 without all the rest above it and below it. It never 
 
CCXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 existed without such vacuities as cannot be filled up by 
 the renovating operation of mere material laws ; unless 
 we cast away the lessons of inductive truth, and give to 
 material laws a different power from what they have 
 in Nature. Such as it is, it never existed at one time ; 
 but its successive parts were elaborated during successive 
 times. This we have learnt from a more enlarged study 
 of the works of Nature : but we do admit the existence 
 of a scale of Nature — not such as was conceived by 
 Bolingbroke, tricked out by Pope, and made the support 
 of a moral scheme by Jenyns — but such as I have en- 
 deavoured to describe historically from the clear records 
 of Creation. 
 
 After the criticism of Johnson the universal scale 
 of Nature seems for a time to have been forgotten ; but 
 it is conjured up again, with new connexions and super- 
 added links, by our material Pantheists. They give no 
 support to their ideal chain by attaching it to the 
 throne of God. They dare, in imagination, to thrust 
 the God of Nature from his throne and to deify the 
 elements ; and from them only to work out all the 
 phenomena of Nature both dead and living : and as 
 their experience carries them upwards no farther than 
 man, him they impudently deify. They go back to 
 the old sensual fooleries of hero-worship, and put man 
 in the place of God. They know Nature too well to 
 tell us of a chain of Nature existing at one time from 
 nothing to infinity, and with its links so bound together 
 " that not one link can be broken without destroying 
 the vast and magnificent fabric of Nature." But they 
 do tell us of a scheme so knit together by material laws 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXX111 
 
 (and by nothing else), that every being must have passed 
 in the way of a natural generative ascent, through every 
 grade of an ascending scale. The ideal chain of Pope 
 and Jenyns, and the pantheistic chain of our modern 
 Materialists, though starting from an entirely different 
 conception of the seat where dwells the true archetype 
 of Nature, bring us nearly to the same conclusion ; and 
 the same reply may be applied 4o both. There is no 
 power in Nature (if we shut out the creative power 
 of God) to elaborate the nearest successive links of 
 Nature's ascending chain such as we behold it. And 
 were we (hypothetically and for the sake of argument) 
 to grant this power, endless vacuities would still remain 
 that would utterly defy the efforts of any known 
 material law, and which no power short of Creative 
 Wisdom could supply. 
 
 But our objections end not here. If the Panthe- 
 istic scheme of development be true, every line on the 
 great scale of Nature must be progressive. If we deny 
 this principle we stultify the whole theory of develop- 
 ment. On this theory we may have beings of a low 
 order during all successive periods : but such beings must 
 either die away from Nature, or rise by natural transmu- 
 tation, like the animals before them, higher and higher 
 still on the scale, as we pass on to successive periods. 
 There can be no pause in a material law. Hence, on 
 this scheme, the organic development on every line must 
 be on the whole progressive and chronological. Now 
 we have admitted that there has been an historical 
 development of animated nature by creative additions, 
 but not by natural development : for on our several 
 
CCXX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 lines of ascent the succession of organic types is not on 
 a natural or chronological scale. 
 
 I am detaining the reader of this digression by 
 statements, which, perforce, lead me into repetitions of 
 what I have said before. But I will now affirm, once 
 for all, that the actual and historical scale suggests not 
 to any reasonable mind the theory of development. 
 Take the whole scale of nature as we find it — fill it out 
 by embodying in it every living type of nature, whether 
 animal or vegetable — interpolate among them every 
 dead type yet found by ransacking the catacombs of 
 nature in all the old deposits of the earth ; and give 
 to these dead types an imaginary life. And what have 
 we then ? A grand development of nature it is true ; 
 but not a sequence that rises chronologically, or is derived 
 from any known natural or generative law. If the 
 Pantheistic theory of transmutation and development 
 were true, then the whole scale, made up (so far as we 
 can see our way) of many parallel lines of organic 
 ascent, must of necessity be progressive; for all its 
 parts are linked together in one natural system of 
 transmutation to something higher. Let us then, once 
 for all, put this theory to the test by what we may safely 
 call the eocperimenta cruris of its truth. Begin with 
 the lowest animals on our scale. They are not the 
 first in age. On a scheme of material development we 
 ought to find mountains of Corals and hard Zoophites 
 (creatures well fitted for fossil preservation) under all 
 other traces of animal life among our most ancient 
 deposits : but there we find" them not. Go on to a 
 Class of Molluscs, and take the family of Brachio- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXXV 
 
 poda ; for they existed at Nature's dawn and they 
 exist now ; but they were larger and more noble in 
 Nature's infancy than they are now. They flourished, 
 and they seem to have been degraded. Along with 
 them we find the Cephalopoda, and of these we can tell 
 the same history. Take the whole Sub-kingdom of 
 Molluscs, so far as it was created in the dawn of 
 nature, and we see in it no marks of immaturity or 
 imperfection. Next take the great complicated Class 
 of Fishes, both of the living and the extinct world, 
 and we find not its organic lines arranged on a scale 
 of chronological ascent. If we seek for the crowning 
 type of this great Class we may find it among the 
 most ancient monuments of extinct nature. From 
 thence we can bring it up and place it side by side, 
 and perhaps above, the most exalted ichthyic type of 
 the living world. Leave the Class of Fishes and pass 
 on to the scale of Reptiles, dead and living. Is this 
 scale chronological ? Is the last collective Reptile Fauna 
 the highest, shewing the last and best development from 
 Nature's womb ? Not so. Again, we must return to 
 the old tombs of Nature, and thence bring back an 
 ancient Reptile type, and put it as the true crowning 
 type of her workmanship, and far above all the living 
 Genera of the Class. Is this like progressive develop- 
 ment by natural generation? Whatever ignorance may 
 assert or pantheism may fable, I fearlessly say no. But 
 Nature^s denial is far more emphatic than the feeble 
 words of my negation. 
 
 I now therefore take my leave of this leading in- 
 quiry of my Preface, with an apology for repetitions 
 
CCXXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 that were almost inevitable. I have endeavoured to 
 make each section independent of the others, and on 
 that account have been led, by independent points of 
 evidence, to a repetition of similar conclusions; for I 
 believe that few persons will read this Preface through, 
 while many may turn over certain sections of it. I have 
 written with earnestness and sincerity, and I have not 
 knowingly blinked any opposing fact, or overstated a 
 single argument. The subject is one of vast importance; 
 for in truth it virtually involves our belief in a Creator 
 and an overruling Providence. Let me then wind up 
 this digression by another quotation from Dr. John- 
 son's admirable Review. " There is a degree of know- 
 ledge that will direct a man to refer all to Providence, 
 and to acquiesce in the condition that Omniscient 
 Goodness has determined to allot him ; to consider this 
 world as a phantom that must soon glide from before 
 his eyes, and the distresses and vexations that encom- 
 pass him, as dust scattered in his path, as a blast that 
 chills him for a moment, and passes off for ever." 
 
 We have now reached a point from which we may 
 again turn back to answer a former question more 
 directly than we have yet done. What have been the 
 conditions of mind that have led men to deny the 
 natural evidence of a Creative Power ? They have put 
 themselves in a false position, we reply, by a misappre- 
 hension of themselves, leading them into an ideal Pan- 
 theism, or by a misapprehension of Nature, leading 
 them into a material Pantheism. The former deifies 
 the mind of man, the latter deifies the dead elements. 
 Both are false, and mischievous because they are false. 
 
PKEFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXXV11 
 
 True knowledge elevates the soul; Pantheism (in what- 
 ever form) withers it and degrades it : for Pantheism 
 cuts us off from all our higher moral aspirations, and 
 from all our innate strength : — from that principle of 
 Causality which elevates us above the rank of beasts, 
 because it lifts our thoughts above the material things 
 around us; which teaches us that the sensual has its 
 perfection in the ideal; that material law must have 
 sprung from a personal ordaining Lawgiver; that the 
 mind of man is not a self-existing thing, but the off- 
 spring of a supreme Creating Mind ; that above all 
 nature, dead and living, is nature's God. 
 
 Men are the fools of fashion, and schemes of deve- 
 lopment are the fashion of the hour. Constitutions, that 
 once came to life only after long gestation and many a 
 mortal pang, are now to be developed into full stature, 
 while the sun is making one of its daily rounds in the 
 sky. Law is to develope its true supremacy by the dis- 
 solution of the elements of order. Nations are to be 
 developed into riches, power, and strength, and happi- 
 ness, by the abolition of the rights of property. On 
 a revolving mechanism, all things, once thought great 
 and glorious, are to descend into the kennel ; and out 
 of it are to rise the elements of another system which 
 are to be twirled and developed into something newer 
 
 and more glorious One develops all knowledge from 
 
 the mind, and laughs at the drudging materialist and 
 experimentalist. Another, bristling up and blundering 
 among small facts, tells us that in them he finds the 
 elements of all nature within his material ken — that 
 he has machinery fit for all work, by which he can 
 
CCXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 grind mind out of matter, rationalize the brute forms of 
 nature, fabricate a new web of humanity, and teach us 
 something better than Christian charity. Things most 
 sacred are to be swept into a fashionable whirlpool, 
 wherein the strangest incongruities are now making 
 their gyrations side by side. One, calling himself an 
 Idealist, makes our Religion nothing but a turn of 
 thought evolved naturally by the mind during its whirl 
 of development ; as if the followers of Jesus had been a 
 set of moody speculative philosophers, and not (as we 
 know they were) a set of very simple and earnest men ! — 
 Lastly, in the same vortex, and side by side with the 
 whirling Idealists, we see a dark being with many faces, 
 who first proclaims himself an anti-rationalist ; and to 
 justify the symbols of this creed, becomes a vender 
 of preposterous miracles and bygone fables ; and then 
 to bring his morality down to the level of his cre- 
 dulity, publishes what he believes not true, and dares 
 to tell us afterwards, that truth is not the verbal ex- 
 pression of our individual belief, but the watchword of 
 a party. And then he makes another gyration that 
 draws him within the whirlpool of the Pantheist, and his 
 brain turns with it ; and by whatsoever name he may 
 now pass, and whatsoever may be the last form and colour 
 of his symbols, he is but the hierophant of Pantheism ; for 
 he sees in the simple elements of his faith, nothing but 
 an organic germ that by a process of incubation may be 
 hatched by man himself into a new organic type, and a 
 higher grade of supernatural development. Where these 
 drunken movements are to end I know not. The sub- 
 ject is no matter for mockery, but for solemn thought. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXX1X 
 
 { 12. Reconsideration of the Argument for Final Causes. 
 Miracles. Belief in a First Cause, and Moral Con- 
 elusions from it. Induction the Fountain of all 
 material Truth, fyc. 
 
 The Rationalist, the Pantheist, and the Materialist, 
 all take one common ground from which they start 
 their systems. — They all refuse to admit any manifesta- 
 tion of a power superior to that of vulgar nature. 
 If facts, whether historical or natural, be put before 
 them, which seem out of the ordinary course of nature, 
 they either shut their eyes to the facts, or tell us that 
 " there must be some power" in common material nature 
 capable of producing them. Their first objections are 
 based on what they call experience ; and then they reach 
 their grand conclusion by virtually rejecting the testimony 
 of experience. There are facts in the past history of 
 nature, as well as in the past history of man, which are 
 utterly beyond our ordinary experience. If this be 
 true (and it is true), we refer such facts not to second 
 causes within our experience, and which our experience 
 tells us to be inadequate, but to a power above that 
 of vulgar nature which is known only by experience ; — 
 to the will and energy of the great First Cause, who 
 created all worlds, animate or inanimate, and ordained 
 the laws by which they were first called into being, and 
 are still upheld. 
 
 " Once believe that there is a God, and miracles are 
 not incredible." These words are found in Paley's 
 reply to an argument against miracles, which is ex- 
 
CCXXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 pressed in the following proposition : " It is contrary 
 to experience that a miracle should be true ; but not 
 contrary to experience that testimony should be false." 
 Therefore, Hume contends, we are bound in reason to 
 disbelieve miracles. If we deny the being of a God, 
 then, whether this kind of reasoning be right or wrong, 
 we must deny the truth of miracles : for a miracle 
 presupposes a power superior to nature, and an Atheist 
 admits no power but that of nature. If, on the other 
 hand, we do believe in a God of nature, then can we 
 conceive it possible, or even probable, that he should 
 suspend what we call his laws, or manifest his power 
 under some new form, to carry out the purposes of his 
 will ; and the question of a miracle thus becomes a 
 question of fact to be decided on its proper evidence. 
 This is the substance of Paley's reply, stripped of its 
 details and illustrations*. 
 
 There are two very distinct views of miraculous 
 power. 1st, It may be shewn in the suspension or 
 violation of a positive law of nature, long established 
 and comprehended by experience. Or, 2ndly, it may 
 be shewn in a new creative act ; such, for example, as 
 the formation of a new Class of animals, which may 
 be in strict co-ordination with the established laws of 
 nature, and therefore, in a certain sense, may be no more 
 miraculous than the generation of a new sentient being 
 of a known Species. There is, however, this essential 
 difference in the two cases. The generation of a new 
 sentient being of an existing Species is but the con- 
 
 * Evidences of Christianity, Vol. i. pp. 1—14. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXXXl 
 
 tinuance of a subordinate organic law of nature long 
 since established and comprehended by experience. 
 The commencement of animals of a new Species would 
 be the commencement of a new set of organic laws, 
 which afterwards might go on harmoniously, and enter 
 into the organic constitution of animated nature. New 
 organic beings are (on this view) like new Acts of 
 Parliament, that become an organic part of the con- 
 stitution of a State — not so much by upsetting old 
 laws as by carrying out their spirit : and new Acts of 
 Parliament create not themselves any more than new 
 organic beings create themselves in the constitution of 
 nature ; both require for their existence an act of the 
 supreme legislative authority. Thus have we an execu- 
 tive power in nature to carry on the laws of nature in 
 harmonious subordination; and we have a legislative 
 power to make new laws — to meet, we might say, the 
 rising wants of a progressive nature. I wish not to 
 cheat the reader by a mere analogy. I use it only to 
 make my reasoning understood. 
 
 Had Hume been told of the successive forms of 
 animal life discovered by Geologists, he ought, on his 
 own principles, to have disbelieved the story; because 
 it contradicts the supposed constancy in the laws of 
 Nature, and is, therefore, contrary to experience. But 
 in this example (derived from Geology) we are absolutely 
 certain that his principles would have led him wrong. 
 Let us next suppose him, by the evidence of his senses, 
 or by any other kind of teaching, to have learnt the 
 great palseontological facts discovered by Geologists. 
 
CCXXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 What would then have been his conclusion ? It is per- 
 haps no easy matter to tell what would have been the 
 conclusions of one who seemed to revel in doubt as if it 
 were his natural element, and who went so far as to 
 doubt his own existence : but, judging from his moral 
 condition, and his apparent unwillingness or want of capa- 
 city to grasp the idea of a First Cause, he would probably 
 have adopted, with the reserve of doubt, some theory of 
 transmutation. But in doing this he would have utterly 
 destroyed the foundation of his own argument against 
 miracles : for the passage of a Fish into a Crocodile — 
 of a Whale into an Elephant — or of a Baboon into 
 a Man — is as perfectly contrary to vulgar experience 
 (and therefore in Hume's sense as perfectly miraculous) 
 as the act of making a deaf man hear, a blind man see, 
 or giving back life to a body that is dead. 
 
 I have no wish to do battle with an Atheist ; and 
 the Author of The Vestiges, to whom I once more return, 
 and with whom I must have a word or two at parting, 
 is not an Atheist. Neither is he a Pantheist, though 
 his assumed facts, as well as his reasonings, are, almost 
 without exception, borrowed from the very lowest Pan- 
 theistic school. Not only are his conclusions ill founded, 
 but I think them utterly incongruous, if he adopt not the 
 scheme of material Pantheism. This point I cannot urge 
 against him ; for he has a right to be the interpreter 
 of his own creed : and however paradoxical the remark 
 may at first seem, the world would be far worse than it 
 is were not men oftentimes inconsistent. He not merely 
 admits the being of a God ; but he expresses this belief, 
 

 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXXX111 
 
 again and again, with all the earnestness of a full con- 
 viction ; and he considers the material world to have had 
 its beginning in the personal and provident act of a 
 great Creative Will. We must therefore regard him in 
 theory as a philosophical and rational Theist. Neither 
 do I affirm, bearing in mind the grand saving fact 
 of inconsistency to which I have just alluded, that he is 
 not a Christian. 
 
 It is, however, impossible to suppose that, consist- 
 ently with his own principles, he can believe in any 
 form of revealed religion ; for he is a Materialist from 
 first to last. He sees in Nature, past and present, 
 nothing but the sequence of second material causes ; 
 and any pretended truths not comprehended in this 
 sequence are (on principles resembling those of Hume, 
 but more positive and of wider application) to be put 
 in the catalogue of human fables, or regarded as Boeo- 
 tian mists that mar the vision of a reasonable man. 
 
 Let us shortly retrace his reasoning, and again put 
 the consistency of his logic to the test. He sees a con- 
 nected series of organic phenomena, and resolves them 
 into natural laws ordained by the Creator. So far all is 
 well, and he is not a Pantheist. He sees again, in the 
 authentic records of Geology, phenomena of a different 
 order, and manifestations of a power that is out of co- 
 ordination with the known laws of reproduction or natu- 
 ral development. Consistently with his own principles, 
 these phenomena should be recorded under some new 
 descriptive term, like the word creation ; for, on his 
 own shewing, they do belong to a higher and more direct 
 s. d. q 
 
CCXXX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 manifestation of productive energy than he has ever 
 seen or heard of in the uniform course of his expe- 
 rience of organic laws. He ought then to go back 
 to his first principles, and to the consideration of the 
 First Creative Cause ; which in truth must have been 
 ever present to his mind (were he a consistent Theist), 
 even in the common sequence of second causes. But he 
 will do no such thing. Instead of this he virtually 
 deserts his own principles, and takes up the weapons of 
 the material Pantheist ; who, knowing no power but 
 that of material Nature, must of necessity resolve 
 all phenomena into the successive actions or develop- 
 ments of material Nature. Thus we find him first 
 professing to be the pupil of Nature ; and then (with the 
 Pantheists) making a set of transcendental leaps, from 
 Order to Order, and from Class to Class, in most posi- 
 tive defiance of all known laws of organic Nature derived 
 from experience. 
 
 Nay, he has done more than this : he has misrepre- 
 sented Nature, deranged her historical documents, and 
 mistranslated her plainest records. Were he an avowed 
 material Pantheist, this proceeding would be natural ; 
 for he would then only distort history to save his 
 principles. As a Theist he is false to his principles, 
 while he distorts history. All this may at first have 
 been done in ignorance of what Nature was ; but now 
 that he maintains his conclusions in spite of better 
 knowledge, we must look out for other motives ; and 
 they are not far removed from sight. A man who 
 publishes a theory before he knows the facts it ought to 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXXXV 
 
 rest upon, is not likely to disturb his theory by a 
 reconstruction of its foundations after the facts have 
 been revealed to him. He cannot be so unnatural 
 as to desert his own offspring. His theory must stand 
 at any rate : and if it rest not on the facts of past 
 experience, it may rest on facts which are hereafter to 
 be evolved from the womb of Time ! This is our Au- 
 thor's logic*. 
 
 An ideal Pantheist may think that all nature is 
 evolved from the mind of man ; and that knowledge, 
 even while he is untrained and uninformed, is lurking 
 as an innate ideal rudiment within him. On this 
 scheme, material knowledge is but a kind of phantasm 
 or poetic dream ; and a philosopher, like a poet, may 
 " body forth the forms of things unseen," and turn them 
 to what shapes he pleases. Much of this highflying 
 fantastical philosophy we find in the works of Oken. 
 Pythagoras thought there could only be seven bodies 
 in our solar system, because seven is a sacred number. 
 The supposed fact, and the reason given for it, were 
 the mere creations of his mind, and had no archetype in 
 nature. Kepler, by some strange notions of celestial 
 harmonies, was led onwards to very great discoveries ; 
 for there are celestial harmonies, though of a very 
 different nature from those which were first bodied 
 
 * TheTe is nothing new in this logic. It fell under the notice of Dr. 
 Johnson, who replied to it as follows : — "He who will determine against 
 that which he knows because there may be something which he knows 
 not — he that can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged cer- 
 tainty — is not to be admitted among reasonable beings." I have borrowed 
 this quotation from Mr. Hugh Miller, during the passage of these sheets 
 through the press. Foot-prints of the Creator, p. 218. 
 
 ?2 
 
CCXXXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 forth in his imagination. The wildest physical notions 
 have sometimes led to truth: and we may, perhaps, 
 allow that a theoretical notion springing up in the 
 mind of man must have some suggestion from nature — 
 either as she dwells within himself, or communicates 
 with him through his senses. No one can tell where 
 analogies are to cease, such are Nature's riches. Let 
 us, then, not despise mere analogies ; but let us not 
 worship them. Let us test them honestly ; and never 
 pretend to build upon them till they are brought into 
 accordance with material facts, and under the domain of 
 material law. The grievous fault of the Ideal school is 
 this : — they conjure up analogies with all the creative 
 licence of a poet — they accept them under their wildest 
 forms — affirm them without proof, and in the terms 
 of an eccentric and most insufferable dogmatism — and 
 build upon them as if they were the accepted principles 
 of positive material science. 
 
 But the author of The Vestiges is no Idealist. In 
 theory he is a Deist — in argument he never rises above 
 the low and pestilent exhalations of a dull material 
 Pantheism. He tells us that we degrade our concep- 
 tion of the Godhead by calling in his intervention as a 
 Creator; — that God has ordained material laws from 
 the beginning — and that he resides not within them, 
 but far apart from them, in a sublime " tranquillity that 
 is altogether new." We believe that God is without 
 those passions which belong to our humanity. We 
 allow that the archetype of all nature was in his mind 
 before time began. Nor is He confined in space. He 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXXXV11 
 
 exists, in the full power of his personal attributes, 
 through all worlds and every atom of them. One 
 writer calls the universe the sensorium of the Godhead. 
 Newton striving to embody his conceptions of the God- 
 head tells us, — JEternus est et Infinitus, Omnipotens et 
 Omnisciens ; id est, durat ab wterno in wternum, et adest 
 ab infinito in infinitum ; omnia regit et omnia cognoscit 
 qua? fieri aut sciri possunt. Non est wternitas et infinitas, 
 sed wternus et infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium, sed 
 durat et adest. Durat semper, et adest ubique, et exis- 
 tendo semper et ubique durationem et spatium, wternitatem 
 et infinitatem constituit*. Such are the strivings of the 
 soul of man towards the comprehension of that which 
 can neither be grasped by finite minds, nor expressed 
 by the power of any symbols of human thought. But, 
 thanks be to the God of nature, that He has deigned 
 to humanize Himself — that He has enabled us, through 
 the works of his hands, as well as through his Word, to 
 form some conception of his attributes — that He has 
 given us a high fruition and glorious hopes in these 
 acts of contemplation — that He has taught us to be- 
 lieve ourselves his children, and to count it our highest 
 good to be brought into obedience to his everlasting 
 laws. 
 
 Do we exalt our conceptions of the God of Nature, 
 by shutting out the view of his creative energy, and 
 putting Him far distant from us in the repose of a 
 sublime pantheistic tranquillity ? I think far otherwise. 
 A repose like this is, to our conceptions, no better than 
 
 * Scholium Generate at the end of Newton's Principia. 
 
CCXXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 the quietism of death. Activity is the very essence of 
 intellectual power. We cannot comprehend it as quies- 
 cent. In one view we see the great animating First 
 Cause in the laws impressed by Him on the vast bodies 
 of the visible universe. In another view we see Him 
 in positive acts of creative power shewn in the organs 
 of successive animated beings brought into life during 
 long successive periods. Were these works of creative 
 power in conflict among themselves, then would there 
 be ruin and confusion in the world; and by this 
 confusion should we mutilate the grand, coherent, and 
 constant attributes of the Great Supreme. But there 
 is no conflict in the successive acts of creation. They 
 are in glorious unison. We see harmony in nature's 
 laws ; but laws make not themselves, and therefore they 
 were ordained by God, and had a beginning. Nay, 
 more than this ; we can by our feeble ken discern, 
 within that atom of space we inhabit, the successive 
 times when many successive material organic laws be- 
 gan ; and by a power of mind created within us, which 
 lifts us far above our fellow-beings and enables us to 
 grasp the meaning of the word Cause, we also discern 
 and acknowledge the successive acts of creative power. 
 We know that God has created : but how he 
 creates, we can form not the least conception ; for 
 external nature is known to us only through its estab- 
 lished laws, and their manifestation to our senses ; and 
 these laws imply a past, and not a present creative 
 act. It may be that in the mind of God there is no 
 greater or different exercise of Creative Power in the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXXX1X 
 
 continuance of a law than in its commencement. But 
 it is not so in the mind of man ; for all his thoughts 
 are limited under the conditions of time and space — 
 ideas that have no meaning as a limitation to the 
 creative will of God. That which concerns us, both 
 morally and intellectually, is not the whole truth, as 
 seen in the mind of God ; but that small part of truth 
 which the God of Nature has deigned to give us, and is 
 fitted to our condition. 
 
 The ideal Pantheist may say, that we have seen no 
 creative acts, and that we know not what creation means, 
 except on his own hypothesis : — in other words, that 
 the act of creation is only in the mind of man. The 
 material Pantheist sees nothing above the sequence of 
 material causes ; and he dwells among them only by an 
 act of moral mutilation, whereby he virtually cuts off 
 from his own soul the right conception of Cause. He 
 extinguishes the great inborn principle of Causality. 
 A rational Deist is far apart from these two stunted 
 schools; he follows Nature, and believes in Nature's God. 
 Believing that God must have at one time created, he 
 has admitted all we want for our argument. What God 
 has once done may be done again ; and the question of an 
 act of Creative Power, under any supposed condition of 
 time or space, becomes a question of fact to be decided 
 by the test of sense and reason. The Author of The 
 Vestiges admits this principle, but denies the inevitable 
 conclusion from it. He is in name a Theist ; he is in 
 reasoning but a material Pantheist. 
 
 We concede then to the ideal Pantheist that we 
 
CCXI PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 see not God creating, and that we only know the 
 exercise of creative power by its effects. We pretend 
 not to determine what creation means in the mind 
 of God, or how He has created. What we know of 
 creation comprehends only certain phenomena of Nature, 
 produced by a Power above Nature, and limited in 
 time and space. But creation, as contemplated in the 
 mind of God, has, we repeat, not one of these ideal 
 limitations. The movements of his Will are the be- 
 ginnings of every material cause, and these movements 
 have no limitation in time and space. It is then utterly 
 beyond the reach of human thought to comprehend 
 what creation means as contemplated in the mind 
 of God. But we do see the proofs of a creative energy 
 within that speck of the universe wherein we dwell ; 
 and these acts of energy are defined in time and limited 
 in space, or they could not be the objects of our contem- 
 plation. We not only see that God has created ; but 
 we also comprehend in part that his creation is in 
 harmony with itself. We know what belongs to the 
 condition of our being ; and it is enough for us, if we 
 use that knowledge in conformity with our position in 
 the world of Nature. " The fool hath said in his 
 heart, There is no God." We deprecate this outrageous 
 folly. We dare not, with either Pantheistic school, 
 deny the principle of Causality so as to reverse the 
 whole condition of our knowledge; and then impudently 
 pretend, either to evolve all knowledge from the mind of 
 man, and thereby to set it in the place of God; or to 
 deny all difference between mind and matter (by resolv- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCxli 
 
 ing all nature, dead and living, into a mere sequence 
 of material laws), and thereby to deify the dead ele- 
 ments. 
 
 It has been stated by our Author, in language that 
 I cannot read without feelings of loathing and deep 
 aversion (for it is irrational, ignorant, and profane), 
 that God is not a present living providential governor 
 of the world of nature — that -He pays "no minute 
 attention to specialities''' — that He resides at a dis- 
 tance from Nature in a sublime inoperative tranquil- 
 lity — that the creation of an organic being is "an 
 inconceivably paltry exercise of Creative Power," and 
 that if we accept not the Pantheistic reasoning of The 
 Vestiges, the world is full of " blemishes and blunders/ 1 
 But is a blemish less because it springs from a law 
 ordained by God? A blemish is a blemish still, though 
 it spring from a general law. It either implies a 
 want of foresight, of power, or of will. But what 
 right-minded man will dare thus to tax the great un- 
 changeable God of Nature, and tell Him of blemishes 
 and blunders in His work ? We know little of what 
 creation is : and by the light of Nature we know no- 
 thing of those inner movements of Almighty Will from 
 which creation sprang. 
 
 How little do we know of the great scheme of 
 Nature ! All we see around us is on a plan ; or rather 
 it is a fragment or an atom of a still greater plan. The 
 meanest reptile on which we trample is an organic part 
 of the whole visible universe ; and this is true though 
 we deny the existence of living beings in any sphere of 
 
CCxlii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 visible space except our own. Every animal endowed 
 with eyes receives continual impressions from the re- 
 motest visible bodies of the world ; and through the 
 rays of light it is linked organically to the stars that 
 glitter in the sky. In turn it acts materially and 
 positively on every one of these most distant glittering 
 bodies, and thereby helps to uphold the stability of the 
 universe. 
 
 It is true that all we see is on a plan, and that the 
 archetype is in the Godhead : but all we see is but an 
 atom of infinity; and every organic being (great or 
 small, as we count greatness) is but the atom of an 
 atom ; yet all these atoms are comprehended under the 
 laws of God's ordaining. If we reject the dreams of 
 the Pantheist, and believe, with the rational Theist, that 
 there dwells, above all we know and see, a Great First 
 Cause that ordained all things by a personal creative 
 act, and brought life out of the dead elements — what 
 right have we (believing this) to say that God is not 
 now creating, even within the limits of that small 
 portion of the universal world, that mere atom (for 
 all we see is but an atom) which we comprehend by 
 sense? Within the limits of that atom of nature 
 which we inhabit creative energy has shewn itself, 
 again and again, among the monuments of by-gone 
 time, though to our senses it may now appear at 
 rest. But among the many million worlds, of which 
 we see the germs in the sparkling atoms of the sky, 
 organic creation may (for ought we know) be in con- 
 tinual activity ; and creative power may be shewn 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCxliH 
 
 continually, both in upholding laws that began in times 
 past, and in ordaining laws which beforehand existed 
 only in the prescient mind of God. We can conceive 
 all this ; and we can believe that all these laws had 
 not only a spiritual communion in the mind of God, 
 but that they all formed but one great scheme of nature, 
 every part of which had a direct material connexion with 
 all the rest (no matter what their separation in visible 
 space), through the definite intervention of material 
 laws. On this view of nature, should there seem to 
 the prying curiosity of men some nook or corner of 
 the world they live in wherein they discern a fancied 
 imperfection of organic plan, let them remember their 
 place in nature, and the narrow limits of their intellec- 
 tual vision, and let them not accuse a plan of which 
 they only see an atom ; but rather believe that in the 
 great archetype dwelling in the mind of God, there 
 is no blemish, — and that they themselves, in a higher 
 condition of intellectual fruition, may have a truer 
 vision of the Great Creator's work — that the mist 
 which dims the sense may then pass away — that then 
 they may comprehend harmonies they now but hear in 
 part, and perceive a glory at present unfitted for mortal 
 sense. It may be objected that speculations such as 
 these are drawn from the imagination, and based on our 
 ignorance rather than our knowledge. But I urge 
 them not as the foundation of any positive scheme of 
 nature. I urge them only in reply to schemes that are 
 quite as imaginative ; and on which conclusions are 
 made to rest that are positive, false, and degrading. 
 
CCxliv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 We may meet hypothesis by hypothesis, if we are to 
 fight our battles on ideal ground. 
 
 By whatever natural means we soar above the 
 earth, to the earth we must soon return. A material 
 philosopher of the true school of nature ventures not, 
 with the ideal Pantheist, to climb by his own strength 
 into the heaven of heavens, and thence to reflect back 
 upon the earth, and all things therein, a pretended light 
 that belongs only to the perfections of the Godhead. 
 If his soul be thither led it can only be by the hand 
 of God ; and then, in the irradiation of a celestial 
 light, he may learn to see, " and tell of things invisible 
 to mortal sight." But this belongs not to material 
 truth, but to another and far higher teaching. 
 
 The great principle in material science, to which I 
 again return, is this. — All material science is inductive 
 in its beginnings and in its early progress. Transgress 
 this great principle, and we let loose a fantastical phi- 
 losophy that may put forth the gaudy flowers of the 
 imagination, but ripens not into the goodly fruits of 
 truth and reason. Facts, at first apprehended by sense, 
 may in the end pass, by successive acts of the mind 
 guided by successive experiments, to the side of abstract 
 or ideal truth, comprehended under our conception of 
 a physical law. In this new condition they may become 
 the root of deductive truths — not now m the way of ex- 
 periment, but by the efforts of pure reason. This we 
 all of us admit ; and we rejoice in the passage of our 
 empirical and disjointed knowledge into this well-em- 
 bodied form and substance. Abstract material truths, no 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXlv 
 
 longer the object but the subject of human thought, are 
 the best lights of the natural world ; and they belong 
 to those provinces of knowledge in which the mind of 
 man has made its firmest and fairest conquests. But 
 on the outskirts of the region of light there is an ill- 
 defined, dim region into which the torch of experiment 
 can only guide us : and here it is that the champions 
 of material truth are doing their^severest battles, and 
 carrying on their conquests. The advance is slow; but 
 sure, if we follow nature ; and after many an ebb and 
 flow the wave of truth spreads onwards. But is this 
 toil to cease? Is this work to be ever done? Far 
 otherwise. If we are to continue victors we must in 
 every age fight the same battles, that were fought in 
 the age before us. We must not merely defend the 
 frontier line, but we must enlarge the boundary, or the 
 powers of darkness will gain back what was won before. 
 There is to be no stagnation in this spirit of conquest. 
 The laws of nature forbid it, and deny us any continued 
 rest from that toil which is the first condition of our 
 duty, and (thanks be to the God of Nature !) the great 
 element of our happiness. Whatever boundary we reach, 
 still there is an infinity beyond, into which the light of 
 science has not pierced ; so that the wider the expan- 
 sion of our knowledge the larger the visible darkness 
 that surrounds us. Through this dim and boundless 
 region the eye of unassisted sense cannot penetrate ; 
 ideal philosophy has no place within it, neither can 
 imagination body forth the glories that may hereafter 
 be seen within it. Nor can we pass one single step 
 
CCxWi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 within it but by the guiding light of experiment, and by 
 the help of those material weapons the God of nature 
 has committed to our hands, and commanded us to 
 wield ; and these weapons we are bound to wield, for 
 His glory and the good of our fellow-men. 
 
 But though our progress in material knowledge be 
 thus fettered by stern unbending laws which both control 
 and direct our onward movements, yet are there high 
 capacities within us, not fettered by mere dead material 
 laws, whereby we can soar to a conception (dim and 
 feeble though it be) of a mighty power in nature beyond 
 all that sense informs us of- — which tells us of a Being to 
 whom light and darkness are both alike, and who dwells 
 through all worlds, but in a light that is unapproachable 
 to mortal sense. To Him we owe the homage of our 
 reason, and of every faculty and feeling of our immaterial 
 nature: and to Him we can also give a bodily homage, by 
 enduring toil — by patient experimental labour* — by a 
 continued study of his material laws — and by learning 
 our true place and duty among God's creatures ; thereby 
 teaching our fellow-men to see through all nature the 
 proof of nature's God, and in the strength of that belief 
 to perform their tasks with cheerfulness ; and in good 
 hope that in the end they may reap that fruit which He 
 has given as the reward and encouragement of patient 
 and well-directed toil. 
 
 To deny the creative providence of God is to deny 
 the foundation of law and order. To deny his con- 
 tinued Providence, is to shut from the soul every reason- 
 able hope and aspiration after higher good — To rest 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCxlvH 
 
 upon a Pantheistic scheme of physics, and to derive the 
 archetype of knowledge only from the mind of man, is 
 utterly to mistake the history and nature of human 
 knowledge — To deny the inductive foundation of every 
 form of material truth, is to deny the lessons of past 
 experience, and virtually to cast away those weapons 
 the God of nature has put within our hands, without 
 which we must remain in powerless ignorance, and 
 be shut out from that higher earthly happiness which 
 is the good fruit of our conquests over the material 
 world. 
 
 I fear, on reconsideration, that in a paragraph near 
 the beginning of the previous Section (p. ccxxix.), I have 
 not given the full strength of Paley's argument. He 
 tells us, in reply to Hume, that there is a want of 
 logical justice in a statement "which (while affirming 
 the incredibility of miracles) suppresses all those cir- 
 cumstances of extenuation, which result from our know- 
 ledge of the existence, power, and disposition of the 
 Deity ; his concern in the creation, and the end an- 
 swered by the miracle ; the importance of that end, 
 and its subserviency to the plan pursued in the work of 
 nature." — During the passage of this sheet through 
 the press, I have also examined Mr. Stuart Mill's 
 Chapter "On the Grounds of Disbelief. ,, (System of 
 Logic, Vol. ii. c. 25). It is very ably written, and 
 there are not, I think, in it any general principles to 
 which I could not subscribe. " Hume^s celebrated prin- 
 
CCxlviH PREFA.CE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ciple, that nothing is credible which is contrary to 
 experience, or at variance with the laws of nature, is 
 (Mr. Mill tells us) merely this very harmless proposi- 
 tion, that whatever is contradictory to a complete in- 
 duction is incredible. That such a maxim as this should 
 either be accounted a dangerous heresy, or mistaken 
 for a great and recondite truth, speaks ill for the state 
 
 of philosophical speculation on such subjects." 
 
 " It is essential to the completeness of an induction that 
 it shall not contradict any known fact. Is it not then a 
 petitio principii to say, that the fact (viz. a supposed 
 miracle) ought to be disbelieved because the induction 
 opposed to it is complete ! How can we have a right 
 to declare the induction complete, while facts, sup- 
 ported by credible evidence, present themselves in oppo- 
 sition to it V Again, he tells us, " A miracle (as 
 
 was justly remarked by Brown) is no contradiction to 
 the law of cause and effect ; it is a new effect intro- 
 duced by a new cause. Of the adequacy of that cause, 
 if it exist, there can be no doubt ; and the only ante- 
 cedent improbability which can be ascribed to the 
 miracle, is the improbability that any such cause had 
 existence in the case. All, therefore, which Hume 
 has made out is, that no evidence can be sufficient to 
 prove a miracle to one who did not previously believe 
 the existence of a being or beings with supernatural 
 power ; or who believed himself to have full proof that 
 the character of the Being whom he recognises, is 
 inconsistent with hi3 having seen fit to interfere on the 
 occasion in question." 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXlix 
 
 If these extracts bring out Mr. Mill's full meaning 
 (and I have done my best not to misrepresent him), 
 then I think that his logical position cannot be as- 
 sailed by any reasonable argument. 
 
 "It is now (he further tells us) acknowledged by 
 nearly all the ablest writers on the subject, that natural 
 religion is the necessary basis of revealed ; that the 
 proofs of Christianity presuppose the being and moral 
 
 attributes of God." "There is no reason that 
 
 timid Christians should shrink from accepting the 
 logical Canon of the grounds of Disbelief, (viz. that 
 whatever is contradictory to a complete induction is 
 incredible) : and it is not hazarding too much to pre- 
 dict, that a school which peremptorily rejects all evi- 
 dences of religion except such as, when relied upon 
 exclusively, the Canon in question irreversibly condemns ; 
 which denies to mankind the right to judge religious 
 doctrine, and bids them depend on miracles as their 
 sole guide ; must, in the present state of the human 
 mind, inevitably fail in its attempt to put itself at the 
 head of the religious feelings and convictions of this 
 country. " Here again I agree with the Author's con- 
 clusion ; but I cannot do so without a few words of 
 explanation, and some verbal limitations. 
 
 (1) If we begin to examine the foundations of 
 our belief, we can only begin our task on reasonable 
 and logical grounds. We are not called on to believe 
 what positively contradicts the first elements of our 
 reason ; and no evidence, however strong, can enforce 
 such a belief as this. But men may, in times past, have 
 s. d. r 
 
CCl PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 seen good reasons for believing in the authority of a 
 teacher, and on the strength of that authority may 
 have believed, not what was contrary to reason, but 
 what was above reason, and what unassisted reason 
 could not have taught them. Miraculous powers would, 
 in any age, be a good test of authority ; and might 
 therefore be an evidence for our belief in matters far 
 
 above the common inferences of reason Again, a man 
 
 may learn to believe in the prophetic character of the 
 older documents of his religion. He can sift this evi- 
 dence, and may be convinced by it : and if so, he has 
 an evidence that cannot be assailed by Hume's argu- 
 ment; for it is not contrary to historical experience, 
 but is based upon it. He can read these ancient 
 documents, which ever since their publication have been 
 in the custody of men who have regarded them as 
 deposits of sacred truth. He can compare their pro- 
 phetic declarations with the events unrolled in the sub- 
 sequent history of the human family ; and by such a 
 comparison may be convinced of the truth and inspi- 
 ration of these Prophetic books. But here also we 
 must first suppose that he has a religious nature, or 
 that he believes in God ; for otherwise he will turn 
 away from the light of this kind of evidence, and he 
 will disbelieve it ; either because he will not examine 
 it, or because it is little suited to the condition of his 
 understanding. 
 
 (2) There is a belief of the heart as well as a be- 
 lief of the understanding. If a man have the second, 
 and not the first, he may be a good logician and a 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Ccli 
 
 learned theologian, but he has no religious faith. If a 
 man have the first and scorn the second, he is a fana- 
 tic. But a good religious man has both ; and in miss- 
 ing this conclusion Locke has, I think, made a great 
 mistake*. There is something wanted more than mere 
 logic in the examination of our belief. It must continue 
 to act on our feelings, or it is worthless; and herein 
 is the great practical difficulty of *a religious life. 
 
 (3) The logical order and the historical order of 
 our belief are two things widely different ; and this is 
 true in every department of our knowledge : we believe 
 first on authority, and we examine afterwards. We know 
 not in what mental condition man was first created ; 
 but we have no reason to believe that he worked out 
 his first elements of knowledge for himself. We believe, 
 on the contrary, that he was placed on the earth with 
 a knowledge suited to his position. We know from all 
 tradition, that the earliest races of mankind were in 
 some form or other religious : but their religion rested 
 on authority, and they seem not to have troubled 
 themselves with a logical examination of its foundations. 
 All religion (whatever be its form) implies, no doubt, 
 some belief in a God : but what we call natural re- 
 ligion did not, I think, in any distinct and logical form, 
 historically precede revealed religion, but followed it. 
 
 (4) That natural religion is the necessary (or I 
 would rather say the logical) basis of revealed, is un- 
 doubtedly true : if the foundations of our belief will not 
 bear the most searching examination of reason, it seems 
 
 • Infra, p. 68. 
 
 r 2 
 
Cclii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 impossible that our religion should remain secure, or 
 have any continued acceptance as the ground of hope 
 or the rule of life. This I have virtually stated in the 
 following Discourse, and in different parts of the Ap- 
 pendix. An Apostle might as well have preached to 
 the stones of the wilderness as to the heathens whom 
 he converted, had there not been some element of 
 belief within them, or some natural element lurking in 
 their minds and ready to spring into life, when religious 
 truth was offered for their acceptance. 
 
 (5) When we say " that natural religion is the 
 necessary basis of revealed," we mean not, however, to 
 affirm that revealed religion rests with its whole weight 
 upon the truths of natural religion, like a building made by 
 the hands of man that presses with its whole weight upon 
 its foundation-stones. This is not our meaning. What 
 we mean is, that when we seek for the logical history 
 of our belief, we must have some starting point to rea- 
 son from ; and the truths of natural religion (or, which 
 comes to the same end, the elements of a religious nature 
 within ourselves) give us the very starting point we 
 want. On the other hand we affirm, that there have 
 been millions of good religious men who have never 
 thought of the first logical grounds of belief; and yet 
 have believed rationally, and practically, on good and 
 sufficient grounds of moral evidence. Again, a man 
 can make no good progress in religion as a rule of 
 life, if he spend his time too long in a logical discus- 
 sion of its elements, and in delving among its first 
 foundations. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCliii 
 
 (6) When a man has accepted the great truths of 
 religion, and it forms within his mind a system of 
 belief, he has the power of gaining an incomparably 
 higher evidence of its truth, than he can derive from 
 any discussion of its first logical elements. This is no 
 fanatical conclusion. It is only fanatical when we re- 
 ject the logical evidences of our faith, turn away from 
 them with scorn, and speak ill oT those who put them 
 before us in sincerity. 
 
 The same, or nearly the same, may be said of the 
 great truths of science. To take a familiar case — We 
 know experimentally the universal gravitation of matter 
 on the surface of the earth. Does this gravitating force 
 extend to the moon? On trial we find that it does, 
 and that it is the very force that keeps her where she 
 is in the heavens. We then go a step farther, and 
 try whether the same kind of central force may not 
 keep all the Planets in their orbits. After a few simple 
 steps of proof, we find this hypothesis also to be true. 
 We then generalize our facts, and affirm the law of 
 gravitation through the whole Solar System. The law 
 of gravitation is no longer the object of search, but 
 the subject of thought and speculation. We can now 
 reason deductively, and draw true conclusions from it ; 
 and our deductive truths (such for example as the se- 
 cular perturbations worked out by La Place, or the 
 theoretical discovery of a new Planet by Adams and 
 LeVerrier) give us a thousand times the weight of 
 evidence that can be given, in proof of our law, by any 
 series of direct experiments. But we do not forget 
 
CCHV PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 our first experiments, and we are willing to return to 
 them again, should any new phenomena call us back to 
 them. If we refuse to do this, we give up the sound 
 doctrines of true philosophy, and begin to side with the 
 sect of pantheistic dreamers. 
 
 This kind of reasoning may be safely applied to our 
 religious belief. There are certain elements of religion 
 within us — we have a religious nature. These elements, 
 when acted on agreeably to God's will, lead us to higher 
 knowledge, and to the conception of a religious law, or 
 a practical system of belief : and when religion is con- 
 templated by us as a law, it becomes (like the general 
 truths of science) capable of incomparably better illus- 
 trations and higher proofs that it was in its first begin- 
 nings. But we dare not on that account affirm that it 
 is independent of its reasonable foundations, or those 
 logical proofs which properly belong to it, and may at 
 first have suggested it to the mind; any more than we 
 dare affirm that an inductive material law is independent 
 of those experimental proofs which first suggested it to 
 the mind. If we do make such an admission, we damage 
 the whole fabric of religion, and may, perhaps, destroy 
 it utterly in our hearts by giving up its strong holds 
 to the dreaming Pantheist. 
 
 I think the previous illustration true ; but let me 
 not be misrepresented or misunderstood. Religion does 
 not generally exist in the mind as a system that has 
 been built up logically, and gained access to the 
 understanding, step by step, like the truths of geo- 
 metry. It does exist, however, as a system or a law 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cclv 
 
 of belief: and in that form it admits of incomparably 
 higher evidence than we can derive from any sifting of 
 its first logical elements. Accept religion as a law, 
 and we can (as in a general law of physics) reason 
 analogically and deductively from it. We find new 
 evidence as we go on with its application. We find it 
 suited to our condition, and to our wants. It explains 
 the secrets of our hearts, encourages us in all good and 
 noble deeds, and gives them a sustaining principle and 
 an enduring sanction; it consoles us in our days of 
 sorrow, and smooths our pillow in the hour of death. 
 It is the only perfect antagonist to brute passion, and 
 it is the living fountain of love and charity. It rises 
 higher and higher still in evidence (directed both to 
 the heart and intellect) if we embrace it faithfully. It 
 is still but in progress, and its full fruits have not 
 yet ripened ; but it has brought out the best develop- 
 ment of the mind of man, and the best types of human 
 polity. It urges on, exalts, and sanctifies all know- 
 ledge, and is therefore in harmony with all nature. 
 
 At one time I meant to have ended this long 
 Preface here. But other questions, bearing on the 
 evidences of religion, seem to demand a passing notice, 
 however feebly and imperfectly I may touch upon them : 
 and I cannot properly conclude without some discussion 
 of the changes now about to be introduced into our 
 course of academic study. 
 
PART II. 
 
 $ 1 . Pantheistic mews of Herniation and its Evidences, 
 and comments on the Newtonian Philosophy — Evi- 
 dences of Christianity historical and prophetical — 
 Moral purity of the Gospel — Its propagation, and 
 effects on the progress of man, §c. — Arguments from 
 Analogy. 
 
 It would indeed be a vain and useless task were I 
 to attempt a discussion of the general evidences of 
 Christianity within the compass of this Preface. They 
 separate themselves into many distinct provinces of phi- 
 losophy and learning, each of which might require a 
 large volume for its illustration. For such a task I 
 have neither leisure, nor capacity, nor sufficient know- 
 ledge. One or two points only will I now touch upon, 
 as they seem to arise quite naturally out of the previous 
 discussions through which I have done my best to be 
 the student's guide. 
 
 In every part of human knowledge — physical, social, 
 moral, and religious — we are almost compelled, during 
 at least one portion of our life, to take our principles 
 for granted. There is no help for this ; and we could 
 not advance without it. We must take for granted 
 that the great principles we cannot work out for our- 
 selves (as least during our early years), have been laid 
 on sure foundations by those who have gone before us ; 
 and there are multitudes of good and useful men who 
 have neither leisure nor capacity for any profound 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cclvii 
 
 examination of their principles. But the social and 
 religious services of such men are not the less real on 
 that account ; and we can admire and love them for 
 their humble and honest devotion to the cause of truth 
 according to the lights they have. 
 
 But in the progress of our knowledge we are sure 
 to learn that some of our early conceptions were not 
 what they ought to be, and that" the relations of phy- 
 sical and moral truths are by no means what we may 
 have at first imagined. We may, for example, have 
 thought that all physical truth was contained in the 
 records of our religion ; and afterwards finding this 
 opinion not true, we may, perhaps, by a kind of natural 
 recoil and in the pride of newly-acquired knowledge, 
 begin to think that all religious truth is contained in 
 the body of physical science. In this kind of conflict 
 men are driven back upon their first principles, and 
 compelled to examine the foundations of their know- 
 ledge, whether relating to divine or human things. If we 
 are men of honest minds, and un warped by prejudice 
 or party, we can hardly fail to see — that if there be 
 religious truth, as there assuredly is, it must be in its 
 essence distinct from physical truth, and must rest on 
 a different foundation : — and that if there be, as there 
 is, a real demonstrative body of physical truth, it must 
 also rest on its own foundations, which are in no wise 
 to be confounded with moral evidence. But truths, 
 though distinct, are not therefore in conflict ; and though 
 resting on different foundations they may give help and 
 support to one another. 
 
CcWiii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 We naturally feel an inner revulsion whensoever 
 the foundations of any old opinion begin to be shaken ; 
 and men often find it far easier to stand still, and fling 
 out bitter words, than to turn back and examine (it 
 may be for the first time) the foundations of their 
 knowledge. If they be reasonable men they must see 
 that their knowledge is but a tottering fabric if it will 
 not bear the most prying search of reason. 
 
 In the mental conflict to which I have just pointed, 
 instead of acting wisely and prudently, men have often 
 acted most foolishly and extravagantly. One party 
 olings only to old foundations. Another party learns 
 to distrust the past, and, in the pride of new discovery, 
 thinks it a glorious task to be employed in uprooting 
 all old foundations, and in putting all knowledge, human 
 and divine, in some light "that is altogether new:" and 
 half-informed, shallow men, will often be seen in the 
 front rank of these audacious innovators. Truth is with 
 neither of these parties, and may sometimes, perhaps, 
 be found between them ; but oftentimes she seems to 
 shun the company of both, and to keep far away from 
 their discordant wranglings. We must however allow, 
 that if new discoveries, which are of value to the human 
 family, be made by either of these conflicting parties, 
 we must look for them among the daring innovators, 
 rather than among those who venture not to lift their 
 eyes from the old and, it may be, the ill-secured foun- 
 dation of their knowledge. The true business of phi- 
 losophy is not however to uproot all old foundations ; 
 but to strengthen those which are good, to take away 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 cclix 
 
 those only that are bad, and to bring the different 
 parts of human knowledge into a true logical and moral 
 accordance. If we fail in this, we fail in the great end 
 and aim of all knowledge. 
 
 The grand intellectual fermentation that has been 
 going on in Germany, and the vast progress made by the 
 Germans in the discovery of physical, philological, and 
 historical truth, have been, no dbubt, among the most 
 remarkable phenomena of the civilized world during the 
 greater part of a century. But great good has generally 
 an alloy of great evil : and it is our duty, so far as we 
 may, to separate the good from the bad. To apply this 
 remark to the subject of our religion — It would ill be- 
 come Englishmen who have been well trained in academic 
 learning, to speak of the Rationalism of Germany as 
 only an unmixed evil. And were it so, we should gain 
 nothing by hard words, if we assailed it not by sound 
 arguments ; yet on this subject hard words are some- 
 times the only things we see in well-meaning but shal- 
 low books of religious controversy. 
 
 I believe, however, that some young men of this 
 University have had their peace of mind destroyed and 
 their faith blighted by the subtilties and refinements of 
 Rationalism: and (as I have hinted above) there is a 
 low form of Rationalism that ends in ideal Pantheism. 
 In that form it is an atheistical and abominable idol. 
 Which of Bacon's idola it represents, I hardly know. 
 Perhaps it represents them in an united form, and is 
 like an oriental idol with many heads and hands ; but 
 not less an idol because it leaves that type which is the 
 external attribute of humanity. 
 
CClx PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 The work of Strauss on the life of Jesus shews us 
 the extravagance of Rationalism pushed into the form 
 of Pantheism, or something very nearly approaching to 
 it. His object, if I understand it rightly, is to shew that 
 the Gospel is not a true history ; and this he strives to 
 make out by a subtle, hostile, and captious criticism — 
 conducted like the cross-examination of a cunning ad- 
 vocate, whose business is not to make out the truth in 
 a seeming conflict among the minute details of evidence, 
 but to destroy, by whatever means, the credibility of 
 a witness who is opposed to him. If a man have little 
 knowledge of the Gospel, and no reverence for it, he 
 may probably be misled, and cheated out of all the 
 hopes of a religious man, by this kind of special plead- 
 ing : but if he know it and respect it, his faith will be 
 as little shaken by such forensic subtilties, as is a rock 
 by the collision of a bubble. He will even see that 
 some of the very discrepancies in this part of sacred 
 history are pledges of its truth : for they are minute 
 and unessential, and prove to demonstration that the 
 authors of the Gospels drew not up their narratives in 
 the spirit of falsehood and collusion. 
 
 Again, the apparent discrepancies in the sacred 
 history (such, for example, as those we see in the 
 Gospel accounts of our Saviour's crucifixion and resur- 
 rection) stand out on the surface of the narrative, and 
 are palpable to common sense. The great essential 
 facts are true and undisputed ; but there are minute 
 points of difference in the several narratives which have 
 existed since the earliest times, and prove that the 
 primitive Christians were too honest, and had far too 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cclxi 
 
 great a regard for the sacred text, to change so much 
 as one word of it in the view of bringing the Gospels 
 into a more verbal and literal accordance. If a man, 
 I repeat, have little or no knowledge of the Gospel, 
 and lead a life so little in accordance with its precepts, 
 that he cannot, without a great moral change, have any- 
 firm hopes of being a sharer in its promises — then the 
 destructive criticisms of Strauss may perhaps root out 
 every germ of his belief ; and he may become what his 
 master seems to be — an infidel, and a Pantheist*. 
 
 * In this faint sketch, not so much of Christian evidence as of its prin- 
 ciples, I am compelled, as far as possible, to avoid details and specific 
 instances ; but lest what is above stated should be misunderstood, I will 
 appeal to two cases in point. (1) In the second chapter of St. Luke's 
 Gospel we are told of a decree of Augustus Ca?sar, "that all the world 
 should be taxed," and the Evangelist adds, " this taxing was first made 
 when Cyrenius was governor of Syria." This parenthetical clause may 
 have been a marginal note by some other hand, and have afterwards found 
 its way into the text by mistake. It involves a chronological difficulty of 
 which different explanations are given by different Christian writers. 
 (2) St. Mark describing the crucifixion of our Saviour, tells us, u it was the 
 third hour, and they crucified him." But we learn from St. John (who 
 was an eyewitness, and wrote his Gospel some time after that of St. Mark 
 was published) that "about the sixth hour" Jesus was still before Pilate, 
 and that he was soon afterwards crucified. 
 
 I will dismiss all the explanations of these difficulties, and suppose 
 (for the sake of argument) that St. Luke made a chronological mistake 
 in stating a known fact of Roman history — and that St. Mark (who was 
 probably not an eyewitness) made a mistake in describing the hour when 
 our Saviour's crucifixion took place. Do we, then, invalidate the truth of 
 the Gospel-history, or its inspiration, by any such concession ? not, I think, 
 in the least degree. Inspiration implies an honest, truth-loving spirit on the 
 part of the sacred writers ; and implies also a knowledge of religious truth 
 and doctrine derived from supernatural and divine authority ; but it by no 
 means implies, that in matters of common history, or in events about 
 which an Apostle could (like any other man) judge by the plain evidence 
 of his natural understanding and his senses, he had any positive inspired 
 guidance. If we hold a contrary opinion, and demand for the sacred 
 writers nothing short of a plenary inspiration, we become involved in most 
 formidable difficulties, and virtually undermine the authority of miracles, 
 
Cclxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 istic philosophy rejects all notion of a personal Creator 
 or Redeemer above and out of ourselves., and all hopes 
 of a personal immortality. With their school, Idea is 
 God, mankind is Christ, and the Gospel is but a col- 
 lection of dreamy visions and unsubstantial legends. 
 A religion such as this is but Atheism in disguise, and 
 deserves no better name. And, after all, it is not new. 
 It is but " the revival," in a new metaphysical dress, 
 '.' of the esoteric doctrines of Brahmanism and Pagan- 
 ism :" yet those who teach these doctrines now are to 
 be held up as if they were fit objects for our idolatry, 
 and are lauded (in terms sometimes of tasteless and 
 abominable profanity) as the restorers of true philosophy. 
 Schelling " taught an absolute indifference or iden- 
 tity between the subject and the object — between 
 thought and the essence contemplated by it ;" and in 
 his subjective idealism, the identity of man with God 
 seems to be made a matter of intuition. Hegel went 
 somewhat farther, and in his absolute idealism professed 
 to demonstrate the same conclusion logically. Strauss 
 is a zealous disciple of Hegel's school ; " and (as is 
 stated by Dr. Mill, with whose opinion I heartily con- 
 cur) it is far more from a desire of working out, on a 
 historical ground, the philosophical principles of his 
 master, than from any attachment to mythical theories 
 on their own account, that we are clearly to deduce the 
 destructive process which he has applied to the life of 
 Jesus*." He boasts of his freedom from prejudice and 
 
 * Observations on the Application of Pantheistic Principles. Cam- 
 bridge, 1840. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CClxV 
 
 prepossession. But it is a very idle boast ; for the spirit 
 of an adopted scheme of philosophy breathes through 
 every chapter of his work ; and his boasted freedom is 
 but a servile determination to make all authority how- 
 ever venerable, and all historical arguments however 
 well supported, give way before his master's meta- 
 physical creed, which he accepts without reserve, and 
 makes to stand in the place of 'demonstrated truth. 
 We may venture to affirm that no historical truth, 
 sacred or profane, could be secure against such a form 
 of trial. I am not, vainly and foolishly, pretending to 
 enter into a formal combat with the doctrines of Hegel 
 and Strauss : all I wish to do is to point out what are 
 the fundamental principles of these authors, and to 
 what they lead. At the same time I do affirm, that 
 we have nothing to fear from these principles, if we are 
 true to ourselves. Hegel's philosophy is little fitted 
 for the English mind ; and will never germinate freely 
 within it : and in the evidence brought before our 
 students during the annual ministrations of our Church, 
 and even in the short works which belong to the re- 
 ligious portion of our ordinary undergraduate's course, 
 we have the materials for a substantial refutation of 
 the most formidable subtilties and sophistries in Strauss' 
 Life of Jesus. 
 
 I have already stated that our ideal Pantheists are 
 the revivers of hero-worship ; and we find, among the 
 followers of their sect, many who talk of their leaders 
 in the language of idolatry, and deck the chosen hiero- 
 phants of their metaphysical creed with attributes that 
 s. d. s 
 
Cclxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 istic philosophy rejects all notion of a personal Creator 
 or Redeemer above and out of ourselves, and all hopes 
 of a personal immortality. With their school, Idea is 
 God, mankind is Christ, and the Gospel is but a col- 
 lection of dreamy visions and unsubstantial legends. 
 A religion such as this is but Atheism in disguise, and 
 deserves no better name. And, after all, it is not new. 
 It is but " the revival," in a new metaphysical dress, 
 '.' of the esoteric doctrines of Brahmanism and Pagan- 
 ism :" yet those who teach these doctrines now are to 
 be held up as if they were fit objects for our idolatry, 
 and are lauded (in terms sometimes of tasteless and 
 abominable profanity) as the restorers of true philosophy. 
 Schelling " taught an absolute indifference or iden- 
 tity between the subject and the object — between 
 thought and the essence contemplated by it ;" and in 
 his subjective idealism, the identity of man with God 
 seems to be made a matter of intuition. Hegel went 
 somewhat farther, and in his absolute idealism professed 
 to demonstrate the same conclusion logically. Strauss 
 is a zealous disciple of Hegel's school ; " and (as is 
 stated by Dr. Mill, with whose opinion I heartily con- 
 cur) it is far more from a desire of working out, on a 
 historical ground, the philosophical principles of his 
 master, than from any attachment to mythical theories 
 on their own account, that we are clearly to deduce the 
 destructive process which he has applied to the life of 
 Jesus*." He boasts of his freedom from prejudice and 
 
 * Observations on the Application of Pantheistic Principles. Cam- 
 bridge, 1840. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CClxV 
 
 prepossession. But it is a very idle boast ; for the spirit 
 of an adopted scheme of philosophy breathes through 
 every chapter of his work ; and his boasted freedom is 
 but a servile determination to make all authority how- 
 ever venerable, and all historical arguments however 
 well supported, give way before his master's meta- 
 physical creed, which he accepts without reserve, and 
 makes to stand in the place of 'demonstrated truth. 
 We may venture to affirm that no historical truth, 
 sacred or profane, could be secure against such a form 
 of trial. I am not, vainly and foolishly, pretending to 
 enter into a formal combat with the doctrines of Hegel 
 and Strauss : all I wish to do is to point out what are 
 the fundamental principles of these authors, and to 
 what they lead. At the same time I do affirm, that 
 we have nothing to fear from these principles, if we are 
 true to ourselves. Hegel's philosophy is little fitted 
 for the English mind ; and will never germinate freely 
 within it : and in the evidence brought before our 
 students during the annual ministrations of our Church, 
 and even in the short works which belong to the re- 
 ligious portion of our ordinary undergraduate's course, 
 we have the materials for a substantial refutation of 
 the most formidable subtilties and sophistries in Strauss* 
 Life of Jesus. 
 
 I have already stated that our ideal Pantheists are 
 the revivers of hero-worship ; and we find, among the 
 followers of their sect, many who talk of their leaders 
 in the language of idolatry, and deck the chosen hiero- 
 phants of their metaphysical creed with attributes that 
 s. d. s 
 
Cclxvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 belong only to the God of nature. Hegel is the great 
 divinity of this revived worship : and he may well take 
 this place, if he have indeed (as his writings seem to 
 tell us) evolved out of his own mind an Encyclopaedia 
 of knowledge, the Science of Logic, the Philosophy of 
 Nature, and the Philosophy of Spirit. In so wide a 
 range it is no easy matter to hit upon experimenta crucis 
 whereby to test the truth of the positions laid down in 
 this Encyclopaedia : but (thanks to the Master of Trinity 
 College*) we may now bring a portion of Hegel's Phi- 
 losophy of Nature to a ready test, and try it, once for 
 all, by placing it side by side with the most certain 
 conclusions of inductive science. 
 
 He pretended to criticise the fundamental proposi- 
 tions of Newton's Principia, and to explain Kepler's 
 Laws. If he did not understand Newton's Principia, 
 he had no right to criticise that great work : if he did 
 understand it, he most shamefully misrepresented it. 
 
 While he takes on himself the task of a critic he 
 tells us that great injustice has been done to Kepler by 
 those who (" in the common way of speaking" !) say 
 that Newton found out the proof of Kepler's Laws. 
 We say in reply, that Kepler discovered his three Laws 
 empirically. He proved them to be facts of astronomy. 
 Newton gave the reason of them, and shewed them to 
 be the necessary consequences of a fundamental prin- 
 
 * See a short, but most instructive paper, " On Hegel's Criticism of 
 Newton's Principia," Cambridge Phil. Trans. (May 21, 1849). The 
 reader has now no need to turn over Hegel's Encyklop'ddie, but may see 
 all he wants on this subject, extracted and condensed by Dr. Whewell into 
 the compass of eleven pages. 
 
PREPACK TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CclxVU 
 
 ciple, in Nature, which he discovered and demonstrated. 
 From this new principle, not merely the three Laws of 
 Kepler, but a multitude of other consequences (forming 
 the great body of physical astronomy) follow of abso- 
 lute necessity. Hegel's comment on the separate pro- 
 positions of Newton is but one mass of ignorant blun- 
 dering. He clearly does not comprehend the meaning of 
 Newton's expressions for central force, or the reasoning 
 from which they are derived. He regards Newton's 
 demonstrations as a tangled web of unmeaning lines ; 
 and then, to enforce his criticism, adds, that the same 
 expressions may be derived analytically from the Kep- 
 lerian laws. Is it possible, we reply, that Hegel was so 
 ignorant of the first elements of exact science, as not to 
 have known (when he wrote his comment), that the ana- 
 lytical and geometrical proofs are virtually the same, 
 that the analytical proofs contain the equivalents of the 
 Newtonian geometrical lines, though they do not re- 
 present them pictorially to the senses ? We destroy not 
 Newton's proofs by translating them into a series of more 
 concise analytical formulae ; and La Place (as well as 
 all the other great men who, during the past century, 
 made the noblest use of analytical demonstrations) ever 
 spoke with admiration of Newton's proofs, and of "the 
 greatness of his genius and good fortune." 
 
 Hegel's comments on the planetary motions in ellip- 
 tic orbits shew a like ignorance of the first elements of 
 mechanical philosophy. The very generality of Newton's 
 proofs — that which constitutes their excellence and 
 certainty — is made a matter of objection. I cannot 
 
 S2 
 
Cclxviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. " 
 
 reply formally to this part of his adverse criticism ; for 
 the attempt would involve me in technical details unfit- 
 ted for this section of the Preface : but I affirm, that it 
 is one unmixed, unredeemed mass of almost incredible 
 ignorance and blundering: and for a proof of these 
 strong assertions I refer the Cambridge reader to the 
 condensed Paper in our Transactions which I have 
 already quoted. In conclusion, I may, however, remark, 
 that he does, what has often been done before, and will 
 often be done again by persons who pretend to speculate 
 on the conclusions of exact science before they under- 
 stand its first elements — He regards centrifugal and 
 centripetal forces as if they were conceptions of the 
 same nature. The former (I surely need not inform the 
 academic reader) is not an extrinsic force, but is an 
 intrinsic, mechanical, and necessary consequence of the 
 curvilinear motion of any body revolving about an 
 attracting center. The latter is a true extrinsic force 
 urging the revolving body towards the center. One who 
 has not learnt to grasp this distinction, is in a poor con- 
 dition to undertake a sane comment on the Principia. 
 
 He who pulls down an old system, ought in fairness 
 to build up another in its place. If Hegel has destroyed 
 Newton's proof of Kepler's Laws, let us see what better 
 proof he has to offer us. His proof of the first Law : 
 viz. that the planets revolve in elliptic orbits, is as 
 follows ; " For absolutely uniform motion the circle is 
 the only path. The circle is the line returning into 
 itself, in which the radii are equal ; there is for it only 
 one determining quantity, the radius. But in free 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cclxix 
 
 motions the determinations according to space and 
 time come into view with differences. There must be 
 a difference in the spatial aspect in itself, and there- 
 fore the form requires two determining quantities. 
 Hence the form of the path returning into itself is an 
 ellipse." If we can regard this account as reasoning 
 (and we must have risen far above the regions of com- 
 mon sense if we can so regard it), the conclusion (as is 
 remarked by Dr. Whewell) does not by any means 
 follow. And why must the orbit be a curve returning 
 into itself? " Because (says Hegel) of the determination 
 of particularity and individuality, of the bodies in gene- 
 ral, so that they have partly a center in themselves, and 
 partly at the same time their center in another" ! We 
 cannot condescend to grace this egregious nonsense with 
 the name of reasoning. And (even admitting it to be 
 sound) it proves, as is shewn by Dr. Whewell, the 
 impossibility of known facts as much as it proves any- 
 thing else. 
 
 Let us next look at Hegel's new proof of Kepler's 
 second Law : viz. that the radius- vector of an elliptic 
 orbit sweeps over equal areas in equal times. It is as 
 follows : " In the circle, the arc or angle which is 
 included by the two radii is independent of them. But 
 in the motion (of a planet) as determined by the con- 
 ception, the distance from the center and the arc 
 run over in a certain time must be compounded in one 
 determination, and must make out a whole. This whole 
 is the sector, a space of two dimensions. And hence 
 the arc is essentially a Function of the radius-vector ; 
 
CClxX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 and the former (the arc) being unequal, brings with it 
 the inequality of the radii. 11 If we could, even in 
 courtesy, call this reasoning, it would not (as Dr. Whe- 
 well remarks) prove the conclusion required. " It would 
 only prove that the arc is some function or other of the 
 radii." 
 
 Lastly, let us examine the new proof of Kepler's 
 third Law : viz. that the cubes of the mean distances of 
 the planets are as the squares of their times of revolution. 
 In the case of falling bodies, Hegel tells us that Time 
 and Space have a relation to one another as root and 
 square. Falling bodies however are the case of only 
 half-free motion, and the determination is incomplete. 
 u But in the case of absolute motion, the domain of 
 free masses, the determination attains its totality. The 
 Time as the root is a mere empirical magnitude : but 
 as a component of the developed Totality, it is a To- 
 tality in itself: it produces itself, and therein has a 
 reference to itself. And in this process, Time, being 
 itself the dimensionless element, only comes to a formal 
 identity with itself, and reaches the square. Space, on 
 the other hand, as a positive external relation, comes 
 to the full dimensions of the conception of Space, that 
 is, the cube. The Realization of the two conceptions 
 (Space and Time) preserves their original difference. 
 This is the third Keplerian Law, the relation of the 
 cubes of the distances to the squares of the times. 11 
 " And this, 11 he adds, " represents simply and immedi- 
 ately the reason of the thing: while on the contrary, 
 the Newtonian Formula, by means of which the Law 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cclxxi 
 
 is changed into a Law for the Force of Gravity, shews 
 the distortion and inversion of Reflexion, which stops 
 halfway" Self-complacent solemnity, and human folly 
 working on a system, never before reached a deeper 
 bathos of absurdity. But Hegel rejoices, like a giant, 
 over his vanquished enemy. " The motion of the hea- 
 venly bodies is not a being pulled this way and that, 
 as is imagined by Newton. They go along, as the 
 
 ancients say, like blessed gods It is not right to say, 
 
 because a stone is inert, and the whole earth consists of 
 stones, and the other heavenly bodies are of the same 
 nature as the earth, therefore the heavenly bodies are 
 inert. This conclusion makes the properties of the whole 
 the same as those of the part. Impulse, Pressure, 
 Resistance, Pulling, and the like, are valid only for 
 other than celestial matter." There can be no doubt 
 (says Dr. Whewell) " that this is a very different doctrine 
 from that of Newton." Having thus destroyed the 
 fundamental propositions of the Principia, Hegel attacks 
 Newton's grand conclusion (viz. that the celestial bodies 
 are composed, like the terrestrial, of inert matter,) by 
 the following irrefragable argument : " Doubtless both 
 are matter, as a good thought and a bad thought are 
 both thoughts; but a bad one is not therefore good 
 because it is a thought." 
 
 Here I quit Hegel's comments and demonstrations. 
 The extracts given above are not a mere idle digression ; 
 but have a direct bearing on the purpose of this section 
 of the Preface. 
 
 It would be arrant folly, on the strength of these 
 examples, to say that Hegel was a man without genius 
 
Cclxxil PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 or intellect. The impression he produced, and still 
 produces in one philosophical school of Germany, seems 
 to prove that he was a man of genius. But the quo- 
 tations above made (like a reductio ad absurdum in 
 geometry) do prove that there must have been some- 
 thing radically false in the condition of his under- 
 standing, and in the principles of his reasoning ; and 
 they prove to demonstration the utter absurdities into 
 which a man is led who entirely mistakes his own 
 powers, and follows out false principles into all their 
 consequences. In like manner, no one denies the 
 reality of Oken's inductive discoveries, or refuses him his 
 due intellectual honor. But this concession makes not 
 his Physio-Philosophy one jot less absurd and mon- 
 strous; it only makes his psychological delusions the 
 more lamentable. Neither do we deny to Strauss the 
 possession of great learning and critical skill : but while 
 he worships a pantheistic idol, it is impossible he 
 should be a Christian, or feel the spirit of its teaching. 
 Our Religion prostrates human nature to the dust, and 
 gives it no moral power to fit it either for its duties 
 here, or for the fruition of eternity, but that which it 
 derives from a source external to itself — from a know- 
 ledge of God's law, and a sustaining grace enabling it to 
 lead an accordant course of life. But Pantheism makes 
 man to be all in all ; at once the fountain of all truth 
 and knowledge and the author of his own religion. 
 Strauss could not, in such a state of mind, accept 
 Christianity in its simple, pure, and natural form. 
 Through his critical skill in handling the weapons of con- 
 troversy, he has, in the opinion of his own school, utterly 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 cclxxiii 
 
 crushed the older Rationalists ; who, by separating the 
 plain historical facts of our religion from its miracles 
 and mysterious doctrines, endeavoured to establish the 
 former by denying and rejecting the latter. But when, 
 on the principles of his Philosophy, he pretends to 
 resolve all sacred history into a myth, and its doc- 
 trines into a set of phantasms or visions, conjured up 
 and seen only within the mind oT man, he reaches a 
 depth of audacious folly in as direct antagonism with 
 our reason and moral sense, as his Master's comment 
 on the Principia is in antagonism with the firmest 
 truths of material science. 
 
 If the academic student know little of the Bible 
 history, or of its evidences, and still more, if he have little 
 knowledge of its doctrines and its promises, he is in no 
 state to encounter the subtle and destructive criticisms 
 of Strauss. He may enter on a study of these criticisms 
 with an honest spirit, and yet be defeated in detail, 
 should he think that his Author is a man of free 
 thought and unfettered by prepossession. But whatever 
 may be Strauss"* subtilty and learning, and whatever 
 his profession of impartiality, " the spirit of the desired 
 conclusion (the establishment of Hegel's philosophy) 
 pervades the detail as well as the plan of all the earlier 
 parts of the Life of Jesus : and in matters properly 
 of historical or critical discussion, we constantly find 
 the usual elements of such enquiries abandoned, and 
 philosophical considerations invoked at every turn*." 
 
 * Observations on Pantheistic Principles, $c. by Dr. Mill. Cambridge, 
 1840. 
 
Cclxxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 But I affirm, once more, that his pantheistic Phi- 
 losophy is false to reason and to human nature; and 
 that all critical conclusions derived through the medium 
 of this Philosophy, must inevitably be tainted (whether 
 the Author may know it himself or not) by this first 
 element of falsehood. Pantheism gives us not the 
 sober fruition either of moral or material truth ; but in 
 its place, directs us to embrace an unsubstantial cloud : 
 and if we wed ourselves to Ixion's folly, we must 
 (according to the allegory of the ancients) have also 
 Ixion's punishment, and end in an everlasting maze and 
 whirl of unprofitable, heartless, and godless dreaming. 
 
 On these subjects I can no longer dwell; and return- 
 ing to the more immediate matter of this section, I ear- 
 nestly recommend the Cambridge undergraduates (and 
 the undergraduates of this day are the representatives 
 of the body at whose request I first published the 
 following Discourse) to study the Evidences of Paley. 
 His work is short and clear, appeals to the first 
 principles of common sense and feeling, and forms a 
 part of our established academic course. It is not, 
 however, a very learned work, and may not on that 
 account satisfy one whose delight is in deep learning ; 
 and it gives us none of the baseless visions of tran- 
 scendentalism, and cannot therefore satisfy a Pantheist, 
 or one who has drunk deeply at his ideal fountains : 
 but truth is its aim, and common sense is its element, 
 and it puts before the unsophisticated heart and reason 
 a far more convincing weight of evidence than is found 
 in any other English work. But our undergraduates 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CclxXV 
 
 must not be content with this. They must study the 
 Gospel histories with an earnest and truth-loving spirit ; 
 and if they do so, they will rise from this study con- 
 vinced more and more that the histories are artless, 
 earnest, natural, and essentially true. The documents 
 of our religion are put before us historically; and we 
 must read and study the history if we wish to under- 
 stand it. It is no right and honest study, if we neg- 
 lect the history and only read a hostile comment. If 
 this be the conduct of our minds, we are sure to end 
 in scepticism or positive unbelief. 
 
 The appearance of Christianity is the greatest fact 
 of history, and the canonical books of the New Testa- 
 ment are the authentic records of the fact. The first 
 question, if we be in a state of doubt, is this — Are 
 these documents substantially true f Now we possess 
 a short work that does contain a subtle, and at the 
 same time a true and honest forensic argument directly 
 bearing on this first and vital question. It takes no- 
 thing for granted but that for which we have the 
 evidence of our eyes ; and it appeals only to those first 
 principles of common sense whereby any man may form 
 a judgment on a question of historical truth. 
 
 Let then the reader, if he have begun to doubt or 
 waver in his reply to this great fundamental question, 
 read carefully and seriously the Horw Paulince of Paley, 
 and he will see a proof nothing short of moral demon- 
 stration, that the book called "The Acts of the Apostles," 
 is substantially a true history of facts and opinions; 
 and he will further see that St Paul wrote all the Epis- 
 
CClxXvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 ties which pass under his name and can be called histo- 
 rical, and taught the doctrines therein recorded. He 
 will also see a proof which cannot be controverted, that 
 St Paul, whether right or wrong, was a sincere, honest, 
 and most earnest man, and that he thoroughly believed 
 what he taught. And these conclusions virtually com- 
 prehend the substantial historical truth of the whole 
 Gospel narrative — the very point for which we are con- 
 tending. 
 
 We may, in this early stage of our inquiry, and 
 after we have read the Horw Paulinw, disbelieve some 
 of the doctrines of the New Testament ; but we cannot 
 believe with the school of Strauss, that its historical por- 
 tions are nothing better than a myth. And if a man 
 have gone thus far in the acceptance of Christian truth, 
 he cannot in moral consistency remain where he is. 
 Christianity is the faith of his fathers, and of his coun- 
 try. His civil duties are bound up in it ; and it pro- 
 fesses not to teach him things of trifling moment, which 
 he has a right to overlook or put on one side ; but it 
 does profess to teach him what is of the deepest import- 
 ance to his happiness and moral hopes. Let him then try 
 to understand the sacred documents of the Old Testa- 
 ment : and here again he is supplied with a short work 
 written on Paley^s plan, which will teach him, with the 
 force of moral demonstration, that a consistent thread 
 of truth runs through the disjointed parts of the Old 
 Testament, and binds them historically together*. 
 
 * Undesigned Coincidences of the Old and New Testament, by Pro- 
 fessor Blunt. London, 11347- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CClxXVH 
 
 He may perhaps during his progress see many 
 things which, to his uninstructed moral sense, may 
 appear difficult or repulsive. But even in the obscurest 
 parts of these old records, and in their strange pro- 
 phetic figures, he may learn to see the typified elements 
 of the Christian scheme ; and the plain shadows of 
 coming historical events that unassisted reason cannot 
 account for, but religion can. If h*e doubt all this (and 
 though he begin his studies as a waverer, and waver 
 long, he may yet see the whole truth at last) let him not 
 lose himself among difficult and recondite works of cri- 
 tical learning ; but rather let him read patiently and 
 seriously the Sunday lessons of our Church from the 
 time of Advent to the Ascension ; and he may there 
 see (on evidence against which neither the subtility 
 of Hume, nor that of our modern Pantheists has any 
 bearing), that whatsoever difficulties there may be in 
 the way of Christianity, there are far greater difficulties 
 in the way of positive infidelity. Let him also read 
 some historical comment, like that of Keith*, on the pro- 
 phetic oracles of the Bible, and then judge honestly for 
 
 * The copies of Keith's work have been sold by tens of thousands. Its 
 great popularity is partly explained by the feverish anxiety which now 
 affects the Christian public, to lift up the curtain that conceals our vision 
 of the future. This anxiety, however natural, is not, I fear, very profitable. 
 I have referred to this work because it compares the geographical and his- 
 torical facts of modern discovery with the prophetic declarations of the Old 
 Testament, and shews that these facts are in many instances the perfect 
 and literal accomplishment of the old prophetic declarations. So much is, 
 I think, completely proved in Keith's work. It maybe read with pleasure 
 and profit, and fully bears out what is said above, that though there may 
 be difficulties in the way of our acceptance of the religion of Christ, there 
 are far greater difficulties in the way of those who reject it altogether. 
 
Cclxxviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 himself. If such be the conduct of his mind, and he 
 have any feeling for the truth of history, and any sym- 
 pathy with the writings of good and earnest men, he 
 will go farther still, and with God's help may in the 
 end be a firm believer. 
 
 If a man have any right conception of an overruling 
 Providence he cannot think that a moral revelation, 
 in some form or other, is in itself incredible. This is 
 the starting point of Paley. It is with moral truth as 
 with physical. Our first elements of truth are derived, 
 by experience, from without : then they pass within our- 
 selves, and gain a new development by the workings 
 of the mind upon its first principles, according to the 
 laws that God has impressed on our inner nature. 
 But while we are thus building up our knowledge we 
 are compelled to take for granted a great mass of 
 knowledge that has been worked out previously by the 
 labours of other men. We cannot move one step with- 
 out granting this. The pantheistic scheme, whether 
 applied to physics or morals, is radically false, and gives 
 us no true history of our knowledge. It mutilates our 
 inner faculties, breaks in upon the constancy of material 
 laws, and distorts the facts of our moral history. And 
 for what purpose ? That it may shut out the glory of 
 the God of nature, and bring to light the glory of the 
 creature man. The scheme of degrading the Gospel 
 into a myth, and our religious polity and faith into a 
 mere form of inner development in the mind of man, 
 is as false to history as it is to human nature. This is 
 the conclusion I wished to reach, and which I urge upon 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cclxxix 
 
 the reader in the strength of a full conviction, and with 
 all the earnestness of truth and goodwill. 
 
 Let no one, however, think that historical truth is 
 all a Christian is to look for among the evidences of 
 his religion. The historical proofs of religion are pro- 
 pounded to the reason and assented to on evidence ; 
 and so far our conviction resembles that we have when 
 we read and understand a proposition in geometry. 
 But this comparison soon comes to an end. Our re- 
 ligious belief implies certain corresponding duties, and 
 an accordant course of life ; and if these be wanting, we 
 want the best evidence of religion — that which appeals 
 to the heart : for religion has its promises as well as 
 its proofs ; and we have no title to its promises, and 
 we may soon learn to disbelieve them altogether, if we 
 perform not the duties it enjoins. Our conviction of a 
 mathematical truth is not progressive; but our moral 
 convictions are progressive : and it is not true that 
 moral convictions, however sincere, do in the first in- 
 stance pass into that form of belief which the Scrip- 
 tures call faith (or " the evidence of things not seen"), 
 whereby the revelations of God and His promises are as 
 fully believed and acted on as if they were the objects of 
 sense. God ordained material laws, and while he conti- 
 nues to uphold them, material nature moves on in har- 
 mony ; but were this sustaining power withdrawn, law 
 would be at an end, and nature would relapse into con- 
 fusion. In like manner our moral nature is of God's 
 creating, and only moves on harmoniously so long as it is 
 upheld by his sustaining power. Without communion with 
 
CCIXXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 God, our religious principles, no matter how clear their 
 first evidence, have no coherence or continuity, and will 
 soon fall back into a state of moral chaos. If a man be 
 sensual, irreligious, or careless of his moral health, he 
 can have no moral strength against the plausible subtil- 
 ties of Rationalism, or the pantheistic dreams of Strauss. 
 Infidelity and sensuality are twin brothers. History 
 tells us this, and our own experience may sometimes 
 whisper it to us; and the Bible declares this truth in 
 words too plain to be misinterpreted. "If any man will 
 do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be 
 of God." Fanatical men may have misunderstood this 
 passage. To do the will of God is to do our duty as 
 social, intellectual, and religious beings, and not to 
 fall short in any part of our appointed task. Sober 
 philosophy accepts this declaration of the Word of God 
 in all its fulness, and experience tells us that it is true. 
 The Apostles and first teachers of Christianity have 
 been called impostors or enthusiasts, and therefore un- 
 worthy of belief. They were not impostors unless we 
 can believe in historical miracles a thousand times more 
 incredible than the miracles of the New Testament. 
 We must believe that a few plain, earnest, unlettered 
 men, fabricated a tissue of falsehoods which explained, 
 perfected, and fulfilled, the complicated historical and 
 prophetic documents of an older religion ; and was also, 
 when they began to teach, woven by a thousand threads 
 into the history of the times in which they lived : which 
 appealed to facts and incidents well known to the 
 persons who were first converted, and made its way 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CClxXXl 
 
 among unwilling hearers, and against all the efforts of 
 national prejudice and civil power. The first teachers 
 were not impostors, if we are ever to put trust in moral 
 evidence. They had nothing to gain in this world. 
 They preached holiness and inward purity ; and they 
 themselves led that life of self-denial they taught other 
 men to lead. They had no secret or esoteric truths ; 
 but they expounded to their flock all they believed and 
 all they knew. They taught the whole counsel of God 
 without reserve. The God they believed in was a God 
 of truth, and was to be worshipped in sincerity, and 
 honoured by a life of truth. We still may listen to 
 their teaching ; for their writings speak to our moral 
 sense, and tell us to put off the old man, which is cor- 
 rupt, according to the deceitful lusts.,. and to put on the 
 new man, which after God is created in righteousness and 
 true holiness. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every 
 man truth with his neighbour ; for we are members one 
 of another... Let him that stole steal no more... Let not 
 the sun go down upon your wrath... Let no corrupt com- 
 munication proceed out of your mouth... And grieve not 
 the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the 
 day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and 
 anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from 
 you, with all malice. And be ye kind to one another, 
 tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for 
 Christ's sake hath forgiven you. (Ephes. iv). Men who 
 thus lived and taught, could not have been acting 
 through their lives but one continued lie. They taught, 
 therefore, what in their hearts they believed to be true. 
 s. d. t 
 
CCIXXXH PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 It was this faith which, under God, sustained them, 
 and made them to go on as they had begun, and to be 
 victors in their conflict with the world. Truth in its 
 simplicity was the aim of their hearts ; and with the 
 world they made no compromise (however horrible the 
 penalties that awaited them) by the sacrifice of one iota 
 of what they believed true. They counted the cost 
 when they undertook their task. Their Lord had died 
 a death of ignominy and torture. They themselves 
 looked for a like end, and their daily experience was 
 in accordance with this anticipation. Behold (says St 
 Paul) / go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not 
 knowing the things that shall befal me there : save that 
 the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying, that bonds 
 and afflictions abide me. But none of these things move 
 me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I 
 might finish my course with joy (Acts xx). And soon 
 afterwards, while on the same journey, when his brother 
 Christians, with prophetic dread of bonds and afflictions, 
 besought him not to go up to Jerusalem, he replied, 
 What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart ? For I 
 am ready not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem 
 for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts xxi). This is no 
 solitary example. It is but a graphic representation of 
 a great principle that ruled over the conduct of all the 
 Apostles and early teachers of Christ. Impostors they 
 were not, if there be such a thing as truth in history, 
 or force in moral evidence. Enthusiasts they were, if 
 by enthusiasm we mean the devotion of every faculty 
 of soul and body to the cause they were sent to plead. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. Cclxxxiii 
 
 But if by enthusiasm we mean any moral obliquity, or 
 unwillingness to see, and practically take up and carry 
 out, the whole truth, so far as they comprehended it, 
 we emphatically deny that they were enthusiasts. 
 
 The existence of Christianity is a great historical 
 fact. How did it begin, and by what power did it win 
 its place in the history of mankind ? If we believe it 
 true, we are at no loss for an answer to these questions. 
 If we believe it false, we give up the best principles of 
 historical evidence and moral truth, and we are baffled 
 in our attempt to find any intelligible reply in which 
 our minds can rest content. 
 
 Can we believe, with the modern Pantheist, that 
 Christianity is a myth, a phantasm of the mind ; and 
 not a system of belief in substantial realities, which are 
 proved by good moral and historical evidence ? We 
 can only grasp this conclusion by giving up those very 
 elements of our nature without which we never could 
 have learnt to apprehend any general truth whatsoever. 
 Pantheistic philosophy turns the whole fabric of our 
 knowledge (physical, moral, social, and religious) upside 
 down, and deprives it of every single point on which it 
 can rest with firmness. The general truths of morals 
 and physics transcend the facts and evidences with 
 which they begin ; but are not, on that account, inde- 
 pendent of them. A blind man may comprehend the 
 principles of Optics, and by reasoning deductively from 
 them might eliminate unknown optical truths : but the 
 science of Optics never could have existed in the mind 
 of man, but for the evidence of his eyes ; and to this 
 
 t2 
 
CclxXXiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 evidence he must again appeal by new experiments to 
 be tested by the sense of sight, if he is to meet the 
 demands of advancing knowledge. The ideal Pantheist 
 forwards not human knowledge (social or physical) ; 
 but clogs it and bewilders it, by an inflated, hazy, me- 
 taphysical creed ; which so blinds the intellectual sense 
 that a man can neither apprehend a plain inductive 
 truth in physics, nor a plain moral truth gathered from 
 the experience of what human nature is, nor a plain 
 inference from those first elements of historical evidence, 
 without which men could have neither knowledge nor 
 profit from the records of past time. But the Pantheist 
 not merely blinds the eyes of common sense and reason, 
 but he has a language as deformed as his creed. He wars 
 against good taste, elevates into realities the phantasms 
 of his brain, and fills his pages with a monstrous un- 
 wieldy jargon, a confusion of tongues worse than that 
 of Babel, which is abhorrent to any soul that loves 
 simplicity and truth. England will not long endure 
 this turgid and cloudy jargon. Her pure philosophical 
 diction has indeed undergone a slight damp suffusion 
 from this new pantheistic vapour : but the warm sun 
 of a better day will drive it off; and it will not long, 
 we trust, be suffered either to obscure our language, or 
 dim the bright surface of moral and religious truth *. 
 
 * I add this note, during the passage of these pages through the press, 
 that I may not be blamed for using vituperative words without giving any 
 reason for them. Few men have had a power over the English tongue 
 more magical than that of Coleridge : but in the latter years of his life 
 his philosophical essays sometimes became obscure and disagreeable, from 
 his use of words, or turns of thought, he borrowed from the German philo- 
 sophy : and there are some modern writers of great power, who seem as 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CClxXXV 
 
 The early teachers of Christianity appealed to the 
 sacred books of their countrymen. We have these 
 books still, and can sift their evidence. So far we are 
 on a level with the first Christians ; and in some impor- 
 tant matters of belief we have, so far as regards this 
 evidence, a great advantage over them. But the Apostles 
 appealed to the teaching and miracles of their Saviour, 
 to whom they had listened, and with whom they had 
 lived ; and they proclaimed themselves the witnesses of 
 His resurrection. This was their starting-point. They 
 began with signs and wonders, and they were the wit- 
 
 if they could never find in their hearts to express themselves as English- 
 men used to do. If the Germans are before us in any parts of philosophy, 
 we may be compelled to adopt some of their technical language; but we 
 have no need to smother our own language under it. The reader will, 
 I trust, bear in mind, that the remarks in the text relate not to German 
 philosophy (truly so called); but to the abuse of it, especially when it 
 passes into the type of Pantheism. The philosophy of Locke led to 
 Materialism ; that of Kant to Pantheism ; but the two leaders are not to 
 bear the blame of all that has been done by their followers. 
 
 All knowledge, psychological as well as material, is in its rise and 
 early form, empirical and inductive; and our good old philosophical 
 language constantly shews us the marks of this truth. There is a sym- 
 metry and congruity in its general terms, even when they are made use of 
 to express the highest points of general knowledge we have arrived at : 
 for they remind us, in their form and derivation, of the steps by which we 
 have reached the level on which we stand. But a Pantheist denies the 
 inductive method, and seeks only for general truth within the recesses of 
 his own mind. He strives therefore to drive from his thoughts the steps 
 by which he gained his general knowledge, and to discard, as far as may 
 be, from his language, those natural expressions that remind him of a truth 
 he chooses to shut out from his belief. Hence, he is positively constrained, 
 by his own principles, to invent a new technical form of words, to describe 
 the emanations and phantasms of his brain; and as his philosophy 
 is not that of nature, neither can his language be simple and natural. 
 Pantheism, therefore, leads to a cloudy, cumbrous, and hypothetical dic- 
 tion : and the worshippers in that school have their metaphysical devotions 
 fed and stimulated by the ideal mists (what Milton calls the " Majesty 
 of darkness") that circle round the idol before which they worship. 
 
CclxXXvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 nesses of great miracles. But they told not their 
 countrymen of things done in a corner. They began to 
 teach the religion of Christ in that city where he had 
 suffered a public death a few weeks before, and in sight 
 of the mount from which he had ascended a few days 
 before. They first addressed their countrymen at the 
 time of a great public festival, which tens of thousands 
 had come to celebrate from all the provinces of Judaea, 
 and from many distant parts of the world. Multitudes, 
 as we know, believed. Many of them, no doubt, had 
 heard the teaching of Jesus, and knew something of His 
 life and miracles ; and had therefore their hearts pre- 
 pared, and their eyes partly opened, for the reception 
 of a new and better light ; and all of them were con- 
 strained by the manifestation of powers which could only 
 come from God. They believed, and became the living 
 members of the Church. But the nation believed not ; 
 for the new doctrine was humbling to individual pride, 
 and destructive of their cherished hopes of national glory. 
 The followers of Jesus, as He had foretold them, were 
 soon the objects of bitter persecution. Time went on, and 
 the primitive teachers addressed themselves not to Jews 
 only, but to proselytes (both " of righteousness and the 
 gate"), and to heathens of every country. We know 
 the subsequent events. Jerusalem and its temple were 
 utterly destroyed, and the descendants of Abraham 
 were driven as outcasts among the nations of the earth. 
 But the followers of Jesus continued to gain fresh con- 
 quests, and in about three hundred years Christianity 
 became the established religion of the Roman empire. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CClxXXVH 
 
 But with what weapons was this great conquest 
 won ? Not by the arms of the flesh ; for these arms the 
 Christians were not allowed to wield ; and they taught 
 no flattering philosophy, but a doctrine most humbling 
 to man's pride : they found therefore no co-operating 
 strength in the philosophy of their own times. They 
 taught a life of self-denial, of humility, of gentleness, of 
 charity, and of purity : and hence it was that their 
 doctrines were in early conflict with the licentious wor- 
 shippers of heathen gods. In the heathen sense of 
 mystery, they had no mysteries ; they had an appointed 
 order of overseers, elders, and ministers, (bishops, priests, 
 and deacons) to perform their simple ceremonials, to in- 
 struct them, guide them, and watch over their spiritual 
 health : but they had no sacrificial priesthood ; and the 
 very name of priest (\epevs) was at first unknown amongst 
 them. They had indeed their rites (and they had also 
 their mysteries, in the Christian sense of mystery), but 
 they were few and simple. They had their rite of admis- 
 sion into the flock, and their rite of commemoration, 
 whereby they kept alive, through visible symbols, the 
 remembrance of the death and passion of their Lord. 
 These rites were done, under divine command, as acts of 
 faith and obedience, and had therefore the promise of a 
 spiritual blessing. They were also sacramental in the 
 Roman sense : — one was a solemn pledge that the neo- 
 phyte would be true to the banners under which he en- 
 gaged to fight : — the other was a renewal of his solemn 
 pledge, and a public declaration that he was still true 
 to it, and would continue "Christ's faithful soldier and 
 
CClxXXVJii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 servant unto his life's end." But they had no gorgeous 
 pageantry or sacerdotal pomp to captivate the senses. 
 The gorgeous temples of the gods, their incomparable 
 sculptures, the symbols of heathen art and imagination 
 carried to the highest grade of sensual and ideal refine- 
 ment, were held as nothing, or worse than nothing, by 
 the early followers of the Apostles. Hence also it was 
 that the heathen multitude (far more, at first, than the 
 heathen magistrate) rose up against them, and tried to 
 crush them. 
 
 But God was on their side, and they went on adding 
 to their numbers, till they were denounced as dangerous 
 to the State. Whether these early Christians were 
 truly thought to endanger the safety of the State, 
 is a question of no moment. A test of their loyalty 
 was offered to them ; — they were called on, and they 
 refused, to do religious homage to Caesar. On this 
 account they were proclaimed guilty of treason, and 
 underwent the direst punishments that the malice of an 
 inflamed idolatrous multitude, and the jealousy of a 
 heathen despot, could inflict upon them. 
 
 Every fact of authentic history proves that the 
 early Christians, whether they were right or wrong in 
 their belief, were upright men who held that they were 
 the servants of a God of truth, and that no motive 
 under heaven could justify them in violating the sanctity 
 of truth. This is the grand point for us to prove, and 
 history proves it with the force of demonstration. How 
 easily they might have tampered with their consciences, 
 and said that the homage done to Caesar was a political 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CClxXxix 
 
 and not a religious act — that this was the sense 
 in which a heathen did his homage — that no Roman 
 believed his monarch (a man like himself, and too often 
 a very ignorant, brutal, sensual man) was in truth a 
 god. But the Christians would not thus tamper with 
 their conscience. Their reply was, like that of Peter 
 and John to the Jewish Sanhedrim, " Whether it be 
 right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more 
 than unto God, judge ye." They refused to do religious 
 homage to Caesar. Truth was to be upheld at whatever 
 cost : and the God of truth they could^ not worship by 
 a lie. Again and again it seemed that the powers of 
 darkness were about to overwhelm them. They were 
 "perplexed, but not in despair ;" they were "persecuted, 
 but not forsaken ;" they believed in the promises of 
 their God and Saviour; they did in their hours of 
 bitter trial what the Apostles had done before ; they 
 fought the fight of faith, and it was the will of Provi- 
 dence that they should gain a victory over all the powers 
 of darkness. 
 
 The heathen multitude had no mercy. They had 
 been trained to the love of blood by bloody celebrations ; 
 they had been trained to sensuality by bad examples, and 
 by a sensual and voluptuous idolatry ; they hated the 
 purity of the simple and self-denying Christians ; their 
 souls were glutted to nausea with *old sights of blood- 
 shed ; and, to satisfy their cravings, they wanted some 
 new form of human suffering. The magistrate, more 
 merciful than the heathen mob, would sometimes inter- 
 pose to save a venerable sufferer like old Polycarp (to 
 
CCXC PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 quote one example among many), by feigning a confes- 
 sion not made by the martyr's lips. But the faithful 
 Christians, of these hard days, were like their Master 
 and his first followers. They neither confessed with 
 their own lips what they believed not true ; nor, while 
 they heard the roaring of the beasts by which they were 
 to be devoured, or saw the faggots by which their 
 bodies were to be burnt, would they allow the magistrate 
 to feign in mercy a confession for them. 
 
 Such, for nearly three centuries, were the attesta- 
 tions of Christian truth, and such were the weapons 
 by which the Christians won their battles. If we 
 believe in Providence, and believe that these men taught 
 only what they had a divine commission to teach, and 
 what in their hearts they believed true, then have 
 we a full explanation both of their conduct and of 
 all its consequences. They began their teaching by 
 an appeal to facts about which they could not be 
 deceived. They made these asserted facts the very 
 foundation of their whole system of teaching. If these 
 were not true, they were a set of impostors. But 
 if we accept this alternative, what follows ? We must 
 believe in a systematic conduct out of all analogy with 
 what we know of human nature, and in a series of con- 
 sequences that mock the whole experience of history. 
 We must believe in a consistent and long-continued 
 series of miracles, moral, social, and historical. 
 
 Gibbon* has well described some of the secondary 
 causes which, under Providence, led to the propagation 
 
 * Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, cxv. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXC1 
 
 and final establishment of Christianity ; but his account 
 fails in some of the essential points of a true and philo- 
 sophical history. It gives us no right conception of the 
 evidence on which the first Christians acted, and of the 
 feelings which carried them on ; neither does it give us 
 any knowledge of the grand simplicity and moral purity 
 of the doctrines taught by them. To these subjects his 
 mind's eye was closed, for he was an unbeliever ; and 
 to fortify his unbelief, he delighted to dwell upon the 
 follies and aberrations of the primitive Christians. But 
 had there been no follies and strange delusions among 
 them, their religion would have wanted one test of its 
 truth ; for these were among the things predicted in 
 the sacred records on which Christianity is built, and 
 with which it must stand or fall. He read the history 
 of the Church of Christ with a never-ceasing curl upon 
 his lip. The demon of impurity haunted him, and the 
 stream of historic truth was polluted by the taint of his 
 imagination. In such a state of mind it was not possible 
 for him to comprehend the moral purity of the Gospel, 
 or to do any adequate justice to those men who were 
 God's instruments in conveying it to mankind. His 
 vast learning and general fidelity we do not pretend to 
 deny. Neither would we affirm that he did not do his 
 best to put before us the causes of the spread of Christ- 
 ianity ; but we do affirm that he was morally and intel- 
 lectually disqualified from being a good and true historian 
 of the religion of Jesus. 
 
 We may, however, use Gibbon's History for another 
 purpose. It may help us to compare the conquests 
 
CCXC11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 made by the followers of Jesus, with the conquests made 
 by other men, during a period of revolution and change 
 extending over fifteen hundred years. — The victories of 
 Mahomet were the victories of a fierce, fanatical, and 
 sensual soldiery over nations weakened by a bad polity, 
 and too often (though called Christian) degraded by super- 
 stition. There is nothing supernatural in such victories 
 as these. And what have been the consequences of the 
 establishment of the religion of Mahomet ? It has never 
 lent itself to the progress of mankind in learning, sound 
 philosophy, good polity, or civil freedom. But it has 
 desolated some of the fairest regions of the earth ; and, 
 at this moment, its empire is ready to crumble by its 
 own weight, and is upheld only by the mutual jealousies 
 of the Christian powers around it. — The victories of 
 Tamerlane were still more rapid and astonishing. His 
 murderous armies spread from one side of Asia to 
 another like a desolating wave, which at one time threat- 
 ened to overwhelm the whole of Christendom. But it 
 broke on the shores of eastern Europe, and then rolled 
 back again and spent its last fury in central Asia. 
 It was stayed by the hand of God ; for Tamerlane 
 died, and no man was raised up to follow out his 
 conquests. — Or we may take a Christian example (if 
 indeed it deserve to be called Christian), and mark the 
 progress of the Crusaders. All Europe seemed, at the 
 time, to be under one great spasm of convulsive energy, 
 and to have its passions borne towards one point of 
 maddening interest. The Crusaders were as fierce, and 
 alas ! often as licentious and fanatical as the followers 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXC111 
 
 of Mahomet. They gained great victories by the might 
 of numbers, and by military courage inflamed by fana- 
 ticism ; but they neither knew nor practised those 
 lessons of mercy and forbearance their religion should 
 have taught them. And what followed ? The tide of 
 conquest turned back upon them ; and in less than 
 a century they were driven out with shame from that 
 Holy City they had won by violence and bloodshed. 
 
 Victories like these have no similitude to the great 
 moral conquest won by the first followers of Jesus. 
 Christianity stands by itself in the history of our race. 
 Its beginning, its progress, and its continuance, are all 
 removed above vulgar nature, and admit of no explana- 
 tion from the events in the common history of our race. 
 It lives and flourishes still, and will live to the end of the 
 world — the nurse of domestic happiness, the mother of 
 our peace and joy, the fountain of all virtuous resolves, 
 the true source of national glory : and in the prophetic 
 visions that are unfolded to him, and in which he firmly 
 believes, the Christian historian can tell us that the 
 gates of hell will not prevail against the religion that 
 was founded by his Saviour. 
 
 The glowing words of the older Prophetic books, in 
 which are prefigured the moral triumphs of the reign of 
 Christ, have often been put in very painful contrast with 
 the present miseries of the Christian world ; and have 
 perhaps been the means of leading some men into 
 scepticism, or a more positive state of unbelief. But 
 we ought surely to make some reasonable allowance for 
 the poetical and figurative diction of the Old Testament ; 
 
CCXC1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 and in the prophetical portions of the New Testament 
 there is no promise to the Church of an exemption from 
 the social miseries that still afflict the human family. 
 The world is the place where men are trained and 
 proved, and not their place of final triumph. Christianity 
 was from the first but a remedial scheme, and it is so 
 still. Its triumphs are for another world. Human 
 nature is still what it was before the coming of Christ ; 
 and we can have no right claim to a fruition of His 
 promises, if we accept not the conditions under which 
 they have been offered to us. If the world practically 
 denies the doctrines of Christianity, it has surely no 
 right to point to the existence of social misery as an 
 argument against our religion. An honest Christian, 
 whatsoever evils may surround him, never complains of 
 the broken promises of his Saviour ; and what shadow 
 of right has any man, who has not heartily accepted 
 Christianity as his rule of life, to complain that its 
 benefits are not fulfilled in his own person % 
 
 But, after all, we may affirm (with confidence from 
 the past, and good hopes for the future) that Christian- 
 ity has already done much for the good of our fellow- 
 men. It has driven slavery from our homes ; not by 
 positive institution or direct command, but by the genial 
 influences of its pure morality and the indirect power of 
 its doctrines. It tells us, that every son of man is our 
 brother, and has a right, not merely to the best offices 
 of good-will and charity, but to a full participation in the 
 blessings of that religious truth which is the foundation 
 of our social happiness and of our hopes of heaven. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXCV 
 
 If any nation upon earth practically deny this truth, it 
 thereby denies the fundamental principles of Christianity, 
 and deserves not the name of Christian ; and under 
 whatsoever form of government it may be held together, 
 and whatsoever boast it may make of civil freedom, it 
 knows nothing of the spirit of the Gospel, and little of 
 that liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, while 
 it nurses and maintains within its bosom the elements of 
 the most deformed despotism that has ever afflicted the 
 race of man. 
 
 Christianity has bound society together by a thou- 
 sand endearing links, that were never felt before its 
 promulgation. Monuments of charity, unknown among 
 heathen men, have risen up around us. Our domestic 
 fabric, with all its faults, is far more pure and lovely than 
 it was in the boasted civilization of Greece and Rome. 
 Woman has now her right place within the world ; and 
 a Christian household is the abode of peace and love, 
 and the best school of every social virtue. The princi- 
 ples of honour (the code of worldly men) have been 
 exalted and refined by the indirect influences of our 
 religion. Revenge and ambition are no longer de- 
 corated in poetry, or adorned in history, as they were 
 of old, under the name of virtue. Religious wars have, 
 we trust, ceased for ever. If religious conquests be 
 hereafter made, it must be by the voice of love and 
 persuasion — by the weapons used by the Apostles of our 
 Saviour. War, alas ! has not ceased ; but horrible as 
 it is, it is not so horrible as it was of old ; and it ends 
 not now with the hopeless slavery of the vanquished. It 
 
CCXCV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 is denounced by all reasonable men, not merely as the 
 frightful scourge of humanity, but as the plague of all 
 civil progress, the destroyer of the wealth of nations, 
 and the worst enemy of true philosophy, of learning, of 
 science, and of all those qualities that minister best to 
 social happiness and national honour. The study of 
 Nature, and the religion of Nature based upon that study, 
 are among the appointed means of enabling us to com- 
 prehend the will of God, and to do our duty here. 
 Revealed religion has a still higher aim ; but the two 
 religions are not in conflict. Christian philosophy 
 loves not a one-sided and narrow creed, but embraces 
 every truth, and loves it for itself : for truth is a mani- 
 festation to the mind of man of the will of that 
 Almighty Being who made him and redeemed him, and 
 has put before him the means of social happiness and 
 the hopes of future glory. 
 
 Dr Johnson tells us, in one of the Papers of his 
 Idler, that "when the philosophers of the last age 
 first congregated into the Royal Society, great expecta- 
 tions were raised of the sudden progress of the useful 
 arts; the time was supposed to be near, when engines 
 should turn by perpetual motion, and health be secured 
 by the universal medicine ; when learning should be 
 facilitated by the real character, and commerce extended 
 by ships which could reach their ports in defiance 
 of the tempest." 
 
 u But improvement is naturally slow. The Society 
 met and parted without any visible diminution of the 
 miseries of life. The gout and stone were still painful ; 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXCV11 
 
 the ground that was not ploughed brought no harvest ; 
 and neither oranges nor grapes would grow upon the 
 hawthorn. At last those who were disappointed began 
 
 to be angry and the philosophers felt, with great 
 
 sensibility, the unwelcome importunities of those who 
 were daily asking, What have ye done f The truth is, 
 that little had been done compared with what Fame 
 had been suffered to promise V &*. 
 
 Ninety years are gone since these words were writ- 
 ten ; and within that period Science has brought to 
 light so many hidden powers of Nature, and contributed 
 so largely to the embellishments and comforts of life 
 that no utilitarian philosopher now thinks of repeating 
 the scornful question, " What have ye done V Could 
 Johnson have heard from the whisper of some prophetic 
 seer, that before a century was over (although oranges 
 and grapes refused to grow upon the hawthorn), fruits 
 that grew within the tropics would be sold at the market- 
 stalls of London, and for a price not much above that 
 of the common produce of our orchards — that the gout 
 and stone, if not subdued, would be palliated — that 
 operations, too horrible to be named, would be performed 
 by the surgeon's knife without one shriek of agony and 
 while the patient was enjoying a pleasant slumber — that 
 commerce would be extended by ships which, urged 
 through the sea by a power they carried within them- 
 selves, had not to wait for the fickle winds, and that 
 "they could reach the ports in defiance of the tempest" 
 — that the very words an author was preparing for the 
 
 * The Idler, Saturday, December 22, 1759. 
 S. D. U 
 
CCXCV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 London press might, with the velocity of lightning, be 
 sent through the air to the capital of Scotland, and 
 there also be set up in type ; and that, if he thought 
 fit, the author might go down the same day to Edin- 
 burgh and correct for himself his duplicate proof-sheets 
 before they went to press — had Johnson heard all this, 
 he would perhaps have thought that he was listening to 
 a lying oracle ; but had he believed the seer, he must 
 have softened his complaint — "that Science has the 
 power of doing little in comparison of what Fame had 
 been suffered to promise." 
 
 Without indulging in any rash anticipations, may 
 we not derive good hopes from the progress of physical 
 discoveries, and still more from the progress of social 
 discoveries and a cultivation of the arts of peace, and 
 believe that a higher Christian civilisation will gradually 
 unfold itself? — That men, before many centuries are 
 over, may, under God's help, so heartily accept religious 
 truth that they may learn to keep down the rebellious 
 elements of their nature — that Christianity, with all its 
 high and holy principles (not seen through the mists of 
 a base philosophy, or disturbed by the taint of social 
 immorality), may at length triumph as it ought to do, 
 and produce those glorious predicted fruits, which will 
 be at once its full earthly accomplishment and the 
 surest evidence of its truth? This may perhaps be 
 called a day-dream ; but it is a pleasant one, and I 
 should grieve to part with it. 
 
 In concluding this short outline of the nature of 
 Christian Evidences, I may remark, that our religion 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCXCIX 
 
 must always find antagonists in the pride and bad 
 passions of mankind. During the last century a philo- 
 sophical Deism was put in opposition to Christianity. 
 It is not Deism now, but Atheism, that is to triumph 
 over the religion of Jesus : but, fortunately for the cause 
 of sacred truth, the pantheistic visions, at this time 
 offered to the credulity of mankind, are as directly op- 
 posed to the first principles of Inductive science, as 
 they are to the historical proofs of our religion. Whether 
 the New Testament be true or false, it has not, when 
 taken collectively, and examined honestly, the least 
 similitude to a mythical book. 
 
 St Luke wrote the book called the Acts of the 
 Apostles ; and we can prove, with the force of moral 
 demonstration, that it is substantially a true and 
 honest history. His Gospel is a compilation ; but 
 he tells us that he had diligently sifted the accounts 
 delivered to the first Christians by the men ff who from 
 the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the 
 word;" and that his own history was written for the 
 express purpose that his Christian readers might know 
 the certainty of the things wherein they had been in- 
 structed. Keeping out of sight any arguments based 
 on the inspiration of the New Testament, and (for the 
 sake of argument) treating this Gospel as a common 
 historical document, we have the highest internal and 
 moral evidence, that St Luke believed it true, and we 
 know that it was so accepted by the early Christian 
 converts to whom (through the person of Theophilus) 
 it was first addressed. We can conceive it possible 
 
 u2 
 
CCC PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 that on some points he might have been misinformed : 
 but we cannot conceive it possible that his Gospel could 
 have been published as a pantheistical myth. 
 
 Myths are the embellishments of an established 
 belief. The heroic traditions of the heathen world 
 may have been partly true, and partly false : but they 
 became gradually covered and obscured by mythic de- 
 corations, when men had fallen into the fooleries of 
 hero-worship. Hence, our old historical myths were 
 published long after the period of the events and the 
 persons they pretended to celebrate. Myths do not 
 make a creed, but presuppose it and embellish it ; and 
 do not immediately, but gradually, gain their currency, 
 as they fall in with the legends of a popular superstition. 
 But the Gospel history was current during the time of 
 the Apostles, was circulated among men who lived during 
 that time, and knew the events described in the history. 
 It was publicly circulated among those men, not to 
 support any philosophical theory, and to decorate a 
 popular belief; but without any philosophical theory, 
 and in spite of an opposing popular belief. It was acted 
 on, as if it were true and historical, by those who 
 proclaimed it to mankind, and by those who accepted 
 it : and on the very strength of its being true and 
 historical, and by nothing else, did it undermine the 
 established and mythical religion of the civilized world. 
 
 The Gospel has none of the historical conditions of 
 a myth. Had the Apostles been a set of dreaming, 
 moon stricken philosophers, like some of Hegel's fol- 
 lowers — deniers of a personal God, the Creator of the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCC1 
 
 heaven and the earth — deifiers of man, and the priests 
 of a new, flattering form of hero-worship : — then, per- 
 haps, the mythical hypothesis of Strauss might have 
 had some similitude to a reasonable theory. But such 
 were not the Apostles of our Saviour, and such was not 
 the rise and progress of Christianity. 
 
 As the Hegelian philosophy destroys the logical 
 foundation of all material and scientific knowledge, by 
 pretending to evolve particular truths, independently of 
 experience, only out of the general conceptions in the 
 mind of man ; so Strauss, the apostle of this philosophy, 
 inverts the whole order of historical truth. According 
 to Strauss, the mythical conception of the Gospel pre- 
 ceded the historical ; and, in the spirit of the same 
 philosophy, he maintains that nothing can be higher in 
 nature than the conceptions formed in the mind of man ; 
 and that miracles, wrought by any power exterior to 
 man himself, are therefore impossible. This seems to 
 be the starting-point of his philosophy ; and what is it 
 but Atheism invested with the cloke of transcenden- 
 talism to cover its naked deformity? We affirm in 
 reply — that there is not the shadow of evidence for the 
 existence of any form of philosophy among the first 
 Apostles out of which a mythical Gospel could have 
 sprung — that the first conception of Gospel-truth was 
 historical — and that in no other form was it first be- 
 lieved, or could have made any progress among men. 
 
 It is not true, but it is historically false, that Chris- 
 tianity sprang up and gained belief, as a mythicized form 
 of oriental philosophy : but it is true, that the simplicity 
 
CCC11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of Christian truth was, in ancient times, obscured by 
 some bad teachers, who deformed its surface by an 
 incrustation of oriental philosophy. And it is true, in 
 these days, that our belief in the being of a God, the 
 best hopes that are bound up among the elements of 
 our moral nature, and the plain facts of historical 
 evidence, are all to be swallowed up, disintegrated, 
 re-digested, and sent out anew, as a kind of living 
 spawn upon which ideal Pantheism is to incubate, and 
 hatch whatsoever monstrous forms it pleases. There 
 can be no social or practical wisdom among men while 
 schemes and fantastical visions of this kind have any 
 currency among them. In their license of speculation, 
 and in their dogmatic contempt for the more sober 
 conclusions of inductive reason, as well as for revealed 
 religion, they may boast their intellectual liberty ; but 
 we may safely predict that they will never build any 
 lasting monuments of social wisdom, or be the true 
 friends of civil freedom. They may call themselves 
 philosophers ; but by casting away the lessons of ex- 
 perience they have practically put themselves back into 
 a state both of moral and social childhood. 
 
 One set of opinions I have endeavoured to keep 
 steadily in view through the long discussions of this 
 Preface. I have contended, that all sound philosophy 
 begins by the inductive method, and that we can never 
 sever it, with safety, from its logical and chronological 
 history — that we have a proof of the being of a 
 personal God involved in the elements of our nature — 
 that the exercise of a Creative power in nature is not 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClll 
 
 incredible, but certain — that the exercise of a mira- 
 culous power is not, therefore, incredible — that we have 
 a grand cumulative historical evidence for the truth of 
 revealed religion — that we have a great additional 
 internal evidence from its lessons of self-denial and 
 its pure morality — and that we have also a grand 
 external evidence for its truth derived from the history 
 of its propagation, and from its effects on the civil 
 progress of mankind. 
 
 Analogy supplies us with another important argu- 
 ment for the truth of revealed religion, which ought, 
 properly, to have appeared in an earlier part of this 
 section : but it is so distinct from all other arguments, 
 and at the same time so important, that I have re- 
 moved it from what might be thought its more natural 
 place, and added it as a supplement to the preceding 
 remarks on Christian Evidences : and I wish the reader 
 still to bear in mind, that I pretend not here to give a 
 treatise on Christian Evidences, but only a series of 
 short hints, thrown out in sincerity and good-will, for 
 the student's guidance ; and it matters little in what 
 order they are put before him, if they be only fitted to 
 give a true aim to the conduct of his mind, in the study 
 of the gravest questions that can ever be submitted to 
 him, and on the right determination of which will 
 depend a great portion of his social happiness, and all 
 the reasonable hopes he can ever have of living here- 
 after in his Maker's presence. 
 
CCC1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 Arguments from Analogy, 
 
 The Deist believes in a God of Nature. The Chris- 
 tian believes in the same God, and admits the first prin- 
 ciples of the Deist ; but he also believes that God is the 
 author of Revelation. If this be true, we may look for 
 some analogy between God's dealings with man in the 
 world of Nature, and his dealings with man in the 
 system of religion offered to our belief ; for experience 
 tells us that all Nature, so far as we comprehend it, is 
 on a consistent plan. Every analogy of this kind, fairly 
 made out, is a positive argument for the truth of our 
 religion, and may help to win over the Deist to the 
 side of Christian truth. Again, there are formidable 
 difficulties in the way of our full acceptance of Chris- 
 tianity as a system of belief and a rule of life. No one 
 pretends to deny this. But if it can be shewn by 
 analogy, that the same difficulties present themselves 
 in the religion of Nature, then may we confirm the 
 wavering Christian ; for these very difficulties supply 
 him with an analogical argument in favour of his religion. 
 And by the same argument we may perhaps convince 
 the Deist ; for he cannot, as a consistent Deist, rest 
 content among great and unresolved difficulties ; and 
 he must either come over to the Christian side, or seek 
 his refuge in an extinction of all inquiry, or in down- 
 right Atheism. But we have little to fear from a pas- 
 sive philosophical scepticism ; and we have nothing to 
 fear from Atheism, for it is abhorrent to the nature of 
 man. It can exist, as a negative form of belief, only in 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCV 
 
 the mind of one who is in a state of moral mutilation ; 
 and can never (except indeed under some masked form 
 of Pantheism) be dangerous to the public faith. Such, 
 in a few words, seems to be Butler's argument in his 
 great work on The Analogy of Religion Natural and 
 
 His argument is perhaps difficult to grasp, from 
 the severe and unimaginative, but truth-loving spirit in 
 which he has placed it before the reader ; and I have 
 heard some very able men declare that they had en- 
 deavoured, in vain, to feel the force of it. Let me 
 then do my best to clear the way, and (without pre- 
 tending to follow the order of his reasoning, or to give 
 his exact illustrations) to sketch in a few sentences the 
 nature of his argument ; in no fond hope of satisfying 
 the reader, but in the honest hope of leading him to 
 a patient study of Butler's work. 
 
 (1) Revealed religion tells us of the unity of the 
 Godhead. Nature proclaims the same truth : but at 
 the time our religion was published for the acceptance 
 of mankind, this great truth was not commonly believed 
 and well understood even by learned heathens. 
 
 (2) Revelation tells us that God created the 
 heaven and the earth — that man was the last created 
 of living beings — and that God then rested from His 
 labours. Many learned heathens held that the order 
 of nature, animate as well as inanimate, had been from 
 eternity. Modern science gives us the truest elements 
 of the Religion of Nature, and proves that the order of 
 Nature has not been eternal, and that man is a creature 
 
CCCV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of the last and latest period. Science also tells us, that 
 since the appearance of man, creative power in Nature 
 appears to have been at rest. That there are difficulties 
 in the interpretation of the opening words of the Book 
 of Genesis, we do not deny. To bring them into a literal 
 accordance with all the phenomena in the past history 
 of Nature would imply, on our part, a perfect know- 
 ledge of the past history of Nature ; but such a know- 
 ledge we have not. The progress of science may clear 
 up these difficulties, and the discussion of them has 
 no fit place here ; for the argument from analogy can 
 only be drawn from facts that are clear and well esta- 
 blished. We may however very safely go one step 
 farther. There appear to have been many successive 
 acts of creation (whether they come within the meaning 
 of the opening words of the Bible, I do not here inquire), 
 all on one great organic plan; and, so far as we can 
 comprehend them, they seem to have been in accord- 
 ance with the successive conditions of the earth. If this 
 be true, we have an analogical argument, not only for 
 the prescience and power of the God of Nature, but 
 also for His continued providential government. 
 
 We may go further still — we may draw from the 
 natural history of the earth, analogical arguments in 
 favour of Revelation. For if God have brought all 
 animated Nature into its present condition by successive 
 acts of creation, which have become incorporated, from 
 time to time, in the system of Nature ; Why may we 
 not suppose that he has dealt in the same manner 
 with the moral part of Nature ? Why may we not 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCV11 
 
 suppose that by extraordinary acts of His moral go- 
 vernment, (such e. g. as the supernatural promulgation 
 of a religious and moral code) He should in a like man- 
 ner deal with the moral part of Nature, and bring 
 it, from time to time, towards a higher grade of per- 
 fection ? 
 
 (3) Revelation tells us that God is omnipotent 
 and omnipresent. Nature proclaims the same great 
 truth. The more our knowledge becomes extended, 
 the firmer is our grasp and conception of the existence 
 of universal law ; and law is the natural expression of 
 God's presence. All Nature is comprehended in it, and 
 no parts of Nature are exempt from subordination to it. 
 Even in those parts of visible space which we some- 
 times speak of as vacuities, are the media through 
 which countless material actions pass unceasingly, and 
 thereby connect together and under one system of 
 general law, all parts of Nature animate and inanimate. 
 All known laws combine together in one vast consistent 
 plan, the archetype of which exists only in the will of 
 the Creator. 
 
 (4) Our Religion tells us that the moral scheme, 
 of which we form a part, is progressive, and does not 
 end here. Nature seems to tell us the same truth. 
 Past Nature has been progressive, as we learn from 
 the records of the earth. We may then believe that 
 she has reached no eternal resting point, but may be 
 progressive still. That which is present has sprung from 
 moral and natural laws impressed on Nature by the 
 power of God. That which is to come may in like 
 manner, and in subordination to the same controlling 
 
CCCV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 power, spring from the present, and be progressive 
 still. 
 
 (5) We may extend the previous statement — Our 
 religion tells us that the present is a preparation and a 
 training for something higher and better. This truth 
 is shadowed out (faintly it may be) in the religion of 
 Nature. We see proofs of the benevolent and wise care 
 of God in the structure of our bodies : but we see 
 also the sure marks of prescient and prospective wisdom 
 and design. For example, within the womb every child 
 of man has breathed by a single heart ; but during that 
 state of being a double heart was laid down and per- 
 fected by the hand of Nature. This heart first begins 
 its appointed task when we pass into the air : all that 
 passed before was but an organic preparation for a 
 new and higher condition of existence. We may then 
 believe, on a true analogy, that our moral existence here 
 is but our moral childhood, and that if we obey the 
 moral laws a prescient God has impressed on our souls, 
 we shall reap the fruits of this moral preparation in a 
 new and more glorious existence. The same truth 
 seems to be shadowed out (but perhaps more feebly) 
 in the progressive development of religious truth, of 
 human polity, and of art and science. 
 
 (6) Revealed religion tells us of a future state 
 of being. This is the. grand truth of our religion, with- 
 out which it would have no meaning. The religion of 
 Nature gives us a conception of a future state and 
 a longing for it ; but leaves the soul in perplexity and 
 doubt. But we do know that all Nature, so far as we 
 understand it, is on a harmonious and consistent plan. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCC1X 
 
 If then our conception and desire of a future state is to 
 have no fruition in futurity, then is Nature out of 
 harmony with herself — Man loses one of the elements 
 of his peace and happiness — Nations lose the best 
 element of social peace and security. The religion of 
 Nature does therefore prepare us for an acceptance of 
 the great fundamental truth of revealed religion. 
 
 (7) Revealed religion tells us of God's law and of 
 its penal sanctions. Analogy proclaims the same truth 
 in the religion of Nature. The God of Nature is a 
 moral governor, and deals throughout all Nature in 
 penal sanctions. All society is upheld in subordination 
 to this fact, and society is the creature of God ; for it 
 is but the natural offspring of the very laws He has 
 impressed on His creatures. Crimes and punishments 
 are words that stand out in every social code since man 
 lived as a social being on the earth. Misery, independ- 
 ently of all human law, follows in the train of sin — 
 national degradation in the train of national crimes and 
 offences against the great moral laws of Nature. Ana- 
 logy is here complete, and fails not in one jot of its 
 full evidence. What we have said of punishments 
 may also be said of rewards. They are a part of God's 
 dealings here. We sow in one season, we reap in an- 
 other. 
 
 (8) Our religion tells us that the Author of our 
 being is plentiful in goodness, but it conceals not the 
 sterner attributes of the Godhead. It tells us that the 
 God of Nature is a God of vengeance and of justice. 
 Nature abounds in merciful dispensations, and we see 
 
CCCX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 among the laws of Nature no mechanism or contrivance 
 for securing physical misery or social evil. But under 
 the government of natural laws we do see grievous 
 examples of individual suffering ; and the natural and 
 social punishments for violated laws are palpable and 
 terrible. We dare not therefore set up one attribute 
 of the Godhead at the expense of another, or count on 
 the mercy of God by extenuating his severe justice. 
 On painful and difficult questions like these, there is the 
 strictest analogy in the teaching of natural and revealed 
 Religion. 
 
 (9) Our religion tells us that the punishment of 
 crimes and follies ends not with their first authors, but 
 descends even to remote generations of the human 
 family. However harsh this may seem to uninstructed 
 reason, it is an unquestionable law of Nature. 
 
 (10) We learn from Revelation that man is fallen 
 from the high moral condition in which he was first 
 created. Nature seems to proclaim the same fact : 
 for this, at least, she tells us — that neither individuals 
 nor societies ever reach that perfection which, as they 
 themselves allow, would best become their moral attri- 
 butes, nor conform consistently to those laws which 
 natural reason pronounces to be right and good. But 
 natural religion points out no adequate remedy for the 
 frightful evils of society. Revealed religion gives us 
 the remedy and its proper sanction. 
 
 (11) Revealed religion tells us that the evils of 
 society are the very means whereby a man is carried 
 through a state of moral discipline and probation. The 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCX1 
 
 religion of Nature tells us that the beet and purest vir- 
 tues of society spring out of the darkest and most painful 
 conditions of humanity, and that without these condi- 
 tions the best graces of moral life could have no field for 
 exercise, and therefore no vital being. 
 
 (12) The preceding analogy may be carried much 
 farther. If we believe in a God of Nature, the evi- 
 dences of religion, considered *as matters of fact, are 
 credible if they conform to the constitution of Nature. 
 A sceptic may say, " that the proof of religion is 
 involved in such difficulties as to render it doubtful ; 
 and that it cannot be supposed, that, if it were true, it 
 would be left upon doubtful evidence."* To this Butler 
 replies, " that from the constitution and course of things, 
 we must in our temporal concerns, almost continually, 
 and in matters of great consequence, act upon evidence 
 of a like kind and degree to the evidence of religion." 
 . . . " The unsatisfactory nature of the evidence with which 
 we are obliged to take up, in the daily course of life, 
 is scarce to be expressed ; yet we do not throw away 
 life or disregard the interest of it, on account of this 
 doubtfulness" ..." The question is not at all, whether 
 the evidence of Religion be unsatisfactory to a sceptic ; 
 but whether it be, in reason, sufficient to prove and 
 discipline that virtue, which it pre-supposes. Now the 
 evidence (of Religion) is fully sufficient for the purposes 
 of probation ; how far soever it is from being satisfac- 
 tory for the purposes of curiosity." And (as Butler 
 adds) it answers the purposes of probation far better 
 
 * Butler's Analogy, Part II. cap. vm. 
 
CCCX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 than it could do if it were as demonstrative and over- 
 whelming as the sceptic seems to require. Were all social, 
 moral, and religious truth, demonstrative, there would 
 be an end of prudence in social conduct, of wisdom in 
 legislation, and of faith in religion. As then the diffi- 
 culties in life, arising out of the course of Nature form 
 an essential part of our moral and social discipline, so 
 the difficulties in the evidences our religion may afford 
 us a like religious probation. This analogy, seems to 
 be well-founded. In the difficulties of life some men fail 
 utterly, and are ruined both in their social and moral 
 condition. And so it is in our religion. But if we 
 submit to our probation with fair and honest minds, we 
 believe that God will help our convictions, and turn them 
 into that which religious men call faith. 
 
 (13) The whole scheme of our religion is remedial. 
 Is there any thing in this conception out of analogy with 
 God's dealings with us in the natural world ? Certainly 
 not. We might almost say that, under Providence, the 
 whole fabric of human knowledge and society is reme- 
 dial. We toil to satisfy our wants ; we invent remedies 
 for disease ; we frame laws against aggression. In every 
 corner of society we see traces of our fallen condition — 
 of natural and moral evils, and of remedies to palliate 
 or remove them. 
 
 (14) The religion of Christ was only matured after 
 many centuries of preparation, was slowly received among 
 men, and is now but partial in its visible benefits. And 
 so also God deals with us in the natural world. Dis- 
 coveries, however important to the race of man, long 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFm EDITION. CCCX11I 
 
 remain concealed, spring up gradually, and after they 
 are published are neither universally known nor accepted. 
 The discoveries of art and science, and the best inven- 
 tions of social life, are all of them examples in point. For 
 thousands of years the surgeon's knife (though used in 
 mercy) was a terror to poor suffering humanity ; but 
 those terrors, (thanks to the God of Nature !) are now 
 almost passing away. Spite ofthe social ill around us, 
 we may hope for better times, when the light of our 
 religion shall brighten the whole earth, and all arts and 
 sciences shall be her willing handmaids. 
 
 (15) Our religion tells us of a vicarious punishment 
 undergone by Jesus Christ in our behalf. It tells us 
 that one man suffered for the good of many — that the 
 death of Christ was accepted as a sacrifice, &c. &c. 
 What was the nature of Christ's person, and how 
 these benefits were brought to pass, are not my present 
 objects of inquiry. The doctrine alluded to has, as we 
 know by experience, often been rejected, and considered 
 too hard to be believed ; but this we may assert respect- 
 ing it, — It is not out of the analogy of Nature. What 
 is Nature but God's providential law shewn in his 
 government of the natural world ? And we have exam- 
 ples, by thousands, of men, who on the highest principles 
 of humanity, have endured bodily loss and suffering for 
 the good of their fellow-creatures. The whole course 
 of Nature tells us that we are in the hourly fruition of 
 benefits we reap through the mediation of others, and 
 of advantages we derive from the toils and bodily suffer- 
 ings of others. Natural religion tells us that a great 
 s. d. x 
 
CCCX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 personal sacrifice, made on principle and for the good 
 of our fellow-creatures, is the most glorious example of 
 social virtue. Neither have we any right to say, that 
 a sacrificial offering is abhorrent from the first principles 
 of natural religion. Nearly all forms of religion, within 
 the known periods of history, have had their sacrificial 
 offerings. Might we not thence infer that such offerings 
 were the natural suggestions of the mind, and therefore 
 a part of natural religion \ We may however take 
 another view, and perhaps suppose that all such offer- 
 ings have been the natural consequences of some common 
 tradition. But whence could this ancient tradition come, 
 so as to gain so powerful and permanent an authority ? 
 The only intelligible answer to this question seems, on 
 this view, to place sacrifice on divine authority ; and 
 therefore, so far, destroys the objection to any doctrine 
 implying a sacrificial offering. 
 
 (16) Our religion enjoins prayer and other spiritual 
 duties, strongly distinguishing them from ordinary, 
 moral, or social duties. The religion of Nature en- 
 joins the same, in a language too plain to be misun- 
 derstood. Prayer enters as one element into all forms 
 of worship, however corrupted. Government ought to 
 be the shadow of God's power on earth : and the right 
 of petition is the high privilege of a free state. Petition 
 is the voice of all nature. In arguing from analogy, 
 we are forced -to compare small things with great : but 
 nothing is small or great in the eye of God, and His 
 Providence rules over all. But it has been said by the 
 infidel, God knows what is for our good, and His Pro- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXV 
 
 vidence will secure it without our asking for it; and 
 He knows what is for our evil, and will not grant it 
 because in ignorance we ask for it. This common-place 
 objection to the principle of all prayer will not, for an 
 instant, bear the test of analogy, and it utterly mis- 
 represents our position in the world. In subordination 
 to the laws of nature, which we allow to be wise and 
 good, there are, as a matter of fact, grievous ills in 
 society ; and we have the power by our own voluntary 
 acts of greatly modifying these ills, both morally and 
 physically : and herein consist some of our very highest 
 social duties. If in the material world which is go- 
 verned by material laws, we can by our own voluntary 
 works amend our condition — if we can build cities, 
 cultivate arts, and perform a thousand social and be- 
 neficial acts in subordination to God's physical laws ; 
 surely, on a most just analogy we may hope also, in 
 subordination to the immutable moral laws of God, by 
 our own spiritual acts in like manner to amend our 
 spiritual condition. A good gift conferred on man as 
 a natural reward of his own voluntary acts, may be, 
 and often is both morally and socially, a far better 
 thing than a good gift conferred on him naturally and 
 without the intervention of his own voluntary acts. 
 Prayer, I repeat, is the voice of nature, and is in 
 unison with the commands of religion; and the com- 
 mon objections against the spiritual act of prayer 
 will not bear the test of reason founded on analogy. 
 Other objections to prayer resolve themselves into phy- 
 sical fatalism, and an entire rejection of Providen- 
 ce 2 
 
CCCXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 tial government. Analogy gives us a good reply to 
 them all. 
 
 (17) Religion teaches many things that are, at 
 first sight, hard to be understood. She tells us of 
 God's absolute foreknowledge — of His unerring decrees 
 — of predestination — election — and of particular na- 
 tions set apart as His favourite people. Whatever may 
 be the meaning of such declarations as these (and I 
 may observe that they seem always to be made as the 
 Providential rewards and conditions of faith and obe- 
 dience), we find them in the Word of God. If in the 
 pride of reason we dare to cavil at them, Religion turns 
 round upon us and asks us — whether the potter hath 
 not power over the clay, and whether he may not make 
 one "vessel to honour, and another to dishonour? At 
 the same time she tells us not to rebel against the 
 providential decrees of God — to bow before His throne, 
 and not to tax His justice. But are these doctrines 
 contrary to the analogies supplied by natural religion ? 
 The religion of Nature tells us that they are not. The 
 physical laws of God are of no partial operation ; but 
 under like physical conditions there is not any thing 
 approaching to apparent equality in the distribution of 
 His social and moral benefits. One society is living in 
 barbarism and gross darkness — another, in comparative 
 happiness, and in the light of religious knowledge and 
 civil freedom. There is, then, no apparent equality in 
 the distribution of the greatest moral and social bene- 
 fits ; and in one point of view all these things may 
 seem to be wrapped up in the consequences of stern 
 

 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXVU 
 
 unbending laws ordained by the God of Nature. From 
 this high point of view they seem to be contemplated 
 in those passages of Scripture to which I have alluded : 
 and we all allow that in the eye of God the voluntary 
 acts of men are but as second causes whereby He works 
 out the purposes of His Providence. But it is certain 
 that man is not permitted to contemplate his own 
 actions and their consequences from the same high 
 point of view ; and hence may arise some great specu- 
 lative difficulties which we can never entirely solve. We 
 are, however, bound on the highest reason, so to inter- 
 pret the word of God as not to bring one of His attri- 
 butes into conflict with another. 
 
 Butler pretends not to solve the difficult question of 
 moral necessity; still less does he dare, like an ideal 
 Pantheist, to put himself in the place of God, and 
 pretend to evolve all consequences, physical and moral, 
 out of his own conceptions. He takes, on the other 
 hand, the position of a humble inductive seeker after 
 truth. He appeals to the actual course of Nature, and 
 tells us that practically we are so far free as to be respon- 
 sible for our deeds — that we experience within ourselves 
 a liberty of moral choice, and that we have (as we know 
 by every day's experience) the power of performing 
 actions which, under the God of Nature, contribute to 
 our social happiness or misery — that practically there is 
 no difficulty in the question before us. 
 
 St. Paul, speaking with authority, tells us the same 
 truth in many exhortations, and in almost every form 
 of written language. If we are weak, we are told 
 
CCCXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 where strength is to be found : and we are not told that 
 moral necessity will screen our guilt, or that our weak- 
 ness is any bar against the penalties of God's broken 
 law. The penal sanctions of human law speak the same 
 language. 
 
 Let us but study St. Paul's example, and let that be 
 the interpreter of his words. In his voyage to Rome 
 he was, as we learn from the Scripture-narrative, under 
 a special promise of safety more than once repeated : 
 but while he firmly trusted in these promises his conduct 
 was that of a wise and prudent man. When the dan- 
 gerous season caught them on their voyage, he told the 
 Captain of the ship in which they sailed, to remain in 
 harbour till the dangerous season was over. He did 
 not tell the Captain that prudent caution was unneces- 
 sary, because they were sailing with the sacred promise 
 of a safe voyage. While they were suffering shipwreck, 
 and the sailors were endeavouring to desert the vessel, 
 he did not tell his fellow-passengers that they had 
 nothing to fear because their safety was secured to 
 them under God's special promise. But he did tell 
 them, that they must all perish if the means of safety 
 were taken away, and no one was left behind to govern 
 and direct the vessel. We know the event : but we are 
 justified in believing, that had the Captain acted on St. 
 Paul's advice, they would not have suffered shipwreck ; 
 and that when they did suffer shipwreck, they would 
 all have perished, had they not listened to his sugges- 
 tions. From his example, as well as from his precepts, 
 we learn, that however firmly we may believe in the pro- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCX1X 
 
 vidential decrees of God, we are bound to perform all 
 the duties of practical life according to the best lights 
 we have ; and if we fail in our duties, the benefits 
 of such decrees can never descend on our heads, or con- 
 tribute to our happiness*. 
 
 I must not dwell longer on this obscure question. 
 What I contend for is — that here also natural and re- 
 vealed religion are in harmon^; and that in the very 
 difficulties under which they both seem to labour there 
 is a strict analogy. Deism does not help us out of 
 these difficulties. Christianity does help us ; for she 
 proclaims our duties under a better sanction. She tells 
 us not to turn our eyes from the dismal side of suffer- 
 ing humanity ; but to the utmost stretch of our power 
 to meet the evils of our fellow-creatures, and to abate 
 them. To do this, on principle, is the necessary part 
 of our social duty, and a condition of our moral pro- 
 bation. If we fail in this duty, by whatsoever name we 
 pass among men, we are not the chosen children of God. 
 Religion tells us to spread the light of truth and the 
 warmth of charity over the whole earth, and thereby 
 to lessen the sufferings of our fellow-creatures, and to 
 bring gladness to the sorrowing heart. Extinguish this 
 light, and we are in hopeless darkness. 
 
 (18) Lastly, we not merely find in Revelation 
 doctrines hard to be understood, but the whole scheme 
 of our religion is imperfectly comprehended : " we know 
 but in part ; " and this declaration applies both to 
 
 * I hardly need inform the reader that the reasoning of this paragraph 
 is borrowed from one of the excellent sermons of the late Dr. Chalmers. 
 
CCCXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 natural and revealed religion. We know there are 
 other worlds, but what moral connexion we may have 
 with them is utterly concealed from us. In Nature 
 many things are concealed from us, and " we know but 
 in part ;" for our knowledge is limited by the narrow 
 conditions of our being. Enough has been already said 
 on this subject. By what analogy have we, then, any 
 right to expect that in the scheme of Providence 
 bearing on our moral condition in futurity, our light 
 should be altogether clear, and that nothing should be 
 left untold \ But, thanks to the God of all worlds ! our 
 moral light is clear so far as He has revealed Himself. — 
 Our knowledge is co-ordinate with our condition — our 
 duties are plainly set before us, — and our hopes are 
 built upon the "rock of ages." 
 
 Such is an outline of the great argument from 
 analogy. Different illustrations of it will offer them- 
 selves to different persons, in conformity with their 
 habits of thought : for the argument, like that which 
 is drawn from the consideration of final causes, may be 
 carried through all parts of Nature, and the pursuit of 
 it, to say the very least, is a salutary moral exercise. 
 
 Arguments drawn from analogy, like those of which 
 I have given a feeble outline, can produce no impression 
 on such men as Hume and Strauss. But what do men 
 such as these give us in return ? Hume's philosophy is 
 sceptical, and leads us to doubt of every thing, both 
 here and hereafter. Strauss' philosophy is pantheistical, 
 and discards the best evidence of inductive truth. It 
 turns all our religion into a phantasm, and all its his- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXl 
 
 torical documents into a fable. Yet these documents 
 were not circulated as a mythical invention. They were 
 woven into the facts of true history ; they were believed ; 
 they were acted on ; they produced the greatest revo- 
 lution in the history of the human race ; they are 
 believed still as true historical realities ; and that belief 
 has directly or indirectly affected the fortunes of all 
 civilized men, and mingled itself with the noblest and 
 the firmest development of their social institutions. 
 We cannot surrender our belief in the sanctifying and 
 exalting realities of religion, to a baseless, atheistical, 
 and unpractical philosophy. 
 
 What has been stated in this Preface on the 
 nature of Christian Evidence is not addressed to one 
 who has studied his religion, and heartily taken it as 
 his rule of life ; but rather to one who is still on the 
 threshold of the subject, and is stumbling among ap- 
 parent difficulties. To such a one the argument drawn 
 from analogy may be of the deepest value. So much 
 I may say from the remembrance of my own difficulties 
 in early life. Thousands, I am certain, have gained 
 both in their moral and intellectual health by the 
 study of Butler; and, so far as I have heard, there 
 never was but one person who was morally injured by 
 it. He was a man of learning and great historical 
 knowledge, of a severe logical mind, and apparently of 
 a stern natural temper. In early life he became a Deist. 
 But little satisfied in this belief, he studied Butler's 
 Analogy ; and finding, during this study, the same or 
 analogous difficulties in natural and revealed Religion, 
 
CCCXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 he rejected them both, and became, through the rest of 
 his life, an unflinching Atheist. There are strange 
 moral anomalies in human nature, and this is one of 
 them. We have nothing to fear from this example. 
 
 As a general conclusion from the previous details 
 of this Preface, I venture to affirm, that Religion has 
 much to hope and nothing to fear from the progress of 
 physical discovery, so long as it is carried on in that 
 humble inductive spirit which shines through the works 
 of the great men who have adorned the history of our 
 University. But woe to the University of Cambridge 
 if she turn aside from this spirit ! — if she try to put 
 down the God of nature, and set up for worship His 
 creature man — if she give not to faith what belongs 
 to faith, while she gives to reason what belongs to 
 reason — if she be not ready, at all cost, to fight the 
 battles both of faith and reason — believing that the 
 God of Nature is the God of Revelation, one and un- 
 changeable — believing that He is the God of all truth — 
 and on the strength of that faith believing that to ex- 
 tend the domain of truth (in whatsoever form she may 
 present herself) is to extend the knowledge of our 
 Maker, and to do His will. This is no bigoted or 
 narrow creed ; it is the faith of every Christian phi- 
 losopher. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXX111 
 
 § 2. Recent Changes in the University Course — Mo- 
 dern Science of Cambridge — Philosophical Society — 
 Modern external improvements — Moral and social 
 character of the Students^ <$fc. 
 The reader who has gone through the preceding 
 pages may perhaps have complained, that the criticism 
 on The Vestiges of Creation is too long, and out of pro- 
 portion to the other discussions of the Preface. But that 
 Work has had a very wide circulation ; partly from the 
 good language and positive form in which it is written, 
 and perhaps still more from the novelty of its conclu- 
 sions. For the Author (apparently without seeing the 
 end of his philosophy) has been the first to put material 
 Pantheism, decked in a good English dress, before the 
 readers in this country. He has also written A Sequel 
 to the Vestiges^ to which no formal reply has yet been 
 given. I was therefore constrained to notice this Au- 
 thor's two Works in some detail ; and through them 
 I have been led to my main object : viz. to expose to 
 our Undergraduates the mischief of modern pantheistic 
 doctrines when applied to physical, moral, and religious 
 questions. With all these subjects I have now done*"". 
 
 * Several months after this section was written, and when a con- 
 siderable part of the Preface was printed, I received a copy of The Foot- 
 Prints of the Creator, by Hugh Miller, (London, 1849). This work 
 (which I earnestly recommend to the reader), is written with the Author's 
 well-known ^graphic power, and contains many original and admirable 
 details respecting the Fishes of the [Old red sandstone, which will com- 
 pel me to abridge, and almost suppress, one of the Notes (No. III.) in 
 the Supplement to the Appendix — Mr. Hugh Miller also attacks, with 
 very great skill, many of the false positions taken up by the Author of 
 The Vestiges. Had these Foot-Prints appeared sooner, I might have 
 abridged the early sections of this Preface, and made them less open to 
 
 the criticism alluded to in the opening words of this section See the 
 
 Supplement to the Appendix, No. IX. 
 
CCCXX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 The present section of the Preface is no longer addressed 
 to the Undergraduates and other resident Members of 
 the University ; but to persons who, although absent 
 from us, take some interest in our system of teaching, 
 and are anxious for our honour and well-being. 
 
 The remarks, in the following Discourse, on the 
 moral and metaphysical studies of the University, have, 
 I rejoice to say, a far less exact application to our 
 system now than they had in the year 1832. The 
 two great Works of the Master of Trinity College, 
 on the History and the Philosophy of the Inductive 
 Sciences, are now a part of our stock-literature ; and 
 these Works, together with his Lectures on the Moral 
 Sciences, are telling year by year on Cambridge studies. 
 On this subject I can speak with some confidence ; for 
 I have, during the last four years, taken a part in 
 the Fellowship-Examinations of the College in which 
 I live ; and I have found, not without sentiments of 
 surprise and admiration, that some of our younger 
 sons have, in addition to our Classical and Mathe- 
 matical course, shewn a very exact knowledge of the 
 Aristotelian logic and other kindred works, of the best 
 British metaphysical authors of the last century, and of 
 the bold and novel speculations of the modern German 
 School. 
 
 But, during the past year a great addition has been 
 made to our regular Academic course, which will, in its 
 season, produce much good fruit, if it be followed out 
 in the spirit in which it was begun. And that it will 
 be followed out, we cannot permit ourselves to doubt : 
 for we have at our head a Chancellor who is young and 
 

 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXV 
 
 full of hope, and has the prospect under Providence of 
 a long life before him. His position, by the side of 
 the Throne, must in itself give him a great moral influ- 
 ence ; and he has a better and far higher influence from 
 his private virtues, and from the large and liberal views 
 he has taken of the great objects of science, and of the 
 social duties of scientific men. I can therefore speak of 
 the future only in the words of" good hope. Some men 
 fear that our old and severe intellectual discipline may 
 suffer by these contemplated changes. Had I partaken 
 of these fears, and believed that our stern mathematical 
 studies, which ever since Newton lived amongst us have 
 been the glory of Cambridge, would descend from their 
 high place, as a natural consequence of the Graces last 
 year passed by the Senate, I should then have been 
 almost willing to cross England barefoot to record 
 my vote against them. But we have nothing to fear 
 from this quarter. Our highest prizes will still be 
 carried off by those who reap their honours in the 
 Mathematical and Classical fields. 
 
 There is a social character in true knowledge. Art 
 and imagination, science and learning, freedom and wise 
 polity, all flourish best together. One material science 
 is not in conflict with another ; but all of them flourish 
 best when all of them are called into their fullest activity 
 and most vital energy, and are all moving on side by 
 side. It is not excessive activity, but an unhealthy death- 
 like stagnation, that is the bane of an Academic body 
 like our own. Chemistry, Mineralogy, Geology. Botany, 
 Anatomy and Physiology, and other Natural Sciences 
 
CCCXXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 (now an acknowledged part of the Cambridge course, 
 and the subjects of Academic honour), may all flourish 
 well together, and assist rather than retard the work 
 of the mathematician. Some of them may indeed sug- 
 gest, and already have suggested, new problems to the 
 mathematician which he alone can solve. And he may 
 be encouraged and cheered in his severe and sometimes 
 solitary toils by the active sympathy of those around 
 him ; for they know that he alone comprehends a lan- 
 guage more powerful and logical than they are permitted 
 to use — that he can express from Nature truths which 
 to themselves are inaccessible — and that he has been 
 taught to wield implements of all others the most 
 potent in the higher provinces of physical discovery. 
 
 Again, our Academic training is for the many, and 
 not for the few who reach a very high grade of know- 
 ledge in exact science. These men indeed may require 
 support and encouragement such as the University can 
 give them ; but they are soon above all common rules 
 of teaching, and stand not in any need of them. But 
 we know well that there are many among our students 
 who, without any power even of comprehending the 
 higher abstractions of exact science, may be encouraged 
 to seek for, and may gain distinction in a " Moral 
 Tripos," such as is now instituted, which comprehends 
 Moral Philosophy, Political Economy, General Juris- 
 prudence, the Laws of Engand, and Modern History. 
 Surely a field like this is wide enough ! 
 
 I wish however to confine my present remarks 
 to the physical sciences : and it is by no means true, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXV11 
 
 that a man who is by nature little fitted to gain 
 distinction from the study of Mathematics, cannot 
 therefore profit by a less severe attention to other 
 studies that are based on observation and experiment, 
 or exercise the powers of philosophical arrangement. 
 There is no such limitation in the faculties of man ; 
 and we are bound to produce good intellectual food for 
 all our sons ; and if they make good progress, even in 
 what we regard our more humble and less exact studies, 
 to give them a commensurate reward and a public 
 honour. Such rewards we hope to give them in our 
 new " Tripos of Honour" for their good progress in the 
 Natural Sciences. These are the principles on which 
 we have acted, and we live in good hopes for the future. 
 But whatever changes we may make, from time 
 to time, in our Academic studies, we must not expect 
 too much from them. Indolence and caprice, folly and 
 bad passion, we shall still have to fight against. Human 
 nature will remain the same with all its attendant 
 infirmities. We cannot teach our sons to be profound 
 in everything. All we can do is to give them a good 
 wide field for study, and to encourage them to active 
 labour, now in their intellectual seed-time, so that they 
 may become well informed in those subjects of whole- 
 some learning that are within their capacity. If we try 
 for more than this, we shall fail utterly ; we shall only 
 be teaching our sons to shew the glittering surface of 
 knowledge without its true solidity ; and then it may be- 
 come little better than gold-leaf that is only fit to cover 
 a toy. 
 
CCCXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 Above all, we are to press on the belief of our sons 
 that all parts of Nature — religious, moral, social, and 
 material — are one great connected system, of which no 
 one part can flourish effectually without the rest. We 
 must teach them the sanctity and severity of Truth ; 
 that if she conceal herself from us, it is only that we 
 may seek her out ; and that we are not permitted to 
 approach her, but by the lessons of treasured knowledge, 
 by the light of experience, and by the honest use of all 
 those helps the God of Nature has put within our 
 hands. If we neglect these lessons, which have long 
 formed, and under God^s blessing ever will form, a part 
 of the teaching of this University, we then leave our 
 cable and our compass, and soon may drift away in 
 "the ship of fools" into the wide ocean of hypothesis ; 
 and there among the fantastic visions of a false philo- 
 sophy we may make a wreck of all our principles of 
 common sense and solid reason, and of all our sober 
 hopes of future good. 
 
 Our best hopes for the future good of Cambridge 
 depend on its past and present history. Our new 
 Academic regulations are not experiments to restore 
 a suspended animation, but proofs of active vitality — 
 new voluntary labours, taken up by those who laboured 
 hard before. We are not so much striving to change 
 our system, as to improve our mechanism, and to apply 
 stronger motives to those who come to our seats of 
 learning. My own knowledge of Cambridge reaches 
 back over a period of forty-five years. During the whole 
 of that period annual lectures have been given by our 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXIX 
 
 Professors on most of the subjects of natural science 
 above enumerated, and now we have annual courses of 
 lectures on every one of them ; and to this list I must 
 add two old and effective courses of lectures — one course 
 on the philosophical principles of machinery — another 
 on experimental illustrations of the higher branches of 
 physics. We have now also public lectures on the 
 Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek languages. When I was a 
 young man the Professors of these tongues were all 
 silent. The same might be said of two out of our three 
 Professors of Divinity. They had important duties to 
 perform, to which they were then and to which they 
 are still, bound ; but, in addition to such duties, they 
 all now read public lectures to good and earnest Classes 
 of young men. I need not here repeat what has been 
 said of the moral and metaphysical lectures of the 
 Master of Trinity College, which form an entirely new 
 part of our Academic Course. Facts such as these are 
 not given for the information of the resident members 
 of the University. They stand not in need of informa- 
 tion ; but this Preface may perhaps meet the eyes of 
 some who have little knowledge of our cycle of study. 
 
 If all this be true, some one may perhaps ask us, 
 Why was there any need for new legislation ? We 
 reply that the Spirit of our legislation is not new : we 
 do but strengthen our old laws by giving new and 
 honourable motives for their better observance. One 
 who is merely seeking for a Degree in Arts without 
 aiming for a place in our list of Honours, will here- 
 after be called upon for a certificate, not only that he 
 s. d. y 
 
CCCXXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 has attended to his College duties, and satisfied those 
 to whom he is more immediately responsible while he 
 is an Undergraduate; but also that he has attended 
 one or more courses of public Professorial Lectures 
 in the natural and moral sciences. Surely this is not 
 too much for us to ask ; and it is notorious that, during 
 past years, multitudes of young men have obtained 
 their Degrees in Arts (after going through the necessary 
 routine of private and College tuition) without ever 
 having attended the lectures of a single University 
 Professor. I have known many good men who in after 
 life have lamented this great oversight of their under- 
 graduate years*. 
 
 But we have done much more than this. Our 
 Undergraduates are now not merely invited to a vo- 
 luntary attendance on our cycle of material and moral 
 sciences, but are encouraged and urged on to such 
 studies by the hopes of academical distinction, and the 
 
 * The Undergraduates are compelled to attend the College Lectures, 
 given daily by the Tutors and their Assistants ; but these persons are not 
 officers of the University. The Professors are Officers of the Uuiversity, 
 and their Lectures are addressed to our whole collective body : but before 
 the passing of the Graces, alluded to above, no Undergraduate (with the 
 exception of a small number of Law and Medical Students) were directly 
 compelled to attend any Professor's Course. Indirectly, however, some 
 of them were compelled to attend a theological course : for most of our 
 Bishops required, from the Candidates for Holy Orders, a certificate of 
 such attendance from one of our Divinity Professors. Our Professor of 
 Physic (on the authority of a Grace) required from the Medical Students, 
 before they could be admitted to a Medical Degree, a Certificate of their 
 having attended the Lectures given by the Professors of Anatomy, Che- 
 mistry, and Botany. I take no notice here of the very extensive system of 
 private Tuition now going on in Cambridge; because it forms, theo- 
 retically, no part of our Academic Course, and cannot easily be brought 
 within the legislation of the Senate. 
 
PREFACK TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXXl 
 
 promises of public reward. Surely this is a movement in 
 the right direction ! It is an improvement in our system 
 — an academical reform — but not an organic change 
 and a revolution. We have the same mechanism we 
 had before ; but we have braced it up anew, and it may 
 we trust hereafter work well under a higher pressure. 
 
 Since the general peace of Europe, our numbers 
 are more than double what they were before ; and, 
 speaking of our mathematical studies, I may venture 
 to affirm, without boasting, that since that time a good 
 spirit has been alive amongst us. Thirty years are gone 
 since the first formation of the Cambridge Philosophical 
 Society; and in the Transactions of that body (which 
 are a good record of the severe labours of Cambridge 
 men) there is hardly a subject which has engaged the 
 attention of the great Mathematicians of Europe that 
 is not discussed in original papers of very great value. 
 All the powers of high analysis have, in our Transac- 
 tions, been brought to bear on the most severe and 
 knotty questions of physics: — such, for example, as the 
 theory of light and electricity — the theory of undula- 
 tions in connexion with the great practical question of 
 the movement of the tidal-waves — the planetary per- 
 turbations — the figure and internal structure of the 
 earth — the theory of sound — and many other prac- 
 tical applications of profound mechanical philosophy. 
 Nor has analysis, as an implement of pure reason, and 
 without any reference to its immediate use or appli- 
 cation, been overlooked by our younger members. It 
 continues to be pushed beyond its former limits, and 
 
 y2 
 
CCCXXX11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 it carries its reward in the delights of discovery, and 
 the enjoyment flowing from the pure unmixed love 
 of truth ; and sometimes, perhaps, in the hope of its 
 future application to the business of life and the prac- 
 tical good of our fellow-men. — We need only men- 
 tion the names of Gumming, Christie, Clark, Herschel, 
 Babbage, Whewell, Henslow, Jenyns, Willis, Power, 
 Lubbock, Airy, Challis, Miller, Hopkins, De Morgan, 
 Murphy, Earnshaw, Kelland, O'Brien, Ellis, Cayley, 
 Green, Stokes, and many others — all of whom were 
 trained amongst us, have partaken of our honours, 
 and been contributors to our Transactions — and we do 
 enough to justify what I have said of the philosophical 
 spirit that has animated our University for the last 
 thirty years.*" 
 
 Two great discoveries in physical astronomy have, 
 within that period, been made by Cambridge men : and 
 it deserves remark, that these two are the only great 
 discoveries in physical astronomy made by Englishmen 
 since the days of Newton. I here, of course, allude to 
 Professor Airy's discovery of the long period of per- 
 turbation in the Earth's orbit by the action of the 
 planet Venus ; and to Mr Adams's theoretical discovery 
 of a new planet external to Uranus. Both these dis- 
 coveries were made after enormous labour, long con- 
 tinued, and directed by consummate mathematical skill. 
 The former gave a new element towards the perfection 
 of those Solar Tables that are in the hands of every 
 scientific navigator. The latter was, perhaps, the most 
 
 * See the Supplement to the Appendix, No. X. 
 
PRFFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION". CCCXXX111 
 
 striking result ever brought out by the application of 
 analysis, and shewed us the perfection and the certainty 
 of a good mathematical deduction from an acknow- 
 ledged principle in physics. 
 
 Tn the early part of the last century Queen Anne 
 visited this University ; and, after dining in the Hall 
 of Trinity College, conferred, at a public academic 
 levee, the honour of Knighthood upon Newton — a 
 man (I need not tell the reader) whose name stamps a 
 glory upon Cambridge, and who, by his labours, changed 
 the whole face and form of natural science. In 1847, 
 our present Sovereign, whose presence amongst us was 
 greeted with our loudest and most heartfelt expressions 
 of loyalty and affection, came hither to grace and honour 
 the Installation visit of Prince Albert ; and after a 
 similar festivity, and at a similar academic levee, the 
 honour of Knighthood was offered to Mr Adams for the 
 part he had taken in the most striking astronomical 
 discovery that had been made by any Englishman since 
 the days of Newton. On the same occasion, Sir John 
 Herschel presented to our royal and youthful Chancellor 
 a noble intellectual offering — the first bound copy of 
 Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope 
 during five successive years, and The Completion of a 
 Telescopic Survey of the whole surface of the visible heavens, 
 commenced in 1825. This work abounds in the proofs of 
 mathematic skill and high inventive power, is some- 
 times animated by a spirit of bold but chastened spe- 
 culation, and contains, out of all comparison, the most 
 astonishing record of new Astronomical phenomena 
 
CCCXXX1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 that is found in the English tongue. None of these 
 facts are unknown to Cambridge men ; but they may 
 not be fully known to every one who may read this 
 Preface : and they prove what I am endeavouring to 
 impress upon the reader — that the genius of Newton's 
 philosophy has not departed from that corporate body 
 in which he spent the best years of his life, and wherein 
 he made all his immortal discoveries. 
 
 It is by no means unusual for men who have no 
 knowledge of mathematics, and little knowledge of the 
 branches of natural philosophy beyond their names, 
 to undervalue the labours of the Mathematician, and to 
 speak of him as a kind of drudge who deals only with 
 numbers, and tabulates the results obtained by the 
 operations of a higher and more inventive intellect. In 
 one sense this opinion may be true ; but in another it 
 is not merely narrow and inadequate, but it is positively 
 false. It is true, that on the outskirts of the great 
 circle of human science there is a dark region no one 
 can enter without the light of experiment. The per- 
 formance of this task is like a voyage to a new and 
 unexplored country ; but when a new land is discovered 
 our task is not done. The discovered country must 
 be colonized and cultivated and brought under the 
 administration of wise and good laws, or it will continue 
 barbarous and unproductive. A mathematician is well 
 employed in tabulating results, and bringing them into 
 symmetry ; but his labour ends not here. Every new 
 result in experimental science is based on some acknow- 
 ledged principle, and can only find its place as a scientific 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXXV 
 
 truth by being brought to bear on some scientific hypo- 
 thesis: and it often happens that a mathematician is, 
 of all men, best able to follow out the consequences of 
 an hypothesis, and thereby to test its truth. He both 
 urges on and directs the labours of the experimentalist. 
 He can confirm the experimentalist where he is right, 
 and can check him where he is wrong, and thereby direct 
 him either to new and better "experiments, or, it may 
 be, to a better grounded hypothesis that may end in a 
 sound theory. This was the logic that guided Newton's 
 long life of discovery ; and while this spirit rules amongst 
 us, we have nothing to fear from those wild visions and 
 transcendental dreams that have sometimes been the 
 clog and disgrace of modern science. The stern logic 
 of mathematics gives us then both an excellent physical 
 and moral training ; and its good effects are not merely 
 seen among men who spend their lives in the abstruse 
 investigations of exact material science, but sometimes 
 also among men who go out into the world and perform 
 their appointed tasks in the Senate, at the Bar, and 
 in all the busy and bustling walks of life. I need not 
 quote examples : the fact is notorious, and, I believe, 
 undisputed. 
 
 It is not, I repeat, in tabulating the results, or in 
 testing the general conclusions of empirical science, that 
 the value of mathematical studies is best exemplified. 
 Every general principle in physics involves a multitude 
 of particular consequences ; and it often happens that 
 the most recondite and valuable consequences of a 
 general principle can, from their very nature, be acces- 
 sible to no man living but a profound mathematician. 
 
CCCXXXV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 In such a condition of knowledge, experimental and 
 inductive skill may for a time lose their first pre-emi- 
 nence ; and it is chiefly from deductive science, aided 
 by all the resources of mathematical invention, that we 
 can hope for great discoveries. 
 
 La Place did not, I believe, establish any new 
 mechanical principles, and he never made so much as 
 one good astronomical observation : but he spent his 
 life in drawing new and great discoveries out of old 
 established principles. The great astronomical cycles 
 which he discovered are not objects of sense, but of 
 pure reason, and require many thousand years for 
 their accomplishment : but they are as certain, and are 
 as fully established, as any facts of direct observation or 
 experiment. They are facts of positive demonstration, 
 deduced from the law of gravitation ; but the law itself 
 never could have been reached or comprehended without 
 observation and experiment. We confound not the 
 discoveries of pure reason with the discoveries brought 
 out by experiment ; but we affirm that in all physical 
 reasoning the two are bound together, and that the 
 former cannot have any existence without the latter. 
 Deductive discoveries have however always held a very 
 high grade of honour ; and La Place was, by common 
 consent, allowed the highest place among the scientific 
 men of his great country. Deductive discoveries are 
 not less true, because they are not experimental : and 
 they are often more noble (and, it may be, more useful) 
 than discoveries that are experimental ; for they are the 
 crowning fruits of a severe logic, and of the very highest 
 and most laborious efforts of pure reason. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXXV11 
 
 It would ill become me to dwell long on the prac- 
 tical application of mathematics, and I have little know- 
 ledge to help me in discussing such a question : but 
 while pleading for the honour of Cambridge, and speak- 
 ing with cheerful hopes of her future prospects, I may 
 just allude to one or two subjects that must, we should 
 think, come home to the heart of every Englishman, 
 with whatever party he may" range himself. In the 
 process of condensation the last strokes of the piston 
 give us the true test of the perfection of our mecha- 
 nism. And so it is in nearly all progressive sciences. 
 The crowning acts, whereby they approach perfection, 
 can only be done by the greatest power of mechanism, 
 and the utmost refinements of intellectual skill. Our 
 sailors may man our ships and fight our battles, do the 
 great work of commerce, and bring to our homes the 
 precious fruits of climates more genial than our own ; 
 but they cannot cross the distant seas in safety without 
 those Astronomical Tables which, year by year, have been 
 approaching more nearly to perfection. To the Mathe- 
 matician they owe these tables, the perfection of which 
 depends upon the highest refinements of analysis com- 
 bined with the utmost mechanical perfection in the 
 conduct of our Observatories. But mere recorded 
 observations, however accurate, are worthless till they 
 are reduced and cleared of errors derived from refraction, 
 parallax, aberration, precession, and nutation. This 
 reduction is an operation of vast labour in an Observa- 
 tory ; but it was undertaken at the Cambridge Obser- 
 vatory first by Professor Airy, and has since been con- 
 
CCCXXXV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 tinued by Professor Challis, so that all the fourteen 
 volumes of Cambridge Observations give us reduced results 
 which are available to the public. This task had not 
 been done at Greenwich. The greatest magazine of 
 good observations that existed in the world, was stored 
 up at Greenwich, but was unreduced; and the Observa- 
 tions were like an ore that contains a precious metal, 
 but is utterly unfit for public currency. But our Cam- 
 bridge Professor was removed to the great national 
 Observatory ; and, backed by the liberal power of 
 Government and aided by a strong band of calcu- 
 lators, he there undertook the task of reduction (the 
 greatest task of its kind in the history of Astronomy), 
 cleared off the arrears of a century, and has now made 
 the Greenwich Observations a part of the circulating 
 stock of the whole world of science. Already the 
 world is reaping the fruit of this almost superhuman 
 labour; for one of the few unexplained tabular errors of 
 the Moon, the opprobrium of physical Astronomy, has 
 been brought under the dominion of law by Professor 
 Hansen, who based his analysis on the suggestions 
 supplied by the reduced Greenwich tables. 
 
 Again, good tide-tables are of inestimable value to 
 the navigator. The tides are, in the first instance, 
 mere facts of observation made out by good experi- 
 ments. But tide-tables are results of a very different 
 order. They are based indeed upon experiment, but 
 their construction involves a knowledge of the lunar 
 inequalities and periods, is a true and very abstruse 
 part of physical Astronomy, and cannot be perfected 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXXXIX 
 
 without the utmost refinements of mathematical analysis. 
 Much has been done, within the last twenty years, in 
 improving the theory of the tides, and bringing the 
 tables (so far as they relate to the British Isles) more 
 nearly towards perfection. And who are the men who 
 have laboured most effectually in this field ? W he well, 
 Lubbock, and Airy — all of them men whom Cambridge 
 honours, and who perhaps would not have been known 
 to the scientific world but for their Cambridge training. 
 
 If the Mathematician has rendered invaluable ser- 
 vices to his country in the construction of nautical 
 tables, his services are also wanted in the construction 
 of our ships. Of all men living the Captain of a ship 
 of war may know best how to fight the battles of his 
 country, to guide his vessel through the seas, and to 
 govern its crew : but this knowledge teaches him not 
 the principles of mechanical construction ; and still less 
 does it give him even a glimmering knowledge of the 
 solid forms whereby a vessel may pass with the least 
 resistance through the water, or of many other true 
 mechanical results, that he cannot so much as touch 
 without the help of severe mathematical analysis. 
 
 A Mathematician may easily blunder in the con- 
 struction of a ship, by overlooking some practical ques- 
 tion that did not enter into the elements of his first 
 calculations. But as his blunders are made on prin- 
 ciple, so do they necessarily lead him to a revision 
 of the conditions under which his complicated problem 
 is to be solved ; and he learns at length to strike a 
 kind of balance among consequences that at first sight 
 
CCCX'l PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 may appear in conflict among themselves; but, in the 
 end, are reducible to a true mechanical subordination. 
 A practical man will inevitably blunder in his construc- 
 tion, if, guided only by experiment, he overlook the 
 truths of theory ; and his blunders being made without 
 any steady principle, give him none of the sound ele- 
 ments of a better structure. The good of the State re- 
 quires that in the construction of our ships experiment 
 and theory should each have their part, and go hand in 
 hand : but it is notorious that in England this union 
 has never been thoroughly effected — that men have 
 sometimes undertaken to build the bulwarks of the 
 State without a knowledge even of the first principles 
 of hydrostatics, and of nautical construction — and often- 
 times without any good scientific grasp of those refine- 
 ments of analysis which should both direct and control 
 the experimentalist. And what has been the conse- 
 quence ? Our national ship-builders have often blundered 
 upon what was excellent, but have not been excellent on 
 principle : and it is, I believe, notorious, that during the 
 wars of the past and present century some of our very 
 best forms of naval construction were copied from the 
 ships of our enemies. The reason for all this was plain 
 enough. In France, the art of naval construction was 
 taught by men of profound science combined with men 
 of practical skill. In England, we had men of con- 
 summate skill derived from great experience ; but 
 science was almost overlooked ; and we have endured 
 much national loss, and some dishonour, as the conse- 
 quence of this blindness. 
 
PREPACK TO TIIK FIFTH EDITION. CCCxH 
 
 When iron Steamers were first constructed, the 
 magnetic needle became almost useless in consequence 
 of the attraction of the vessel : but by a happy com- 
 bination of experiment and mathematical calculation, 
 this great difficulty was removed, and Professor Airy 
 gave our Captains a set of rules whereby they were 
 enabled to conduct an iron vessel over the Atlantic 
 with as much security as one that is built of oak. 
 There is, indeed, no end to the practical application of 
 mathematical analysis to the business of life. This truth 
 is obvious, and is perhaps universally admitted. But I 
 must dwell no longer on this subject, and the examples 
 I have selected are such as speak, one should think, to 
 the common sense and feelings of every inhabitant of 
 this country. Men may, perhaps, be found who regard 
 the theoretical discovery of a new Planet as a kind of 
 astronomical luxury that is of small social value ; but 
 no one will be so hardy as to deny the immeasurable 
 importance of good nautical tables, and of good princi- 
 ples of construction in the great dock-yards of England. 
 
 The highest prizes of society will, however, be 
 given to the bustling combatants in the busy and 
 practical walks of life. The solitary labours of the 
 Mathematician have little interest with the busy public. 
 They understand not one syllable of his language — 
 they know nothing of his toils — they can have no true 
 sympathy with his pursuits — and they have no true 
 conception of the great accessions he can bring to the 
 common stock of knowledge. From open competition 
 in the State he has little to hope for. But he has 
 
CCCXlii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 much to hope for in the enlightened patronage of a 
 wise government, and in Academic institutions like 
 those of Cambridge and Dublin. Evil would be the 
 day for the Science of the British Isles were the high 
 honours given to mathematical learning by these two 
 Universities to lose their estimation through any change 
 of system. The great Mathematicians of Dublin will 
 be true to their best interests; and Cambridge, I doubt 
 not, through every moral and intellectual change, will 
 continue true to the interests of high mathematical 
 science. Its practical bearing on the business of life 
 is universally admitted ; and on this account we honour 
 it : but we have higher motives for upholding it and 
 honouring it in our Academic course — as the guide to 
 the highest forms of material truth — as an instrument 
 to draw out the consequences of accumulated disco- 
 veries — as a check to wild hypotheses — and as a part 
 of severe logic, of moral training, and of intellectual 
 discipline. I repeat, therefore, that the hopes of the 
 University of Cambridge rest on her past and present 
 history — that in our new acts of Academic legislation 
 we mean to strengthen our old system, and not to pull 
 it down — and that we mean not to abate one jot of 
 the high honours we hope hereafter to award to those 
 students who make good progress in mathematical 
 learning. Evil would be the day to the University of 
 Cambridge were she to decorate with her best honours 
 men who continue but accomplished school- boys, while 
 she forgot those who are toiling in more manly labours, 
 and bringing new materials to the public stock of know- 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCxllii 
 
 ledge — who are not spending their whole time in the 
 embellishment and illustration of the past, but in look- 
 ing to the future, and assisting in the intellectual and 
 social progress of mankind. 
 
 External Improvements in Cambridge. 
 The whole external aspect of the University is 
 greatly changed within the period of my residence. 
 Nothing about us seems to shew neglect or decay : 
 everything seems to point towards improvement and 
 progress. The foundation-stone of Downing College 
 was laid in 1807'. Noble additions have been made to 
 several of our Colleges ; and some of these new works 
 have been carried out at a great cost, and a great 
 personal sacrifice on the part of the resident Fellows. 
 In the noble spirit of private sacrifice to public and 
 future good St. John's College stands preeminent. — 
 We have now a noble Observatory, built out of the ac- 
 cumulations of the corporate funds of the University, 
 aided by the liberal subscriptions of its friends and 
 members. The Observatory is stocked with first-rate 
 instruments, and for nearly twenty years has been in 
 full activity. The fourteen quarto volumes of reduced 
 Observations well attest this truth. — One side of a con- 
 templated new quadrangle has been added to the Public 
 Library. The upper floor of this building is of beautiful 
 architecture, and is capable, it has been said, of holding 
 1 00,000 volumes. The contents of the Library are three- 
 fold what they were at the beginning of this century, 
 and it is administered under regulations of great libe- 
 
CCCxliv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 rality ; for it is not merely open for daily consultation, 
 but thousands of its volumes are in constant circulation 
 among the members of the University : and the same 
 liberal administration is shewn also in the several Col- 
 lege Libraries*. — An ample and convenient site for a 
 new Botanic Garden has been purchased from our cor- 
 porate funds, and its cultivation is already in progress. 
 Our old Garden contained a very valuable Botanical Col- 
 lection, well known through a scientific catalogue ; but 
 it was inadequate to our present wants, and it was 
 greatly damaged by the new buildings of Cambridge, 
 which now press upon it, and almost surround it. — In the 
 early part of 1 his century the Anatomical Collection at 
 Cambridge was the property of the Professor, and we 
 had no anatomical room deserving the name of a Mu- 
 seum. We have now an excellent Anatomical Museum 
 that is open to the public. It contains a beautiful and 
 most instructive collection, illustrative both of human 
 and comparative anatomy. A part of these treasures were 
 purchased out of our corporate funds, but another very 
 important part of them we owe to the munificence and 
 the long-continued personal labours of Dr. Clark. — On 
 the first floor of the new building of the Public Library 
 
 * Five or six thousand volumes are in constant circulation from the 
 University Library ; and any volume may be returned after it has been 
 read, and another may then be taken out in its place : so that the actual 
 amount of books circulated during any Academic Term from this Library 
 is enormous. The College Libraries are available for the resident Str.dents 
 of the several Colleges. About a thousand volumes are in circulation 
 during Term from the Library of Trinity College : but these volumes are 
 continually returned, and others taken out in iheir place, at the pleasure 
 of the Students. All books are returned to the Libraries once a quarter 
 in order that their condition may be examined. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCxlv 
 
 are two contiguous Museums — the one of Mineralogy, 
 the other of Geology The former contains the min- 
 eralogical collection of the late Dr. E. D. Clarke, 
 which was purchased by the University : it contains also 
 the noble collection of the late Sir Abraham Hume, 
 which the University owes to the munificence of Vis- 
 count Alford. These collections are well arranged, are 
 illustrated by a course of annual lectures by Professor 
 Miller, and are accessible to the public. — The Geo- 
 logical Museum contains specimens collected during 
 the last thirty years, only to be counted by tens of 
 thousands, which are now arranged stratigraphically by 
 Mr. M'Coy, and are constantly open to the public. In 
 splendour and extent it is, of course, greatly inferior 
 to some national collections ; but for practical use in 
 consultation, and for the purposes of academic study, 
 it is not, I believe, inferior to any public collection in 
 Europe. It contains also the original collection of Dr. 
 Woodward, which has now a great historical interest, 
 and continues in its old arrangement in conformity with 
 the printed Catalogue. It contains also a very good col- 
 lection of recent Shells, presented to the University by 
 H. J. Brooke, Esq., of London, and of Corals, presented 
 by Mr. Garnons, Fellow of Sidney College. — Within the 
 same period has risen a magnificent Museum of Art, 
 which we owe to a bequest of Viscount Fitzwilliam. 
 Some may think this a work of splendour and luxury — 
 and so it is — but we honour the memory of the noble 
 Founder of the Museum, and rejoice in having now 
 within our establishment the power of leading some of 
 s. d. z 
 
CCCxWi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 our youthful Members to the study of what is beautiful 
 in art, as well as what is severe in science. Facts 
 such as are stated in this long paragraph speak best 
 for themselves, and stand in need of no comment to 
 make their meaning clear. 
 
 Much, however, remains to be done before our 
 external mechanism can, on the humblest view, be 
 regarded as complete. The Cambridge Philosophical 
 Society possesses a beautiful collection of British Orni- 
 thology, obtained by purchase, and many other pre- 
 cious specimens of Natural History presented by its 
 Members. The whole ornithological collection of 
 Swainson was obtained by a liberal subscription of our 
 resident Members, and presented to the University ; 
 and it has been since increased by a valuable series 
 of specimens, presented by Captain Blackwood.* But 
 we have no Zoological Museum — a fact which may 
 well excite astonishment, when we remember that Ray 
 (the greatest of English naturalists) was a Fellow of 
 Trinity College, and a contemporary of Newton. This 
 is a grievous want. — Our public lecture-rooms are 
 defective in number and unworthy of the University. 
 Our new scheme of Undergraduate-study will make 
 these defects more grievous than they were before, and 
 induce us, I trust, before long, to complete a second 
 side of the new quadrangle of the Public Library. 
 The first floor of such a building would give us all the 
 
 * This gentleman, after returning from a long and perilous voyage of 
 discovery, put on the Academic dress, and resided a year amongst us as a 
 Member of Jesus College. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCxlvii 
 
 accommodation we stand in need of. — We give degrees 
 in Music, but we have no great Hall of Music. Such 
 a building might be called a luxury ; but it would add 
 to the splendour of the University, which cannot be 
 complete without it. For want of such a building the 
 last public Academic exercise in music was performed in 
 a private College Chapel. — Above all, we want a public 
 Hall well stocked with instruments for physical and 
 chemical experiments, and open, on liberal terms, to 
 every Member of the University. Our young Members 
 should not merely see experiments made by others, but 
 should have an opportunity of making experiments for 
 themselves, if we hope, by the help of our teaching, to 
 ripen the best fruits of scientific knowledge. Newton 
 felt the want of such an establishment when he was a 
 resident member of the University, and many good men 
 have felt it since his time. 
 
 But, it may be said, that our corporate funds are 
 all gone, and that our income is hardly sufficient to 
 meet the annual demands which are made upon it. 
 This is unfortunately true; and I know that no great 
 work can be done by the University without a per- 
 sonal sacrifice on the part of its Members. What I 
 contend for is, that from our past and present history 
 we draw our hopes for the future good of Cambridge ; 
 and if, during the next thirty years, she be guided by 
 the same spirit that has animated her during the thirty 
 years that are gone, then will not one of her public 
 buildings be left unfinished, nor any thing left short 
 that could minister to her honour ; but she will go on, 
 
 22 
 
CCCxlvili PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 faithfully and wisely, in perfecting the great and good 
 task which Providence has set before her, and the 
 country looks for at her hands. 
 
 Our best hopes for the future good of Cambridge 
 are not, however, grounded merely on the improvement 
 of our external mechanism, or on any scheme of instruc- 
 tion however wisely planned. They rest rather upon the 
 moral and intellectual character of our sons. — In the 
 early years of this century, convivial excesses, though 
 gradually disappearing in good English society, were 
 too often its bane and disgrace. The University of 
 Cambridge, like all other great corporate bodies, felt 
 the ill effects of these sensual and degrading evils. How 
 could it be otherwise ? Persons just arrived at man's 
 estate, and in all the exuberance of youthful feeling, 
 were sure to be led astray when temptation was en- 
 forced by the habits of society, and sensuality was sanc- 
 tioned by the examples of men who had reached the 
 highest grade of public honour, and were the idols of 
 popular worship. I have lived long enough to be called 
 a laudator temporis acti : but from this part, at least, 
 of an old man's weakness I am free — I cannot praise 
 the past Academic generation at the expense of the 
 present. The manners of English Society have changed 
 for the better, and Cambridge has felt the change. 
 Intemperance and convivial brawlings have ceased to 
 disgrace our Colleges. In every condition of society 
 there will be exceptions to the general rule of sobriety 
 and good order : and were they flagrant and disgraceful, 
 the University would put them down by the strong 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCxlix 
 
 arm of authority. But there is a still stronger arm 
 in the power of public opinion ; for intemperance is 
 now regarded as disgraceful, and ill befitting the man- 
 ners of any one who wishes to pass under the name of 
 a Christian and a gentleman. On this subject, the rules 
 of discipline, the sense of public honour, and high prin- 
 ciple, all combine to a common end ; and thus united 
 their power is irresistible. 
 
 Again, the religious habits and sentiments of 
 Englishmen have greatly improved within the last fifty 
 years. Those who have watched these changes, must 
 have seen, along with them, some of those evils that 
 are the inevitable concomitants of every great social 
 change, though it be from worse to better ; and while 
 human nature continues what it is, we shall never pass 
 through any period of great religious movement in the 
 State without some outbreaks of folly, mysticism, and 
 fanaticism. Some will be worshippers of forms and 
 symbols to the verge of rank idolatry ; others will be 
 contemners of all form and order — some will mistake 
 the outer decorations of the Church for its sanctuary ; 
 others will deny our need of any sanctuary — some will 
 contend for despotic authority in the priesthood ; others 
 will deny all authority to the ministers of Christ — 
 some will rationalize all mysteries, and cut down the 
 Word of God to the lowest standard of human reason, 
 so that it may teach nothing but what comes within 
 the limits of our experience; others will exalt mys- 
 teries at the expense and degradation of reason, and 
 make our faith little better than a blind submission 
 
CCCl PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 to authority against which reason may not raise its 
 voice. 
 
 English society (spite of some evils, offensive at 
 once to common sense and Christian charity) has gained 
 in true religious strength during the present century ; 
 and Cambridge has shared in the benefits of this moral 
 progress. We now see more earnestness and decency 
 and gravity in the religious conduct of our sons than 
 were seen in the early years of this century. We 
 want not the outward homage of a hypocrite — this would 
 be no matter for rejoicing : but we do rejoice to see 
 a great majority of our sons attending the most solemn 
 acts of religion ; and shewing that earnest gravity 
 which becomes men who think in their hearts that reli- 
 gion is a solemn matter in which they have the deepest 
 personal concern. In making this statement I know 
 that I am only using the words of simple truth. The 
 venerable Bishop of Calcutta spent some time amongst 
 us during his last visit to England. He knew our con- 
 stitution well ; but he sought for information as to the 
 present moral condition of the University, and the prac- 
 tical working of our system. He attended our Halls 
 and Chapels, not as a spy, but as a friend and a 
 fellow-worshipper. He knew what academic habits 
 had been in his youthful days, and he saw what they 
 were now: and he left us after expressing, again and 
 again, and in far stronger words than I have used in the 
 preceding sentences, his conviction of the great social 
 and moral benefits of our present training. 
 
 It is often urged against us, that our discipline is 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCcli 
 
 lax, and that our academic liberty degenerates into 
 licentiousness. We reply, that open licentiousness is 
 put down with a strong arm, and that offences against 
 good manners are visited by a stern punishment when- 
 soever they come under the notice of our authorities. 
 But we do allow our younger members a great freedom 
 of action ; and we think it right and good to confide to 
 them this liberty. Students between the ages of nine- 
 teen and twenty-five are not to be treated like children. 
 By a system of espionage, and by a more direct and 
 personal restraint, we might prevent some acts of youth- 
 ful folly, and some licentious wanderings from the right 
 way. But such a system of discipline would be an 
 insufferable evil, and ten times worse than the ills it was 
 meant to cure, and would be utterly incompatible with 
 the growth of that free, patriotic, truth-loving, and 
 manly character, which is now, and we hope ever will 
 be, the honourable distinction of a Cambridge Under- 
 graduate. 
 
 As a matter of fact, our students (with very limited 
 exceptions) leave us with the sentiments of chivalrous 
 attachment towards us ; and with feelings of lasting 
 love and friendship towards their young rivals in the 
 liberal Academic race. And herein is a great gain 
 to the State : for at the old Universities men of 
 rank and fortune, destined from their childhood for the 
 higher duties of public life, and of every shade of 
 political opinion, are engaged, side by side, in common 
 studies and common social pleasures, and learn to live 
 in mutual respect and goodwill, undisturbed and un- 
 
CCclii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 tainted by any element of party rancour. These feelings 
 they carry with them into public life. Each man, on 
 his own principles, takes his side in the conflicts of 
 society and the battles of political party ; but he begins 
 these conflicts with the tolerant sentiments of a patriotic 
 Englishman and a Christian gentleman. In the reports 
 of Parliament we are sometimes startled by meeting 
 with expressions that are vulgar, narrow-minded, and 
 unpatriotic: but we seldom, if ever, can find them 
 dropping from the lips of one who has gained honours 
 at our old Universities, or partaken of the humanizing 
 influences of our free and manly discipline. 
 
 The governing body of Cambridge is sometimes 
 described, by those who know not the true and practical 
 value of our system, as a conclave of bigoted ecclesias- 
 tics who have little knowledge of the progress of society, 
 and little feeling for its present wants. It is true, that 
 the greatest number of our Colleges are religious and 
 ecclesiastical foundations : but the University, as a col- 
 lective body, is a lay corporation. Within the last 
 forty years many of our distinguished Tutors, both 
 public and private, have been laymen ; and at this 
 moment nine out of the twenty-five public Professors of 
 the University are laymen. But it follows not that our 
 teaching is inexpedient and illiberal, because the eccle- 
 siastical element enters so largely into our constitution. 
 This question was discussed at great length and with 
 much earnestness in the last conversation I had the 
 happiness of holding in the chamber of the old philo- 
 sopher La Place, a short time before his death. In 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCliH 
 
 conclusion he said, " I think your teaching good and 
 liberal, and for the benefit of your country ; and I think 
 it one of the misfortunes of my life not to have seen 
 Cambridge. When I was a young man I had not the 
 means of travelling ; then came the terrible war of 
 the Revolution; and now I am too old to travel, and 
 I must die without seeing the place where Newton 
 lived and made his great discoveries." And he then 
 added in an emphatic voice (repeating more than once 
 the words to which I have alluded in a following Note 
 (infra, p. 129,) " I think your teaching right, and were 
 I in your place I should deprecate any great organic 
 change ; for I have lived long enough to know, what 
 we did not at one time believe, that society cannot be 
 upheld in happiness and honour without the sentiments 
 of religion." 
 
 The University is governed by very ancient laws 
 and customs called Statuta Antiqua, and by a formal 
 code of Statutes, enacted in the 12th year of Queen 
 Elizabeth, which has permanent authority, and cannot 
 be changed by any power vested in the Senate — our 
 corporate legislative body. It is not likely, it may be 
 said, that a Code of Academic Laws, granted in the 
 12th of Elizabeth, should be well suited to the times in 
 which we live. This is in part true ; and some of its 
 enactments have become obsolete, and are now for- 
 gotten. Others, that are more important and funda- 
 mental, are still in full force ; and by this Code (as well 
 as by our Statuta Antiqua) our chief privileges and 
 forms of administration, are legally defined ; nor have 
 
cccliv 
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 we any internal power of changing them. When dis- 
 cussing questions of this kind with learned Foreigners, 
 who have visited us since the general peace of Europe, 
 I have a hundred times heard from their lips expres- 
 sions and sentiments such as these — " National cha- 
 racter is not the expression of a momentary senti- 
 ment, that may be put off and on like an outer gar- 
 ment ; but is the natural and moral fruit that has 
 been matured and ripened during successive ages : and 
 free institutions are not only best in practical expe- 
 rience, but most secure and lasting, when they have 
 grown with the growth of the State. It is this sentiment 
 which gives them a firm root in the good affection of 
 the people. History tells us that your aristocratic 
 institutions have been favourable to civil liberty. Your 
 aristocratic body has too many connecting links with 
 the people not to respect their claims and civil rights, 
 and too many privileges not to be a maintainer of social 
 order. Hence, like a fly-wheel, it has preserved the 
 steady movements of the machine of State, and has 
 prevented those unseemly collisions between the execu- 
 tive and the people, which at all times are destructive of 
 personal security and dangerous to reasonable liberty ." 
 Expressions of this kind may sometimes have been used 
 as mere terms of courtesy or flattery ; but many times, 
 I doubt not, were the honest words of sincerity and 
 good-will. Similar expressions I have heard, again and 
 again, from Professors and other learned Foreigners, 
 while discussing with us the antiquated and aristocratic 
 forms of our old institutions. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclv 
 
 Whatever may be the opinions of learned strangers, 
 we believe that, on the whole, our laws and institutions 
 have worked for the benefit of the country : and we 
 owe a deep and lasting debt of gratitude to the 
 memory of those royal patrons and benefactors from 
 whom we derive our laws and privileges. We say not 
 that our Codes are perfect, but we know and feel that 
 they have become national and historical. It is im- 
 possible for any young man to be so dead to historical 
 sentiments as not to feel some sense of moral obliga- 
 tion when he sits down every day in a Hall decorated 
 with the portraits of Bacon, Newton, Barrow, Russell, 
 Ray, Coke, Cowley, Dryden, Bentley, and other men 
 who once lived here, and whose names will ever live 
 (some with unspotted fame, others through evil report 
 as well as good report) in the glorious annals of their 
 country. We have a noble intellectual ancestry ; nor 
 can any power on earth take this honour from us ; nor 
 can any new institution share it with us ; and this 
 thought is in itself a true element of security and public 
 good — All our studies and forms and fashions are his- 
 torical. There are many customs amongst us which, 
 in a new institution, might be thought burdensome, 
 unreasonable, or ridiculous. But we should be far 
 more unreasonable and ridiculous were we to abolish 
 them : for they are the links that connect the past 
 with the present ; they tell us of stirring times in the 
 by-gone days of literature and science ; and they remind 
 us also of past struggles in the cause of civil freedom, 
 and of noble deeds done in behalf of religious liberty 
 
ccclvi 
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 by those who went before us, and once filled the very 
 stations in which it has been the will of Providence now 
 to place us. 
 
 Many times I have heard the learned Foreigners 
 who have come amongst us object strongly to the pre- 
 cedence we give (and by our laws and customs are 
 compelled to give) to men of rank; and above all, to 
 distinctions of Academic dress — such as the gown of 
 the Fellow-Commoner, and the splendid robe worn by 
 Noblemen during our high festivals. " Why continue," 
 they have said, "these strange and useless customs, that 
 are fit only to cause envy and heart-burnings among 
 the Undergraduates? Such customs would not be en- 
 dured, for a single day, in our Universities V We have 
 replied — that customs which have lasted for centuries, 
 and have become historical, are not to be lightly parted 
 with — that although Noblemen may claim certain pri- 
 vileges by Royal Statutes over which we have no con- 
 trol, yet are they subject to our discipline, to which 
 they must yield obedience like our very humblest 
 sons — that in our public examinations there is no 
 show of personal favour or affection, and no privilege 
 given to men of rank — that if at one end of our Hall 
 a Nobleman have a place of honour, there is at the 
 other end a table of intellectual precedence, whereon the 
 names of all our Undergraduates are written in the very 
 order they have won for themselves in fair and open 
 conflict — that academic distinctions obtained in fair 
 intellectual conflicts are not unfrequently the harbin- 
 gers of public honours in society ; so that one who has 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClvii 
 
 fought in our humblest ranks may sometimes send his 
 son amongst us with the privileges of a Nobleman — 
 that the external privileges of rank are not, therefore 
 matters of heart-burning and envy — that, on the 
 contrary, were they called in question and submitted to 
 the vote of the whole resident academic body, old and 
 young, they would be upheld without so much as one 
 hand being raised against them.*" 
 
 To the Statuta Antiqua, and the Royal Code, have 
 been added many by-laws, called Graces, passed from 
 time to time by our Academic Senate, to meet the pro- 
 gressive wants of the University. These Graces are 
 binding on the University, provided they contradict not 
 our fundamental laws ; but they may afterwards be 
 modified or abrogated by new enactments of the Senate. 
 This corporate power of enacting by-laws for the good 
 of the University is a privilege of inestimable value. 
 Any Member of the Senate may originate a by-law ; 
 but before it can be submitted to the Senate for its 
 vote, and thereby gain the force of a Statute, it must 
 first pass a committee, called a Caput ; and each mem- 
 ber of this body has the power of veto conferred on him 
 by the Royal Code. Public opinion has generally been 
 too strong for any flagrant and inexpedient exercise 
 of this enormous power given to the several members 
 of the Caput. It is, however, a clog to our legislation, 
 and there have been some instances in which the 
 caprice of an individual, leading to an arbitrary and 
 inexpedient use of his privilege as a member of the 
 Caput, has retarded the reasonable wishes of a great 
 
CCClviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 majority of the Senate. Nothing is more mischievous, 
 in a corporate body, than frequent and petty legislation ; 
 and I should, on that account, grieve to see the Caput 
 abolished altogether : but its constitution might be 
 improved and its powers limited, either by a new Royal 
 Statute, or by Parliament, without in any respect en- 
 dangering the public good*. 
 
 It is not, however, my present task to point out 
 the means of reforming or improving our body of Royal 
 Statutes. What I contend for is, that the University, 
 spite of certain clogs to its legislation, has, on the 
 whole, done what was wise, and liberal, and for the 
 public good ; and that the present moral aspect of our 
 body gives us cheerful and sanguine hopes for the 
 future. Within the last twenty-five years, two or three 
 
 * Our present Caput is composed of six Members of the Senate : viz. 
 the Vice-Chancellor, a Doctor of each of the faculties (Law, Physic and 
 Divinity), and two Masters of Arts. It might, I think, be conveniently 
 increased by the addition of five or six Members of the Senate. The effect 
 of a single veto might be limited to one Term : so that a Grace so rejected 
 might in course of another Term pass down to the Senate for its vote, pro- 
 vided it were sanctioned by a good majority (say two-thirds) of the Caput. 
 We should have nothing to fear from such a change as this, and it might 
 be brought about, I believe without any difficulty, by a new Royal Sta- 
 tute, which would be accepted by the Senate, and then become a part of 
 our Academic Code. Within my memory the Caput has saved our body 
 from many acts of hasty and unwise legislation, and has very seldom done 
 us any injury. The power of veto has indeed been very seldom exercised. 
 But 1 remember one not very creditable attempt at what might be vulgarly 
 called packing the Caput, when a political question was to be submitted to 
 the Senate ; and ab.out twenty years since the University suffered both 
 inconvenience and great pecuniary loss by the caprice of a member of the 
 Caput, who by his single veto prevented us from removing our old Bota- 
 nical collection to a better site, and consequently from selling our old 
 Botanic Garden, which would not, I believe, now fetch one third of the 
 price it might have done twenty or thirty years since. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclix 
 
 Roman Catholic gentlemen have resided in our Col- 
 leges, and attended the ordinary course of lectures. 
 One of them afterwards gained the rank of Cardinal, 
 and died at Rome. Within the same period, a young 
 man, of the Society of Friends, kept Terms at Cam- 
 bridge, conformed in all respects to our customs and 
 discipline, and ended by carrying off one of our highest 
 mathematical honors. And a few years since, a Turk- 
 ish Bey, with a commission from the Sultan, came to 
 reside amongst us. He was admitted at one of our 
 Colleges, adopted our dress and customs, and attended 
 the ordinary course of lectures. Before he left us he 
 published an essay on the Calculus of Variations, which 
 he presented to his friends as an expression of grati- 
 tude and good-will towards those among whom he had 
 been living in friendship, and of whose studies he had 
 partaken. It would, I think, be for the great benefit 
 of the University had she the power, in cases such as 
 these, of conferring an honorary degree, as a stamp of 
 her approbation, and without the exaction of any re- 
 ligious test whatsoever. But we have no Honorary 
 Degrees in Cambridge ; and by our Academic laws, each 
 student, before he proceeds to his first Degree, is com- 
 pelled to sign the Registrary's book, which act implies 
 that he is a bond fide member of the Church of England. 
 It may, perhaps, be said, by those who are un- 
 friendly to our whole system of internal government, 
 that we might, through the authority of Parliament, 
 or by direct application to the Crown, have gained 
 some extension of our powers in passing by-laws, some 
 
CCClx PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 changes in our antiquated customs, and some modifica- 
 tion of our tests. This may be true, and it is notorious 
 that within the present century several movements have 
 been made in this direction, and been defeated. With- 
 out pretending to discuss the policy of these move- 
 ments, I may observe, that the resident members of 
 the University, who joined in them, wished not for any 
 great organic changes They sought not to sever the 
 University from the Church of England ; for they be- 
 lieved that the University and Church of England must 
 stand or fall together. They found themselves joined 
 by men who had neither derived any personal benefit 
 from the University, nor knew anything of its in- 
 ternal government. Such men were ready to seek for 
 academical reform at a cost the most liberal members 
 of the University would at all times be unwilling to 
 pay ; and nothing was effected in such an incongruity 
 of principles and motives. We asked for the abolition 
 of a religious test before we conferred the honor of a 
 Degree in Law, Physic, or Arts, upon any of our sons 
 who had gone through our ordinary academic course, 
 and conformed to our discipline ; and in this form 
 our Petition was presented to the House of Peers by 
 the late Earl Grey. But after the presentation of a 
 similar Petition (in which, of course, the word Dissenter 
 did not appear) to the House of Commons, steps were 
 taken for The Admission of Dissenters to the two old 
 Universities under such a form as would have been, 
 perhaps, subversive of our discipline, and would have 
 produced an organic change in our constitution which 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxi 
 
 the persons who framed the Petition never contem- 
 plated, and did not wish to sanction by their votes. On 
 this subject I can speak with entire confidence, as I 
 was one of a Committee that drew up the Petition in 
 question. 
 
 Our endowments and privileges have of late years 
 been the topics of envy and obloquy — sometimes even 
 among men who have filled positions of influence in 
 the State. Hence many University-men, otherwise 
 favourable to a modification of our Statutes, may 
 very naturally fear to seek for a doubtful and future 
 good at the risk of forfeiting the great moral ad- 
 vantages of the position they now occupy, and the 
 privileges it is their solemn duty to defend. I wish 
 not, however, to detain the reader among doubtful 
 questions of Academic reform, on which good men 
 may differ, and I return again to the present moral 
 condition of the University. 
 
 At the beginning of this century several. debating 
 societies existed in Cambridge, and in the year 1815 they 
 formed themselves into one great Union, and a building 
 was afterwards erected for their reception. Here our 
 Undergraduates, and some of our younger Graduates, 
 meet and read the daily Papers, and the periodical 
 works of England, France, and Germany ; and here 
 also they meet, once a week during each Term, for the 
 discussion of questions that are literary, philosophical, 
 or political. No pitiful espionage controls their meet- 
 ings. Their debates are not only open to the members 
 of the Union, but to Academic visitors ; and subjects 
 s. d. a a 
 
CCClxii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 of deep and moving interest are sometimes discussed 
 with no small freedom. The Authorities of the Uni- 
 versity have any day the power of putting this Union 
 down : but it is not put down, and no public evil follows. 
 If any momentary evil may have arisen from the license 
 of debate, it has been accompanied by a far greater 
 good ; for the debates of the Society are conducted 
 on principles worthy of English gentlemen. Any ex- 
 pression, even in the heat of debate, in conflict with 
 religion, would not be tolerated for a single moment. 
 Such expressions might, no doubt, be silenced by autho- 
 rity ; but no such authority is needed : for the young 
 men themselves have a loyal attachment to the religious 
 and social institutions of their country, and they know 
 what is due to their position in society, as well as to 
 the feelings of their fellow-students. And this is assur- 
 edly an inestimable gain to the religion of the country. 
 A man who has learnt to pay external respect to religion, 
 and to the sentiments of religious men, may learn in 
 time to feel the power of religion over his own heart. 
 But one who has been taught in early life to scoff at 
 religion, and to make it the subject of ribald mockery 
 and scorn — who has shut his eyes to the Book of Life, or 
 seen it only through the distorted misrepresentations of 
 a sceptic, mingling it perhaps with filthy jests, or with 
 transcendental dreams and subtle fooleries — cannot be- 
 come practically and truly religious by any thing less 
 than a moral miracle. Such a one may, perhaps, be- 
 come in after life a lover of solemn forms and pageants, 
 and embrace a kind of poetical religion, as a thing that 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxiti 
 
 is graceful in society, and nattering to his taste and 
 temper; but, after such a training in early life, it is 
 hardly possible that the simple and humbling truths of 
 Christianity should ever gain access to his understand- 
 ing, or find an abiding place in his affections. 
 
 However this may be, our Undergraduates have 
 learned the lessons of order, and tolerance, and patriot- 
 ism, and liberality, and brotherly love, during the season 
 of those youthful conflicts, which, under a different con- 
 dition of Academic society, might end in irreligion, and 
 faction, and hatred, and in personal encounters incom- 
 patible with moral order, and perhaps in blood. 
 
 Soon after the general peace of Europe one of the 
 great Captains of Napoleon visited Cambridge, and 
 spent several days amongst us. We listened to him 
 with an interest indescribable, while he recounted to us 
 some of the great historical passages of the preceding 
 years ; of which we had only read, but in which he had 
 been an actor. He seemed to take a deep interest in 
 our manners and institutions ; and above all things he 
 was delighted with the manly bearing, and joyous, but 
 respectful, freedom of our sons. " But have you not," 
 asked the French Marshal, " with all this free inter- 
 course and liberty of thought and action, frequent 
 quarrels and personal encounters among your Under- 
 graduates?" We replied, that the practice of duelling 
 was utterly unknown amongst us — that such a thing 
 as an appeal to the sword was never thought of — that 
 it was kept down by the power of our Academic laws, 
 and by the stronger power of opinion among the 
 
 ««2 
 
CCClxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 young men themselves. He then remarked, that all 
 this spoke well for the condition of our Society ; and 
 that a liberty such as was enjoyed by our younger mem- 
 bers, would, in the Universities of the Continent, lead 
 to " duels every week *." 
 
 Our Undergraduates, as a body, are orderly, pa- 
 triotic, reasonable, and religious. Duels and other fan- 
 tastical customs that disgrace the discipline of some 
 Continental Universities, are incompatible both with 
 our manners and principles. Those pantheistic dreams 
 that are the bane of modern philosophy are almost 
 unknown, even by name, amongst us. The mind of 
 Cambridge is not prepared for the germination of such 
 bad seed, or for the reception of idle transcendental 
 visions that are as offensive to the elements of com- 
 mon sense as they are to religious faith. During the 
 last two years, while States and Empires have been 
 shaken to their foundations, we have seen the Students 
 of several Continental Universities taking the lead in 
 disgraceful civil broils, and fighting in the front ranks of 
 lawless and murderous factions. Were like evils, by the 
 will of Providence, now let loose on the society of 
 
 * In the year 1791 a duel was fought in the Devil's Ditch near New- 
 market (fit place for such a bloody meeting ! ) by two Cambridge Under- 
 graduates. One of them fell, and tne victor in this miserable combat died 
 not long afterwards in a state, it is said, of phrensy. I well remember the 
 horror with which the event was commonly alluded to, more than forty years 
 since, when I was myself an Undergraduate ; but it is now almost for- 
 gotten. A sermon was preached on the occasion by Thomas Jones, Tutor 
 of Trinity College — a person long since dead ; who still lives, however, in 
 the affectionate remembrance and veneration of his Pupils. The Sermon 
 was published ; but copies of it are now difficult to meet with, and are 
 found only in private collections. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxV 
 
 England, what would follow ? I only speak the truth, 
 when I state my conviction that every Cambridge Stu- 
 dent would be seen on the side of social order ; and, 
 whatever might be his political name, that he would be 
 ready to shed his blood in support of those institutions 
 of rational freedom his fathers have handed down to 
 him, and in support of that religion which in his heart 
 he believes true, and which he clings to as the best 
 security for public blessings, and the only foundation 
 for his hopes of future happiness. I am not using the 
 language of panegyric — I am writing the words of sim- 
 ple truth. Once more therefore I contend, that in our 
 antiquated forms and historical remembrances we have 
 a true element both of security and utility — that in 
 what we have done for the last forty years — that in 
 what we are now doing, and in the spirit that still 
 breathes among us — that above all, in the moral and 
 intellectual character of our sons, we have the firmest 
 ground for our hopes of future good. Cambridge will, 
 we trust, be true to herself : and Providence will then 
 be on her side, and will carry her through her conflicts, 
 and make her in centuries yet to come, what she has been 
 in centuries that are gone, one of the living fountains 
 of Sacred Truth, one of the brightest lights of English 
 science, one of the best conservative elements of social 
 and religious liberty, and one of the strong pillars of 
 national glory. 
 
CCClxvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 fi 3. Modern religious movements. Principles of the 
 Church of England contrasted with those of the 
 Church of Borne. " Tracts for the Times." Terms 
 of Communion. Immorality of the " Tracts." Acts 
 of Apostasy. Causes of error in our estimate of 
 religious and moral questions. True Catholicity. 
 Conclusion. 
 
 While discussing the present condition and pros- 
 pects of the University, there is another subject I 
 have no right to pass over, though I touch upon it 
 with great reluctance. Several of the metaphysical 
 and moral writers of the Continent tell us that an 
 inclination to what they call pietisme is one of the 
 peculiarities of the British character. They remark, 
 that party-names, such as High Churchman Low 
 Churchman, Methodist and Puritan, that were at one 
 time thrown out in scorn and mockery, and afterwards 
 passed into the language of common use in England, 
 have no good synonymes among themselves, because 
 they want the living types of opinion which give to 
 such words their fashion and currency. It is notori- 
 ous that any strong abiding sense of religion, sinking 
 into the heart and thereby influencing our course of 
 life and moral sentiments, would be called pietisme by 
 those who are irreligious ; and in this sense of the word 
 I trust that it always will be, as it long has been, de- 
 scriptive of the manners and principles of Englishmen. 
 
 Religion, considered as a rule of life, is made up of 
 doctrines, solemn ordinances, and moral precepts ; and 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclxvii 
 
 of external forms administered* in every Christian so- 
 ciety, under some prescribed rules of discipline. There 
 may be in a Christian society certain rules that are 
 purely local and conventional, and, so far, rest only on 
 expediency: but all the true elements 6f our religion 
 are of equal authority so far as they are of divine 
 command ; and while we allow its divine authority we 
 have obviously no right to accept one part of it and 
 reject another, at our caprice or supposed convenience. 
 To do this is to overturn the foundations on which 
 religion rests. It is, however, true that sincere believers 
 have taken very different views of religion, from the 
 effects of early training, of national habits, and of 
 natural temper. Some men are so framed as to re- 
 ceive the deepest moral influences through the senses ; 
 and, if they be religious men, they naturally learn 
 to seek for spiritual support in external solemnities. 
 Others are inclined to seek for consolation in a kind 
 of mystical pietisme ; and trusting to this element, they 
 may perhaps overlook what is external to themselves, 
 and in the end, may disregard some positive institu- 
 tions of religion that are of divine command. In the 
 latter part of his life Milton seems to have satisfied 
 himself with this kind of pietisme; and it is the very 
 life-food of monastic superstition. We cannot "over- 
 come the world 1 ' by flying from it; for the world is 
 the place of trial to which the God of Nature and 
 Author of our religion has sent us ; and there we 
 have to perform our social, not our solitary task. 
 Others again, looking only to what they consider the 
 
CCclxviii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 practical and social ends of religion, may perhaps be 
 led to undervalue both its external ordinances, and the 
 strong devotional sentiments, without which it cannot 
 have coherence as a moral rule, or an abiding life as 
 an inner and spiritual principle. 
 
 In the Church of Rome the religion of Bossuet dif- 
 fered from that of Fenelon — the Jansenist differed 
 from the Jesuit — Pascal differed from Escobar and Mo- 
 lina. In like manner, within the pale of the Church of 
 England, a High Churchman differed from a Puritan : 
 and a Presbyterian of the Church of Scotland differed 
 from an Episcopalian, whether of the Church of England 
 or of the Church of Rome. Who was right and who 
 was wrong in these conflicts of opinion, are points I 
 do not venture to discuss : but writing historically, I 
 may affirm that differences such as these are not to 
 be set down merely to the score of political faction, 
 or dishonest suppression, or a want of belief in the 
 supreme authority of religion : but, on the contrary, 
 that they take their rise from principles which are deep- 
 seated in human nature, and ever have produced, and 
 perhaps ever will produce, shades of difference in the 
 practical belief and manners of Christian societies. 
 
 That these shades of difference existed at the time 
 of the Reformation of our Church no one pretends to 
 deny : and it is, we believe, historically true that our 
 Formularies and Articles of faith were drawn up on a 
 scheme of tolerance and comprehension. Whoever 
 denies these principles, and endeavours to narrow the 
 comprehensive scheme of our Reformers, whatever may 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclxix 
 
 be his honest opinions, is an enemy to our Church, 
 and to that enlarged charity without which Christianity, 
 as a rule of faith, would lose all its life and meaning. 
 
 But because our Church is comprehensive, it follows 
 not that she remains without any well-defined external 
 forms, and that she offers to her sons no tests for the 
 security of religious faith. Every State has some consti- 
 tutional principles to which its subjects owe a practical 
 loyalty and obedience ; and every religious community has 
 some principles to which all its members owe a spiritual 
 submission. Without the recognition of some principle 
 such as this no society could be held in any continued 
 union. The Church of England has prescribed forms 
 for the administration of religious offices ; and she has 
 enunciated her fundamental doctrines in formal Articles, 
 that are offered to the acceptance of her Ministers 
 under the most solemn of all public sanctions. These 
 Articles contain the grounds of her separation from 
 the Church of Rome. If they be true, then was she 
 justified in the formal act of separation : but if those 
 doctrines of the Church of Rome be true which our 
 Articles enumerate and formally deny, then must our 
 Articles be so far false : our Reformers were in grievous 
 and guilty error, and our Church is schismatical and 
 heretical. No truth of common sense or history is 
 more plain than this. 
 
 It would be worse than idle for me in this Preface 
 to vindicate the principles of the Church of England, 
 and to contrast them controversially with those of the 
 Church of Rome. I profess only to write historically, 
 
CCClxX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 and I wish only to speak of certain principles that are 
 notorious and incontrovertible. 
 
 The Church of Rome acknowledges as Articles of 
 Faith — the Supremacy of the Pope — the Infallibility of 
 general Councils — the doctrine of Transubstantiation — 
 the Sacrifice of the Mass — seven Sacraments — the doc- 
 trine of Purgatory — the Veneration of Images and Relics 
 — the Invocation of Saints — and certain doctrines con- 
 nected with Pardons and Indulgences. These Articles 
 of Faith are formally repudiated by the Church of Eng- 
 land. She denies them in expressions that are as plain 
 and positive as any that can be found in written words. 
 All of them she formally denies; some of them she 
 calls " superstitious," " corrupt," " blasphemous fables, 
 and dangerous deceits," " fond things repugnant to the 
 word of God," &c. It is morally impossible to mis- 
 understand the strength of this denial. It was at once 
 the cause and the justification of our separation from 
 the Church of Rome. After our separation we were 
 still members of the visible Church of Christ, as it is 
 defined in our 19 th Article ; and we were still mem- 
 bers of the Holy Catholic Church, in that enlarged and 
 charitable sense whereby the Catholic Church is defined 
 in the authorized words and solemn prayers of our 
 public Service. By this formal act of denial we became 
 also a Protestant Church — a name well understood, 
 and which takes not from our primitive Catholicity : a 
 name, moreover, of which Laud was not ashamed, and 
 that is used by our Church as her true designation in 
 one of her most august solemnities. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxxi 
 
 Two great principles were virtually accepted by the 
 Reformers of our Church. First, the supreme authority 
 of Scripture in deciding upon questions of religious 
 faith and controversy. — This principle was not merely 
 implied, but was formally enunciated. — Secondly, the 
 rights of conscience and of private judgment in matters 
 of religious faith. For the Reformers could not consis- 
 tently deny to other Churches that liberty they them- 
 selves had exercised, and without which the Church of 
 England could not have gained so much as a formal 
 existence, or had a name among the members of the 
 great Catholic and Christian community*. But there 
 
 * " If the Bible is the sole foundation of Christian Faith in the Church 
 of England, and not the sole foundation of Faith to the Church of Rome, 
 the authority admitted by the latter in addition to the authority of the 
 Bible, must constitute an essential difference between the two Churches... 
 When we appeal to our Liturgy and Articles, which is done only in 
 arguing with those who have previously acknowledged them, we do not 
 appeal to them as documents having validity in themselves, but as docu- 
 ments having no other validity than what they derive from the Bible ; as 
 documents which are only so far valid as they agree with the Bible. On 
 the other hand, when a Romanist appeals to Tradition, as a Rule of 
 Faith, he appeals to an authority neither derived from nor in any way 
 dependent on the Bible. He regards Tradition as an authority which 
 existed even before the New Testament : as an authority proceeding 
 equally through Christ and his Apostles, though transmitted through a 
 different channel; as an authority containing doctrines, delivered orally 
 by the Apostles, and recorded in the works of the Fathers." These 
 words are quoted from the Comparative View of the Churches of England 
 and Rome, by Bishop Marsh, p. 3 and p. 4, (Cambridge, 1814). In the 
 same work (p. 172 and p. 173) we find the following conclusion: " Though 
 the Church of England acknowledges the right of withdrawing from its 
 communion, if men cannot conscientiously remain in it, this does not imply 
 an admission that there is no sin in Schism, or a separation from the esta- 
 blished Church, in cases where no plea of conscience can be urged."... 
 " Since we judged for ourselves when we seceded from the Church of 
 Rome, we must allow others to judge for themselves when they secede 
 from the Church of England," &c. This admirable work of our late 
 Margaret Professor (Bishop Marsh) is out of print, and ought to be 
 
CCClxXU PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 are many men who distrust and hate every movement in 
 the direction of civil or religious freedom. Looking 
 only to one side of our nature, they can see the evil 
 consequences of human liberty, while they can discern 
 no portion of its concomitant good. Our Reformers 
 were not of this temper. They had a more enlarged 
 charity — better hopes for the social destinies of the 
 human race, and for the blessings, as they firmly be- 
 lieved, that Providence had in store for them. 
 
 It is, however, true that civil liberty may degenerate 
 into a licentiousness incompatible with all good go- 
 vernment, and that religious liberty may sometimes 
 engender a spirit of sectarianism and fanaticism. No 
 one denies these evil consequences of freedom. But 
 on the other hand we may ask, whether history does 
 not plainly shew us many moral evils of a more de- 
 grading character and a deeper die, which are among 
 the natural fruits of a despotism that keeps the human 
 mind in darkness, and destroys its healthy germination 
 in the light of day. 
 
 Whatever may have been the consequences of the 
 Reformation, whether good or bad, all honest and rea- 
 sonable men were, for more than two centuries, agreed in 
 one point at least — that the Church of England was 
 widely separated in doctrine from the Church of Rome. 
 The positive doctrines of the Church of England (such for 
 example as the doctrine of Justification by Faith) may 
 
 republished. His short digressions on the political question of " Catholic 
 Emancipation" ought, perhaps, to be suppressed in a new edition, as 
 they have now lost all their interest, and only encumber the clear argu- 
 ments and historical statements of the work. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclxxiil 
 
 no doubt admit of some latitude of interpretation. But 
 her negative doctrines, like negative precepts in a code 
 of morals, have a positive authority that admits neither 
 of palliation nor honest evasion. No human sophistry- 
 can explain away those Articles (for example) whereby 
 our Church renounces the Papal Supremacy, the doc- 
 trine of Transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, 
 and Purgatory. Whether doctrines such as these be 
 true or false, they are denied by the Church of Eng- 
 land. On the strength of this denial she broke off her 
 communion with the Church of Rome, and established 
 a separate communion of her own, to which she admits 
 her sons under some of the most solemn sanctions 
 whereby mankind have been held in obedience to re- 
 ligious and social order. If we accept not her solemn 
 decisions on points such as these, we may, perhaps, think 
 fit to remain in her formal communion ; but we cannot 
 have the shadow of a right to take upon ourselves her 
 sacred offices, or to stand up within the ranks of her 
 priesthood. 
 
 Whether some strange doctrines of development 
 may not have been tainting the speculations of certain 
 members of our Church, or whether some scheme of 
 rationalism may not have been eating into the vitals of 
 their faith, I pretend not to inquire. As a matter of 
 fact, the just Nemesis of a tottering faith has driven one 
 set of Churchmen to cast away the sacred might of reason, 
 and seek for refuge in authority ; and another set to 
 cast away both faith and reason, and to lose themselves 
 among the disordered dreams and blighting mists of 
 
CCclxxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 pantheism. One extreme often begets another ; and, 
 whatsoever may have been the cause, a new party has 
 sprung up within the bosom of the Church of England, 
 which, in one or two extreme cases of delusion, has led 
 its victims either into pantheism or a demoralizing fa- 
 naticism. They began, like many other reformers, with 
 a severe and somewhat ascetic rule of life. They 
 seemed to be of pure and simple manners, and they 
 were the champions of priestly authority. They pro- 
 fessed to conform to the letter and spirit of our Ritual, 
 and they revived certain minute and insignificant ob- 
 servances that seemed to have become obsolete through 
 the lapse of time, and had been discontinued without 
 any formal enactment, and apparently by silent consent. 
 So far they had the hearty sympathy of many good 
 members of our Church, who longed for a stricter rule 
 of discipline, whose taste was gratified, and whose devo- 
 tions were stimulated by the revival of antiquated forms 
 and solemnities. By others they were suspected, and 
 not without good reason ; for it appeared, before long, 
 that they were craving for some irrefragable authority 
 they found not within the Church of England : and they 
 were little content with Christianity as revealed to 
 them in the simple words of the Bible, and put before 
 them in the Formularies and Articles they derived from 
 our old Reformers. — They told us (in the language of 
 their leader) that our Articles were " the offspring of 
 an uncatholic age" — that the members of our Church 
 were "in bondage," — that they were compelled "to 
 work in chains" — that they were constrained to go on 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxXV 
 
 " teaching with stammering lips," " through the me- 
 dium of indeterminate statements, and inconsistent pre- 
 cedents, and principles but partially developed," &c. 
 &c* Our Prayer-Book, they said, had the elements of 
 a more perfect Catholicity, and its principles were to 
 be " carried out" by a new and better kind of reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 But how was this modern reformation to be brought 
 about \ Not merely by employing the terms of con- 
 temptuous and bitter vituperation towards the framers 
 of our Articles and compilers of our Liturgy, but by 
 frittering away every proposition whereby our old 
 Reformers had set up a test of Orthodoxy, and denned 
 the grounds of their separation from the Church of 
 Rome. — Our Church affirms "that whatsoever is not 
 read in Holy Scripture, nor may be proved thereby, is 
 not to be required of any man that it should be believed 
 as an article of faith j-" — "that we are accounted right- 
 eous before God only for the merit of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our works and 
 deservings ;" — "albeit that good works, which are the 
 fruits of faith, are pleasing to God, and do spring out 
 necessarily of a true and lively faith." — She further tells 
 us, that " voluntarv works over and above God's com- 
 mandments, which are called works of supererogation, 
 cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety." She 
 defines what she understands by the visible Church of 
 Christ, and she positively and formally denies the infal- 
 
 * Tracts for the Times, No. 90. 
 t Article VI. 
 
CCclxXvi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 libility both of particular Churches and of general Coun- 
 cils. In the interpretation of such Articles as these, so far 
 as they are positive and dogmatical, men have differed 
 widely in opinion. But in their plain emphatic words, 
 as well as in the avowed intentions of their authors, these 
 Articles also contain negations which, whether right or 
 wrong, are levelled at certain doctrines of the Church 
 of Rome, and admit of no honest evasion whatsoever. 
 
 Again, the Church of England, as we are taught in 
 her Articles, "hath the power to decree Rites and 
 Ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith." 
 These words were never passed by the representatives 
 of our Church in Convocation, and have on that account 
 no fundamental Church-authority. They were intro- 
 duced silently and without consent by some private 
 adviser of Queen Elizabeth ; they exactly fell in with 
 her high notions of Supremacy, and they obtained the 
 sanction of Parliament ; and they were afterwards un- 
 questionably binding on every member of our Church who 
 had signed her Articles of faith, and given his unfeigned 
 assent and consent to them under the sanction of an oath. 
 But what do .the words, above quoted, mean ? Not that 
 the Church of England is infallible ; but that, as a body 
 corporate, she claims the right of prescribing the terms 
 of her communion, and the right of excluding from it 
 men who differ from her in those points of doctrine 
 and discipline which, as an expounder of the Word of 
 God, she declares essential. This is Bishop Marsh's 
 interpretation of the clause above quoted from the 
 Articles ; and it admits of no other without introducing 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxXVH 
 
 a positive contradiction among the plain declarations of 
 the Articles themselves. A similar authority is claimed 
 by the Church of Scotland over those who are of her 
 communion. Like the Church of England, she also 
 asserts and maintains a spiritual authority in denning 
 the terms of her communion ; and in a memorable in- 
 stance she, a few years since, expelled from her body 
 a very powerful and popular preacher, because he held 
 the doctrine of the peccability of Jesus Christ after he 
 became incarnate — a doctrine which she believed un- 
 sound, and had repudiated. — How, indeed, could any 
 Church continue in integrity and safety, if it had not 
 within itself the power of prescribing the terms of its 
 communion both on points of faith and discipline ? 
 
 The Church of England is a true Member of the 
 Catholic Church of Christ, but she does not on that 
 account boast her infallibility. She is only so far in- 
 fallible as she has drawn her doctrines from the Word 
 of God. She despises not the helps of human learning, 
 or of Tradition ; nor does she overlook the decrees and 
 determinations of Councils, or the opinions of the early 
 Fathers of the Church : but she dares not put these 
 old opinions of erring men in any authority commen- 
 surate with that of the Scriptures; but she rather uses 
 them as helps towards the right understanding of the 
 Word of God. Were this the right place for the dis- 
 cussion, I might also point out the wide difference 
 there is between ecclesiastical polity and articles of 
 faith. On questions of form and polity our Church 
 does appeal to good historical tradition, and thinks her- 
 s. d. b b 
 
CCclxXViii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 self bound by the model of the primitive Church of 
 Christ ; and on this ground (without at all swerving 
 from the great fundamental principle of deriving her 
 doctrines from the Bible, and the Bible only), she de- 
 mands a conformity to her sacred rites and polity on 
 the part of those who are members of her body. She 
 believes that her teaching is true — that her forms are 
 apostolical, and her doctrine evangelical — and believing 
 this, she speaks with parental authority, and asks, in 
 confidence, for the love and obedience of all the loyal 
 sons of her communion. 
 
 Men are constantly craving for some infallible living 
 authority to guide them on religious and moral questions. 
 But neither the Evidences of our Religion, nor the 
 limits of Church-authority, are put before us with the 
 clearness of demonstration. Were it so, there could 
 be no such thing as schism, for there could be no differ- 
 ence of opinion on religious questions : but we should 
 thereby lose (as is admirably argued by Bishop Butler) 
 one of the greatest and best elements of our probation ; 
 and our religious training would have no analogy to 
 God's dealings with us in the natural world. Unity 
 and peace are pleasant words ; but while human nature 
 remains what it is, the direst social evils may be lurking 
 behind the outward semblance of peace and unity. 
 Suppose the whole Christian world in a state of ex- 
 ternal religious unity brought about by Church-autho- 
 rity ; might not intellectual stagnation among religious 
 teachers, indifference among the people, cold-heartedness, 
 and scepticism, grow naturally out of such a condition 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxxix 
 
 of society ? Like a political despotism, it might, no 
 doubt, extinguish some great social evils; but it would 
 foster other and far greater evils; for it would stop 
 the growth of those great Christian virtues that spring 
 from Christian freedom. In such a state of things the 
 world would not be the searching school of Christian 
 wisdom that it is now. 
 
 All men take their religious principles for granted 
 in early life, and many continue to take them for 
 granted through their whole life : but an Undergra- 
 duate of Cambridge ought not to be in this condition. 
 He may be called on to give a reason of the hope that 
 is in him : and although the quotation of Church-au- 
 thority may be a very good reason, and the best he 
 has to give on some point in debate; yet it is but a 
 sorry excuse for indolence and moral cowardice, and 
 a desertion of those moral and intellectual struggles 
 that belong to our probation. Such a desertion seems 
 to be an act of disobedience towards God who gave us 
 our reason, and enjoined us to use it honestly. These 
 remarks apply to all members of the University, and to 
 those especially who are destined for the ministerial 
 offices of our Church. If any one meet with difficulties, 
 let them be encountered by him in an honest and 
 humble spirit, as a part, and very important part, 
 of his moral probation : but let him not give up his 
 reason by basely skulking from his high moral duties 
 behind the shelter of authority. If such be his tem- 
 per, he is little fitted for the work of a Christian 
 teacher. The claim of infallibility is in itself no proof 
 
 bb2 
 
CCC1XXX PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 that a Christian community is right in its exposition of 
 Christian doctrines ; but on the contrary, is a very 
 strong presumptive proof that such a community is in 
 grievous error. 
 
 The Church of England prescribes the terms of 
 her communion, and the rules of her discipline, and in 
 so doing she exercises, as we have stated, an authority 
 that is, directly or indirectly, claimed by every religious 
 community in Christendom. The Church of Rome 
 makes a like claim : but not content with this, she also 
 affirms her infallibility ; and, on the strength of this 
 affirmation, has she many times carried fire and sword 
 among men who conscientiously dissented from her 
 communion. In doing this she was at least consistent 
 with her principles. But if ever, before the sacred 
 principles of religious toleration were understood and 
 sanctioned by law, the Church of England have trodden 
 in the persecuting steps of her elder Sister, she thereby 
 not only committed great sin, but was utterly incon- 
 sistent with her own principles : for she has no claim 
 to infallibility ; and she had no right to deny to others 
 that liberty she had claimed for herself, when she threw 
 off the fetters of the Church of Rome. 
 
 Not to dwell any longer on the discussion of first 
 principles, it is historically certain that the grounds of 
 our separation from the Church of Rome are most 
 plainly and unequivocally stated in our Articles. But 
 some modern fanatics (and I have a right to call any 
 men fanatics who try to enforce their opinions against 
 the principles of common sense and the obligations of 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxXxi 
 
 truth and honour) have of late years endeavoured to 
 break down the barriers set up by our old Reformers 
 between the Church of England and the Church of 
 Rome. And how was this attempt begun and carried 
 on ? First, by an ascetic life — by a professed veneration 
 for obsolete forms and antiquated authorities — by a 
 subtle, but confused and mystical logic, and a form of 
 reasoning utterly unlike any thing we now find among 
 the honest and earnest writings of well-educated Eng- 
 lishmen. Secondly, by a bolder flight, in which the first 
 principles of honesty and truth were cast to the winds, 
 and a scheme of sophistry was distributed among the 
 neophytes of a new doctrine, as transparent and as 
 immoral as the very worst of those Jesuitical subtilties 
 that called forth the incomparable irony of Pascal. 
 I cannot enter at any length on a controversy of which 
 the public is weary, and for which indeed there is little 
 room in this section of the Preface : but I may notice, 
 by the way, one or two examples of this demoralizing 
 sophistry. 
 
 (1) Our Church affirms (Article xxi.), that " Ge- 
 neral Councils may not be gathered together without 
 the commandment and will of Princes." So far the 
 Article might be called political, for the clause has 
 reference only to the royal authority and Supremacy. 
 But our Church next affirms — that "when (General 
 Councils) be gathered together (forasmuch as they be 
 an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with 
 the spirit and word of God), they may err, and some- 
 times have erred, in things pertaining to God.'" And 
 
CCclxXxii PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 what is the reply to this Article ? " General Councils 
 may err, unless in any case it is promised, as a matter 
 of express supernatural privilege, that they shall not 
 err."..." Such a promise does exist in cases where Ge- 
 neral Councils are not only gathered together accord- 
 ing to ' the commandments and will of princes,"' but in 
 the Name of Christ, according to our Lord's promise* ." 
 To such an assertion we may rejoin — that all General 
 Councils have been called together in the name of 
 Christ, and that they are not infallible (as our Church 
 affirms in her fundamental Articles of faith), because 
 they are composed of erring men. There is (as we all 
 allow) a promise to every faithful body of Christian 
 men, and to every faithful Christian, of spiritual help ; 
 but there is no promise either of collective or individual 
 infallibility. The Tractarian comment (above quoted) 
 is but a covert attempt to fritter away a very plain 
 negative proposition, the meaning of which does not 
 admit the shadow of a doubt, and the establishment 
 of which was essential to the lawful existence of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 (2) In the following Article our old Reformers 
 thought that they had erected an insuperable barrier 
 between their doctrine and that of the Church of 
 Rome. " The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, 
 Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of 
 Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, 
 is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded on no 
 warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the 
 
 * Tracts for the Times, No. XC. p. 21. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCClxXxili 
 
 word of God," (Art. xxn). We have here no question 
 about the antiquity of this doctrine : it is condemned 
 because it is a vain invention not grounded in Scrip- 
 ture. But what is the Tractarian comment \ " The 
 Doctrine objected to in this Article is " the Romish 
 Doctrine."..." The Primitive Doctrine is not condemned 
 in it"..." And further, by the Romish Doctrine is not 
 meant the Tridentine, because {his Article was drawn 
 up before the decree of the Council of Trent." " The 
 Doctrine condemned in this Article concerning Purga- 
 tory, Pardons, Images, Relics, and Saints, is not the 
 Primitive Doctrine, nor the Catholic Doctrine, nor the 
 Tridentine, but the Romish." &c* A sophism more 
 transparent and dishonest than this can hardly be met 
 with in the writings of the older followers of Loyola. 
 
 The Church of England denies no true primitive 
 doctrine taught by Christ and his Apostles. Neither 
 does she close her eyes against good historical evidence 
 where it may help her in the interpretation of the 
 Word of God. But she denies (and partly on the 
 strength of such denial she broke off from the Church 
 of Rome) that there is any good and true primitive 
 doctrine concerning Purgatory, Image-worship, or In- 
 vocation of Saints, resembling that which she in this 
 Article condemns. An honest Roman Catholic would 
 laugh any man to scorn who told him that the Romish 
 doctrine held on these disputed points was not derived 
 from a very old Tradition : and still more might he 
 laugh to scorn any Protestant who dared to tell him 
 
 * Tract XC. pp. 23, 25. 
 
CCcIxXxiv PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 that the Romish doctrine respecting Purgatory, Par- 
 dons, Image-worship, and Invocation of Saints, was not 
 substantially the same both immediately before and im- 
 mediately after the publication of the Decrees of the 
 Council of Trent. 
 
 (3) The doctrine of Transubstantiation, (or the 
 change of the substance of bread and wine) in the 
 Supper of the Lord, is repudiated by our Church ; and 
 she declares (Article xxvm.) "that it is repugnant 
 to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the 
 nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to 
 many superstitions. " These w T ords are plain enough, 
 and I will not detain the reader with a Tractarian 
 comment on them, that is worthy of the pen of a 
 Molina. This doctrine had given rise, during many 
 ages before the Reformation, to vain discussions and 
 useless subtilties, by which the writings of good and 
 learned men had been strangely mystified and dis- 
 figured. I have no wish to seek my way through the 
 maze of school-logic in which the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation has been entangled : but I may state, 
 while passing on, that if our religion is to have any 
 logical basis to rest upon, this doctrine cannot be true. 
 When St Peter began to preach Christianity he de- 
 clared himself the witness of the Resurrection. And 
 what proof had he of the Resurrection I The evidence of 
 his senses. All the Apostles, including the one elected 
 by lot to fill their number, had this essential evidence. 
 What proof had the multitude of Christ's miracles? 
 The evidence of their senses. Without the evidence 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclxXXV 
 
 of the senses the authority and proof of a physical 
 miracle is gone. Now the doctrine of Transubstan- 
 tiation implies the existence of a physical miracle which 
 is not the object of sense, but is contradicted by our 
 senses. If it be true, it destroys the validity of that 
 very evidence on which our religion mainly rests for 
 its authority ; and Christianity cannot stand the test 
 of reason : yet are we enjoined, in the Word of God, 
 " to give a reason for the hope that is in us ; " and a 
 life of faith is called " a reasonable service."" 
 
 The real question for any Member of the Church 
 of England (who has sworn to his literal belief in the 
 twenty-eighth Article) is this : — what do the plain 
 words of this Article mean, and what was the meaning 
 intended by the Christian Convocation which drew it 
 up and published it as a test of religious truth ! What 
 may have been the opinions of individuals, however wise 
 and good, who lived either before or after the Re- 
 formation, is not the question. Such opinions may 
 shake our faith in the Church of England, but cannot 
 alter our honest interpretation of her Articles. I may, 
 perhaps, venture to express my own conviction, that a 
 repudiation of the doctrine of Transubstantiation would 
 not have justified our Church in her separation from 
 the Church of Rome, had not this doctrine been the 
 natural, and almost inevitable root of other doctrines of 
 most vital influence (whether for good or evil) in the 
 practical teaching of our religion — viz. the doctrines 
 arising out of the " Sacrifice of the Mass." 
 
 (4) The Church of England declares that the 
 
CCclxXXVi PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 offering of Christ, once made, is a perfect propitiation 
 for all the sins of the whole world — "that there is 
 none other satisfaction for sin but that alone" (Art. 
 xxxi.) " Wherefore (she adds) the sacrifices of Masses, 
 in which it was commonly said that the Priest did offer 
 for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or 
 guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits." 
 No human words could be plainer and more emphatic ; 
 and every Minister of our Church has sworn to his 
 belief both in the positive and negative declarations 
 contained in this Article. It is historically certain 
 that it was levelled against the doctrines and practices 
 of the Church of Rome; and that our Reformers 
 broke off from her communion mainly on the grounds 
 affirmed in this very Article. But what is the Tracta- 
 rian comment on these most emphatic declarations? 
 " Here (t, e. in Article xxxi.) the sacrifice of the Mass 
 is not spoken of, in which the special question of 
 doctrine would be introduced ; but ' the sacrifice of 
 Masses, 1 certain observances, for the most part private 
 and solitary, which the writers of the Articles knew 
 to have been in force in time past, and saw before 
 their eyes, and which involved certain opinions, and 
 certain teaching," " That the Article before us neither 
 speaks against the Mass in itself, nor against its being 
 an offering (though commemorative) for the quick and 
 the dead, for the remission of sin;.... but against its 
 being viewed, on the one hand, as independent of or 
 distinct from the Sacrifice of the Cross, which is blas- 
 phemy; and on the other, its being directed to the 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclxXXVH 
 
 emolument of those to whom it pertains to celebrate 
 it, which is imposture in addition*." I pass over the 
 wretched verbal quibble founded on the word Masses, 
 which happens to be in the plural number. It is im- 
 possible to affirm in stronger and clearer words than 
 those of our thirty-first Article — that our Church re- 
 pudiates every Mass-offering for the quick and the dead ; 
 because " the offering of Christ, once made, is perfect"... 
 and " there is none other satisfaction for sin but that 
 alone." We may affirm that no honest member of 
 the Church of England can escape from this conclusion, 
 and that the whole range of religious controversy can- 
 not lay bare to us a set of assertions more evasive and 
 fraudulent than the Tractarian comments I have just 
 quoted. 
 
 (5) Our Church affirms (Art. xxxvn.) that " the 
 Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of 
 England ;" and before any one of her Priesthood can 
 be admitted to a place of trust or dignity he is com- 
 pelled to swear — " that no foreign Prince, Person, Pre- 
 late, State, or Potentate hath, or ought to have, any 
 jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or au- 
 thority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm." — 
 " This (says the Author of Tract 90) is the profession 
 which every one must in consistency make who does 
 not join the Romish Church." — Yet (with what to 
 common readers must appear a strange inconsistency) he 
 concludes his comment with these words : — " We find 
 
 * It perhaps deserves remark, that the parenthetical clause — " though 
 commemorative" — did not appear in the first edition of Tract 90. 
 
ccclxxxviii preface to the fifth edition. 
 
 ourselves, as a Church, under the King now, and we 
 obey him ; we were under the Pope formerly, and we 
 obeyed him. c Ought' does not in any degree come 
 into the question." The temporal Supremacy of the 
 Crown may be a weak point in the system of the 
 Church of England : but the Supremacy of the Pope 
 is not merely political ; it is also religious. Our old 
 Reformers could not honestly have taken one single 
 step had they not rejected the Supremacy of the Pope : 
 nor could the Convocations (which settled our Articles 
 and religious Forms) have conscientiously met together 
 and deliberated, had they not been able to declare that 
 the Pope neither had nor ought to have any ecclesiastical 
 Supremacy in England. Denying conscientiously the 
 Supremacy of the Pope, they had a right to make this 
 denial a fundamental article of their religious Tests 
 before they admitted any member of their communion to 
 a Priestly Office. Such a person must swear that the 
 Pope neither hath, nor ought to have, any spiritual au- 
 thority in this realm : and " ought" does come into 
 the question. Even the Author of Tract 90 could not 
 long endure so flat a contradiction. He soon learnt to 
 acknowledge that the Pope ought to have spiritual au- 
 thority, and he apostatized from the Church of which 
 he was a Priest, and from the faith of his native land. 
 I can encumber these pages with no more in- 
 stances of Tractarian comment. But what (we may well 
 ask) was the drift and aim of this kind of subtilty ? 
 The drift was plainly this — that a man who believed 
 in the doctrines of the Church of Rome, and in his 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCclxXxix 
 
 heart rejected the doctrines laid down by our Re- 
 formers, might retain his privileges as a member of 
 the Church of England, and remain in her commu- 
 nion : nay, more than this — that he might swear to his 
 belief in her Articles, and take on himself her most 
 sacred offices. " Our Prayer Book (we are told in 
 Tract 90) is acknowledged on all hands to be of Catho- 
 lic origin ; and our Articles also, the offspring of an 
 uncatholic age, are, through God's Providence, to say 
 the least, not uncatholic, and may be subscribed by 
 those who aim at being Catholic in heart and doctrine*. " 
 But how is this made out I By sophistry as palpable as 
 ever denied the pages of human controversy. He who 
 subscribes and swears to the Articles is commanded 
 "not to put his own sense or comment" on them, but 
 u to take them in the literal and grammatical sense." 
 And again, he is commanded "not to affix any new 
 sense to any Article. 11 Plainer words were never writ- 
 ten. Is (we ask) the Tractarian interpretation of the 
 Articles literal and grammatical ? Unquestionably it is 
 not — Moreover it is new. There may have been dis- 
 honest members of Convocation, who said with their 
 lips what in their hearts they believed not true. This 
 is possible. But, historically, the Tractarian comment is 
 new; and it is in most direct antagonism with the plain 
 grammatical sense of our Articles, and with the un- 
 equivocal intentions of the Convocation which drew 
 them up for the acceptance of the members of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 * Introduction to Tract XC. p. 4. 
 
CCCXC PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 The Author of Tract 90 felt the pinching nature of 
 this reply. He allows that " the tenor of his explana- 
 tions is anti- Protestant, whereas it is notorious that the 
 Articles were drawn up by Protestants, and intended 
 for the establishment of Protestantism." But then 
 (he adds) " it is a duty we owe to the Catholic Church 
 and to our own, to take our reformed confessions in the 
 most Catholic sense they will admit ; we have no duties 
 to their framers*." The first clause of this sentence we 
 all admit ; but we do not accept the second. It is our 
 duty to take the reformed confessions in a large and 
 liberal sense, so far as we can do so honestly : but we 
 have also a duty to the framers of our Articles ; and it 
 is our duty to accept their decisions on points of funda- 
 mental doctrine, where their decisions are unequivocal ; 
 for they are the authoritative decisions of our Church, 
 and can only be set aside by a new formal act of 
 Convocation. If we cannot in conscience do this, we 
 may perhaps remain in the communion of our Church : 
 but we cannot have a right to take on ourselves her 
 ministerial and sacred offices; inasmuch as our Church 
 exacts from every Minister, under the sanction of an 
 oath, a subscription to those very confessions which were 
 established by our Reformers. 
 
 Finally, our Author tells us, that the English Reform- 
 ers " constructed the Articles in such a way as best to 
 comprehend those who did not go so far in Protestant- 
 ism as themselves." ..." If, then, these framers have gained 
 their side of the compact in effecting the reception 
 
 * Conclusion to Tract XC. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXC1 
 
 of the Articles, let Catholics have theirs too in retain- 
 ing their own Catholic interpretation of them." The 
 conduct of our Convocation (he tells us) was like that 
 of a French political minister, " who acted a double 
 part, and had been caught in his own snare 11 !..." The 
 Protestant Confession was drawn up with the purpose 
 of including Catholics ; and Catholics now will not be 
 excluded. What was an economy in the Reformers is a 
 protection to us. What would have been a perplexity 
 to us then, is a perplexity to Protestants now. We 
 could not then have found fault with their words ; they 
 cannot now repudiate our meaning*.'* Here, I think, 
 the cloven hoof is plain enough, and has no embroidered 
 shoe to cover it. In the avowed opinions of all good 
 Churchmen, our Articles were drawn up in a spirit 
 of comprehensiveness ; and, both in charity and honest 
 policy, they were made as little offensive, as was com- 
 patible with truth, to the wavering and hesitating mem- 
 bers of the Church of Rome. But no honest member 
 of our Church can be so blinded as to think — that 
 where our Articles speak plainly they are without 
 plain meaning — and that there is no essential difference 
 between Tridentine doctrines, and those the Church 
 of England publishes as true tests of orthodoxy, and 
 enforces on her Ministers under the sanction of an 
 oath. What conquests the Author was dreaming of 
 when he wrote the words last quoted, I ask not now. 
 All plain-dealing members of our Church did repudiate 
 
 * Concluding words of Tract XC. 
 
 
CCCXC11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 his obvious meaning; and he did at length, what he 
 ought to have done sooner — he formally abjured the 
 communion of our Church. 
 
 His severe and ascetic life — his great scholastic learn- 
 ing in the track he had chosen for himself — his igno- 
 rance of natural science, and his utter contempt for it — 
 his subtle and entangled logic, involving the strangest 
 incongruities — the boldness and novelty of his doctrines 
 — all these things combined had a seductive charm 
 to some minds, and had led them to gather round him, 
 and to accept his teaching as if it had been oracular. 
 Apparently to prevent alarm, he published a confession 
 of faith and doctrine, wherein he contrasted, clearly and 
 emphatically, his own religious creed with that maintained 
 by the Church of Rome.* But his position was untenable, 
 and there was soon to be an end of any dreams of con- 
 quest within our Church. While he was contemplating 
 his final act of apostasy, his old friends in our Church 
 might have mourned over him, as an erring Brother 
 who had been entangled among the meshes of his subtle 
 logic. But by his own acts he removed himself almost 
 beyond the bounds of virtuous sympathy : for he told 
 us — that he had long been in heart and principle with 
 the Church of Rome while he was an outward member 
 of our communion — and that his Lectures on Romanism 
 did represent the sentiments of the Church of England, 
 but (even at the time they were published by himself) 
 did not represent his own. What was this publication, 
 
 * Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, &c. (Oxford, 
 1838.) 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXC111 
 
 then, but a flagrant act of treacherous sophistry I And 
 where is the Author now ? He is a Priest of the Church 
 of Rome ; and he has published a new confession (whe- 
 ther sincere or not is a question for his conscience), thai 
 is a monstrous compound of Popery and Pantheism. 
 For, in his final scheme, the Catholic faith is not a 
 religion revealed to us in the Sacred Books we call 
 canonical, and in the works of trie Fathers which are 
 supposed to contain the oral traditions of the Apostles 
 and their followers: but a new pantheistic element is 
 to be fastened on the faith of men — a principle of 
 development which may overshadow both the Verbum 
 Dei scriptum and the Verbum Dei -non scriptum of the 
 Romish Church, and change both the form and sub- 
 stance of primitive Christianity. 
 
 We have no right to blame, in a spirit of vitu- 
 perative bitterness, a brother who changes his religious 
 creed: but we have a right to demand from him an ob- 
 servance of the vulgar rules of truth and honour, while 
 he endeavours to draw others to his new opinions. The 
 drift of Tract 90 is this : — viz. that a man may hold the 
 doctrines of the Church of Rome, and remain a Member 
 and a Minister of the Church of England. To give so 
 much as the shadow of a ground for such a conclusion 
 we are called on to prove that, on the questions of 
 Supremacy, Purgatory, Pardons, Adoration of Images, 
 and other important doctrines condemned in our Articles, 
 the Romish Church underwent, during the long sittings 
 of the Tridentine Council, a substantial change of opinion. 
 But the Romish Church admits of no such change : 
 s. d. cc 
 
CCCXC1V PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 and no man living knew better than the Author of 
 Tract 90, that on all the points on which he argued, 
 the Romish Church was the same, in substance and in 
 letter, before and after the sessions of the Council of 
 Trent. Nor is this all. The statement of Tract 90 
 (viz. "that by the words Bomish doctrine (in Article xxn.) 
 is not meant the Tridentine, because this Article was 
 drawn up before the Decree of the Council of Trent,") 
 is not historically true : and it was proved by the 
 present Bishop of Exeter (in a Charge which shewed 
 both great historical knowledge and logical skill), that 
 on some of the important doctrines, which our Church 
 makes a ground of separation, the Tridentine Decrees 
 were published before the promulgation of our Articles ; 
 and that the words of our Articles were put in such a 
 form as to be in specific and verbal antagonism with 
 these Decress of the Church of Rome. To this state- 
 ment, by the Bishop of Exeter, no reply was ever, I 
 believe, attempted ; and it is final and incontrovertible. 
 It might have been thought impossible, that, among 
 well-educated Englishmen, any principles could gain a 
 currency while they were in open conflict with the 
 honest use of reason and the plain maxims of truth 
 and honour. But there is a moral contagion in fa- 
 naticism which enables it, in a time of novel excite- 
 ment, to trample on the most sacred principles that 
 are binding between man and man. It is not so 
 much the subtilty and sophistry, as the hideous immo- 
 rality of Tract 90, that I wish to lay bare before the 
 Undergraduates of Cambridge. Were its principles 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXCV 
 
 accepted by Englishmen, there would be an end of their 
 upright bearing and manly sentiments — there would 
 be an end of that plain-dealing which is the sure 
 foundation of mutual trust and good-will. Candour 
 would be no longer the virtue of a Christian. Candour, 
 said one of the new school of fanaticism (now, like his 
 Master, an apostate from our Church) is not the virtue 
 of a Saint. We, on the contrary, believe that candour 
 is a sacred element of Christian purity and holiness. 
 It is a portion of that enlarged charity without which 
 our faith would only be " sounding brass and a tinkling 
 cymbal." If such opinions as I am here condemning 
 were generally accepted in our Academic Society and 
 acted on, Cambridge would not stand against the vir- 
 tuous indignation of the country for another quarter of 
 a century: and much as I love and honour the College 
 in which I live, I hesitate not to say, were such a state 
 of sophisticated morals and mental reservation to be- 
 come general within these walls (which God forbid !), 
 the sooner they were pulled down the better. — Soon 
 would they fall in ruins ; and no honest plain-dealing 
 man could be asked to join us in mourning over them. 
 Let me not be misunderstood. — I condemn not all 
 the Oxford Tracts : for many of them are straight- 
 forward, just, and true, and well fitted for the times in 
 which we live. Some are mischievous because they 
 are crooked and mystical. Others are radically false 
 and palpably destructive of the best elements of charity 
 and Christian truth. Speaking for myself, I might say 
 that I drew from them some pleasure and profit, and 
 
 c c2 
 
CCCXCV1 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 that I never suspected or saw their drift, till I read in 
 1836 the Preface to their second Volume. I thought 
 it plain that the Author of the Preface did not believe 
 in the doctrine of Justification as it is clearly stated by 
 our Reformers (Art. xi.). It may be true that some 
 members of our Church may have misunderstood the 
 doctrine of Justification by Faith only, and may have 
 been led into grievous and fatal sin by neglecting the 
 practical duties of a holy life, and the sacramental 
 means of grace which Christ established and commanded 
 us to make use of. But the Author of the Preface 
 tells us (or seems to tell us) — that the sacramental 
 symbols may, without superstition, be offered to an 
 infant or to a dying man in a state of insensibility; 
 because " such practices had the sanction of primitive 
 usage." As if no errors of doctrine had risen up even 
 in the times of the Apostles, and no very foolish and 
 superstitious acts had "been ever done by the Christians 
 of the first three centuries ! He seems to regard a 
 Sacramental rite as spiritually efficient — not because it 
 is celebrated by us as an act of Faith done in a spirit 
 of obedience, and enabling us to realize and make our 
 own the great fact of Redemption, and helping us 
 to lift our souls towards our Redeemer's throne in 
 heaven — but because it is an opus operatum (a kind 
 of charm, differing in no respect which I can compre- 
 hend, from one of the fancied charms of Pagan wor- 
 ship), the efficiency of which is in some way or other 
 independent of its symbolical meaning and of an exer- 
 cise of faith. If this were his meaning it was in plain 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXCV11 
 
 contradiction to our eleventh Article. It seemed spi- 
 ritually to degrade the Communicant while it mag- 
 nified the Priestly Office ; and to insinuate the doctrine 
 of Transubstantiation, or of some new sacrificial offer- 
 ing which differs from that one offering which is the ob- 
 ject of our faith — the offering of Christ which was made 
 once for all, so that there was to be no more offering 
 for sin — which alone our Church acknowledges in her 
 31st Article, where she formally repudiates every other 
 offering. What was at first suspected and feared, 
 was in the end realized in that final Tract of most im- 
 moral sophistry, which is a stain on the literature of 
 our Church and was the natural prelude of an act of 
 apostasy. 
 
 But what, it may be said, has the previous dis- 
 cussion on the Oxford Tracts to do with the history of 
 Cambridge studies, and of our modern manners and 
 opinions ? The reply to this question needs not many 
 words. I have, with plain truth, spoken some good of 
 Cambridge ; but I should be wanting in that candour 
 I have in words commended, were I not to admit that 
 there have been some facts in the recent history of our 
 younger members which tell not to our credit. Some 
 years since the Cambridge Camden Society was esta- 
 blished, mainly for the purpose of promoting the know- 
 ledge of Ecclesiastical Antiquities. Its objects were 
 excellent, its members were numerous, and some of 
 them did good service in promoting the studies for 
 which their Society was organized. But a narrow, 
 fanatical spirit sprang up within one party of them. 
 
CCCXCV111 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 Their writings were not merely damaged by faults of 
 taste, and fantastical puerilities, but were vitiated by 
 some grave errors of principle. Some of them seemed 
 to have taken up a religion built upon the principles of 
 taste, rather than upon more solid reasons drawn out of 
 sacred and historical evidence. They learned to speak 
 of the Architects of the Middle Age as men religiously 
 inspired, and of our old Reformers as a set of Vandals 
 and infidels. These figures of speech soon passed into 
 ideal realities. At one of the meetings an Undergra- 
 duate read an elaborate architectural Paper, ending with 
 a kind of religious or moral dissertation, in which he 
 seemed to declare that Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley 
 died at the stake, by the just judgment of God, for 
 having consented to the desecration of our Monasteries. 
 Some expressions of this kind might be rhetorical and 
 figurative : all of them were not. The working of the 
 Society became suspected, and its oldest and most 
 influential members withdrew from it in a body. It 
 then lost its vitality and strength, and soon came to its 
 dissolution. And well was it for Cambridge that this 
 Society died a sudden death : for, without denying that 
 it had done and was doing some good, it was, in the 
 opinion of many, a very thriving school of foppery and 
 fanaticism. Very soon after its dissolution one or two 
 of its active members went over to the Church of Rome. 
 It would be folly to suppose that the Oxford Tracts 
 did not find their way to Cambridge, and work some 
 evil here. A few, happily a wry fete, of our Undergra- 
 duates seem to have accepted the demoralizing principle 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCXC1X 
 
 of Tract 90, and to have had one kind of faith for the 
 University, and another for their closets. One Graduate, 
 of considerable scholastic attainments, was indulged by 
 his College with a set of chambers (to which he had no 
 customary claim), where he carried on the work of 
 private tuition. A case of apostasy among his pupils 
 provoked suspicion. His publications were examined 
 and were thought to be tainted with fantastical and 
 superstitious opinions savouring of unsound doctrines. 
 He was therefore deprived of an indulgence that some 
 thought he had abused. And what followed ? He pub- 
 licly went over to the Church of Rome : thereby justi- 
 fying the previous suspicions that had arisen against 
 him ; and proving, that while the College had been treat- 
 ing him with indulgence, he had been acting towards 
 them with treachery. In another case, a Bachelor of 
 Arts asked for a College Testimonial, that he might 
 become a candidate for Deacon's Orders. The Testi- 
 monial was refused, on the ground that the candidate 
 had published, not long before, a little work that was 
 thought puerile, foolish, and superstitious. But he was 
 of unblemished morals; and I can state positively, that 
 on a second application his Testimonials would not have 
 been refused, had he expressed any honest regret at his 
 previous conduct, and given any rational grounds of 
 hope that he would not repeat any similar acts of folly. 
 But nothing of the kind was done, and he also went 
 over to the Church of Rome. 
 
 These are the only two Cambridge cases of a moral 
 malady, engendered by the concluding doctrines of 
 
CCCC PREP ACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION 
 
 the Tracts, which teach us that we may hold one set 
 of religious opinions while we profess another. There 
 are amongst us no predisposing causes for the reception 
 of such a moral disease as this. We were unscathed 
 and hardly touched by the pestilential vapour which 
 came amongst us ; and it has passed over us like the 
 shadow of a cloud that leaves no track behind it. No 
 man of weight and authority surrendered his faith to 
 the demoralizing subtilties evolved in the last volume of 
 the Tracts. There is not, I believe, so much as one 
 Cambridge man, out of his state of pupilage, who would 
 not heartily repudiate them. Our faith remains un- 
 changed in principle ; but it is firmer and better rooted 
 than it was before the recent shaking of opinions. It 
 is however notorious that, within the last twenty years 
 of religious movement, many members of the Church of 
 England have passed over to the Church of Rome, and 
 among them were some Undergraduates and one or two 
 of the younger Graduates of Cambridge. But among 
 them was not so much as one who had any weight 
 or authority while amongst us — who had carried off 
 our high Academic honours — or drunk deep at our 
 fountains of learning. 
 
 Once for all I may remark, that if any man be per- 
 suaded that the Church of Rome has truly determined 
 the Scripture Canon, and rightly interpreted its sacred 
 books — and if he moreover believe that in addition to 
 the Verbum Dei scriptum, she possesses the true Verbum 
 Dei non scriptum embodied in her Traditions, and of 
 like authority with the written Word of God — and if, 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCCl 
 
 believing all this, he also believe that the Tridentine 
 Decrees contain a right summary of the doctrines and 
 Church-polity that are honestly drawn from these two 
 sources of religious authority — then, in such a condition 
 of belief, it is impossible for him to remain an open and 
 honest member of the Church of England, and but one 
 plain and righteous course is open to him. With such 
 a one I have no dispute ; for I profess not here to 
 weigh the doctrines of the Church of England against 
 those of the Church of Rome. But before he takes his 
 final step of apostasy from the faith of that Church in 
 which, by God's will and by no choice of his own, he 
 was engrafted when a child, let him remember that he 
 owes a very solemn duty to the country of his birth, to 
 the baptismal font where he was first sprinkled, to the 
 schools where he lisped his first confessions, and to the 
 altar in sight of which he took on himself those very 
 vows, which had been first made in his behalf by those 
 who took on themselves the solemn obligations of his 
 Christian Sponsors. If he desert the faith of his 
 Fathers without most solemn deliberation, and a long 
 and most severe sifting of Christian Evidences, he com- 
 mits a deadly sin in his first step of apostasy, while he 
 passes over the threshold of a new Temple — dedicated 
 indeed to the God he has long professed to worship; 
 but with other forms of celebration, and other vital 
 doctrines which his mother Church repudiates. Still 
 more is his apostasy to be condemned, if it be, after 
 all, but an act of moral cowardice — of one who, having 
 been pledged at his Baptismal Font to be a faithful 
 
CCCC11 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 soldier of Christ, flies from that moral warfare and 
 probation which are the trials in a Christian soldier's 
 battle-field — and flinches from his duty, by throwing 
 the responsibilities of a rational being upon the autho- 
 rity (falsely called irrefragable) of erring men. The 
 faith of Christ implies the willing obedience of a reason- 
 able soul, not the bondage of an unthinking slave. It 
 asks for that obedience of the heart which is utterly in- 
 compatible with a slavish and blind obedience : and if, 
 after we come to man's estate, we do change our reli- 
 gious creed, the change must be made on the evidence 
 of an enlightened reason, and not as a sorry excuse for 
 shifting from ourselves the deep responsibility of the 
 right exercise of reason. No movement begun in this 
 way can be otherwise than hateful in the sight of God. 
 It is, in truth, a rebellion against the God, both of 
 Nature and Revelation, who gave us reason as our high- 
 est and most glorious endowment when rightly used ; 
 whereby truth and falsehood are rent asunder and put 
 as things separate before the conscience ; and without 
 which, no endowments, whether temporal or spiritual, 
 can be of any lasting value to mankind. 
 
 Falsehood and fanaticism have a mighty power of 
 propagation. They not only beget their likeness, but 
 they often beget their opposites. Rationalism has led 
 some men to blind submission. Popery has led to Pan- 
 theism, and Pantheism to Popery. Church-tyranny 
 begat iconoclastic fury ; and iconoclastic fury has been 
 known to re-forge the fetters it had cast off. Truth has 
 been so bedecked with falsehood, that men could hardly 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. CCCC111 
 
 see her form ; and she has, in the folly and fury of 
 debate, been so tossed above the regions of common 
 sense, that it seemed she was never to find a resting- 
 place within the level of human apprehension. Often 
 has she been so bandied about that, after many a shock 
 of opinion and recoil of thought, the combatants have 
 lost their breath ; and she has ended with neither side, 
 but fallen prostrate on the ground between them. 
 These are not idle figures of speech and vain inven- 
 tions ; but are forced on our thoughts by some of the 
 gravest and plainest facts in the history of man. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Before I bring this Preface to a close, I wish again 
 to remind the reader that it is in the first place ad- 
 dressed to the Cambridge Undergraduates ; and that it 
 has been drawn forth by some grave errors of opinion, 
 more or less current in the world, on physical, philoso- 
 phical, and moral questions. Hence its tone (almost 
 from first to last) has been controversial. Some may 
 tell me that it is written too strongly and vituperatively. 
 But why should I not write vituperatively, if I think 
 I see the truth, and at the same time see the germina- 
 tion of opinions which deserve to be condemned? I 
 have, however, written with personal bitterness to no 
 man living ; for I know not personally, and, perhaps, 
 shall never see the face of one of the Authors on whose 
 writings I have animadverted, with some severity it may 
 
CCCC1V CONCLUSION. 
 
 be, but certainly with no personal dislike or ill-will. I 
 have no wish to smoothe over, with words of unmeaning 
 courtesy, actions and sentiments which I think deserve 
 to be condemned. Courtesy is an excellent thing be- 
 tween man and man, because it helps to foster charity ; 
 but we serve the ends of charity very ill if we set up 
 courtesy at the cost of truth. It may, I think, be 
 well, in these concluding paragraphs, to point out some 
 of the moral causes of error both in philosophical and 
 religious questions. 
 
 1 One cause of error is self- worship and a wrong 
 estimate of our faculties, which prompt us to be teachers 
 while we ought to be learners. We may soon learn to 
 think ourselves all in all to ourselves, and that we stand 
 in no need of external teaching or religious help. A Pan- 
 theist, on some such ground as this, pretends to look 
 down upon inductive knowledge, and disbelieves in God. 
 A Deist, out of the same elements of human nature, 
 rejects the teaching of Revelation. And a proud For- 
 malist and Rationalist — who does not know his own 
 condition, and thinks that he stands in no need of a 
 Redeemer — though he call himself a Christian, cannot 
 (with any thing less than a moral miracle) accept the 
 humbling, and at the same time the exalting truths of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 2 Nearly allied to the preceding source of error, 
 though apparently its very antagonist, is the self-love of 
 timidity and mere moral indolence ; which leads a man 
 to cast away the highest duties of his probation, and to 
 shelter himself under authority. This may be sometimes 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCV 
 
 a mark of moral cowardice and self-distrust, and of no- 
 thing worse. But we may know it by its fruits ; and 
 it is commonly no proof either of true charity or real 
 humility. For men of this temper, when they have 
 once taken a side, are often seen among the bitterest 
 advocates of intolerance and party violence. Having 
 shorn themselves of the noblest attributes of intellectual 
 freedom, they can have no tolerance (whether their 
 adopted opinions be right or wrong) for freedom of 
 thought on the part of other men. 
 
 3 Another most prolific source of error, some- 
 times very like the former (and no wonder, for all 
 moral errors are engendered in the soul by the father 
 of lies, and his whole progeny have a strong family 
 physiognomy), is a condition very common in the mind 
 of man, which leads him to stop short in the way of 
 truth, by mistaking the means for the end — second 
 causes for first causes — partial truth for universal 
 truth ; and teaches him to dwell among such elements 
 of imperfect knowledge, and to worship them, as if they 
 had within themselves the form and excellence of the 
 highest truth. Human imagination and pride help out 
 this kind of delusion : for men are ever ready to believe 
 that while they stand still on the road that conducts to 
 the temple of universal truth, others have no right to go 
 farther than they have done. 
 
 This bad principle is so wide spreading, and puts on 
 so many shapes, that I know not well what name to give 
 it : but for want of a better we may call it the idolatrous 
 element of human error. It is shewn in the faith of the 
 
CCCCV1 CONCLUSION. 
 
 material Pantheist, who, comprehending some of the laws 
 of material nature, is so blinded by them that he can 
 discern nothing beyond them ; and therefore makes his 
 idol out of the material world. It is seen in the faith 
 of the ideal Pantheist, who, realizing no truth but 
 through the conceptions and creative energies of his own 
 mind, believes in no other and higher power of thought 
 or creative energy ; and therefore idolizes his own con- 
 ceptions, and turns man into a God. This is the idola- 
 try of a modern Hegelian mystic, who thinks to gain 
 strength by despising the means of knowledge, and the 
 steps by which only we can ascend to it — who thinks 
 himself before the world, while he is only backing into 
 the ancient slough of Pantheism. 
 
 The same bad element of our nature has wrought 
 itself also into the vitals of religion — taught men to 
 worship forms and deify symbols— to speak of the 
 Church, not as a nursing mother, but as a goddess ex- 
 empt from all the weak attributes of humanity — as in- 
 fallible as the teaching of demonstration addressed to the 
 natural reason, or as the teaching of the Word of God 
 addressed both to the enlightened reason and the heart. 
 
 It is a sound rule in logic that an argument which 
 proves too much proves nothing. Men will not apply 
 this rule to themselves, but they are ready enough to 
 apply it to others. And thus it is that idolatrous errors, 
 as before stated, beget their opposites, and drive man- 
 kind into a denial of legitimate authority, and a con- 
 tempt both of the forms of Church-polity and the use 
 of the external symbols of faith — though the one have 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCV11 
 
 the sanction of Apostolical example, and the other be 
 ordained by the command of God. On questions of 
 form and polity it would be desperate folly to despise 
 the lessons drawn from experience and antiquity ; and 
 on questions of faith no teaching can rise higher than 
 the Word of God, or pretend to reach its level, except 
 by the honest use of enlightened reason applied humbly 
 to its interpretation. But the idolatrous element of 
 our nature has led men far out of this track. They will 
 boast of Catholicity while they are putting on fetters 
 which cramp the energies of reason, without which we 
 can have no apprehension of universal truth. They 
 talk of Catholicity while they refuse to pass their eye 
 round the whole horizon of truth — while they see but 
 down one narrow vista, and their vision blinks to all 
 other illumination. They know not, and acknowledge 
 not, the grand Catholicity of truth, and that exalted 
 faith which tells us that truth cannot contradict itself, 
 and that the perception of truth, however feeble and 
 glimmering it may be, is a perception of a light that 
 comes from God. They talk of Catholicity while they 
 refuse to drink at any of God's fountains of know- 
 ledge, but such as have passed through their own 
 narrow filter. But worse than all, while their vision is 
 one-sided and dim, their ways are crooked. The holy 
 ends of truth are to be reached by putting truth her- 
 self in abeyance ; and charity, her natural offspring 
 and the end and aim of all religion, is, on the maxims 
 of a new creed, to be immolated before the altar of 
 formality, and the miserable worship of a party idol. 
 
CCCCV111 CONCLUSION. 
 
 If this idolatrous element of error have led men far 
 aside from the right track of truth, what has followed 1 
 Other men by a natural recoil, and seeing only one side 
 of human error, and having a new idol of their own, 
 have started away in a right opposite direction : but if 
 the ways of men are crooked, though they start off in 
 directions that are opposite, they may soon come round 
 and meet again — moving onwards deviously, and thus 
 completing a vicious circle wherein truth can never 
 dwell. If there be a fearful Nemesis of Faith, there 
 is also a fearful Nemesis of Reason : and these two 
 ministers of vengeance will wreak their fury on men 
 who bow before the idolatrous element of their nature, 
 and overlook the upright homage that is due both to 
 faith and reason. They will distract one man into a 
 belief that he is a champion of the Church of England, 
 while he is abusing her old Reformers — that he is ad- 
 vocating the cause of truth, while he is teaching the 
 principles of falsehood — that he is promoting knowledge 
 by dealing out among his dupes the very worst pueri- 
 lities of medieval superstition. They will drive another 
 to a worse form of phrensy — to set up a pantheistic 
 Rationalism in the place of Christian love — to worship 
 Atheism in masquerade — to fall down before stocks and 
 stones, while he denies a personal God who redeemed 
 him, and a personal Maker and providential Ruler of 
 the Universe. 
 
 Many a time, in my younger years, have I won- 
 dered, when turning over the Bible history, at the 
 falling away of the old people of God into the sin of 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCC1X 
 
 rank idolatry. But I forgot, or did not know, that this 
 proneness to idolatry was only the manifestation of a 
 strong principle in the breast of man, which has had its 
 modes of worship in every shifting scene of his history: — 
 that Pharisaical homage was but idolatry in another 
 shape, fitted to a more advanced condition of society — 
 that bigotry in every form — that the crotchets and 
 caprices of fashion and folly — that political names and 
 factions — that many other things which defile and make 
 turbid the current of human life, may be looked on as 
 the offsets of the same bad principle of our nature. 
 
 No man can shake off this idolatrous element alto- 
 gether. There is lodged within him the principle of 
 self-love : and he has within his bosom a religious ele- 
 ment which is sure to break forth in some shape or 
 other. Hence, if he have falsified his nature, that 
 should lead him onwards and upwards, and if he have 
 closed his eyes to external teaching, he is sure to set 
 up some crooked idol of his own, and to prostrate him- 
 self before it. It is notorious that bad and irreligious 
 men are often superstitious. We have not to ransack 
 the pages of ancient history to prove this point : the 
 proof meets us now at every turn. Those who reject the 
 teaching of the Church of Christ — who see nothing in 
 the sublime Theism taught by Moses, and in the 
 impure Idolatry taught by the Egyptian priests, but 
 different grades of development in the opinions and 
 dreams of men — who reject the Prophetic writings as 
 the offspring of ignorance and imposture — who tell us 
 that the Gospel is but a myth, and Christianity but the 
 s. d. dd 
 
CCCCX CONCLUSION. 
 
 accomplishment of an Hegelian vision: — such men, with 
 this ample capacity of unbelief in what is true, and a like 
 ample capacity of belief in what is false, will turn round 
 and ask us to become wise and rational by denying God 
 and deifying the elements — by denying a provident and 
 personal Creator, while we make mites from the touch 
 of a galvanic wire, and, by a natural magic, breed 
 lions out of seals, elephants out of whales, and men 
 out of monkeys ! Infidelity and superstition are twin- 
 sisters. There are miracles in Nature : and if we deny 
 the being of the God of Nature, what can we do but 
 make ourselves the grovelling worshippers of some 
 material idol ? And thus we see men and women, who 
 can draw no good lessons from past experience, and 
 have no veneration for that sacred truth which is every 
 good man's solace through the ills of life and by which 
 society is held together, willingly making themselves, in 
 the light of day and in despite of reason, the veriest 
 dupes of a juggler and an impostor. 
 
 There lodge within the nature of man many bad 
 principles, which, if not kept down by the power of 
 truth, unite themselves with his self-love and breed some 
 vain conceits and superstitious forms of a sensual re- 
 ligion, whereby he learns to stop short in his concep- 
 tions of the true and spiritual service he owes to his 
 Creator. A poor savage may worship a deformed idol 
 made by his own hands. He acts in conforniity with 
 the promptings of nature ; and he can rise no higher, 
 because he has been taught no better. But a Chris- 
 tian formalist, who is lacking in charity, has a worse 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXl 
 
 idol lurking in his bosom ; for he offends against better 
 knowledge. — We know, but too well, that there have 
 been men who have trampled on all law, and yet been 
 the slaves of idolatrous superstition. They have soothed 
 their consciences with some acts of antiquated mum- 
 mery, and then gone back to deeds of violence and 
 lust. They have gone through acts of maceration as 
 if they could thereby pay off their "score in their account 
 with a God of purity ; and then had nothing to do but 
 begin a new account of abominable sensuality. It is 
 the very soul and essence of idolatry to confound the 
 means of religion with its end. We cannot be reli- 
 gious men if we use not the means which are of divine 
 command ; but while we use these very means, if the 
 heart have no share in our homage, we may only be 
 blinding our conscience, and pandering to our self-love, 
 and to the idolatrous element that lurks within us. 
 
 4 Another fruitful cause of error, nearly allied to 
 the former, and often making a part of it, is the energy, 
 and, sometimes, the despotism of the imagination. We 
 may well believe that the imagination was intended, by 
 the Providence who gave it to us and made it a part 
 of our inner nature, to have a mighty influence over 
 the belief and conduct of mankind : but it was never 
 meant to triumph at the cost of better knowledge, or 
 to rule over the actions of men without the sanction of 
 enlightened reason. Its best office is to cooperate with 
 reason by influencing the heart and affections ; so that 
 reason may not be a mere cold and inoperative assent 
 to truth (whatsoever the form of truth may be) ; but 
 
 dd2 
 
CCCCX11 CONCLUSION. 
 
 may be carried out, and shine before men, in the acts 
 of daily life. 
 
 Men are often driven mad through their senses : 
 and it is imagination that mainly helps on this mad- 
 ness. We are all acted on more powerfully by a pub- 
 lic speaker than by a didactic essay, though it convey 
 the very sentiments of the speaker. In one case, we 
 have the lively sympathy of the senses acting on the 
 imagination, and the contagious influence of association 
 with a crowd of fellow-listeners. In the other, we have 
 the mere cold acquiescence of reason. But the former 
 is not necessarily better than the latter: nay, it may be 
 ten times worse; for, in cases where truth and false- 
 hood are mixed together, and can only be separated by 
 the calm decisions of unembarrassed reason, it may 
 become a mere theatrical emotion that leads us from 
 the truth. 
 
 This kind of effect belongs to what the ancients 
 called hi/pocrisis, but is by no means to be confounded 
 with what we now call hypocrisy. In theatrical emo- 
 tion a man for a short time cheats himself — in hypo- 
 crisy, his very aim is to cheat his neighbour. But we 
 must ever bear in mind that sincerity in our emotions 
 (especially during moments of strong social sympathy) 
 is no test of the truth of our principles. A poor Hin- 
 doo in his life of horrible torture and maceration is no 
 doubt honest to his own principles ; and when driven 
 mad by the stirring influence of the multitude around 
 him, and the fumes of an idolatrous excitement, he 
 throws his body under- the bloody wheels of a great 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCX111 
 
 Idol, that he may be crushed to death ; he has a religious 
 belief which, though horrible in its forms of worship 
 and hateful in the sight of God, is, at the moment, as 
 sincere and strong as the faith of a Christian martyr. 
 
 Music, splendid pageants, and architectural deco- 
 rations, may produce a strong sensual emotion — more 
 than this, they may become the powerful handmaids of 
 religion ; but in themselves they are not religion. And, 
 worse than all, they may teach us -to stop short and 
 dwell among these mere sensual implements ; thereby so 
 fostering what has been called the idolatrous element 
 of error, as to make us uncharitable toward a Christian 
 brother whose worship is more simple than our own, 
 and little satisfied with the plain unimaginative teach- 
 ing of the Gospel. In such a case (and it is perhaps 
 not an uncommon one) they are far worse than no- 
 thing — they may become the very implements of false- 
 hood — the ministry of a spirit of darkness who knows 
 how to cover his deformity under an angel's wings. 
 
 It is absolutely certain that men, calling themselves 
 Christians, will pass from the extravagance of theatrical 
 emotion to the extravagance of sensual indulgence ; 
 and with such persons Religion herself, or something 
 which takes her name, may become the minister of a 
 refined and subtle sensuality. Under the delusions of 
 the imagination men will talk of Catholicity who have 
 stripped themselves of all the attributes of universal 
 truth — who neither give to faith what belongs to 
 faith, nor give to reason what belongs to reason. The 
 religion of the Jew (so far as it was formal and exter- 
 
CCCCXIV CONCLUSION. 
 
 nal) was confined and localized, and appealed very 
 powerfully to the imagination : but in his faith (so 
 long as it was pure) the idolatrous element was kept 
 down by terrible denunciations against idolatry, by 
 prophetic and spiritual teaching, and by the expecta- 
 tion of a higher and better teaching, that, in God's time, 
 was to grow out of his national faith and polity. A 
 Christian, with this example in his memory, has no 
 right to shut out the imagination altogether from its 
 office as an accessory of religion ; for he believes that 
 the religion of the Jew, sprang, like his own, from the 
 revelation of God : but it is, at the same time, his solemn 
 duty to keep watch against the abuse of the imagination. 
 If in the material world we can trace the elements 
 of an archetype through all the changing forms of ani- 
 mated nature, so also there is a moral archetype that 
 shines through the shifting forms of God's moral dispen- 
 sations. The spiritual element is the same — the forms 
 and shadows differ : so that the moral accessories of 
 one period cannot be shifted to another, without mis- 
 chief and incongruity. The religion of Christ is not 
 national, but universal, — not provisional, but final. The 
 God we worship is the God of all Nature : our religion 
 is a revelation of truth for the good of all mankind. If 
 we overload our religious worship with ceremonials so 
 as to forget its spirit — if we so localize our conception 
 of the Godhead that we cannot lift our hearts towards 
 our Redeemer's throne without turning our faces to an 
 altar built by the hands of man — if, in the same spirit, 
 we seek for religious solace in shrines and pilgrimages, 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXV 
 
 and homage done before the dry bones of men — in such 
 homage as this, working through the imagination on 
 some of the most delusive feelings of humanity, we but 
 fall back upon the elements of a local worship and a 
 narrower faith ; or, worse still, into a personal idol- 
 atry, not one jot more reasonable or less sensual than 
 the idolatry of the heathen. 
 
 Is then our religious faith to have no helpers and 
 accessories ? We say not so. The religion of Christ 
 embraces every atom of the moral world. Imagination 
 is a noble part of our moral nature, that ought to have 
 its proper nutriment, and we have no right to starve it. 
 To do so would be but another very mischievous form 
 of idolatry — the offshoot of spiritual pride. Not only 
 did the religious solemnities of the Jews appeal to the 
 imagination, but the inspired writings of their Prophets 
 were often invested in its most glorious decorations. 
 We cannot, therefore, on religious grounds, banish all 
 appeals to the imagination : what we contend for is — 
 that faith is not an acquiescence in a principle which 
 merely solaces our taste — that imagination may be the 
 helper and minister of religion, but is not the found- 
 ation on which it is ever meant to rest. If so, it 
 can never have any solid enduring influence as a rule 
 of life. — It will shift with every caprice of fashion, and 
 its whole fabric may be blown over by some puff of new 
 opinion. The Apostles of Jesus made their first strong 
 appeal to the senses, and not (speaking strictly) to the 
 imagination. They appealed also to the reason : for 
 they argued (we may dare to say logically) from the 
 
CCCCXV1 CONCLUSION. 
 
 sacred and historical documents that were in their 
 hearers' hands. They appealed to reason, and also to 
 that direct evidence of sense, which all men are by their 
 nature Compelled to believe in and to act upon. They 
 had the overwhelming evidence of facts and the stern 
 realities of life so instantly before them, that they had 
 little to do with appeals to the imagination. Yet in 
 pondering over the simple and unadorned narrative of 
 their labours, the imagination becomes more inflamed 
 than by gorgeous pageants, or the poetical decorations 
 of human skill, however highly wrought : and while we 
 read the Acts of the Apostles, we can believe our- 
 selves, for a moment, members of the faithful band of 
 Christian soldiers who fell on Paul's neck and kissed 
 him, sorrowing that they were to see his face no more ; 
 and we can go with them in spirit to the sea-side, and 
 hear their parting prayers in a temple not built by the 
 hands of man, which had for its music the roaring of 
 the waves, and for its vaulted roof the canopy of heaven. 
 It is plain that men will boast of their Catholicity 
 whose religion is sectarian and one-sided, and has none 
 of the true elements of a faith that is universal. They 
 forget that, while the essentials of religion remain as 
 constant as the attributes of God, forms and fashions, 
 and all things that belong to the outer garb of human 
 sentiments, are in continual change and movement — 
 and that ceremonials, which at one time might be the 
 useful and almost necessary accompaniments of religion, 
 may be incongruous and useless at another. Hence it 
 is that they worship forms, and postures, and antique 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXV1I 
 
 dresses, till their imagination, working on the idola- 
 trous element that lurks in the bosom of every son of 
 man, leads them to a conception of religion that is con- 
 fined and sensual ; and to a narrow apprehension of 
 the sanctity of universal truth, and the holiness of 
 universal charity and love. In such a state of idola- 
 trous excitement candour ceases to be a Christian 
 virtue, and the ends of religion may be sought at the 
 cost of honour and plain dealing. 
 
 I write not of ideal evils, but of realities that 
 mark the times in which we live : and vices and follies 
 of this kind continually propagate some opposite form 
 of extravagance. Idolatry of forms in one party breeds 
 a contempt of all forms in another. Thus we may read, 
 in essays written within the walls of our old Univer- 
 sities, that medieval art was the offspring of inspiration 
 as much as the writings of Isaiah or St John. Folly 
 such as this cannot stop short of sensual idolatry. And 
 other essayists, beginning in the same school and 
 professing to give its doctrines a wider Catholicity, 
 dare to tell us, that medieval inspiration, and the in- 
 spiration of the Apostles, and the inspiration of all 
 genius, Christian and Heathen, are one and the same 
 thing: and thus a sensual idolatry of the works of 
 man passes naturally into the worship of man — into 
 Rationalism, which stifles the true spirit of religion; or 
 Pantheism, which drives God from our thoughts while 
 it deifies the world he has created. Nor are these 
 the only forms of fanatical extravagance. Another 
 set of men, hating the evils of a sensual idolatry, and 
 
CCCCXV111 CONCLUSION. 
 
 in their hearts longing for religious truth, seek, it by 
 casting off all allegiance to the Church, and all sym- 
 pathy with the present fabric of Christian society. They 
 seek for a public worship as simple as that of the first 
 Christians who had neither churches nor social rights : 
 and they not merely reject all forms and decorations ; 
 but, to resemble the first little band of Christians, they 
 would abolish the rights of individual property, and 
 have all things in common. It is certain that these 
 men, however sincere and honest, have neither practical 
 wisdom, nor an enlarged and enlightened knowledge of 
 the Word of God. Their faith has not the semblance 
 of Catholicity; and though they may be honest in 
 their sectarian fanaticism, they only play the game of 
 modern political Socialists, and of bad men who would 
 wage war to the knife with art and science, and the 
 form and substance of Christianity, and the rights of 
 property, without which Christian civilization could never 
 have risen up and shed its blessings on the world. 
 
 In the modern essays, to which I have been alluding 
 in this part of the Preface, there are, I think, many 
 proofs of the deluding influence of bad and uncatholic 
 sentiments. That there are essential truths in religion 
 which every one who deserves the name of Christian must 
 believe, and that there are also some essential forms in 
 the ministrations of religion, no one pretends to deny. 
 But there are forms that are unessential ; and to dwell 
 upon them as matters of party strife, and to magnify 
 them above measure, and at the cost of charity, is no 
 mark of a true and reasonable Catholicity ; but it is, on 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCX1X 
 
 the contrary, a proof of intolerance and sectarian bi- 
 gotry. We admit the lawful authority of our Church, 
 and we give her a willing and lawful obedience; we be- 
 lieve her teaching true, because it is founded on the 
 Word of God ; we partake of her celebrations, we ac- 
 cept her means of grace, we join in her humiliations at 
 the visible evidences of God's wrath, at her thanksgiv- 
 ings for the removal of a pestitence, and her worship 
 for the blessings of daily life. All this we do, acting 
 at once in obedience to God's commands and the honest 
 voice of reason. But we offer not a slavish homage 
 made at the sacrifice of reason, or think our Church in- 
 fallible in her peculiar forms and appliances of the Word 
 of God. She is made up of fallible men ; and has no 
 strength but what she derives as an honest dispenser and 
 interpreter of the promises revealed to us in that infal- 
 lible Word. 
 
 But if we be surrounded by so many difficulties 
 that stand in the way of sacred truth, and there be no 
 infallible human guide to conduct us through them, how 
 may we escape from them? We reply, that no man 
 living can escape from them altogether. They form 
 an essential part of his moral probation. The real 
 question for every son of man is this — How shall he 
 conduct himself, amidst the difficulties which surround 
 him, so as to be at once a good subject of the State, 
 and an approved servant of his heavenly Master ? It is 
 his duty to conform to the ordinances prescribed by 
 the Church of which he is a true member, and to which 
 he owes allegiance. If he do this, it is so far well. 
 
CCCCXX CONCLUSION. 
 
 But the duties of public worship imply also the duties 
 of private devotion ; and if these be wanting, then must 
 his conscience tell him that his public profession is a 
 mockery and a heartless formality. If our faith be not 
 a mere mockery and delusion, we must be led by it to 
 drink daily at the fountains of sacred truth — to study 
 the Word of God — to accept it as teaching us the 
 means of grace and the rule of life — and to conform 
 our lives to the spirit it enjoins. If we do this ho- 
 nestly we cannot go far wrong ; for the principles and 
 rules of Christian life are intelligible to a child : and it 
 is our most plain and practical duty to test our lives 
 continually by the Word of God. If we can read such a 
 passage as I have extracted in a preceding page, and 
 our conscience tell us that our lives do conform to its 
 spirit, it is well for us, and we may go on our way re- 
 joicing""". But if while reading such passages (for 
 example) as we meet in the concluding chapters of St 
 Paul's Epistles, we find that they have no practical 
 illustration in our course of life — then, whatsoever be 
 our knowledge and whatsoever our name and position 
 among men, we are but wayward children in our Fa- 
 ther's sight, or rebels against his law. — This Preface is 
 not, however, an essay either on the principles of 
 religion or of philosophy. It professes only to point 
 out to the Undergraduates of Cambridge some of the 
 common errors by which they are beset, and in their 
 behalf to raise up a voice of warning : and this part 
 of my task is now very near its close. 
 
 * Supra, p. cclxxxi. 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXX1 
 
 Speaking more generally of the hopes and fears of 
 a great academic body like the University of Cambridge, 
 I think (as already stated) that we have nothing to fear 
 from material Pantheism ; and we have very little to fear 
 from the ideal Pantheism which has, of late years, so 
 much distorted the teaching of one large metaphysical 
 school of Germany. It is ill suited to the homely and 
 practical mind of an Englishman ; and, most fortu- 
 nately, its clumsy, unwieldy, and untranslatable termi- 
 nology forms a barrier over which our truth-loving stu- 
 dents will not be willing to pass. But we have some- 
 thing to fear from modern Rationalism : for we also 
 have our Rationalists, who instead of humbly taking the 
 Word of God as their food of life, are willing to cull from 
 it only what suits their taste, and to carve out from it 
 only what pleases their palate. Much, also, have we to 
 fear from an antagonist form of error, which leads men 
 not only to accept the plain teaching of the Word of 
 God, but to add to it both doctrines and observances 
 which cannot be found within its letter, and to set them 
 up as if they were of divine authority and sanction. And 
 these delusions are the more dangerous, because they 
 fall in with that bad, selfish, and idolatrous principle, 
 which leads us to magnify our own works, and to pride 
 ourselves in our individual services ; as if they were a 
 kind of fee which we could pay our offended Maker as the 
 price of heaven. Thus, for example, the Bible enjoins 
 the practice of self-denial and abstinence from sensual 
 sin : and starting from this principle, which is most 
 plain and true, a formalist will build upon it a scheme 
 
CCCCXX11 CONCLUSION. 
 
 of asceticism and religious maceration ; as if a God of 
 mercy loved human suffering for its own sake, and 
 thought it meritorious. A patient endurance of the 
 severe trials and crosses our Father puts upon us, is a 
 most essential part of our moral discipline through life. 
 A voluntary infliction of pains and macerations is no 
 part of God's teaching (which commands temperance, 
 but commends not abstinence), and is a superstitious 
 insult on His benevolent attributes. A religion of this 
 kind is pharisaical in principle ; is the food of infi- 
 delity on the one hand, and of monastic superstition on 
 the other ; is a part of creature- worship ; and is the 
 best ally of Pantheism. And we need not wonder at 
 this ; for it is the very essence of idolatry to stop short 
 among the formalities of religion, and make them (or 
 it may be the Priests who administer them) the ob- 
 jects of superstitious worship. Pantheism does the same 
 thing. It idolizes Nature, and worships Man. Hence 
 it is that Superstition, Priestcraft, and Pantheism, na- 
 turally pander to one another. 
 
 What then should be our souFs high aim? A 
 genuine and not a spurious Catholicity. The soul is 
 to be wedded to all truth. The God of truth is to be 
 our worship. The sanctity of truth is to be upheld at 
 whatever price : and any teaching — moral, political, or 
 religious — which tampers with this sanctity, is to be 
 abhorred and cast off from thought, as the foul teach- 
 ing of the very spirit of evil. Such a faith as this may, 
 under God's favour, gradually raise up within us an 
 abiding spiritual principle that keeps devotion alive, 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXX111 
 
 while it informs the moral part of man, purges his 
 senses, and draws out the highest and best develop- 
 ment of his reason. Thus guided, he may learn to see 
 the God of Nature and the God of Revelation in every 
 thing around him; not with the eyes of a sensual pan- 
 theistic idolatry, but with the eyes of Christian faith. 
 
 We study the wonders of Creation, and we believe 
 in a personal Creator. So far our reason teaches us ; 
 but we are surrounded with difficulties, doubts, and 
 darkness, if we go no farther : for by nature we see but 
 in part, and we neither comprehend the attributes of 
 God, nor the whole scheme of His Providence : hence, 
 if we dwell too much among the material elements of 
 Nature, we may become Sceptics, Idolaters, or Pan- 
 theists. But Religion steps in and helps us, and 
 instructs us by a brighter and better light ; and by her 
 teaching we learn our duties as social men, and we 
 learn also the lessons of a practical obedience which 
 looks beyond the world of Nature for its sanction. 
 Her lessons are not drawn from the maxims of sec- 
 tarian bigotry, or any narrow scheme of man's in- 
 vention. The whole horizon of glorious truth is set 
 before us ; and we are permitted — nay, so far as we 
 have capacity for the task, we are enjoined — to turn 
 our eyes to every part of this bright horizon. But we 
 see not Nature (and Religion is a part of Nature) only 
 through the eyes of visual sense ; but with the eyes of 
 reason, purged, expanded and sanctified by the influence 
 of faith, whereby we discern, and believe in, things far 
 beyond the ken of sense. In this way our hopes of 
 
CCCCXX1V CONCLUSION. 
 
 personal fruition, and of future good, rise far above any 
 earthly teaching, and reach the level, not of what we 
 can conceive intellectually, but what we discern spiritu- 
 ally, of the great scheme of Providence : and under the 
 guidance of this teaching, difficulties and doubts and 
 dangers vanish, one by one, in our contemplation of law 
 and order and benevolent arrangements among the 
 visible works of God ; and the dispensations of human 
 life, painful and .mysterious though they may sometimes 
 be to uninstructed sense, are beheld as the means of 
 our probation, the instruments of mercy, and the ways 
 that lead to purity and peace. 
 
 The scheme of teaching in a Christian University 
 should not, therefore, be either narrow or sectarian ; but 
 should be reared on the wide basis of universal truth, 
 all parts of which are in unity. Our body is made up 
 of many members, each working in its proper place for 
 the good of the individual man : so also the great body 
 of human knowledge is made up of limbs and members 
 that are not to be mangled and disjointed — are not to be 
 like neighbouring kingdoms, in frequent warfare, some- 
 times interrupted by a hollow truce — but are to be knit 
 together for one great purpose — the glory of the Cre- 
 ator, the good of man's estate, and the domination of 
 harmony and love. A great trust has been committed 
 to the University of Cambridge, and on the whole she 
 has used it, we believe, to her own honour and the great 
 good of the State ; and as the wants of society have 
 become expanded she has shewn a readiness to give 
 a wider basis to her services in the great cause of truth, 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXXV 
 
 whether physical, social, or religious. On this subject 
 enough has been said already. 
 
 In bidding adieu to the Undergraduates, it may be 
 for the last time, I profess not to be their teacher 
 in what they have to learn here, except in one rugged 
 walk of science in which Providence has made me 
 their guide for more than thirty years. The great- 
 est and best part of their teaching is committed to 
 other hands. My task in this Preface, as I have 
 already told them, has not been so much to teach them 
 what they are to learn, as to tell them what they are 
 to shun. I have raised a warning voice to tell them 
 of slippery paths on which they may fall, of dark 
 obstructions over which they may stumble, of hazy 
 visions that may lead them far astray, of a Siren's voice 
 of false philosophy that may tempt them to make 
 a wreck both of earthly honour and of religious hope. 
 But I may claim an old man's privilege, and I do so in 
 a spirit of truth and good-will, and tell them that they 
 are compassed round with social and moral dangers — 
 that they are open to obloquy and envy — that if they 
 do not their best, now that they are young, to fit them- 
 selves for the social duties of manhood, there are men 
 ready to tear from them every privilege on which, 
 it may be, they pride themselves too much, and which 
 they may forfeit in dishonour before they are old. 
 Indolence, sensuality, and indifference to the high teach- 
 ing of physical, moral, and religious truth, will be their 
 loss and shame. No matter what their rank and 
 station, they must sow the seed in youth, if they hope 
 s. d. ee 
 
CCCCXXV1 CONCLUSION. 
 
 to reap the good harvest in after-life, and to do the 
 work to which God and their country will appoint them. 
 And sensuality is not the sin of a moment. It breeds 
 mischief in all coming years. It poisons the very foun- 
 tain of thought by fastening on the imagination and 
 the memory, and cannot be washed off by human tears 
 or mere human penitence : but it haunts us, like a demon, 
 in every virtuous resolve and every attempt at a holy 
 and consistent life. Worse than all, it is a rebellion 
 against that Holy Spirit of God who is our religious 
 counsellor and guide, and without whose strength our 
 resolves are good for nothing, and we are sure to fall 
 short even in our own poor standard of moral duty. I 
 ask the Undergraduates then, by the feelings of high 
 patriotism — by their love of honour — by their dread of 
 social shame — by the claims of conscience, and by the 
 duties it tells them that they owe to themselves, their 
 country, and their God, to begin their Academic task 
 with the earnestness and the hope and the humility of 
 Christian men — not in a spirit of worldly strife, but in a 
 spirit of piety, charity, and love. I ask them to give their 
 heart's best homage to the cause of universal truth ; to 
 love candour and plain dealing, as a part of truth ; to 
 abhor sophistry as a part of falsehood. Let them begin 
 in this temper, and go on in good heart, and believe 
 that their early labours will not be in vain, and that 
 God will be their helper ; and, looking no farther than 
 the prizes of this world, that, if they fail to reap the 
 rewards of earthly honour, they may reap rewards 
 which are far better, in the brightness of a pure con- 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXXV11 
 
 science, and in the happiness that ever dwells with 
 Christian hope. 
 
 I never had the pen of a ready writer, and my 
 constitution abhors all sedentary labour. This Preface 
 has not, therefore, been brought to a close without 
 some pains, and many interruptions from bad health, 
 and from engagements which pow begin to press 
 hard upon me : but in the performance of my task I 
 have done my best to discharge a small portion of a 
 great debt of gratitude and love I owe to the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge. Under her fostering care I have 
 now lived more than forty-five years. And what 
 changes have come over the face of Society during that 
 long period ! Few indeed are left of the friends and 
 companions of my early life. In a very few more 
 years, should they be granted me, I shall reach that 
 age which the Psalmist makes the limit of man's life ; 
 and beyond which, should life be lengthened, all its 
 added years are " but labour and sorrow." Little 
 space have I therefore either for hope or fear in my 
 prospects of a future residence within these College 
 walls : and poor indeed would an old man be if nothing 
 beyond worldly hopes were left him. But we can live 
 our life over again, and dwell among past years in 
 memory. And we should learn the lessons of humility 
 and truth from such a retrospect. History is a worth- 
 less tale, and the retrospect of past life but an idle 
 dream, if they teach us no lessons of prudence, of 
 heavenly wisdom, of mutual love, and of hope that soars 
 above the world of sense. 
 
 eeZ 
 
CCCCXXV111 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We may, also, sometimes amuse the imagination 
 by innocent historical visions of the future : but we 
 have no moral right to evolve such visions from the 
 soul, and build them on any other basis than a firm 
 belief, that individual men, and bodies corporate, and 
 states, and empires, are but instruments in the hands 
 of God to work out the ends of his Providential will ; 
 and that each and every one of them must fall away 
 and come to open shame (in the very course of Nature, 
 which is but the visible working of God's will) if they 
 fail in that part to which He has appointed them. 
 Speaking for ourselves, we can have no good hope for 
 future blessings upon Cambridge, but that which rests 
 on the good she has done to Church and State — by 
 being in deed, what she is in word, "the school of 
 sound learning and religious education," — by being the 
 honoured channel of conveying to the children of the 
 State the pure streams of accumulated knowledge — and 
 by teaching her sons, as the social end of all they learn, 
 the lessons of high and holy bearing, of Christian 
 honour, of piety, and truth, and love. 
 
 But have we no signs for fear in our historical 
 visions of the future ? This is not the condition of 
 Christian Europe. Individuals, and States, and Em- 
 pires, have each of them their appointed task, and it 
 is by difficulties, temptations, and dangers that they 
 are tried, and from which, if they acquit themselves 
 as the true servants of Providence, they come purified 
 like a precious metal from the fire. In the early years 
 of this century, England looked like one vast battle- 
 
t CONCLUSION. CCCCXX1X 
 
 field, and the sons of Cambridge for awhile threw off 
 the gown, and took up arms in defence of religion, and 
 liberty, and all a good man cherishes. This was the 
 condition of Cambridge the year I first saw its College 
 walls. But God blessed the arms of England — the terror 
 of invasion passed away — and the University gradually 
 went back to its ordinary habits of peace and study. 
 There rose up, however, in Europe a mighty Empire, 
 and God seemed to fight on the side of its hosts, till 
 kingdom after kingdom fell before it ; and in a few years 
 more, all Europe, from the frozen regions of the North 
 to the warm valleys of the South, was in one armed league 
 against these Islands. But this great hostile Empire 
 began in violence and blood : and as it rose it was not 
 governed by the maxims of justice and humanity. The 
 humbling lessons of Christian truth had no place in its 
 affections, and it paid no right honour either to civil or 
 religious freedom ; for it was driven onwards by the 
 lust of domination and the thirst of spoil. It was, 
 then, no fit instrument to uphold the cause of truth, 
 or to carry out the ends of Providence in Christendom ; 
 and it fell from its high throne because the God of 
 Nature fought against it. 
 
 Europe was afterwards, by the will of Providence, 
 blessed with a peace of more than thirty years. But 
 how did the nations, the rulers and the people, profit 
 by the hard lessons of adversity ! Kings were slow and 
 heartless in doing that which they had promised in the 
 hour of danger, and the people were ready to rise in 
 deeds of lawless violence. The greatest Empires of Eu- 
 
CCCCXXX CONCLUSION. 
 
 rope were wasting the precious years of peace in pre- 
 paring the materials of war, and consuming the very 
 vitals of the State in accumulating the implements of 
 aggression. I need not tell the consequences of this un- 
 christian and tyrannous policy. We have seen enough 
 of them, or heard enough of them, in the revolutions 
 and battles of the last two years, Peace is once more 
 established in Europe ; but it is the peace of brute 
 force, which, for a time, has put down lawless violence. 
 It is not the peace of loyalty, cemented by good-will and 
 mutual trust, and based on Christian principle ; and it 
 has, therefore, none of the enduring elements of stability. 
 Bloodshed, revolutions, and civil broils, are the bitter 
 fruits of a policy which burdens peace with all the cost 
 of war, and leads by inevitable necessity to an utter 
 destruction of national wealth, and a loss of national 
 honour. 
 
 England, thanks to Providence, has been free from 
 many of these horrible evils : but we cannot be calm 
 spectators of the clouds that seem still to be hanging 
 over Europe, and portend a coming season of storm 
 and tempest that may wreak some part of its fury on 
 this country. And have we no social evils of our own 
 to disturb our prospects of the future ? Famine and 
 pestilence have been doing the work of death in these 
 Islands — united, alas ! too often but in name. Poverty, 
 and misery, and sin, meet us at the corners of our 
 streets, and cry out for help. New forms of infidelity 
 and new fashions of immorality are continually starting 
 up amongst us. The diffusion of knowledge (good, and 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXXX1 
 
 excellent, and conservative as true knowledge is) has 
 brought up the rankest weeds of quackery and empiri- 
 cism. None are willing to be learners ; all are striving 
 to be teachers ; and every man seems ready with some 
 physical or social nostrum. In the study of worldly 
 gain we may follow, and follow wisely, the promptings 
 of our inner nature ; and a worldly man may be the 
 best practical judge of the means of his worldly in- 
 terests. But in teaching the lessons of moral duty 
 and religious truth, we have to teach a man to keep 
 down the first promptings of his inner nature, and to 
 subdue himself : and if in this struggle he be left only 
 to the promptings of his nature, unrestrained by the 
 strong arm of law and untamed by the persuasions of 
 religion, we give him over as a slave to the very soul 
 and spirit of evil. We may talk of the accumulations 
 in the store-houses of mammon from the fostering in- 
 fluence of free trade, but let us not dare to tell our 
 fellow-men of free trade in piracy and rapine and 
 human blood. 
 
 More than forty years since, England stood erect 
 among the nations of the earth by a great deed of self- 
 denial, done in antagonism with the spirit of worldly 
 gain, and in honour of religion and humanity. And 
 what is the posture of England now \ Her Parliament 
 is reformed, and so far it may be well. But men are 
 now found in it, who have strength of purpose and 
 great worldly shrewdness, and who deal out the max- 
 ims of commercial wisdom, and talk loudly of national 
 
CCCCXXX11 CONCLUSION. 
 
 wealth, while they forget that the noblest portion of a 
 nation's capital is invested in its honour, its morality, 
 and its religion. And the rulers of our land have 
 sometimes seemed to truckle to these worldly men ; not 
 yet indeed by proclaiming a free trade in the life and 
 blood of our fellow- creatures, but in sharing, under the 
 specious mask of righteous commerce, in the profits of 
 human slavery, and thereby fostering crimes which defile 
 and make abominable the face of some parts of Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 Wilberforce and Clarkson are no more. They 
 learnt their early lessons of humanity at Cambridge, 
 and their names are still held in love and honour here. 
 But the sons of the very men who were first banded 
 with these Christian heroes, in a most righteous war- 
 fare against piracy and rapine, seem almost to have 
 forgotten the lessons of their fathers; and in our days 
 few of them lifted up their voice when the cause of 
 freedom and humanity was in its utmost peril, and 
 England was sliding downwards into a policy which 
 taught her to cast off the honours she had won by 
 former struggles: — to become an accessory to hideous 
 crime, and to barter for a portion of its profits ; while 
 her laws, and the voice of Christian humanity not yet 
 stifled among her children, withheld her from openly 
 joining in its abominable perpetration. And what fruits 
 have we reaped in this bad harvest? Some of our 
 Colonies are ruined ; others have been in rebellion ; and 
 all around us seems involved in darkness and in danger. 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXXX111 
 
 And what better could we look for from a vacillating 
 policy, which has dared to look for profit in expedi- 
 ents, which are at the cost of consistency, humanity, and 
 holy principle*? 
 
 * I have no wish to discuss in this place a question thatjs merely 
 political ; but no question that bears on our national morality is out of the 
 scope of this Preface. In the early years of this century the Slave-trade 
 was declared illegal by an act passed during the short Whig administra- 
 tion. This act was the brightest glory of*the Party ; but its brightness 
 was dimmed and tarnished by a disastrous policy introduced by the repre- 
 sentatives of the same Party in 1841. Some of the members of adminis- 
 tration contended, at the time, that their new policy was not inconsistent 
 with their old principles ; and that the horrors of the Slave-trade would not 
 be aggravated by it. It is a very great stretch of charity to believe that 
 the statesmen who used these arguments did so in sincerity. A crooked 
 and inconsistent policy draws forth false, sophisticated, and crooked ar- 
 guments. At any rate, the event has shewn that these statesmen were 
 mistaken ; and that the Slave-trade, with all its complicated horrors, was 
 enormously increased after 1841 by the new demand the slave-workers 
 looked for in the English markets. It is a lamentable fact, that by our 
 voluntary change of policy we have increased the victims of this infamous 
 and bloody traffic by the addition of tens of thousands. How could it be 
 otherwise ? We encouraged the slave-dealer to run greater risks, and 
 make far greater efforts, than he had done before, in the hopes of direct or 
 indirect remuneration from his open dealings with this country. Where 
 was the consistency of maintaining an armed fleet to suppress the Slave- 
 trade on the coast of Africa, while we were paying the slave-worker in 
 South America for produce obtained by means most abominable and un- 
 christian, and partly raised by the hands of the very men who had been 
 dragged away from Africa in spite of the watchfulness of our cruisers ? 
 Our law makes it immoral for a British subject to traffic in human blood 
 and bonds. Is it not then immoral to pay a foreigner indirectly for doing 
 an act of immorality that is forbidden to an Englishman ? There is but 
 one intelligible answer to such a question as this. England by her new 
 policy committed a great national sin ; and she is now reaping, and will 
 long continue to reap, the bitter fruits of it; and the worst of all these 
 bitter fruits is the loss of national honour. 
 
 But it was said in 1841 that England had long been inconsistent — 
 that she admitted (for example) the cotton that was grown in the Slave- 
 states of North America. Let us, for argument's sake, assume that she 
 was inconsistent. Were we on that account to undo what good we had 
 done in the great cause of humanity ? If we had put down a great 
 national sin, and some other countries refused to tread in our steps, 
 
CCCCXXX1V CONCLUSION. 
 
 This is, thank God, but one side of the social picture. 
 England dares to look her social evils in the face ; and 
 we trust that she may long flourish (spite of all the evils 
 
 were we on that account to retrace our steps, to go shares with these coun- 
 tries in their most unrighteous gains, and to encourage them in doing that 
 which our law forbad, and pronounced vile and infamous ? "Were we to 
 do nothing in the cause of freedom, because we could not do every thing ? 
 Because we could not put down all crimes, were we therefore to do away 
 with all penal laws, and proclaim a free commerce in sin ? No one could, 
 perhaps, be found so impudently absurd as to give a positive reply to 
 such questions as these. Yet absurdities not one jot less gross were 
 bolted by some of our statesmen who vindicated our change of policy in 
 1841 on the score of our previous inconsistency. 
 
 But the main argument, drawn from our supposed inconsistency, wants 
 the shadow of a foundation whereon to rest. England before 1841 was 
 not inconsistent in her dealings with the great slave question; and her 
 honour was then untarnished. She had no right to dictate to other nations 
 on a question of their internal polity. She could trade with Turkey, 
 though the Turkish Empire was despotic and Mohammedan. She could 
 trade with North -Am erica, though its Southern States were unhappily de- 
 filed by domestic slavery. North-America did not drag slaves across the 
 Atlantic to cultivate her cotton -grounds; and English merchants could 
 honestly deal with its Southern States, without violating one single prin- 
 ciple of that great moral act of our Parliament which abolished the Slave- 
 trade. Neither (by such commercial dealings) did our merchants violate 
 those other acts of Parliament which denounced this trade as a crime for 
 which every Englishman was amenable to the severe laws of his country, 
 and counted as felonious and infamous by every honest subject of the realm. 
 
 But we may imagine a new case. Let us suppose the United States to 
 conquer a new country — to incorporate it, as an additional State of their 
 National Union — to cover it with cotton and sugar plantations, — to re- 
 establish the African Slave-trade, — and to cultivate their new plantations by 
 yearly introducing among them slaves dragged, by tens of thousands, from 
 the coast of Africa. In this hypothetical case, would England be morally 
 right, or politically consistent, in dealing with the new State and buying 
 its sugar or cotton produced by this new effort of Slave-labour ? Common 
 sense and Christian morality tell us that in so doing she would be most 
 shamefully inconsistent with the noble spirit of her former legislation, and 
 grossly unchristian in going out of her way to participate in gains drawn 
 from foreign works which her laws have denounced as immoral on the part 
 of her own subjects. A case like this never has, and we trust never will, 
 occur within the dominions of the United States. But if it did occur (to 
 the great disgrace of English blood) it would be in strict analogy with 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXXXV 
 
 that encompass her), blessed by good laws, and sancti- 
 fied by high principle ; and that she may help to teach 
 the nations of Europe wherein their true safety lies, and 
 that civil freedom is compatible with peace and social 
 order. In this way may she become the nurse and 
 pattern to other nations less blessed and honoured by 
 Providence than she has been. And she has a higher 
 duty still, which she owes to the many millions of her 
 fellow-subjects who are in heathen darkness. She has 
 to diffuse among them the light of Christian freedom, 
 and the blessings of Christian hope. If this be indeed 
 her task, and she perform it faithfully, then will she 
 
 some other cases in which England, since 1841, has forfeited her consist- 
 ency, greatly lowered her national honour, and, at the dictation of an un- 
 scrupulous and daring body of men, has sacrificed Christian principle to 
 supposed commercial gain. 
 
 The abolition of the Slave-trade was a great moral and Christian 
 victory gained after a battle of twenty years. The leaders, who were 
 victors in this battle, are gone : but their sons and representatives, through 
 sheer cowardice, are now beating a shameful retreat, and gradually losing 
 the honours their fathers had won for them. Any retrograde movement, 
 after such a struggle, is enough to fill the breast of a good Englishman 
 with shame, and make him despair of the future glories of his native land. 
 
 It cannot, at the same time, be denied that the most intrepid of the 
 abolitionists were not always true to their avowed principles, and that they 
 did not altogether keep good faith with the British Planters. Neither were 
 they always wise in policy, however humane and Christian their avowed 
 motives : for they forgot that men who had lived as slaves could not be 
 fitted at once for civil freedom. Humanity and wise policy pointed to a 
 gradual abolition of colonial slavery— secured by the active supervision of 
 men whose hearts were in the work of humanity. But gradual abolition, 
 or any gradual training for the full enjoyment of civil rights, little satisfied 
 the impatience of men, who in the pride of a recent victory were obstinately 
 resolved to gather its fruits before their season. Whatever share of blame 
 may rest with conflicting parties, we know that some of our colonies are 
 ruined ; and Christian patriots think that no acts ever passed by the re- 
 presentatives of England since the great revolution in 1688 were more dis- 
 graceful, and more pregnant with future mischief, than our sudden change 
 of policy begun in the year 1841. 
 
CCCCXXXV1 CONCLUSION. 
 
 have indomitable strength against all powers of dark- 
 ness : for she will be an honoured instrument in the 
 hands of God for diffusing the lessons of wisdom and 
 truth, of peace and love, to the remotest regions of the 
 earth. If this be indeed her glorious task, and she per- 
 form it faithfully, the God of peace will be on her side, 
 and will give her strength and victory in all her coming 
 struggles. 
 
 Returning once more to the moral duties of the 
 University, we may tell our sons that in the lessons of 
 wisdom we may draw from the retrospect of the past, 
 from the fruition of the present, and from the dim 
 visions we can form of the future, we see motives for 
 good hope, not unmixed with fear. This is the nature 
 of man's probation in every age of society ; and without 
 these mixed conditions of humanity we should lose the 
 highest and best lessons of our moral training, and of 
 our moral duties in social life. 
 
 The discoveries of physical science are a part of a 
 nation's strength and glory : but these discoveries may, 
 under a narrow and one-sided teaching, lead us to a 
 base material fanaticism, that would drive the thoughts 
 of the God of Nature from the world, and lead us into 
 Stygian darkness. Again, the inventions of mechanical 
 skill are, or ought to be, the poor man's boon and bless- 
 ing ; for they abridge his toil, and throw the strain of 
 human production from the sensitive framework of his 
 body upon the dead implements of nature. But has the 
 vast progress in mechanical skill brought out a corre- 
 sponding advance in peace, and love, and social purity, 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXXXV11 
 
 and Christian happiness ? We know that the very con- 
 trary is too often true — that mechanical discoveries and 
 manufacturing skill have brought with them a want of 
 steady balance in the productive dealings of the country 
 — fits of feverish prosperity followed by fits of collapse 
 and misery — accumulations of vast wealth to the few — 
 squalid poverty, vice, and misery to the many. Are we 
 then to stop the progress of mechanical discovery, and 
 fall back into the primeval condition in which each man 
 eats only the fruit produced by the sweat of his own 
 brow ? No man is so mad as to wish for this, or to 
 deny the blessings of commercial wealth and mechani- 
 cal discoveries. But we do affirm, that while mechanical 
 inventions and manufacturing industry have been called 
 out by the thirst of gain and the seductions of mam- 
 mon, few corresponding efforts have been made to subdue 
 the social evils that grow out of the corruption of the 
 heart — and that mechanical inventions and manufac- 
 turing industry bring no durable strength and safety to 
 the State, if advancing society be not held in check 
 by moral and religious training, and the Christian les- 
 sons of humanity. The wisdom of Providence knows 
 how to bring moral good out of physical evil. The 
 folly and wickedness of man has too often drawn moral 
 evil out of physical good. 
 
 Art may pander to immorality ; poetry may be the 
 impudent handmaid of sensuality; the vilest crimes 
 and the most withering despotism may lurk under the 
 external forms of civil freedom. Do we then say that 
 freedom, and art, and imagination, are worthless things ? 
 
ccccxxxvm CONCLUSION. 
 
 Not so. They become worthless only by their abuse ; 
 and they may, under the guidance of high principle, 
 be the ministers of true liberty, social virtue, and 
 national glory. At every shift of government and 
 every turn of fortune, we see bad elements springing up 
 to blight our hopes, and disturb our foolish visions of 
 some new form of human perfectibility. And how can 
 it be otherwise, while the moral and religious elements 
 of society are either starved, or glutted, it may be, 
 with unwholesome food ? In the British revolutions 
 great crimes and great blunders may have been com- 
 mitted on every side; but the supreme authority of 
 morality and religion was never made a matter of 
 public mockery and scorn by any party in the State ; 
 and our Constitution at length settled down with a full 
 recognition of the supreme authority of moral and reli- 
 gious principle ; and so it has lasted well. 
 
 But the struggles for freedom without principle 
 are no better than the struggles of a madman with his 
 keeper. Idle metaphysical dreams, schemes of popular 
 worship, and the fantastical creations of a demoralized 
 intellect, can never guide men to civil freedom; but 
 will, by an inevitable necessity, fix upon nations the 
 fetters of a civil or military despotism : for any govern- 
 ment is better than the mock freedom of vanity and 
 folly and lawless violence. Had the nations of the 
 Continent learnt and practised the humbling lessons 
 of the Gospel, they would have known what rational 
 liberty meant, and they might have secured it for their 
 children. But each man has had his own nostrum ; 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXXX1X 
 
 and each man hates all nostrums but his own. Thus 
 is folly rampant while charity is in bondage ; and the 
 Pantheist, the Socialist, the Despot, and the Republican, 
 have their several cures for every civil and religious 
 malady ; while they forget that the heart of man is the 
 fountain-head of all moral evil. Let that be purified by 
 a benevolent and heaven-informed teaching, which may 
 reach the innermost springs of human thought, and 
 make mankind obedient to the lessons of wisdom and 
 truth and purity and love : and when thus informed, men 
 will be fit for civil freedom, and under the will of Pro- 
 vidence, they may gain an enduring possession of it. 
 
 Once for all — the prospects of the University, so 
 far as regards the future, are obscured by the clouds 
 which now seem to be gathering about the Coun- 
 try : but if we have some cause for fear, we have 
 good cause (if we be true to ourselves) for thankfulness 
 and hope ; and our only security is in the righteous 
 performance of the great trust that Providence has 
 committed to us. Cambridge is not a mere school 
 of material science : for material science teaches us 
 not our religious and social duties, and may lead us 
 into a proud indifference to the moral interests of 
 our fellow- men — into scepticism — or into material 
 Pantheism, which is the basest form of infidelity. 
 Cambridge is not a mere school of experimental or 
 mechanical discoveries : for mechanical inventions have 
 sometimes, through the cold-heartedness and selfishness 
 of men, become the powerful instruments of moral evil. 
 Cambridge is not a mere school of the imagination, and 
 
CCCCX1 CONCLUSION. 
 
 of the refinements and luxuries and decorations of human 
 learning : for these things, however good and beautiful 
 and useful as the accessories of more solid learning, 
 may become the most dangerous ministers of a moral 
 poison. She is not a mere dogmatic teacher of the 
 National Religion : for religion, without moral, social, 
 and physical knowledge, will lead us, almost of necessity, 
 into one-sided and narrow views of religious truth, false 
 estimates of ourselves, bigotry, and intolerance ; and into 
 disloyalty to the State, should the State possess the 
 true elements of civil freedom : and, worst of all, such 
 a religion will sometimes lead men to sacrifice the sa- 
 cred principles of candour, charity, and truth, to the 
 supposed interests of a party. These are no ideal 
 evils ; they are still rampant in society : and past his- 
 tory tells us, that crimes, which have been the shame 
 and dishonour of humanity, have again and again been 
 perpetrated in the sacred name of the religion of 
 Jesus. 
 
 But the teaching of the University of Cambridge 
 has not been that of a bigoted and narrow school: 
 and we earnestly hope that she will shew in times to 
 come that exalted Catholicity, which gives to faith what 
 belongs to faith, while it gives to reason what belongs to 
 reason — which honours truth under whatsoever form, 
 moral or material, — which tells us that our appre- 
 hension of truth is an apprehension of a part of the 
 attributes and will of God, and that all truths are 
 knit together in inseparable unity, and have their ever- 
 lasting seat within His bosom. If this continue to be 
 
CONCLUSION. CCCCXli 
 
 her faith, she will think it her greatest privilege to be 
 the honoured channel of conveying the widest lessons 
 of truth to the children of the State ; and this she 
 will do zealously, and not grudgingly: and little will 
 she have to fear from new fashions of study or re- 
 volutions of opinion ; for her interests will be blended 
 with the best interests of learning and humanity and 
 charity and religion : and the State will honour her as 
 the blessed instrument, under Providence, of conveying 
 to its sons their first and best lessons of wisdom and 
 science, of faith, moral purity, and brotherly love*. 
 
 " Some apology is due to the University for a very long 
 delay in the publication of the following Discourse, which 
 has been advertised, for two or three years, as almost ready 
 for the Press. The following statement is my apology. 
 Sometime in the year 1846 the proprietors of the Discourse 
 told me that they wished to publish a new Edition of it, and 
 asked me to give them an additional Preface. I told them 
 that I could not find time to comply with their request before 
 the end of the autumnal Term of that year. The Discourse 
 was afterwards passed through the Press; and during the 
 early months of 1847 the Appendix was printed with one or 
 two additional Notes ; and the early, geological part of the 
 Preface was then written very nearly as it now appears. I 
 hoped, indeed, that the work would be published at the 
 beginning of the Easter Term of 1847; in which case the 
 Preface would not have extended to so much as one half its 
 present length. But an attack of a chronic malady, which 
 for years back has made me a very unproductive labourer, 
 drove me from Cambridge before my task was done; and 
 I had no power of taking it up again during the remainder 
 of that year. In the early spring of 1848 I resumed my 
 
ccccxlii CONCLUSION. 
 
 task ; but I was again compelled, by ill health, to give it up 
 before I had made any good advance in it ; and other sub- 
 jects then pressed on my notice which I did not wish to pass 
 over, and which greatly extended my first plan. The Pre- 
 face, in its present more expanded form, was finished during 
 the spring of this year : but professional engagements called 
 me away from Cambridge for two months ; and I was after- 
 wards so crippled by a severe accident as to be incapacitated 
 from either bodily or intellectual labour for two months 
 more. The revision of the latter part of the Preface, and its 
 passage through the Press, was, therefore, necessarily postponed 
 to the latter part of the Long Vacation; and a considerable part 
 of it has been printed during the present busy Academic Term. 
 A few additions have been made to it (such e.g. as a short 
 reference to the Logic of Mr Stuart Mill, and to some papers 
 on the Hegelian Philosophy, by the Master of Trinity Col- 
 lege) while the sheets were in the Press, which require, per- 
 haps, no formal notice* : and I hardly need remark, that most 
 of the foot-notes were also added while the several sheets were 
 passing through the Press. In other respects it has been printed, 
 almost word for word, as it was first written. Its great 
 length gives an incongruity to its Title — " a Preface :" but 
 for this there is now no help ; and the publishers and readers 
 will have little cause to complain of this incongruity in form, 
 if the matter of the Preface be thought good and useful. 
 
 * Supra, p. ccxlvii. 
 
 Trinity College, 
 Nov. 30, 1849. 
 
DISCOURSE. 
 
DISCOURSE, 
 
 Psalm CXVI. 17, 18, 19. 
 
 / will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will 
 call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows 
 unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people, 
 In the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of thee, 
 Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord. 
 
 How beautiful and how varied are the forms of 
 praise and thanksgiving in the book of Psalms ! 
 They appear as the outpourings of a grateful heart 
 before God for the glories of his creation — for suc- 
 cour in the hour of danger — for deliverance from 
 affliction — for national privileges — and for antici- 
 pated salvation. There is an earnestness in many 
 of them that lays hold upon our strongest sympa- 
 thies : for (without speaking of their inspired and 
 prophetic character) they jnay be truly said to 
 spring from feelings which are natural to every 
 man who is not utterly debased, and in the exer- 
 cise of which generous tempers ever take delight. 
 The words I have chosen are the conclusion of a 
 Psalm composed by one who had been raised up 
 from some great affliction — his soul had been de- 
 livered from death, his eyes from tears, and his 
 s. d. A 
 
feet from falling. I quote them however with no 
 reference to the purpose for which they were first 
 uttered, but because they are well fitted for the 
 occasion that brings us together — to offer in the 
 courts of the Lord's house the sacrifice of thanksgiving, 
 and to call upon the name of the Lord. 
 
 A well disciplined mind may perhaps learn to 
 see everything with an eye of faith, so as to find, 
 in all the dispensations of Providence, a motive for 
 the exercise of holiness. But many of us are, I 
 fear, too little endowed with a spirit leading to a 
 contemplation of God in the common bounties of 
 his creation : our spiritual sluggishness requires some- 
 thing more exciting than sensations arising from 
 large and general views of God's providence — some- 
 thing which comes immediately to our own hearts 
 and bosoms, and seems to bear upon our personal 
 happiness. When the body is weighed down by 
 sickness, or the spirits sunk by present affliction, 
 the glories of this world fade away before us ; and 
 we seek, or at least as Christian men we ought to 
 seek, our proper consolation in looking to that hea- 
 venly kingdom which suffers no change, and into 
 which sorrow finds no entrance : and after the clouds 
 lately gathered round us are passed away and we are 
 conscious of a great deliverance, the feelings of our 
 hearts (unless quite dead to religious sense) will 
 burst forth in the language of praise and thanks- 
 giving. In like manner, though perhaps in less de- 
 gree, on the national anniversary, the religious festi- 
 val, or the solemn commemoration, thoughts seemingly 
 extinct within us will start into new life, and trains 
 of association will arise, lifting our thoughts above 
 the selfishness and sensuality of the world, and fixing 
 them on our noblest destinies. 
 
And let me here observe, that the fact of our 
 receiving impressions lik6 these (however interrupt- 
 ed, and by whatever means excited,) is an evidence 
 that the spirit of religion is not dead within us. By 
 the blessing of God, the spark now burning but 
 dimly may be excited to a flame, which shall refine 
 the corruptions of our hearts and become the ani- 
 mating principle of our lives. On this account, every 
 visitation tending to alienate our* affections from the 
 world ought to be considered as the warning voice 
 of God addressed to ourselves, and not to be de- 
 spised ; and every solemnity of religion (whether 
 public or private), having the power of touching the 
 heart and acting on our better feelings, is to be re- 
 garded as a merciful invitation of God, and never, as 
 we hope for heaven, to be rejected. . 
 
 Sentiments such as these are surely fitted for 
 the occasion on which we meet ; to return thanks to 
 God for the mercies he has vouchsafed to us — to 
 recount the names of those pious benefactors to 
 whom we owe the peaceful abode of learning and 
 science wherein we dwell — to place before the mind's 
 eye those illustrious men who have inhabited this 
 our Zion, and obtained for themselves a name im- 
 perishable as the records of our race. These men 
 are to us in the place of a glorious ancestry, urging 
 us by their example to an emulation of their deeds ; 
 and we are unworthy sons if we turn a deaf ear to 
 that voice by which they still seem to speak to us. 
 
 Among them were found many to join the fore- 
 most rank of those who in ancient times emanci- 
 pated this country from spiritual bondage ; to par- 
 take in the great work of translating the records 
 of our faith into our native tongue, and to put 
 forth their whole intellectual strength in diffusing 
 
the light of Christian truth among the people. In 
 their lists we read the name of Bacon, who, gifted 
 almost with prophetic spirit, was enabled to climb 
 the Pisgah of science, and point out the land of 
 promise to those who were to follow him — of New- 
 ton, who after having achieved, by his single arm, 
 the conquest of the natural world, was not puffed 
 up, but gave God the glory ; combining, with pow- 
 ers which never fell to the share of any other man, 
 the simplicity of a child, and the humility of a 
 Christian — of Ray, who saw the finger of God in 
 the whole frame-work of animated nature, and within 
 these sacred walls taught the listeners to compre- 
 hend the meaning of those characters he himself 
 had first interpreted — of Barrow, the learned and 
 the wise, the inventive philosopher, the manly rea- 
 soner, the champion of England's faith, the eloquent 
 and single-minded Christian moralist — and of many 
 other illustrious men, whose very names time would 
 fail me to tell, who having had their minds braced 
 by the studies of this place, and their hearts sancti- 
 fied by the wisdom from above, devoted themselves 
 to the high and holy office of extending the empire 
 of truth. 
 
 And surely the happiness we enjoy, and the names 
 we this day commemorate, require something more 
 from us than the gratitude of the lips — something 
 more than a formal and heartless ceremonial. We 
 are here met at our annual celebration where these 
 mighty men have met before ; we are worshipping at 
 the altar where they worshipped, we are treading on 
 their ashes, and looking on their tombs, and every 
 thing around us is sanctified by their genius. 
 
 Circumstances like these have ever exerted a 
 powerful influence on generous natures. If heathen 
 
men have felt them, and made them the topics of 
 exhortation and the mainsprings of national honour, 
 how much more ought they to effect us who are 
 assembled as a Christian brotherhood. We believe 
 that the glorious names we commemorate are not 
 those of men who have perished without hope ; but, 
 having fought the good fight in this life, that they 
 have received a crown of glory in the life which is to 
 come. They seem to speak to us from their tombs, 
 but with no earthly voice, encouraging us by their 
 example, and telling us to be firm and of good cheer 
 in this our pilgrimage — that beyond the dark portal 
 to which we all are hurrying there is a land of 
 promise — and that treading in the steps where they 
 have trodden, and guided by the heavenly hand 
 which guided them, we ourselves may reach that 
 land and dwell with them in everlasting glory. 
 
 The influence of domestic example is, I think, 
 to be recognized in the institutions of every nation. 
 In all of them, under some form or other, we find 
 the traces of hereditary rank and of transmitted 
 authority : and in infant societies, those institutions 
 did not, I believe, commence in assumed physical 
 superiority, but rather in the experience of moral 
 fitness. 
 
 It is not wise for us too nicely to canvass the 
 decrees of Omnipotence : some of them we can 
 partially comprehend — some of them must ever re- 
 main hidden from our sight. We are however 
 justified in saying that, in the moral, as in the 
 physical world, God seems to govern by general 
 laws : and when he declares to us, that he will visit 
 the sins of the fathers on their children ; and that 
 he will have mercy on thousands in them that love 
 him and obey him ; we hear not a new and despotic 
 
6 
 
 annunciation contrary to the ordinary operations of 
 his moral government ; but rather we hear a formal 
 promulgation and a higher sanction of them. It 
 is true as a matter of fact, that some races and 
 kindreds are favoured above the rest of men — that 
 God shews mercy to them in thousands, spreading 
 among them the light of truth, and exalting them 
 above the other nations of the earth. But these 
 temporal blessings, I repeat, are not violations, but 
 examples of the moral government of God ; for in 
 the nature of things they only co-exist with the 
 exercise of those moral and intellectual qualities 
 which bind men and families together, and form the 
 very sinews of national strength. When the les- 
 sons and the examples of virtue fail, the nation's 
 strength fails with them ; the voice of eloquence and 
 the maxims of wisdom are no longer heard within 
 its walls, and its proudest monuments soon moulder 
 into the dust ; or if they remain at all, are visited 
 in after times as mighty ruins, serving only to con- 
 trast its former glory with its present desolation. 
 
 It is then our bounden duty to reflect, that our 
 sentiments and our conduct do not terminate with 
 ourselves. Every man, however humble his station 
 and feeble his powers, exercises some influence on 
 those who are about him for good or for evil : and 
 these influences emanating again as from a fresh 
 center, are propagated onwards — and though diluted 
 by new motives, and modified by new circumstances 
 at each transmission, so as in common cases to be 
 lost to the eye of man, they may still go on pro- 
 ducing a silent effect to the remotest generations; 
 and thus become, under Providence, a part of the 
 appointed means by which a nation's glory is con- 
 tinued, and its strength upheld. 
 
What I have said of nations, is true also of 
 families or households like our own. If we have 
 received a goodly inheritance we ought to transmit 
 it unimpaired to our children. It matters not to 
 us that the light of truth has been shed abroad 
 by those who have gone before us, if we be living 
 in intellectual darkness. It is not our honour, but 
 our shame, that the wise and good have dwelt 
 within these walls, if they have now no living re- 
 presentatives. Self-examination is therefore among 
 the most important duties of this solemnity : nor is 
 it to be a mere idle and inoperative retrospect, but 
 must be followed by prayer against intellectual pride 
 and presumptuous sins — prayer for support in those 
 resolves of which our consciences approve — prayer 
 above all for that spirit which will lift us above 
 the temptations of the world. If we be endowed 
 with this temper, we bring a hallowed offering to the 
 altar, and cannot doubt that the incense of our praise 
 will mount up to the throne of grace, and bring 
 down a blessing on our household. 
 
 By the arrangements of Providence, things which 
 to us seem good and evil are so blended in this life, 
 that in the annual celebration of societies like our 
 own, we are seldom permitted to meet with feelings 
 of unmixed joy. In thinking of the past glories 
 of our body and of the mighty minds by which its 
 animation has been continued, it is impossible for 
 any one who has dwelt within its walls but a few 
 short years, not to be struck with the changes in its 
 moral aspect — not to be reminded of early prospects 
 blighted, of the links of friendship severed — not to 
 have impressed upon his memory, that hearts but as 
 yesterday warm with kindness, and tongues glowing 
 with the accents of genius, are now cold and inani- 
 
8 
 
 mate. The song of praise and the voice of thanks- 
 giving ought therefore to be heard as notes of prepa- 
 ration ; telling us that this is not our abiding city — 
 that with all the good things it contains, and the 
 goodly recollections belonging to it, it is but a halt- 
 ing-place in the great pilgrimage of life — and that 
 before another returning festival, the names of some 
 of us may be also written on the long scroll of those 
 who are departed. 
 
 These, my brethren, seem to be sentiments not 
 merely fitted for the occasion on which we meet, but 
 such as must force themselves on every serious and 
 reflecting mind. I must however content myself 
 with this short allusion to them, as the time does 
 not allow me to dwell on them any farther. 
 
 Leaving then these general topics, I proceed to 
 speak of this as a place of sound learning and Chris- 
 tian education, and to inquire what ought to be the 
 conduct of the understanding during the course of 
 our academic studies before we enter on the great 
 theatre of life. What I am now saying, though 
 I hope not altogether unfitting to other ears, is 
 chiefly addressed to the younger members of our 
 household. 
 
 In the first place, let me put before you a law 
 and condition of your being, of great influence in 
 the formation of your characters. Impressions in- 
 dependent of the will, whether produced directly 
 through the senses, or by trains of association within 
 the mind, gradually lose their power by repetition ; 
 but habits, whether of mind or body depending on 
 a previous determination of the will, gain strength 
 by their very exercise, so as at length to become 
 a part of ourselves and an element of our happiness. 
 
9 
 
 It is to the operation of this law that we must 
 refer some of the strangest contradictions in human 
 nature. What a melancholy contrast we too often 
 find between the generous temper of youth, and the 
 cold calculating spirit of a later period ! between 
 the actions of a man at one time of his life and 
 those of another ! I believe there is not one whom 
 I am now addressing, who A if he reflect at all, 
 will not acknowledge how much the cold hand of 
 time has already chilled some of his better feelings. 
 Now it is absolutely certain, that sensuality and other 
 sins to which by nature man is prone, will do their 
 work in marring the image of God ; and, unless 
 opposed by some countervailing principle, will end 
 in habits making a wreck both of soul and body. 
 In such a state of things a man becomes utterly 
 spell-bound — he is in the gall of bitterness and the 
 bond of iniquity, and has no power to help himself; 
 and the hand of God alone can help him. 
 
 I am not now contending for the doctrine of 
 moral necessity ; but I do affirm that the moral 
 government of God is by general laws ; and that 
 it is our bounden duty to study those laws, and 
 as far as we can to turn them to our account. As 
 far, at least, as this world is concerned, the feelings 
 on which we act in early life may and do diminish 
 in their intensity, and yet we may go on in a course, 
 honourable to ourselves and useful to our country, 
 mainly by what is called the force of habit. Of 
 what vast importance is it then, to those I am now 
 addressing, many of whom have barely reached the 
 dawn of manhood, to lay a good foundation against 
 the coming time, by fostering habits of practical 
 kindness, and self-control — by mental discipline and 
 study — by cultivating all those qualities which give 
 
10 
 
 elevation to the moral and intellectual character — 
 in one word, by not wavering between right and 
 wrong, but by learning the great lesson of acting 
 strenuously and unhesitatingly on the light of con- 
 science. 
 
 The studies of this place, so far as they relate to 
 mere human learning, divide themselves into three 
 branches. 
 
 1st. The study of the laws of nature, com- 
 prehending all parts of inductive material philoso- 
 phy. 
 
 2dly. The study of ancient literature — or in 
 other words, of those authentic records which convey 
 to us an account of the feelings, the sentiments, and 
 the actions, of men prominent in the history of the 
 most famous empires of the ancient world. In these 
 works we seek for examples and maxims of prudence 
 and models of taste. 
 
 3dly. The study of ourselves, considered as 
 individuals and as social beings. Under this head 
 are included ethics, and metaphysics, moral and 
 political philosophy, and some other kindred sub- 
 jects of great complexity, hardly touched on in our 
 academic system, and to be followed out in the more 
 mature labours of after life. Our duty here is to 
 secure a good foundation on which to build ; and to 
 this end we must inquire what ought to be the con- 
 duct of the mind in entering on any of these great 
 provinces of human learning. 
 
 I. A study of the laws of nature for many years 
 has been, and I hope ever will be, held up to honour 
 in this venerable seat of the discoveries of Newton. 
 But in this, as in every other field of labour, no 
 man can put aside the curse pronounced on him — 
 
11 
 
 that by the sweat of his brow he shall reap his 
 harvest. Before he can reach that elevation from 
 whence he may look down upon and comprehend 
 the mysteries of the natural world, his way is steep 
 and toilsome, and he must read the records of crea- 
 tion in a strange, and to many minds, a repulsive 
 language, which, rejecting both the senses and the 
 imagination, speaks only to the understanding. But 
 when this language is once learnt, it becomes a 
 mighty instrument of thought, teaching us to link 
 together the phenomena of past and future times ; 
 and gives the mind a domination over many parts 
 of the material world, by teaching it to comprehend 
 the laws by which the actions of material things are 
 governed. To follow in this track, first trodden by 
 the immortal Newton — to study this language of 
 pure unmixed truth, is to be regarded not only as 
 your duty, but your high privilege. It is no servile 
 task, no ungenerous labour. The laws by which 
 God has thought good to govern the universe are 
 surely subjects of lofty contemplation ; and the 
 study of that symbolical language by which alone 
 these laws can be fully deciphered, is well deserving 
 of your noblest efforts. Studies of this kind not 
 merely contain their own intellectual reward, but 
 give the mind a habit of abstraction, most difficult 
 to acquire by ordinary means, and a power of con- 
 centration of inestimable value in the business of 
 life. Were there any doubt of this, I would appeal 
 to modern examples, and point out a long list of 
 illustrious men, who, after being strengthened by 
 our severe studies and trained in our discipline, have 
 borne off the prize in the intellectual conflicts of 
 their country. But I need not attempt to prove 
 what no one is prepared to deny. 
 
12 
 
 Are there, however, no other consequences of 
 these studies beyond those I have pointed to ? The 
 moral capacities of man must not be left out of 
 account in any part of intellectual discipline. Now 
 these severe studies are on the whole favourable to 
 self-control : for, without fastening on the mind 
 through the passions and the senses, they give it 
 not merely a power of concentration, but save it 
 from the languor and misery arising from vacuity 
 of thought — the origin of perhaps half the vices of 
 our nature. 
 
 Again, the study of the higher sciences is well 
 suited to keep down a spirit of arrogance and intel- 
 lectual pride : for, in disentangling the phenomena 
 of the material world, we encounter things which 
 hourly tell us of the feebleness of our powers, and 
 material combinations so infinitely beyond the reach 
 of any intellectual analysis as to convince us at once 
 of the narrow limitation of our faculties. In the 
 power of grasping abstract truth, and in the power 
 of linking together remote truths by chains of ab- 
 stract reasoning, we may be distinguished from the 
 lower orders of the beings placed around us ; but, 
 in the exercise of these powers, we bear perhaps no 
 resemblance whatsoever to the supreme intellect. 
 Applied to an Almighty Being with the attribute of 
 ubiquity, in whose mind all things past and to come 
 co-exist in eternal presence, time and space have no 
 meaning, at least in that sense in which they are 
 conditions of our own thoughts and actions. To 
 him all truth is as by intuition; by us truth is only 
 apprehended through the slow and toilsome process 
 of comparison. So that the powers and capacities, 
 forming the very implements of our strength, are 
 also the indications of our weakness. In some of 
 
13 
 
 our capacities, we may perhaps exhibit a faint 
 shadow of a portion of our Maker's image ; but in 
 the reasoning power, of which we sometimes vainly 
 boast, we bear to him, I believe, no resemblance 
 whatsoever. 
 
 Simplicity of character, humility, and love of 
 truth, ought therefore to be (and I believe generally 
 have been) among the attributes of minds well 
 trained in our philosophy. After all that has been 
 done since the thoughts of man were first turned to 
 the phenomena of the material world — after all the 
 boasted discoveries of science, from the first records 
 of civilization down to our own days — those glo- 
 rious passages of the Old Testament, contrasting 
 the power and wisdom of God in the wonders of his 
 creation, with mans impotence and ignorance, have 
 still, and ever will continue to have, not merely 
 a figurative or poetical, but a literal application. 
 Gird up now thy loins like a man : for I will de- 
 mand of thee, and answer thou me*. Where wast 
 thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? de- 
 clare, if thou hast understanding... Whereupon are the 
 foundations thereof fastened ? or who laid the corner- 
 stone thereof; when the morning-stars sang together, 
 and all the sons of God shouted for joy ? Or who shut 
 up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had 
 issued out of the womb f When I made the cloud the 
 garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling -band 
 for it... and said, Hitherto thou shalt come, but no 
 further : and here shall thy proud waves be stayed ? ... 
 Where is the way where light dwelleth ? and as for 
 darkness, where is the place thereof ? ...Knowest thou 
 it, because thou wast then born f or because the number 
 of thy days is great ? 
 
 * Job, chap, xxxviii. 
 
14 
 
 Before such an interrogator we can only bow in 
 humble adoration. The study of the laws of nature 
 may strengthen and exalt the intellectual powers : 
 but strange must be our condition of self-government 
 and tortuous our habits of thought, if such studies 
 be allowed to co-exist with self-love and arrogance 
 and intellectual pride. 
 
 A study of the Newtonian philosophy, as affect- 
 ing our moral powers and capacities (the subject I 
 am now pressing on your thoughts), does not ter- 
 minate in mere negations. It teaches us to see the 
 finger of God in all things animate and inanimate, 
 and gives us an exalted conception of his attributes, 
 placing before us the clearest proof of their reality ; 
 and so prepares, or ought to prepare, the mind for 
 the reception of that higher illumination, which brings 
 the rebellious faculties into obedience to the divine 
 will. 
 
 We learn, by experiment, the different actions 
 and relations of the material things around us, and 
 we find them bound together by a law of mutual 
 attraction. Following our master of philosophy in 
 the loftiest generalization recorded in the history 
 of mankind, we attribute this property, found in the 
 matter on the surface of our planet, to every other 
 mass of matter within the limits of the visible uni- 
 verse. We bring our generalization to the test of 
 observations of a new and certain kind, and we find 
 that it is true. We find that no parts of the visible 
 universe are insulated from the rest ; but that all 
 are knit together by the operation of a law common 
 to them all. We follow this law into its remotest 
 consequences, and we find it terminating in beauty, 
 and harmony, and order*. 
 
 * See Appendix, Note (A). 
 
15 
 
 Again, if we commence our examination of the 
 natural world with the small portions of matter 
 which surround us, and following our induction in 
 a new direction, resolve them into their elements, 
 and unravel the laws of their combination ; we see 
 at every step new cause for wonder — new objects for 
 admiration. Every portion of the matter we tread 
 beneath our feet (however insignificant as an object 
 of sense) propagates its influence through all space, 
 and is felt in the remotest regions of the universe. 
 However small the particle of dust we trample on, 
 it may present traces of a mechanism subservient 
 to the complicated functions of a living being ; or 
 it may be a compound inorganic body, possessing 
 properties of indefinite complexity : and though it 
 be what we call a simple substance, still it is held 
 together by its own laws of cohesion ; it is com- 
 posed of elements not brought together fortuitously, 
 but in obedience to a fixed law, by which they are 
 congregated in definite proportions, and grouped in 
 symmetry and order. Not only is every portion of 
 matter governed by its own laws, but its powers of 
 action on other material things are governed also 
 by laws subordinate to those by which its parts are 
 held together. So that in the countless changes of 
 material things and their countless actions on each 
 other, we find no effects which jar with the mecha- 
 nism of nature ; but all are the harmonius results of 
 dominant laws. 
 
 Again, if we pass from the consideration of 
 things visible and tangible to the subtile and impon- 
 derable agents of the material world, we not only 
 witness the manifestation of their powers in every 
 physical change and every combination ; but we know 
 that some of them, and we may perhaps suppose 
 
10 
 
 that all of them, are diffused uninterruptedly through 
 every portion of the universe. We are certain that 
 the material of light is at least as far extended as 
 the force of gravitation. It places us at once in 
 physical contact with the remotest bodies of our 
 created system, and by its vibrations they become 
 manifest to us through our visual sense. There is, 
 therefore, no portion of space, however small or 
 however distant, which is not filled at all times with 
 subtile matter — which does not every moment trans- 
 mit material influences, in number complexity and 
 rapidity beyond the grasp of thought ; yet never 
 anomalous or fortuitous, but governed by fixed laws, 
 and subservient to ends most important in the eco- 
 nomy of nature, and essential to the very existence 
 of sentient beings. 
 
 In speaking of the laws of nature and of the 
 harmonious changes resulting from their action, in 
 spite of ourselves we fall into language iff which we 
 describe the operations of intelligence : and language, 
 let me observe, was never formed by a convention 
 of learned men, or constructed on the scheme of an 
 hypothesis. It is the true offspring of our intellec- 
 tual nature, and bears the image of such ideas as 
 rise up of necessity in the mind, from our relation 
 to the things around us. If we forget him in our 
 thoughts, with our lips at least we must do homage 
 to the God of nature. What are the laws of nature 
 but the manifestations of his wisdom \ What are 
 material actions but manifestations of his power ? 
 Indications of his wisdom and his power co-exist 
 with every portion of the universe. They are seen 
 in the great luminaries of heaven — they are seen 
 in the dead matter whereon we trample — they are 
 found in all parts of space, remote as well as near, 
 
17 
 
 which we in our ignorance sometimes regard as 
 mere vacuities — they are unceasing — they are un- 
 changeable*. 
 
 Contemplations such as these lift the soul to a 
 perception of some of the attributes of God ; im- 
 perfect it may be, but still suited to the condition 
 of our being. But are thoughts like these to pass 
 through the mind, and produce only a cold acqui- 
 escence? Are we to dwell in the perpetual pre- 
 sence of God and yet dishonour him by the worship 
 of ourselves, and refuse to him the homage of our 
 humble praise ? Such were not the feelings of the 
 holy psalmist, when, contrasting his own feebleness 
 with the all-pervading wisdom and power of God, 
 he was kindled as by fire from heaven, and burst 
 out into rapturous expressions of adoration : Whi- 
 ther shall I go from thy spirit f or whither shall I 
 flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, 
 thou art there : if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou 
 art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and 
 dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall 
 thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold 
 me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me ; 
 even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the dark- 
 ness hideth not from thee : but the night shineth as 
 the day : the darkness and the light are both alike to 
 thee-f. 
 
 How any believer can deny the reality of a natu- 
 ral religion when he reads those passages in the 
 Bible where its power is so emphatically acknow- 
 ledged, is more than I can understand. We are 
 told by St. Paul, that even the Gentiles are without 
 excuse ; for the invisible things of God from the creation 
 of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
 
 * See Appendix, Note (B). f Psalm cxxxix. 7—12. 
 
 S. L>. B 
 
18 
 
 js which are made, even his eternal power and 
 Godhead*. Yet I have myself heard it asserted 
 within these very walls, that there is no religion of 
 nature, and that we have no knowledge of the attri- 
 butes of God or even of his existence, independently 
 of revelation. The assertion is, I think, mischievous, 
 because I believe it untrue : and by truth only can 
 a God of truth be honoured, and the cause of true 
 religion be served. 
 
 But there is another class of objectors, who not 
 only adopt this cold and unnatural conclusion, but 
 rejecting revelation along with it, banish utterly all 
 thought of God from the world. It is indeed true, 
 as these objectors state, that all material changes 
 are governed by fixed laws, and that the present 
 condition of all material things is but a natural con- 
 sequence of these laws operating on that condition 
 of matter which preceded the phenomena we con- 
 template. They rest their strength, so far as I 
 understand their meaning, in this immutability of 
 the laws of nature : and having, with much labour, 
 deciphered a portion of these laws, and having 
 traced the ordained movements of the material world 
 without ever thinking of the Being by whom these 
 movements were directed, they come at length to 
 deify the elements themselves, and to thrust the 
 God of nature from his throne. But where is the 
 reasonableness of this conclusion \ The unchange- 
 ableness of the laws of nature is not only essential 
 to the well being, but to the very existence of crea- 
 tures like ourselves. The works of our hands are 
 liable to perpetual change, from caprice, from vio- 
 lence, or from natural decay : but in the material 
 laws ordained by God, there is no semblance of decay, 
 
 * Rom. i. 20. 
 

 10 
 
 because they partake of the perfections of his at- 
 tributes, and are therefore unchangeable. 
 
 The single-minded writers of the New Testa- 
 ment, having their souls filled with other truths, 
 thought little of the laws of nature : but they tell 
 us of the immutable perfections of our heavenly 
 Father, and describe him as a being in whom is no 
 variableness or shadow of turning. The religion of 
 nature and the religion of the Bible are therefore 
 in beautiful accordance ; and the indications of the 
 Godhead offered by the one, are well fitted to give 
 us a livelier belief in the promises of the other. So 
 far from offering any foundation for an atheistical 
 argument, the constancy of the laws of nature 
 might, I think, have been almost anticipated by a 
 well ordered mind, though unacquainted with the 
 great discoveries of physics : and should the framer 
 of the universe have other changes in reserve for 
 the material world beyond those that follow from 
 the laws by which he has already in part revealed 
 himself to us, we have no right to suppose that 
 such changes can be known or understood by be- 
 ings like ourselves — so feeble in capacity — so limit- 
 ed in time — and confined to such a speck of the 
 universe. 
 
 But after all, we do contemplate something more 
 than a mere succession of material changes. We 
 find that these changes are limited by an adjusting 
 power, and tend to a condition of equilibrium, and 
 that the ultimate results of the laws of nature are 
 harmony and order. We find them operating in 
 different portions of space with endless complexity, 
 and yet producing effects perfectly adapted to each 
 other. We see innumerable portions of matter not 
 only obeying laws common to all matter, but acted 
 
20 
 
 on by new laws subservient to vital power ; and 
 by these laws gradually moulded into a beautiful 
 form and mechanism — suited at once to all the 
 complicated functions of a sentient being, and to all 
 the material elements which surround it. Are we 
 to believe that there can be such beautiful and har- 
 monious movements in the vast mechanism of nature, 
 and yet think that the Spirit of God hath not brood- 
 ed over them, and that his hand hath not guided 
 them ? Can we see in every portion of the visible 
 world the impress of wisdom and power, and yet 
 believe that these things were not foreseen in the 
 Divine mind, and these ends not contemplated before 
 he called the universe into being? 
 
 The external world proves to us the being of 
 a God in two ways ; by addressing the imagination, 
 and by informing the reason. It speaks to our 
 imaginative and poetic feelings, and they are as 
 much a part of ourselves as our limbs and our or- 
 gans of sense. Music has no charms for the deaf, 
 nor has painting for the blind ; and all the touching 
 sentiments and splendid imagery borrowed by the 
 poet from the world without, would lose their magic 
 power, and might as well be presented to a cold 
 statue as to a man, were there no pre-ordained 
 harmony between his mind and the material things 
 around him. It is certain that the glories of the ex- 
 ternal world are so fitted to our imaginative powers 
 as to give them a perception of the Godhead, and a 
 glimpse of his attributes ; and this adaptation is a 
 proof of the existence of God, of the same kind (but 
 of greater or less power according to the constitu- 
 tion of our individual minds) with that we derive 
 from the adaptation of our senses to the constitution 
 of the material world. 
 
21 
 
 The heavens declare the glory of God, and the 
 firmament sheweth his handy-work*. Here is a 
 direct assertion — an appeal to the heart and not to 
 the understanding ; and every unsophisticated heart 
 will beat in unison with it. The fool hath said in 
 his heart, There is no God: corrupt are they, and 
 have done abominable iniquity^. In this passage 
 the denial of God is coupled in the mind of the 
 sacred poet with foul and sensual sin. And is not 
 such a union justified by experience? A soul cor- 
 roded by sensual sin can ill reflect the pure image 
 of God — can ill discern the indications of his will in 
 the glories of his creation. 
 
 Leaving, however, the proofs of an intelligent 
 cause from the connexion between the external world 
 and our imaginative powers, let us once more glance 
 our eye over the proofs which appeal to the reason- 
 ing faculties. The mind becomes bewildered among 
 the countless movements continually going on, and 
 the perpetual changes produced by material actions, 
 of which we see neither the beginning nor the end : 
 but we find repose in the study of animated nature. 
 Every being possessing life may first be considered 
 apart from the rest of nature. Its bodily organs 
 are produced by powers of vast complexity, and 
 understood only in their effects — confined in their 
 operation to the individual being, and entirely sepa- 
 rate from the ordinary modes of atomic action. Yet 
 these organs thus elaborated, exhibit throughout a 
 perfect mechanism, in all its parts (as far as we can 
 comprehend them) exactly fitted to the vital func- 
 tions of the being. Contrivance proves design : in 
 every organic being we survey (and how countless 
 are the forms and functions of such beings !) we see 
 
 * Psalm xix. 1. t Psalm Liii. 1. 
 
22 
 
 a new instance of contrivance and a new manifesta- 
 tion of an intelligent superintending power. 
 
 This proof is so strong that it never has been 
 and never can be gainsaid. It is in vain that we 
 attempt to shut out the belief of an intelligent Crea- 
 tor by referring all phenomena to a connected suc- 
 cession of material causes, not one of which is fully 
 comprehended. This thought should indeed fill us 
 with deep humility, but takes not from us the fair 
 inductions of our reason. We do not understand 
 that complicated material action by which the God 
 of nature builds up the organic structure of a sen- 
 tient being : but we do, in part at least, comprehend 
 the adaptation of its mechanism to various ends, and 
 we see those ends accomplished : and this enough to 
 warrant our conclusion. 
 
 An uninstructed man sees a piece of mechanism, 
 and from the form and the acting of its external 
 parts (though he comprehend neither its whole 
 structure nor its objects) is certain that it is the 
 work of a skilful hand. Another man understands 
 all its complicated movements, but knows not the 
 nature of the moving power in which they origi- 
 nate. A third can explain the alternate expansions 
 and condensations of an elastic vapour, and point 
 out this action as the origin and support of the 
 whole propelling force. At length we find one, who 
 will not only explain the whole mechanism from 
 first to last ; but tell us of the nature of its materials, 
 of the places whence they were derived, of the modes 
 of their fabrication, of the manner in which they 
 were put together, and of all the effects of their 
 combined action. But it is not necessary to know 
 all this to be certain of an intelligent contriver. 
 The first observer drew this conclusion rightly from 
 
23 
 
 what he saw, though he comprehended little of these 
 complicated movements. And after all, what rela- 
 tion does the most skilful mechanist bear to his own 
 workmanship ? He does not create one particle of 
 matter — he does not supersede one law of nature : 
 but using the matter created to his hands, and form- 
 ing and combining it in subordination to the laws 
 impressed on it, he produces .a connected succession 
 of material actions, and obtains a series of results — 
 foreseen in his own mind and determined in his will 
 before he commenced the building of his fabric. 
 
 Something like this we can trace in the develope- 
 ment of organic beings. They are formed of matter, 
 which was created, and governed by its own laws, 
 anterior to their existence : they are matured by 
 a regulated succession of material actions : when 
 perfected, they exhibit an exquisite combination of 
 mechanical contrivances, and organs fitted to carry 
 them into effect. To such a structure are super- 
 added vital functions and appetencies, which (like 
 the moving force of a complicated engine) put all 
 its parts into motion, and compel them to obey the 
 laws of their destination. The external forms of 
 organic bodies we can study, their functions we can 
 observe, their internal mechanism we can partly 
 trace : but when we consider the vital powers con- 
 nected with their origin and developement, we find 
 ourselves among phenomena out of the ken of our 
 senses, and removed beyond our intellectual grasp ; 
 and are compelled to acknowledge our utter igno- 
 rance. But, on this account to exclude an intelligent 
 contriver, would not be more wise, than for a man 
 to assert the fortuitous concourse of the wheels of a 
 machine, because he knew not the power by which 
 it was set in motion. 
 
24 
 
 It is in vain that we attempt to banish an intel- 
 ligent Creator, by referring all changes, organic 
 and inorganic, to a succession of constant material 
 actions, continued during an eternity of past time. 
 Were this true, it would not touch our argument : 
 and every clear instance of organic contrivance or 
 material adaptation, would be a phenomenon un- 
 explained, except on the supposition of a contriver. 
 It would only prove that, in a certain portion of 
 space, God had thought fit to give a constant ma- 
 nifestation of his wisdom and power through an 
 indefinite period of duration. The eternity of 
 material forms is, however, but a dream of false 
 philosophy, unfounded in reason or analogy ; and, 
 so far at least as organic nature is concerned, con- 
 tradicted by the plainest physical records of the past 
 world. 
 
 Assuming, then, that the structure of every 
 being, endowed with life, demonstrates the existence 
 of an intelligent overruling power, to what more 
 does the conclusion lead us? — To the inevitable 
 belief that all inanimate nature is also the pro- 
 duction of the same overruling intelligence. As all 
 parts of matter are bound together by fixed and 
 immutable laws ; so all parts of organic nature are 
 bound to the rest of the universe, by the relations 
 of their organs to the world without them. If the 
 beautiful structure of organic bodies proves design, 
 still more impressive is the proof, when we mark the 
 adaptation of their organs to the condition of the 
 material world. By this adaptation we link together 
 all nature, animate and inanimate, and prove it to be 
 one harmonious whole, produced by one dominant 
 intelligence. 
 
 The organs of sense and the materials around 
 
25 
 
 them are related to each other in the way of adap- 
 tation, but not in the way of cause and effect. The 
 eye is not formed by the vibrations of light, nor the 
 ear by the pulsations of the air. Had this been the 
 case, such beings as the blind and the deaf would 
 never have been heard of; for no being can be re- 
 moved from the influence of those elements. The 
 eye and the ear are formed in the womb by the 
 mysterious operations of organic secretion and as- 
 similation, before the pulsations of the air have ever 
 reached the ear, or the vibrations of light have ever 
 acted on the visual sense. They are examples of a 
 beautiful mechanism demonstrating design ; but they 
 are adapted only to a future condition of the being ; 
 and so also demonstrate a provident intelligence. 
 Should any one deny conclusions such as these, I can 
 only reply that his mind is differently constituted 
 from my own, and that we have no common ground 
 on which to build a reasonable argument. 
 
 By the discoveries of a new science (the very 
 name of which has been but a few years engrafted 
 on our language), we learn that the manifestations 
 of God's power on the earth have not been limited 
 to the few thousand years of man's existence. The 
 Geologist tells us, by the clearest interpretation of 
 the phenomena which his labours have brought to 
 light, that our globe has been subject to vast physical 
 revolutions. He counts his time not by celestial 
 cycles, but by an index he has found in the solid 
 framework of the globe itself. He sees a long suc- 
 cession of monuments each of which may have re- 
 quired a thousand ages for its elaboration. He 
 arranges them in chronological order; observes on 
 them the marks of skill and wisdom, and finds within 
 them the tombs of the ancient inhabitants of the 
 
26 
 
 earth. He finds strange and unlooked-for changes 
 in the forms and fashions of organic life during each 
 of the long periods he thus contemplates. He traces 
 these changes backwards through each successive era, 
 till he reaches a time when the monuments lose all 
 symmetry, and the types of organic life are no longer 
 seen. He has then entered on the dark age of 
 nature's history ; and he closes the old chapter of 
 
 her records This account has so much of what is 
 
 exactly true, that it hardly deserves the name of 
 figurati ve description. 
 
 Geology, like every other science when well in- 
 terpreted, lends its aid to natural religion. It tells 
 us, out of its own records, that man has been but a 
 few years a dweller on the earth ; for the traces of 
 himself and of his works are confined to the last 
 monuments of its history. Independently of every 
 written testimony, we therefore prove by natural 
 evidence that man, with all his powers and appe- 
 tencies, his marvellous structure and his fitness for 
 the world around him, was called into being within 
 a few thousand years of the days in which we live — 
 not by a transmutation of species, (a theory no better 
 than a phrensied dream), but by a provident con- 
 triving power. And thus we at once remove a stum- 
 bling block, thrown in our way by those who would 
 rid themselves of a prescient first cause, by trying to 
 resolve all phenomena into a succession of constant 
 j material actions, ascending into an eternity of past 
 [time. 
 
 But this is not the only way in which Geology 
 gives its aid to natural religion. It proves that 
 a pervading intelligent principle has manifested its 
 power during times long anterior to the records of 
 our existence. It adds to the great cumulative argu- 
 
27 
 
 ment derived from the forms of animated nature, by 
 shewing us new and unlooked-for instances of organic 
 structure adjusted to an end, and that end accom- 
 plished. It tells us that God has not created the 
 world and left it to itself, remaining ever after a 
 quiescent spectator of his own work : for it puts be- 
 fore our eyes the certain proofs, that during succes- 
 sive periods there have been v not only great changes 
 in the external conditions of the earth, but corre- 
 sponding changes in organic life ; and that in every 
 such instance of change, the new organs, so far as 
 we can comprehend their use, were exactly suited to 
 the functions of the beings they were given to. It 
 shews intelligent power not only contriving means 
 adapted to an end : but at many successive times 
 contriving a change of mechanism adapted to a change 
 of external conditions ; and thus affords a proof, pe- 
 culiarly its own, that the great first cause continues 
 a provident and active intelligence*. 
 
 I forbear to dwell on other questions deeply 
 connected with this science — Proofs of a higher tem- 
 perature, as shewn by the organic forms of the old 
 world — indications of the same kind, in the crystal- 
 line structure of the lower strata, and the masses on 
 which they rest — and further proofs derived from 
 the figure of the earth itself. The spheroidal form 
 of the earth seems to have preceded all geological 
 phenomena, and makes probable the condition of 
 primeval fusion : and, following in the same train of 
 thought, we have only to imagine another accession 
 of heat, and the whole earth must have been dissipated 
 through planetary space, and have appeared (were 
 there then an eye like our own to behold it) as a 
 mere expanded nebulosity f. 
 
 * See Appendix, Note (C). t Sec Appendix, Note (D). 
 
28 
 
 Speculations like these, starting at least from 
 actual phenomena, are not without their use. For, 
 without lowering one jot the proof of a pre-ordain- 
 ing intelligence, they point, through a long succession 
 of material changes, towards a beginning of things, 
 when there was not one material quality fitted to 
 act on senses like our own ; and thus they take from 
 nature that aspect of unchangeableness and stern 
 necessity which has driven many men away from the 
 light of natural religion, and some to downright 
 atheism. 
 
 If, then, our planetary system was gradually 
 evolved from a primeval condition of matter, we 
 may well believe, that every material change within 
 it, from first to last, has been but a manifestation 
 of the Godhead, and an emanation from his imme- 
 diate will — Or we may suppose, that new powers 
 have, by an act of creative interference, been im- 
 pressed on it at successive epochs of its changes ; and 
 that these new powers, working together with the 
 old, may have brought about the next system of ma- 
 terial conditions* — Or, if it be thought more in 
 conformity with what we see of the modes of material 
 action, to suppose that the primeval system contained 
 within itself the elements of every subsequent change, 
 then is the primeval matter to the matured system 
 of the world, as the seed to the plant, or the egg to 
 the living creature. Following for a moment the 
 last of these hypotheses — shall this embryo of the 
 material world contain within itself the germ of all 
 the beauty and harmony, the stupendous movements 
 
 * This second hypothesis (though at first sight less philosophical 
 than either of the other two) is suggested by the analogy of the re- 
 peated changes of organic species, alluded to above, each of which can 
 be regarded only as a positive creative interference. 
 
29 
 
 and exquisite adaptations of our system — the en- 
 tanglement of phenomena, held together by compli- 
 cated laws, but mutually adjusted so as to work 
 together to a common end — and the relation of all 
 these things to the functions of beings possessing 
 countless superadded powers, bound up with life and 
 volition? And shall we then satisfy ourselves, by 
 telling of laws of atomic action, of mechanical move- 
 ments, and chemical combinations ; and dare to think, 
 that in so doing, we have made one step towards an 
 explanation of the workmanship of the God of nature ? 
 So far from ridding ourselves, by our hypothesis, of 
 the necessity of an intelligent first cause, we give that 
 necessity a new concentration, by making every ma- 
 terial power, manifested since the creation of matter, 
 to have emanated from God's bosom by a single act 
 of omnipotent prescience. 
 
 Leaving, however, these subjects of lofty spe- 
 culation, and retracing our steps from the first 
 condition of created matter towards the order of 
 things now going on before us, we see, from the 
 form and structure of the solid masses on the sur- 
 face of the earth, that many parts of it have been 
 elaborated during successive periods of time; and 
 if we cannot point out the first traces of organic 
 life, we can find, at least, an indication of its begin- 
 ning. During the evolution of countless succeeding 
 ages, mechanical and chemical laws seem to have 
 undergone no change ; but tribes of sentient beings 
 were created, and lived their time upon the earth. 
 At succeeding epochs, new tribes of beings were 
 called into existence, not merely as the progeny 
 of those that had appeared before them, but as 
 new and living proofs of creative interference ; and 
 though formed on the same plan, and bearing the 
 
30 
 
 same marks of wise contrivance, oftentimes as unlike 
 those creatures which preceded them, as if they 
 had been matured in a different portion of the 
 universe and cast upon the earth by the collision of 
 another planet. At length, within a few thousand 
 years of the days in which we live (a period short 
 indeed if measured by the physical monuments of 
 time past), man and his fellow-beings were placed 
 upon the earth. Of the whole creation, he alone 
 has an appetence for abstract truth — he alone sees 
 material powers, and by the capacity of his mind 
 grasps at them, not as accidents but phenomena 
 under some ruling law — and, in describing them, 
 he uses language (and what is language but the 
 connected natural signs of internal thoughts?) in 
 which, in spite of himself, he describes the opera- 
 tions of intelligence and power. He turns these 
 laws to his own account ; by his own volition works 
 upon them, and produces consequences important to 
 himself and foreseen in his own mind : and thus he 
 learns, from what he has done himself, and from 
 the constitution of his intellectual nature, to see in 
 all things around him contrivance and causation. 
 All nature is but the manifestation of a supreme 
 intelligence, and to no being but him to whom is 
 given the faculty of reason, can this truth be known. 
 By this faculty he becomes the lord of created beings, 
 and finds all matter, organic and inorganic, sub- 
 servient to his happiness, and working together for 
 his good. A part of what is past he can compre- 
 hend ; something even of the future he can antici- 
 pate ; and on whatever side he looks, he sees proofs, 
 not of wisdom and power only, but of goodness. 
 
 But these abstract powers form not the whole 
 immaterial part of man. He has moral powers and 
 
31 
 
 capacities unsatisfied with what he sees around him. 
 He longs for a higher and more enduring intellectual 
 fruition — a nearer approach to the God of nature : 
 and seeing that every material organ, as well as 
 every vital function and capacity in things around 
 him, is created for an end, he cannot believe that a 
 God of power and goodness will deceive him ; and 
 on these attributes he builds ^his hopes of continued 
 being, and future glory*. 
 
 This is the true end to which the religion of 
 nature points. Her light may be but dim, and 
 beyond the point to which she leads us there may 
 be a way which the vultures eye hath not seen, the 
 lion's whelp hath not trodden, nor the fierce lion 
 passed — a cold and dismal region, where our eyes 
 behold none but the appalling forms of nature's dis- 
 solution : but here our heavenly Father deserts us 
 not ; he lights a new lamp for our feet, and places 
 a staff in our hands, on which we may lean securely 
 through the valley of the shadow of death, and reach 
 and dwell in a land where death and darkness have 
 heard the doom of everlasting banishment. 
 
 In ending this portion of my discourse, let me 
 exhort you not only to mingle thoughts like these 
 with your abstract studies, but to give them an habi- 
 tual personal application — to seek above all things 
 a spirit of single-mindedness and humility — to be- 
 lieve yourselves in the perpetual presence of God — 
 to adore him in the glories of his creation — to see 
 his power and wisdom in the harmony of the world — 
 his goodness and his providence in the wonderful 
 structure of living beings — Not merely to admit 
 these things as general truths, but to make your- 
 selves familiar with them by frequent trains of rea- 
 
 * See Appendix, Note (E). 
 
32 
 
 soiling founded on such examples as are continually 
 before you*. 
 
 To deny all natural religion is not more strange 
 than to commence a system of moral philosophy by 
 denying the existence of moral feelings. It is, I 
 think, to deny that very constitution of our minds 
 on which the foundation of our religious character 
 must be laid. How such a character is matured and 
 upheld I do not now inquire : but among persons of 
 intellectual habits, it depends for its commencement 
 mainly on the conduct of the mind in early life : and 
 during the changes of advancing years cannot per- 
 haps be so well upheld by any ordinary means as by 
 a steady habit of seeing, and adoring with thankful- 
 ness of heart, the wisdom and goodness of God in 
 the wonders and bounties of his creation. The mate- 
 rials for thoughts like these are placed abundantly 
 around us. 
 
 To many minds, the forms of natural knowledge, 
 presented in the abstractions of severe science, are 
 cold and uninviting : but if we follow them with 
 the light of other kindred studies, such as those I 
 have endeavoured faintly to shadow out, we bring 
 down the fire from heaven which at once gives them 
 movement and animation. 
 
 II. In the comments I think it right to make 
 on the second branch of our studies, I may take for 
 granted that every one of those whom I now ad- 
 dress, has from his tender years been taught the 
 languages of Greece and Rome, and is familiar with 
 at least a portion of their literature. It is no part 
 of my object either to praise or blame the system of 
 early education in this country : but, before I pass 
 
 * See Appendix, Note (F). 
 
33 
 
 on, I may recall to your minds the wonderful ease 
 with which a child comprehends the conventional 
 signs of thought formed between man and man — 
 not only learns the meaning of words descriptive of 
 visible things ; but understands, by a kind of rational 
 instinct, the meaning of abstract terms, without any 
 apparent effort of that faculty by which he separates 
 them from the names of individual objects of sense. 
 The readiness with which a child acquires a lan- 
 guage may well be called a rational instinct : for 
 during the time that his knowledge is built up, and 
 that he learns to handle the implements of thought, 
 he knows no more of what passes within himself, 
 than he does of the structure of the eye, or of the 
 properties of light, while he attends to the impres- 
 sions on his visual sense, and gives to each impression 
 its appropriate name. As the memory becomes stored 
 with words, and the mind accustomed to their appli- 
 cation, this readiness of verbal acquisition gradually 
 decays, and at length, with some persons, almost 
 disappears. That this is true, I need only appeal to 
 the experience of those who, after being long disused 
 to such studies, have attempted to learn a language. 
 They will tell you of their feeling of mental drudgery 
 and intolerable fatigue, during their slow, laborious 
 progress, in acquiring what a child gains without 
 knowing how, and a young person learns cheerfully 
 and without a sense of toil. A small part of these 
 remarks applies only to our vernacular tongue and 
 to oral teaching : the greater part bears on the ac- 
 quisition of all languages — the dead as well as the 
 living. Our fathers then have done wisely, and fol- 
 lowed nature, in making the study of languages a 
 part of our earliest discipline. By this study we 
 gain access to the magazines of thought — we find our 
 8. n. C 
 
34 
 
 way through the vast storehouses wherein are piled 
 the intellectual treasures of a nation, as soon as we 
 have capacity to understand their value, and strength 
 to turn them to good account. 
 
 With individuals as with nations, the powers of 
 imagination reach their maturity sooner than the 
 powers of reason ; and this is another proof, that 
 the severer investigations of science ought to be 
 preceded by the study of languages ; and especially 
 of those great works of imagination which have be- 
 come a pattern for the literature of every civilized 
 tongue. From time to time there arise upon the 
 earth men who seem formed to become the center 
 of an intellectual system of their own. They are 
 invested, like the prophet of old, with a heavenly 
 mantle, and speak with the voice of inspiration. 
 Those that appear after them are but attendants in 
 their train — seem born only to revolve about them, 
 warmed by their heat and shining by their reflected 
 glory. Their works derive not their strength from 
 momentary passions or local associations, but speak 
 to feelings common to mankind, and reach the in- 
 nermost movements of the soul ; and hence it is 
 that they have an immortal spirit which carries them 
 safe through the wreck of empires and the changes 
 of opinion. 
 
 Works like these are formed by no rule ; but 
 become a model and a rule to other men. Few, 
 however, among us are permitted to shew this high 
 excellence. Ordinary minds must be content to learn 
 by rule; and every good system of teaching must 
 have reference to the many and not to the few. But 
 surely it is our glorious privilege to follow the track 
 of those who have adorned the history of mankind — 
 to feel as they have felt — to think as they have 
 
35 
 
 thought — and to draw from the living fountain of 
 their genius. Close and animating is the intellectual 
 communion we hold with them ! Visions of imagi- 
 nation starting from their souls, as if struck out by 
 creative power, are turned into words, and fixed in 
 the glowing forms of language : and, after a time, 
 the outward signs of thought pass before our sense ; 
 and, by a law of our being not under our control, 
 kindle within us the very fire which (it may be thou- 
 sands of years ago) warmed the bosom of the orator 
 or the poet — so that once again, for a moment, he 
 seems in word and feeling, to have a living presence 
 within ourselves ! 
 
 As the body gains strength and grace by the 
 appropriate exercise of all its members, so, also, 
 the mind is fortified and adorned by calling every 
 faculty into its proper movement. No one will in- 
 deed deny, that the imaginative powers are strength- 
 ened and the taste improved, especially in young 
 minds, by the habitual study of models of high ex- 
 cellence. It may, however, at first sight well admit 
 of question, when we consider the shortness of life 
 and the multitude of things demanding our efforts 
 and pressing on our attention, whether a study of the 
 dead languages ought to form so prominent a part 
 of academic discipline. Had Europe, after the darker 
 ages, advanced to civilization without the aid of 
 ancient learning, this question might not have been 
 so readily answered in the affirmative. But, without 
 troubling ourselves with imaginary difficulties, we 
 may reply — that the best literature of modern 
 Europe is drawn more or less from the classic 
 source and cast in the classic mould ; and can nei- 
 ther be felt or valued as it ought without ascending 
 to the fountain-head — that our superstructure must 
 
 c2 
 
36 
 
 suffer if we allow its foundations to decay. If this 
 answer be not thought sufficient, there is another 
 which admits of no reply, and the force of which 
 no time can take away. Our classical studies help 
 us to interpret the oracles of God, and enable us 
 to read the book wherein man's moral destinies are 
 written, and the means of eternal life are placed be- 
 fore him. 
 
 Assuming then that our fathers have done well 
 in making classical studies an early and prominent 
 part of liberal education ; there still remains a ques- 
 tion whether they are wisely followed up in the 
 system of our University. Those who are best 
 acquainted with our studies will confess with what 
 delight they have witnessed the extent and accuracy 
 of erudition displayed, of late years, by many of 
 our younger members. Whatever is taught in this 
 place ought to be taught profoundly : for superficial 
 information is not merely of little value, but is a 
 sure proof of bad training. Hence, that critical skill 
 which teaches men to dissect the ancient languages — 
 to unravel all the subtilties of their structure — and 
 to transfuse their whole meaning into a translation, 
 well deserves the honors and rewards we have long 
 bestowed upon it. 
 
 In the department of verbal criticism some of 
 the mighty men whose names adorn our domestic 
 history (and whose remembrance we keep alive by 
 this day^ ceremonial) have earned a lasting fame ; 
 and have proved how in their hands, that know- 
 ledge, which with vulgar minds is trifling and with- 
 out fruit, can be made to assist in the illumination of 
 history, the detection of sophistry, and the support 
 of sacred truth. Few persons are, however, gifted 
 with the powers of a Bentley or a Porson : and wore 
 
37 
 
 we permitted, on a day like this, to allude to the 
 imperfections of such men, we might perhaps la- 
 ment, that so little even of their time was employed 
 on matter worthy of the giant strength that God had 
 given them. 
 
 I think it incontestably true, that for the last 
 fifty years our classical studies (with much to de- 
 mand our undivided praise) have been too critical 
 and formal ; and that we have sometimes been 
 taught, while straining after an accuracy beyond our 
 reach, to value the husk more than the fruit of 
 ancient learning: and if of late years our younger 
 members have sometimes written prose Greek almost 
 with the purity of Xenophon, or composed iambics 
 in the finished diction of the Attic poets, we may 
 well doubt whether time suffices for such perfec- 
 tion — whether the imagination and the taste might 
 not be more wisely cultivated than by a long sacrifice 
 to what, after all, ends but in verbal imitations — 
 in short, whether such acquisitions, however beauti- 
 ful in themselves, are not gained at the expense of 
 something better. This at least is true, that he who 
 forgets that language is but the sign and vehicle of 
 thought, and while studying the word, knows little 
 of the sentiment — -who learns the measure, the garb, 
 and fashion of ancient song, without looking to 
 its living soul or feeling its inspiration — is not one 
 jot better than a traveller in classic land, who sees 
 its crumbling temples, and numbers, with arithmeti- 
 cal precision, their steps and pillars, but thinks not 
 of their beauty, their design, or the living sculptures 
 on their walls — or who counts the stones in the 
 Appian way instead of gazing on the monuments of 
 the "eternal city." 
 
 There is one province of verbal criticism which 
 
38 
 
 has often been overlooked, or set at nought, and 
 yet would abundantly repay the labour of its culti- 
 vation. Words are the signs of thought ; and from 
 words themselves (without following them through 
 all their inflexions and combinations in the finished 
 structure of a language) we may see into the natural 
 feelings and judgments of men, before they become 
 warped by the prejudices of sect or the subtilties of 
 system. If in reading the ancient writers, we meet 
 with words describing virtue and vice, honor and 
 dishonor, guilt and shame, coupled with the strong- 
 est epithets of praise or condemnation ; then we are 
 certain that these things existed as realities before 
 they became words ; or at least, that in the minds 
 of those who, during the early progress of society, 
 built up the ancient languages, they were considered 
 as realities ; and on that account (and that account 
 only) had their representatives among the symbols 
 of thought. I believe we might in this way make a 
 near approach to a true system of moral philosophy : 
 and our progress would at every step record a series 
 of judgments, not derived from any doubtful train of 
 reasoning, but forced on mankind by the very condi- 
 tion of their existence. 
 
 In following up the manly studies of this place, 
 we ought to read the classic page, not merely to 
 kindle delightful emotions — to gratify the imagina- 
 tion and the taste — but also to instruct the under- 
 standing; and to this end the philosophical and 
 ethical works of the ancients deserve a much larger 
 portion of our time than we have hitherto bestowed 
 on them. It is indeed notorious, that during many 
 past years, while verbal criticism has been pursued 
 with so much ardour, the works to which I now 
 allude (coming home, as they do, to the business of 
 
31) 
 
 life, and pregnant, as they are, with knowledge 
 well fitted to fortify the reasoning powers) have, by 
 the greatest number of us, hardly been thought of; 
 and have in no instance been made prominent sub- 
 jects of academic training. The classical writers did 
 not cultivate the imagination only; but they saw 
 deep into the springs of human thought and action : 
 and rightly apprehending the . capacities of man and 
 their bearing on social life, they laid the foundation 
 of their moral systems in the principles and feelings 
 of our nature, and built thereon a noble superstruc- 
 ture. Should any one object to these ancient systems 
 (as Paley and many other writers have done), and 
 tell us that they are obscure, indefinite, and without 
 sanction : we might reply, that in every question, 
 even of physical science, we take but a few steps 
 towards a first cause, before we are arrested by a 
 boundary we cannot pass — before we are encompassed 
 with a darkness no eye can penetrate : — that in moral 
 questions (founded, not on the properties of material 
 agents, which we can examine and sift, again and 
 again, by new experiments, but on the qualities of 
 rational and responsible beings), still narrower is 
 the limitation of our inquiries. To suppose that we 
 can reason up to a first cause in moral questions — 
 that we can reach some simple principle, whence we 
 may descend with logical precision to all the compli- 
 cated duties of a social being ; is to misapprehend 
 the nature of our faculties, and utterly to mistake 
 the relation we bear both to God and man. Such a 
 system may delight us by its clearness, and flatter 
 our pride because it appears, at once, to bring all 
 our duties within our narrow grasp : but it is clear 
 only because it is shallow; while a better system 
 may seem darker, only because it is more profound. 
 
40 
 
 If it be contended, that in the trying circum- 
 stances of life the moral systems of the ancients are 
 without sufficient motives: we may reply, that in 
 this respect all moral systems are alike — that all of 
 them lead to consequences, and point to actions, 
 beyond the power of any earthly sanction. When 
 we ascend to the highest virtues and capacities of 
 our moral nature, and think of the tens of thou- 
 sands who in every age have encountered a voluntary 
 death for the good of their kindred men and the glory 
 of their country, or the still more exalted heroes who 
 have died as solitary martyrs in the defence of some 
 high and holy principle ; we tell of deeds which mo- 
 ralists and historians of every age have adorned with 
 their praise, and held up for imitation. But still, 
 however common acts like these may have been in 
 the history of mankind, we have no right to class 
 them as social duties, grounded in mere moral and 
 social feelings; and in accounting for them, our .souls 
 recoil from the vulgar sanction of this world's praise. 
 If deeds like these be compatible with our nature ; 
 then is there something within us, which, however 
 obscured or ill-informed, points to a higher destiny : 
 and in asking for motives, we must quit the province 
 of morals, and enter on that of religion ; and in its 
 hopes, faint and feeble as they may often be, we may 
 not only find an answer to our question, but a reason 
 why such high feelings and capacities are implanted 
 in us ; leading us, as they do, into acts opposed to 
 the strongest instincts of our nature, and above the 
 sanction of all ordinary moral rules. 
 
 It is, I think, certain that the study of an ethical 
 system, grounded on the moral and social feelings, 
 and exemplified by that course of action which in all 
 ages has been honoured by the virtuous and the wise, 
 
41 
 
 is not only a good practical training for the mind 
 (which in the busy commerce of life has often more 
 to do with moral than with physical reasoning), but 
 prepares it for the acceptance of religious truth. 
 Whether this opinion be true or false, it is at least 
 certain, that many of the writers of antiquity had 
 correct notions on the subject of natural religion. 
 The argument for the being of a God, derived from 
 final causes, is as well stated in the conversations of 
 Socrates, as in the Natural Theology of Paley. Nor 
 does Socrates merely regard God as a powerful first 
 cause, but as a provident and benevolent being : and 
 he tells us, that as man is the only animal with a 
 soul capable of apprehending a God, he is the only 
 being by whom God is worshipped — that prayer and 
 sacrifice are our duty — that by such services we may 
 learn some of the secrets concealed from men, and 
 know, that the Divinity sees every thing, hears every 
 thing, is present everywhere, and cares for all his 
 works. Few however of the heathen Philosophers 
 conceived or uttered sentiments like these; and trained 
 as they were in a superstition which deified their bad 
 passions, and sanctioned their vices under the impure 
 forms of its religious rites, we need not wonder at 
 their limited knowledge of the attributes of God, or 
 their feeble hopes of a more exalted state of future 
 being *. 
 
 In speaking of the spirit which ought to guide 
 us in our classical studies, we must look also to their 
 lessons of practical wisdom. History is to our know- 
 ledge of man in his social capacity, what physical ex- 
 periments are to our knowledge of the laws of nature : 
 and well it is for that country which learns wisdom 
 by the experiments of other nations. In ancient 
 
 * See Appendix, Note (G). 
 
42 
 
 history we can not only trace the fortunes of man- 
 kind under almost every condition of political and 
 social life ; but all the successive actions we contem- 
 plate are at such a distance from us, that we can 
 see their true bearings on each other undistorted by 
 that mist of prejudice with which every modern po- 
 litical question is surrounded. We may see that the 
 higher virtues, which are the only secure foundation 
 of a nation's strength, are confined to no time or 
 country ; and, although sometimes called into their 
 fullest action by a sudden and trying circumstance, 
 are in the common course of things but the slowly 
 matured fruit of good discipline and good government. 
 We may look on states rising out of small beginnings, 
 and watch the means by which they gradually ascend 
 in the scale of national strength. We may mark the 
 giant power of despotism wasting away before a petty 
 combination of free men. We may see that liberty 
 is the handmaid of genius and virtue — that under 
 her fostering care, feelings and sentiments, embodied 
 in national literature, spring up and knit men toge- 
 ther as one family, and for a time give them an 
 almost unconquerable might — and lastly, that the 
 loss of national sentiments and national independence, 
 whether commencing in decay from within or violence 
 from without, is alike followed by moral and physical 
 desolation. 
 
 We study to little purpose, if while we unroll 
 the history of past time we look but at one side of the 
 portraiture of our race. If we read in it the maxims 
 of wisdom, we find also the annals of crime. If great 
 actions have shewn man's high capacities, the sins 
 and follies, by which all history is blotted, prove also 
 the feebleness of his purpose. We may find in every 
 page the records of selfishness — the desolation pro - 
 
43 
 
 duced by the jarring interests of faction. We may 
 see that the foulest crimes have oftentimes been en- 
 acted under the fairest forms of government ; and 
 that in all conditions of a state (from its beginning 
 to its end) corruption of manners is ever incompatible 
 with true liberty. We may trace the history of a 
 vast empire, from its first beginnings — find it, after 
 many mutations of fortune, rising to great power by 
 the exercise of great virtue — and during the lapse of 
 ages, see its citizens jealous, even to a crime, of their 
 civil freedom. We may then go on, and find the 
 same people becoming willing tools in the hands of 
 bad men, and, at length, so utterly corrupt, as to 
 rush, with one consent, into the basest servitude : 
 and in those evil days, we may find that even the 
 best men were willing to surrender their inheritance, 
 and to seek, in the despotic authority of one, a re- 
 fuge against the more intolerable license of the many. 
 We leave however our lesson incomplete if we follow 
 not this history to its end, and see that the calm of 
 despotism, superinduced on a corruption of manners, 
 is followed by a stagnation of all the higher virtues 
 which minister to national strength ; and so becomes 
 but the dismal presage of dismemberment and final 
 dissolution. 
 
 In the moral, as in the physical, convulsions of 
 the world, the good and the bad are often mingled 
 together in a common calamity; and were we to 
 limit our views to this life only, we might see, in the 
 dealings of God with man, much to perplex and to 
 confound us. Still it is true, even in this narrow 
 view, that there is in the history of past times enough 
 to shew that God will in the end vindicate his cha- 
 racter as a moral governor : for we find, that in all 
 ages virtue and wisdom have been the only firm sup- 
 
44 
 
 ports of national strength — and that as in individual 
 men, where sin rules in the bodily members, there is 
 a degrading moral servitude, and a loss of capacity 
 for high thought and action — so also that among 
 states and empires, depravity of manners has ever 
 been followed by a loss of glory and a loss of free- 
 dom. Hence we may conclude on a large experience, 
 grounded on all history, past or present, sacred or 
 profane, that those public men who have sought to 
 gain their ends by inflaming the bad passions of the 
 people and pandering to their vices, have been trai- 
 tors to the cause of true liberty, and blasphemers 
 against the very God they professed to worship. 
 
 Another conclusion, not less general than the 
 former, may also be drawn from the universal experi- 
 ence of past history — that under no form of govern- 
 ment is man to be maintained in a condition of per- 
 sonal happiness, and social dignity, without the sanction 
 of religion. Finally, as all material laws, and all ma- 
 terial organs throughout animated nature, are wisely 
 fitted together, so that nothing, of which we compre- 
 hend the use, is created in vain ; and as the moral 
 and intellectual powers of man, working together 
 according to the laws of his being, make him what 
 he is — teach him to comprehend the past and almost 
 to realize the future — and rule over his social des- 
 tiny ; we may surely conclude, as a fair induction of 
 natural reason, that this religious nature (so essential 
 to his social happiness) was not given to him only to 
 deceive him ; but was wisely implanted in him, to 
 guide him in the way of truth, and to direct his soul 
 to the highest objects of his creation. And thus we 
 reach (though by steps somewhat different) the same 
 end to which I endeavoured to point the way in the 
 former division of this discourse. 
 
45 
 
 III. I now enter on the third branch of our 
 studies, in which we are ourselves considered phi- 
 losophically, as individuals, and as social beings. 
 Under this head are included, as was observed be- 
 fore, many subjects of great complexity, requiring 
 for their investigation long habits of patient thought 
 — bearing directly on the business of life — and in 
 their application deeply affecting our moral and 
 intellectual characters. If the shortness of time per- 
 mits us not, in our academic system, to enter largely 
 on this great province of inquiry, and if some de- 
 partments of it are fitted only for the labours of 
 after life ; we are at least bound to give, as far as we 
 are able, a right bias to the youthful sentiments on 
 all great questions concerning human nature ; so 
 that those who begin their moral studies here may be 
 enabled to lay a good foundation, whereon, in ma- 
 turer manhood, they may build in safety. 
 
 Locke's " Essay on the Human Understanding " 
 and Paley's " Principles of Moral and Political 
 Philosophy" have long formed such prominent sub- 
 jects of instruction in this University, that the 
 remarks I have time to make on our metaphysical 
 and ethical studies will be almost confined to these 
 two works. 
 
 It is, perhaps, unnecessary for me to inform you, 
 that Locke supposed the mind to be first of all " as 
 white paper, void of all characters," and that all 
 its subsequent ideas — all its materials of reason and 
 knowledge — are derived from two sources, sensation 
 and reflection. By ideas from sensation he means 
 the natural perceptions we have of external things 
 through our senses; by reflection he understands 
 the notice the mind takes of what passes within 
 itself, " whereby it becomes furnished with ideas of 
 
46 
 
 its own operations :* and he affirms, " that however 
 great the mass of knowledge lodged within the mind, 
 there can be nothing there which did not come in by 
 one of these two ways.' 1 
 
 It is incontestably true, that the senses are the 
 first avenues of our knowledge, and that through 
 them we become first acquainted with external 
 things. In describing the modes in which the mind 
 is furnished with knowledge through the senses, 
 the " Essay on the Human Understanding " is, I 
 think, rather to be considered as defective in execu- 
 tion, than faulty in principle. Since its publication, 
 much good service has been done in this department 
 of inquiry, by Reid and other writers ; but much, 
 if I mistake not, still remains to be done ; and were 
 I to speculate on the coming fortunes of the philo- 
 sophical literature of this country, I should look 
 forward to the time when some one, learned in 
 physiology, instructed in all the laws of those elastic 
 fluids by which we are surrounded and acted on, 
 and skilled in the analysis of the inner workings of 
 the mind, shall bring his strength to bear on this 
 one subject, and present us with a work detailing 
 the whole office of the senses, from childhood to 
 manhood — from the dawn of reason to its full ma- 
 turity. 
 
 In discriminating the ideas we derive from re- 
 flection, and pointing out the modes in which the 
 mind is gradually raised to its full strength and 
 stature, the "Essay on the Human Understanding " 
 is not only defective in execution (sharing the com- 
 mon fortune of man's work), but is also, I think, 
 faulty in its principles. The account it gives of 
 some of our simplest abstract notions is erroneous ; 
 parts of the work are doubtful and obscure ; and 
 
47 
 
 the whole greatly devoid of philosophic symmetry 
 and order*. Still there are, in every chapter of 
 it, the marks of deep thought — of a strong mind, 
 clearing away the masses of intellectual rubbish by 
 which his whole subject was encumbered — and, 
 above all, of a lofty independent spirit, holding 
 allegiance to no authority but that of truth. Hence, 
 whatever the coining history .of letters may bring 
 to light, I cannot imagine the day when the works 
 of Locke, under proper limitations, will not form 
 noble subjects for academic study. 
 
 Men seem to differ little in the impressions they 
 first receive from their senses ; and perhaps quite 
 as little in the first abstractions they are by nature 
 led to form. Yet how widely separated is one in- 
 tellect from another ! From the stones of the same 
 quarry one man builds a hovel ; another chisels out 
 the breathing image of the human form. It is in- 
 contestably true, that men are chiefly distinguished 
 from each other by their habits of combining the 
 same original elements of thought. But, in making 
 these combinations, they are not led on blindly and 
 fortuitously, but in obedience to intellectual laws 
 operating with greater or less force on every rational 
 being. What would be the value of the senses were 
 there no sentient principle within ? And where 
 would be the use of teaching were there no inborn 
 capacities in the soul to apprehend and to be acted 
 
 * It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to descend into particulars ; 
 but, without alluding to the faults of omission, I may, in justification 
 of what is here stated, point out, by the way, that Locke's account of 
 the origin of our idea of time is universally considered as wrong — that 
 by a large school of metaphysicians his account of our knowledge of 
 space is regarded as not less erroneous — that most men look upon his 
 discussions, respecting personal identity and the determination of the 
 will, as either defective or false — and that all men regard his disserta- 
 tion on power as crude and obscure. 
 
48 
 
 on I It may be true that we have no innate know- 
 ledge ; but we have innate intellectual powers : and 
 that they are essentially the same in all men, differ- 
 ing* only in degree, is evident from the individual 
 habits, the social sympathies, the civil institutions, 
 and the languages of our race ; the common feelings 
 that hurry us into action ; the common proofs that 
 gain our deliberate assent. 
 
 The distinction between innate ideas and in- 
 nate capacities is almost overlooked in the work of 
 Locke *. To this cause we must attribute the great- 
 est mistakes and imperfections of his system, and the 
 strange omission of many of the highest faculties of 
 our nature. Of the imaginative powers he hardly 
 says one word, or speaks of them only to condemn 
 them. Yet are they so woven into our nature that 
 they mingle themselves with almost every word and 
 deed — aid us in the interchange of thought - ever 
 give delight, in their exercise, both to savage and 
 civilized man — nor can they for a moment be put off, 
 except by an effort of the mind, in the severe ab- 
 stractions of exact science. For a metaphysician 
 
 * The habit of disregarding the distinction between abstract ca- 
 pacities and their particular manifestations, seems to have led Locke 
 into his strange paradox respecting personal identity. Consciousness 
 (in the sense in which he uses the word) is the proof of our own 
 identity to ourselves ; and it is through this principle, in our nature, 
 that we know that we continue one and the same being, and feel that 
 we are personally responsible for our past actions. Remembering or 
 associating the past with the present is one of the faculties of a rational 
 being. But the individual mind existed anterior to the manifestation 
 of this faculty ; otherwise there is no common connecting principle 
 among our thoughts, and no such thing as personal identity. In the 
 chapter on u our ideas of substances," he considers a " spiritual sub- 
 stance as the substratum of those simple ideas we have from without;" 
 and he justly discriminates between the soul itself and the manifesta- 
 tion of its powers. His distinction is well drawn; but it is, I think, 
 at variance with his discussion on personal identity. 
 
49 
 
 to discard these powers from his system, is to shut 
 his eyes to the loftiest qualities of the soul, and 
 is as unaccountable as it would be for a physio- 
 logist to overlook the very integuments of our animal 
 frame. 
 
 It is by the imagination, more perhaps than by 
 any other faculty of the soul, that man is raised 
 above the condition of a beasts Beasts have senses 
 in common with ourselves, and often in higher per- 
 fection : to a certain extent also they possess, I 
 think, the powers of abstraction, though this is 
 denied by Locke ; but of the imaginative powers 
 they offer perhaps no single trace. These high attri- 
 butes of the soul confer on it a creative energy — 
 aid it even in its generalizations from pure reason — 
 bring before it vivid images of the past and glowing 
 anticipations of the future — teach it to link together 
 material and immaterial things, and to mount up 
 from earth to heaven. All that is refined in civilized 
 life, all that is lofty in poetry or ennobling in art, 
 flows chiefly from this one fountain. 
 
 As a matter of fact men do possess imaginative 
 powers, and ever have delighted, and ever will delight 
 in their exercise : and to exclude them from a system 
 of pyschology is to mutilate, and not to analyse, the 
 faculties of the soul. They may have been abused ; 
 but what of that ? every faculty has been abused 
 and turned to evil. Shall we, then, not merely 
 overlook the powers of imagination ; but, with Locke, 
 regard men who appeal to them in their proofs and 
 mingle them in their exhortations, as no better than 
 downright cheats? If this be our conclusion, then 
 must the sublime morality of Job — the inspired 
 song of David — the rapturous anticipations of deli- 
 verance in the prophecies of Isaiah, stamped in the 
 
 S.T). I) 
 
50 
 
 loftiest forms of poetic imagery, and falling on the 
 ear as if proclaimed by an angel's voice from the 
 gates of heaven — and the fervent testimony of thou- 
 sands of holy men in every age declaring and en- 
 forcing the oracles of God — all and every one of 
 these heart-stirring appeals must fall under our cold 
 and senseless condemnation. 
 
 In denouncing the exercise of the imagination as 
 a fraud upon the reason, Locke would have done well 
 had he been considering mere demonstrative truth ; 
 but I find no such limitation to his censures. All 
 reason is not mathematical, nor is all truth demon- 
 strative : and one fault of the Essay of Locke is its 
 attempt to extend too far the boundaries of demon- 
 stration. It would indeed be as absurd to apply 
 imaginative language to the demonstrations of pure 
 reason, as to apply the language of demonstration to 
 the analysis of ideal beauty. Each faculty must 
 have its proper place ; but none can be lopped off 
 without marring the handiwork of God. 
 
 If it be demanded what is the office of the ima- 
 gination \ we may reply that its office consists in its 
 appropriate exercise conjointly with every other 
 faculty of the soul. In one respect, however, its use, 
 as well as its abuse, is so obvious as to deserve a 
 formal notice. Men decide not on reason only — 
 incline not naturally to the right side, like the scale 
 of a balance, by the mere weight of evidence. They 
 act in common cases through habit or affection ; 
 and in trying circumstances the determination of the 
 will is often more by feeling than by reason. Hence 
 the imaginative powers, in kindling up the active 
 feelings of the soul, have ever been mighty instru- 
 ments of persuasion, whether for good or for evil. 
 When Demosthenes, in pleading before the Athenian 
 
51 
 
 multitude, swore by his fellow-countrymen who had 
 perilled their lives in battle on the field of Marathon 
 — and when St Paul, speaking in the presence of 
 King Agrippa, held up his hand before the as- 
 sembled crowd and wished to God that every one 
 of them was not only almost but altogether as him- 
 self excepting his bonds — each spoke from the mo- 
 mentary fulness of his own feeling — each spoke to 
 the hearts and bosoms of those around him ; and 
 put forth a weapon of persuasion a thousand times 
 more sharp than ever issued from the cold armory of 
 reason. 
 
 Another great fault in the Essay of Locke (in- 
 volved, I think, in his very system, which looking only 
 to the functions of the soul forgets its innate capa- 
 cities), is its omission of the faculties of moral judg- 
 ment. That such faculties exist, is proved by the 
 sense of shame in a child, by the natural feelings of 
 manhood, by the language of every country, and the 
 code of every nation : and lastly, by the word of 
 God, which speaks of conscience not as a word of 
 convention — a mere creation of the social system ; 
 but as something implanted in our bosoms by the 
 hand of our Maker, to preside there and pass judg- 
 ment on our actions. We read of men convicted in 
 their own conscience — living in all good conscience — 
 we are told of the law written in the hearts {of the 
 Gentiles), and of their conscience also bearing witness — 
 we read of a conscience void of offence — of the answer 
 of a good conscience towards God — of holding faith 
 and a good conscience — and of a conscience seared with 
 a hot iron through long familiarity with sin. What 
 meaning have words like these, if we may at our own 
 will strip conscience of its sanction, and think of it 
 no longer as a heaven-born rule of action ? 
 
 d2 
 
52 
 
 The faculties of moral judgment, combined to a 
 certain degree with powers of choice and liberty of 
 action, not only distinguish us from the lower beings 
 of creation, but constitute the very essence of our 
 responsibility, both to God and man. Their omission, 
 then, is a great blemish in any system of psychology. 
 
 Let it not be said that our moral sentiments are 
 superinduced by seeing and tracing the consequences 
 of crime. The assertion is not true. The early 
 sense of shame comes before such trains of thought, 
 and is not, therefore, caused by them ; and millions, 
 in all ages of the world, have grown up as social 
 beings and moral agents, amenable to the laws of God 
 and man, who never traced or thought of tracing 
 the consequences of their actions, nor ever referred 
 them to any standard of utility. Nor let it be said 
 that the moral sense comes of mere teaching — that 
 right and wrong pass as mere words, first from the 
 lips of the mother to the child, and then from man 
 to man ; and that we grow up with moral judgments 
 gradually ingrafted in us from without, by the long- 
 heard lessons of praise and blame, by the experience 
 of fitness, or the sanction of the law. I repeat that 
 the statement is not true — that our moral percep- 
 tions shew themselves not in such order as this. 
 The question is one of feeling ; and the moral feelings 
 are often strongest in very early life, before moral 
 rules or legal sanctions have once been thought of. 
 Again; what are we to understand by teaching? 
 Teaching implies capacity : one can be of no use 
 without the other. A faculty of the soul may be 
 called forth, brought to light, and matured ; but can- 
 not be created, any more than we can create a new 
 particle of matter, or invent a new law of nature. 
 Philosophy is not grounded on external autho- 
 
53 
 
 rity, but in the observed nature of the things we 
 contemplate, whether they be material or imma- 
 terial. We may invent systems of legal ethics drawn 
 from the prudential maxims of society, or we may 
 act on a system of Christian ethics founded on the 
 positive declarations of the word of God : but with- 
 out an inherent moral capacity, without a moral 
 sense placed in the breast of man, by the same hand 
 that made him, the science of moral philosophy has 
 not, I think, the shadow of any foundation whereon 
 to rest. 
 
 Returning then to the point from which we 
 started ; if the mind be without innate knowledge, 
 is it also to be considered as without innate feelings 
 and capacities — a piece of blank paper, the mere 
 passive recipient of impressions from without ? The 
 whole history of man shows this hypothesis to be an 
 outrage on his moral nature. Naked he comes from 
 his mother's womb ; endowed with limbs and senses 
 indeed, well fitted to the material world, yet power- 
 less from want of use: and as for knowledge, his 
 soul is one unvaried blank ; yet has this blank been 
 already touched by a celestial hand, and when 
 plunged in the colours which surround it, it takes 
 not its tinge from accident but design, and comes 
 forth covered with a glorious pattern. 
 
 If the senses be the first link, connecting the 
 soul with the world without, it is equally certain that 
 they are no sooner excited, than the affections begin 
 to shew themselves : not long after, the moral and 
 imaginative powers appear to germinate — feebly and 
 interruptedly it may be, yet with vigour enough to 
 shew that they were rooted in the soul by the same 
 hand that formed it. The powers of pure reason 
 come later into exercise : and at length, by the joint 
 
54 
 
 action of all his powers, man becomes what he is — a 
 social, a moral and an intellectual being — fitted in 
 all his capacities for the material world without, and 
 for the social condition in which God has placed him. 
 Some of his faculties may be powerless because un- 
 tried — may have withered for want of nourishment ; 
 others by good training may have reached their full 
 maturity : but no training (however greatly it may 
 change an individual mind) can create a new faculty, 
 any more than it can give a new organ of sense. In 
 every branch of philosophy the limitations are alike ; 
 we may observe the phenomena and ascend to laws, 
 and, by another movement of the mind, ascend to 
 the notion of intelligent causation : but in coming 
 down from these laws to their practical application, 
 creative power is ever out of question with us, whether 
 we have to do with the material or immaterial world ; 
 and every change produced by philosophic skill is 
 still subordinate to all the phenomena from which we 
 first ascended. 
 
 To the supposition of an innate capacity of moral 
 judgment, some one may oppose the passions, the 
 vices, and the crimes of mankind ; and thence infer, 
 either that man is without moral capacity, or that 
 conscience is utterly devoid of sanction. We may, 
 however, reply, that under the blind impulse of pas- 
 sion men not only take that side which their con- 
 science warns them to be wrong, but also in a thou- 
 sand cases wilfully do that which reason tells them 
 to be against their highest interest : and if, after all 
 this, we do not deny the faculty of reason, neither 
 ought we to deny the reality of a moral sense. In a 
 diseased action of the bodily frame, the organs of 
 life may become the implements of death : but no 
 one, on that account, discards the inductions of phy- 
 
55 
 
 siology — denies that all parts of the frame are skil- 
 fully knit together — or ceases to believe that every 
 organ has its fitting use. So in the immaterial part 
 of man, sin, like a burning fever, may make havoc 
 among his highest faculties, and end in moral death : 
 but we have no right on that account to regard sin 
 as our proper condition, or to affirm that it is not 
 a moral pestilence destructive of the supreme law of 
 our moral nature. Neither have we any right to 
 say that it blots out the knowledge of good and evil, 
 and overturns the judicial throne of conscience. 
 Such a decision is at war with the recorded judg- 
 ments of mankind, and strikes at the foundation of 
 all human law. Sin may hold our souls in bondage; 
 but, so long as reason lasts, it destroys not our 
 responsibility ; nor is the continued perpetration of 
 crime ever tolerated as a plea in bar of a penal sen- 
 tence. 
 
 The objection just considered, does however prove 
 the feebleness of moral rule — shows that there is 
 something wrong within us, which jars with nature's 
 harmony — that there is in the moral government of 
 God much that is beyond the grasp of mere philoso- 
 phy ; and so teaches us to look beyond this world, 
 and in the consolations of religion and the hopes of 
 a future life to seek a better and a higher sanction ; 
 and in the motives of Christian love to find a steadier 
 and more abiding principle of holy action, than all 
 the philosophy upon earth ever has given or ever can 
 give to man in the hour of temptation *. 
 
 With all its faults, the " Essay on the Human 
 
 * On the subject here alluded to, I would earnestly recommend to 
 the reader's perusal an excellent sermon by Dr. Chalmers, entitled 
 " The Expulsive Power of a new Affection." Glasgow, 1823. 
 
56 
 
 Understanding" is a work of great power ; and were 
 any one to need a proof of this, he has only to con- 
 sider the impression it produced on the speculations 
 of a former age. Its greatest fault is the contracted 
 view it takes of the capacities of man — allowing him, 
 indeed, the faculty of reflecting and following out 
 trains of thought according to the rules of abstract 
 reasoning ; but depriving him both of his powers of 
 imagination and of his moral sense. Hence it pro- 
 duced, I think, a chilling effect on the philosophic 
 writings of the last century : and many a cold and 
 beggarly system of psychology was sent into the 
 world by authors of the school of Locke ; pretending, 
 at least, to start from his principles, and to build on 
 his foundation. It is to the entire domination his 
 " Essay" had once established in our University that 
 we may, perhaps, attribute all that is faulty in the 
 Moral Philosophy of Paley — the work on which I 
 now proceed to comment. 
 
 I would ever wish to speak with reverence of a 
 man whose name is an honour to our academic body, 
 and who did, I believe, during his time, much more 
 for the cause of revealed truth than any other writer 
 of his country. His homely strength and clearness 
 of style, and his unrivalled skill in stating and fol- 
 lowing out his argument, must ever make his writings 
 popular : and, speaking for myself, I cannot describe, 
 in terms too strong, the delight I once experienced 
 in studying his Moral Philosophy, where truth after 
 truth seemed to flash on the mind with all the force 
 of demonstration — on questions too which, in other 
 hands, seemed only involved in mystery and doubt. 
 On this account, if there be a defective principle in 
 his system, it ought the more boldly to be combated, 
 lest the influence of his name and the charm of his 
 
57 
 
 philosophic manner, lead us only the farther from 
 the truth. 
 
 He commences by denying the sanction and au- 
 thority of the moral sense; and brings the matter 
 to a point, by putting forth an instance, which, like 
 an experimentum cruris, is at once to be decisive 
 of the question. Having detailed a case of cold- 
 blooded parricide, he asks whether " a savage, cut 
 off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, 
 would, when told of this, feel any sentiment of dis- 
 approbation." We may reply, (as Paley seems to 
 do) that he certainly would not : for neither could 
 he possibly comprehend the meaning of the tale; 
 nor, if he did, could he find a word to express his 
 natural abhorrence of the crime. If this reply be 
 thought too technical, and only a shifting of the 
 difficulty, we may meet the case in a different way, 
 and combat one ideal instance by another. Suppose 
 a solitary being placed from childhood in the recesses 
 of a dungeon and shut out from the light of day, 
 then must he grow up without one idea from the 
 sense of sight. But should we thence conclude that 
 the sense was wanting? Let him be brought into 
 the light ; and by laws of vision, over which he has 
 no control, he will, like other beings, gain knowledge 
 from the sense of sight. Let the solitary savage, in 
 like manner, come from the recesses of the forest 
 into commerce with his fellow-beings ; and he will 
 also, by the law of his moral nature, as inevitably 
 gain a sense of right and wrong ; and he will then 
 pass a natural judgment on the crime of parricide, 
 like that of any other rational and responsible man. 
 No one now speaks of an innate knowledge of moral- 
 ity : an innate moral sense or faculty, defining and 
 determining the quality of our moral judgments, is all 
 
58 
 
 for which we contend ; and Paley's instance is quite 
 worthless for his argument. 
 
 Had he grounded his rejection of the moral sense 
 on the avowed depravity of our nature, and the im- 
 potency of moral rule in putting down the evil that 
 is at war with our better feelings, we should, with one 
 mind, have allowed the force of his objection ; and 
 some would, I doubt not, have accepted his conclu- 
 sion. In so doing they would however have done 
 wrong : for the rejection of the moral sense, on re- 
 ligious grounds, is one of the errors of fanaticism. 
 Amidst all the ruin that is within us, there are still 
 the elements of what is good ; and were there left 
 in the natural heart no kindly affections and moral 
 sentiments, man would be no longer responsible for 
 his sins ; and every instance of persuasion against 
 the impulse of bad passion, and of conversion from 
 evil unto good, would be nothing less than a moral 
 miracle. On such a view of human nature, the A- 
 postles of our religion might as well have wasted their 
 breath on the stones of the wilderness as on the 
 hearts of their fellow-men in the cities of the heathen. 
 
 Had Paley, rejecting the authority of the moral 
 sense on grounds like these, proceeded to build up a 
 system of Christian ethics, founded on the word of 
 God, enforced by its heavenly sanction, and recom- 
 mended through the affections to a practical accept- 
 ance as a rule of life, he might have conferred a great 
 benefit on the cause of morality and religion. He 
 might then have gone on to shew, that the code of 
 Christian morals contains a set of rules co-ordinate 
 with other rules which the wise and the good of all 
 ages have endeavoured to establish and enforce (with 
 a fainter light indeed, and under a more feeble sanc- 
 tion) as in accordance with the law of our nature, 
 
59 
 
 and therefore with the will of God : and afterwards 
 he might have proved, that the rules of action, de- 
 rived from these two sources, are not only in con- 
 formity with each other, but call our highest faculties 
 into activity, and return into our bosoms incomparably 
 the greatest sum of earthly happiness. Thus might 
 he have arrived at a perception of an attribute of 
 God, in the only way in which it is permitted us, by 
 the mere force of natural reason, to reach high points 
 of knowledge — by ascending from particular to general 
 truths, from phenomena to laws ; and thus might he 
 have concluded, that as in the material world we see 
 in all things the proofs of intelligence and power ; so 
 also, that in the immaterial world we find proofs, not 
 less strong, that man is under the moral government 
 of an all-powerful, benevolent, and holy God. Fol- 
 lowing this train of thought he might, lastly, have 
 enunciated a proposition (resembling in its words 
 what stands in the front of his moral system, but far 
 different in its meaning and incomparably more true), 
 that whatever is right is also expedient for man. 
 
 Whatever be the faults of Paley's system, as- 
 suredly they spring not from fanaticism. After reject- 
 ing the moral sense, but on no such grounds as have 
 been just imagined, he proceeds to prove (by reason- 
 ing I shall shortly examine) that actions are only to 
 be estimated by their general tendency — that utility 
 is the touchstone of right and wrong. Here we have 
 a rule, simple in its enunciation, and flattering to 
 human pride : for man no longer appears as the sub- 
 ject of a law, but presides with the authority of a 
 judge, and his rule of action is the leading interest 
 of himself and his fellow- men. 
 
 In the material world we have no control over 
 the laws of nature ; we gain physical knowledge only 
 
60 
 
 by studying them ; and new physical power only by 
 obeying them : and in questions of morality — of right 
 and wrong — we are equally the servants of a law, 
 either written in the heart or recorded in the word 
 of God. To hesitate is to rebel ; and to wait for 
 the calculations of utility, would be, too often, but to 
 seek a cloak of sophistry to cover our escape from a 
 positive duty. 
 
 Leaving, however, mere general objections, let 
 us come to the system itself, and to the rule of its 
 application. Paley first resolves all right into con- 
 sistency with the will of God : and here, at least, is 
 no matter for dispute ; for every moral system implies 
 some law or other, which can only emanate from 
 God, and to obey that law is plainly to obey his 
 will. But how are we to discover that will ? We 
 answer, by studying the moral nature' of man, and 
 his relation to the things around him — by ascend- 
 ing from moral phenomena to moral laws, which thus 
 become the manifestations of the will of God, and 
 may be embodied in the maxims of moral philosophy : 
 or, by humbly accepting the revelation of his will, 
 which is religious knowledge. But by whatever means 
 we try to discern the will of God — by whatever path 
 we endeavour to ascend towards his holy temple — 
 we see but in part and understand in part ; we grasp 
 not one of his attributes ; we comprehend not how 
 they co-exist within his bosom ; we remain but wor- 
 shippers at the gate ; the veil which conceals him 
 from us cannot be lifted up, nor could our eyes en- 
 dure the brightness of his glory. 
 
 But how little does Paley seem to think of this 
 when he reasons of his Maker as if he were a man, 
 and dares to bind up the great first cause in the links 
 of a single disjunctive proposition. God, as far as 
 
01 
 
 regards the interests of man, must be benevolent, 
 malignant, or indifferent. This is the fundamental 
 proposition of his moral system. But by what right 
 can man set limits to the moral condition of the Al- 
 mighty ? — the creator of a million worlds, each bound 
 to the others by never changing laws ; and perhaps 
 also of a million intellectual systems, each connected 
 with our own by mysterious relations, conceived in his 
 mind and preordained in his will, yet not revealed to 
 us. In vain we try to comprehend even a single at- 
 tribute of God ; we know him only as he has thought 
 good to reveal himself, by the law written in the 
 heart — by the laws of the material world — and by 
 the declarations of his word. He may, and does, 
 consult his glory in countless ways we know not of. 
 And is it not the height of arrogance in any creature 
 like ourselves, to limit, even in thought, the workings 
 of his power, and to confine the operation of his at- 
 tributes to such channels only as our language can 
 define and our souls can comprehend ? 
 
 In the history of moral reasoning, there is not 
 to be found a fundamental proposition more faulty in 
 its principles, or more dangerous in its application, 
 than the one just considered. Is it not notorious, 
 that scoffing men, reasoning on like grounds and with 
 like fallacy, have impugned the benevolence of God — 
 have profanely dared to entangle the great first cause 
 in a dilemma ; pretending to prove, from the misery 
 and desolation they saw around them, that he either 
 wanted goodness or wanted power? 
 
 If the fundamental reasoning in Paley's system 
 be unsound, its rule is unsuitable to our nature. If 
 expediency be the measure of right, and every one 
 claim the liberty of judgment, virtue and vice have 
 no longer any fixed relations to the moral condition 
 
62 
 
 of man, but change with the fluctuations of opinion. 
 Not only are his actions tainted by prejudice and 
 passion, but his rule of life, under this system, must 
 be tainted in like degree — must be brought down to 
 his own level : for he will no longer be able, com- 
 patibly with his principles, to separate the rule from 
 its application. No high and unvarying standard of 
 morality, which his heart approves, however infirm 
 his practice, will be offered to his thoughts. But his 
 bad passions will continue to do their work in bend- 
 ing him to the earth ; and, unless he be held upright 
 by the strong power of religion (an extrinsic power 
 which I am not now considering), he will inevitably 
 be carried down, by a degrading standard of action, 
 to a sordid and grovelling life. 
 
 It may perhaps be said, that we are arguing 
 against a rule, only from its misapprehension and 
 abuse. But we reply, that every precept is prac- 
 tically bad when its abuse is natural and inevitable — 
 that the system of utility brings down virtue from 
 a heavenly throne and places her on an earthly tri- 
 bunal, where her decisions, no longer supported by 
 any holy sanction, are distorted by judicial ignorance, 
 and tainted by base passion. Independently however 
 of the bad effects produced on the moral character 
 of man, by a system which makes expediency (in 
 whatever sense the word be used) the test of right 
 and wrong, we may affirm, on a more general view, 
 that the rule itself is utterly unfitted to his capacity. 
 Feeble as man may be, he forms a link in a chain of 
 moral causes, ascending to the throne of God ; and 
 trifling as his individual acts may seem, he tries, in 
 vain, to follow out their consequences as they go 
 down into the countless ages of coming time. Viewed 
 in this light, every act of man is woven into a moral 
 
63 
 
 system, ascending through the past — descending to 
 the future — and preconceived in the mind of the 
 Almighty. Nor does this notion, as regards our- 
 selves, end in mere quietism and necessity. For we 
 know right from wrong, and have that liberty of 
 action which implies responsibility : and, so far as 
 we are allowed to look into the ways of Providence, 
 it seems to be compatible with^his attributes to use 
 the voluntary acts of created beings, as second causes 
 in working out the ends of his own will. Leaving, 
 however, out of question that stumbling-block which 
 the prescience of God has often thrown in the way 
 of feeble and doubting minds, we are, at least, cer- 
 tain, that man has not foreknowledge to trace the 
 consequences of a single action of his own ; and, 
 hence, that utility (in the highest sense of which the 
 word is capable) is, as a test of right and wrong, 
 unfitted to his understanding, and therefore defective 
 or faulty in its application. 
 
 By what right, either in reason or revelation, do 
 we assert the simple and unconditional benevolence 
 of God ; and, on this assumption, go on to found a 
 moral system and a rule of life? If he be a God of 
 mercy, is he not also a God of justice? Sin and misery 
 are often among the means of bringing about the ends 
 of his providence ; and are so far consistent with his 
 government, that they are permitted to last their 
 time upon the earth. Nor is this all. The authority 
 of any law may be abrogated by the same power that 
 made it : and in the revealed history of the dealings 
 of God with man, acts, which under ordinary circum- 
 stances would be crimes of the darkest die, have more 
 than once been made tests of obedience or conditions 
 of acceptance. Contemplations such as these make 
 the unassisted reason shrink within itself through pure 
 
64 
 
 despair of comprehending the whole moral govern- 
 ment of the world. One thing, at least, they do 
 prove — how rash and vain a thing it is for a feeble 
 and narrow-sighted being like one of us, to construct 
 a moral code on his own interpretation of a single 
 attribute of the Godhead. 
 
 A religious man has a happy escape out of all the 
 difficulties of these dark questions. He feels within 
 himself the liberty of choice ; his conscience tells him 
 he is responsible for his actions ; the word of God 
 points out a remedy for the evils which encompass 
 him: he applies the remedy to himself in humble 
 thankfulness, for it meets his wants and is fitted to 
 his capacity; and, in the terms of his acceptance 
 into the Christian covenant, he finds no condition 
 annexed but the love of God and man. 
 
 It may perhaps be said, that the moral system 
 of Paley is compatible with the most exalted mo- 
 tives, inasmuch as it takes in the whole Christian 
 sanction of a future state ; and no man, under any 
 reasonable view of morality and religion, can be call- 
 ed on to act in opposition to his eternal interests. 
 Part of this observation may be just ; but it gives 
 no colour of truth to the moral system here consi- 
 dered, unless it can be also shewn, that our future 
 condition, as revealed to us in the religion of Christ, 
 depends on our following a rule of life, measured by 
 the standard of utility. But is this true ? I believe 
 the contrary ; and that the holiness, without which no 
 man shall see the Lord, is as different from a temper 
 governed (no matter how consistently) by any worldly 
 rule whatever, as light from darkness. 
 
 Christanity considers every act grounded on mere 
 worldly consequences as built on a false foundation. 
 The mainspring of every virtue is placed by it in 
 
65 
 
 the affections, called into renewed strength by a feel- 
 ing of self-abasement — by gratitude for an immortal 
 benefit — by communion with God — and by the hopes 
 of everlasting life. Humility is the foundation of 
 the Christian's honour — distrust of self is the ground 
 of his strength — and his religion tells him that every 
 work of man is counted worthless in the sight of 
 heaven, as the means of his pardon or the price of 
 his redemption. Yet it gives him a pure and perfect 
 rule of life ; and does not, for an instant, exempt 
 him from the duty of obedience to his rule : for it 
 ever aims at a purgation of the moral faculties, and a 
 renewal of the defaced image of God ; and its moral 
 precepts have an everlasting sanction. And thus does 
 Christian love of God and man become an efficient 
 and abiding principle — not tested by the world, but 
 above the world ; yet reaching the life-spring of every 
 virtuous deed, and producing in its season a harvest 
 of good and noble works incomparably more abun- 
 dant than have ever risen from any other soil. 
 
 The utilitarian scheme starts, on the contrary, 
 with an abrogation of the authority of conscience — 
 a rejection of the moral feelings as the test of right 
 and wrong. From first to last, it is in bondage 
 to the world, measuring every act by a worldly 
 standard, and estimating its value by worldly con- 
 sequences. Virtue becomes a question of calculation 
 — a matter of profit or loss ; and if man gain heaven 
 at all on such a system, it must be by arithmetical 
 details — the computation of his daily work — the 
 balance of his moral ledger. A conclusion such as 
 this offends against the spirit breathing in every page 
 of the book of life ; yet is it fairly drawn from the 
 principles of utility. It appears indeed not only 
 to have been foreseen by Paley, but to have been 
 s.d. E 
 
60 
 
 accepted by him— a striking instance of the tenacity 
 with which man ever clings to system, and is ready 
 to embrace even its monstrous consequences rather 
 than believe that he has himself been building on a 
 wrong foundation*. 
 
 Utilitarian philosophy and Christian ethics have 
 in their principles and motives no common bond of 
 union, and ought never to have been linked together 
 in one system : for, palliate and disguise the differ- 
 ence as we may, we shall find at last that they rest 
 on separate foundations ; one deriving all its strength 
 from the moral feelings, and the other from the 
 selfish passions of our nature. Religion renounces 
 this unholy union ; and the system of utility standing 
 by itself, and without the shelter of a heavenly gar- 
 ment not its own, is seen in its true colours, and in 
 all the nakedness of its deformity. 
 
 It has indeed been said that all men are govern- 
 ed by selfish motives, and that a Christian differs 
 from a worldly man only in acting on a better calcu- 
 lated selfish rule. I hope that no one whom I am 
 now addressing has been for a moment imposed upon 
 by such flimsy sophistry. The motives on which 
 man acts are not less varied than the faculties of 
 his soul ; and to designate them by one base name 
 (even if done honestly) would only prove an utter 
 
 * The following are the passages here referred to : 
 
 M The Christian religion hath not ascertained the precise quantity 
 of virtue necessary to salvation." 
 
 " It has been said, that it can never be a just economy of Provi- 
 dence to admit one part of mankind into heaven, and condemn the 
 other to hell ; since there must be very little to choose between the 
 worst man who is received into heaven, and the best who is excluded. 
 And how know we, it might be answered, but that there may be as 
 little to choose in their conditions ?" Moral Philosophy, Book i. ch. 7- 
 
 In the latter years of his life Paley would, I believe, have been 
 incapable of uttering or conceiving sentiments such as these. 
 
67 
 
 contusion of thought or a helpless poverty of lan- 
 guage. 
 
 If we adopt, as some have done, the notion of 
 absolute moral necessity, we destroy the very foun- 
 dation of morality : for every moral system, in imply- 
 ing responsibility, implies also, at least to a certain 
 degree, the liberty of choice between right and wrong. 
 By the long-continued commission of sin, a man may, 
 however, forfeit the power of self-control — may lose 
 the highest prerogative of his nature, the liberty of 
 soul and body. In such a condition he is said, in 
 the emphatic language of Scripture, to be given up to 
 a reprobate mind — to be in the bonds of iniquity. 
 But no one comes from his Maker's hands in this 
 condition — he gradually sinks into it by a series of 
 voluntary acts for which he has himself to blame, 
 and of which he bears within his bosom the accu- 
 mulated evil. 
 
 The determination of the human will has ever 
 been considered a dark and difficult subject of in- 
 quiry. One cause of this may be, that it takes 
 place more by passion and affection than by reason ; 
 and we should be almost justified in affirming, that 
 the will is never determined by reason only, unless 
 some affection be superadded*. But this destroys 
 
 * Locke affirms (Essay on the Human Understanding, Book n. 
 chap. 21,) that " the motive for continuing in the same state of action, 
 is only the present satisfaction in it : the motive to change, is always 
 some uneasiness :" and consistently with this opinion he goes on to 
 state, " that the most pressing uneasiness naturally determines the 
 will, when man is distracted with different desires." Here is a fal- 
 lacy of like kind with that which has led men to resolve all motives 
 into selfishness. Uneasiness, mental or bodily, is a powerful motive 
 in determining the will, but it is not the only motive. The passion of 
 maternal love which urges a mother to caress and protect her child, is 
 surely a feeling very different from the pain which induces a child to 
 withdraw its finger from the flame of a candle. To describe the two 
 feelings by the same term uneasiness , tends only to confusion both of 
 
 E 2 thought 
 
68 
 
 not the sanctity of moral rule ; for we are clearly 
 as responsible for the exercise of our passions and 
 affections as for the other faculties of our nature. 
 Whatever may be the clouds first raised by the sub- 
 til ty of man, and still hanging over certain moral 
 questions, practically we feel that we are free; and 
 
 thought and word. If the doctrine of Locke be true, a man is in a 
 state of absolute moral necessity — a conclusion, I think, directly con- 
 trary to reason and to our own experience.— Again ; the doctrine, even 
 in extreme cases, is not true. A man of courage will sometimes en- 
 dure the protracted torture of a surgical operation without flinching. 
 But no one will, surely, say, that the remembrance of past suffering, or 
 the hope of future good, is at the moment a more intense uneasiness 
 than the pain inflicted by the surgeon's knife. In such a case the 
 will is determined by the hope of future good, and directly against the 
 impulse of present uneasiness. 
 
 Locke saw clearly that the will is not generally determined by 
 reason pointing out to us the greatest positive good : and he was 
 thence led to the theory above stated ; which, however inadequate to 
 explain all the active principles of our nature, has in it much truth ; 
 and ought to have modified several of the opinions advanced in the 
 latter part of his work. (Book iv. chap. 17, 18, 19.) Describing the 
 different grounds of assent, he well distinguishes reason and faith from 
 each other. M Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father 
 of light communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has 
 laid within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural 
 reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God im- 
 mediately ; which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and 
 proofs it give that they come from God." Faith, according to the 
 same author, is the assent to any proposition, coming directly from 
 God in the way of revelation. But he forgets that religion is a rule of 
 life, and that faith is worthless unless it influence the will : yet, on his 
 own system, the will is never determined by a mere perception of the 
 greatest positive good. In short, whatever practical view we take of 
 human nature, faith, in the sense in which the word is used by Locke, 
 is of no value unless there be added to it some of that very element of 
 assent which he condemns under the name of enthusiasm. Without 
 the co-operation of the affections, the influence of Christian rule 
 would soon be extinguished within the bosom — would go out like tire 
 in a damp vault for want of the vital air of heaven to keep it burning. 
 I have thought it right to point out this inconsistency, because it 
 involves consequences of great importance: and the chapters last re- 
 ferred to are written with an energy and spirit most captivating to the 
 judgment of young minds. 
 
69 
 
 the judgment of conscience declaring to us that we 
 are responsible for our deeds, is recorded in the lan- 
 guage and institutions of every civilized nation in 
 the history of the world. If this does not satisfy the 
 metaphysician, it is at least enough for the Christian 
 moralist, whose rule of life is simple, and whose light 
 is clear. 
 
 Leaving, however, all dark questions connected 
 with the determination of the human will, let us for 
 a moment consider men as they are, and the obvious 
 motives of their actions. However they may differ 
 in the natural strength or cultivation of their indi- 
 vidual powers, there are the same essential elements 
 in all ; and morally speaking, one man seems to be 
 distinguished from another only by the direction and 
 expansion given to his innate faculties, and the go- 
 verning power he has gained over them. We see 
 one obeying the movements of brute passion — ha- 
 bitually disregarding others, and seeking only his 
 own sensual gratification. In calling such a one self- 
 ish we use a term of unqualified reproach ; and he 
 stands convicted, not merely by our own moral 
 judgment, but by the recorded sentence of every age 
 and country. Another may be selfish in a different 
 way. He may seek some end his natural feelings and 
 his reason pronounce to be good ; but he seeks that 
 end immoderately, and without reference to the well- 
 being of his fellow-men. Such a man is called selfish, 
 when we estimate his life by that perfect rule which 
 tells him to love his neighbour as himself; or even 
 when we try his motives by the humble standard 
 exhibited in the conduct of the world ; and in the 
 latter case, though the word selfish be used only in a 
 relative sense, it is still adopted by us as a term of 
 reproach. 
 
70 
 
 But if selfish passions have exercised a predomi- 
 nating influence over the conduct of mankind, there 
 are other motives in our moral nature, leading to 
 acts of self-denial, and to ends connected only with 
 the good of others. Benevolent affection — a desire 
 for the well-being of others — is a natural feeling of the 
 soul, and even the basest of mankind will sometimes 
 manifest its partial influence. It comes not solely by 
 teaching, for it is perhaps first seen as a mere ani- 
 mal instinct : neither is it the fruit of reason or cal- 
 culation ; for however choked it may be, in common 
 cases, by our baser passions, and kept down by 
 motives returning only into self, it sometimes be- 
 comes a strong predominating feeling, leading us into 
 acts contrary both to reason and our worldly interest. 
 Can we then, without a gross abuse of words, con- 
 found acts originating in benevolent affections, with 
 those that spring from brute passion or the lust of 
 worldly gain? Cruelty and pity, selfishness and 
 generosity, are words in the vocabulary of every 
 tongue ; and are placed there only because they are 
 wanted in the interchange of thought, and in the 
 description of what is ever before us in our commerce 
 with mankind. 
 
 All the phenomena of the material world ori- 
 ginate in laws of nature, acting either singly or in 
 combination : but to designate all these laws by one 
 name, so far from contributing to philosophic clear- 
 ness, would prove in us an utter confusion of thought, 
 and an incapacity for understanding the use of gene- 
 ral terms. — So also in the immaterial world, the 
 determination of the will takes place in accordance 
 with the laws of man's moral and intellectual nature, 
 and his actions correspond with the passions and 
 affections working within his bosom. But if the 
 
71 
 
 actions of man exhibit all the shades of character 
 recorded in written language — then also must the 
 passions and affections be as varied ; and to designate 
 them all by one name (hitherto defining only what 
 is base and sordid), would, I think, argiie a distorted 
 view of human nature, arising out of moral obliquity 
 
 or judicial blindness A utilitarian philosopher acts 
 
 wisely, indeed, in hiding the deformity of his moral 
 code by confounding the distinctions between right 
 and wrong : and should his system ever triumph 
 in society, it can only be by defacing the beauty of 
 language, as well as by destroying the moral dignity 
 of man. 
 
 How a Christian can resolve all actions into the 
 effects of mere selfish passion, is more than I can 
 comprehend. The Head of our Church, while he had 
 the form of man, shewed not in one act the element 
 of selfish feeling. The love of man was the principle 
 of his life — the beginning and the end of his minis- 
 tration. Are we not told to walk even as our Saviour 
 walked — to make his example our rule of life ? And 
 is it not true, that the Apostles of our religion, 
 warmed by the spirit of their Master, went about 
 doing good — spent their lives in works of self-denial, 
 recommending themselves as ministers of Christ, by 
 pureness, by knowledge, by long -suffering, by kindness, 
 by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of 
 truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteous- 
 ness on the right hand and on the left * f To call such 
 men selfish, is to desecrate our language, to blind 
 our moral sense, and to insult all the better feelings 
 of our nature. A man may be saved from the com- 
 mission of crime through fear — he may do his duty 
 
 * 2 Cor. vi. 6, 7- 
 
72 
 
 through the hope of reward — but, as the will is 
 ruled mainly by the affections, he cannot go on con- 
 sistently in the right way unless they be enlisted 
 on the side of his duty : and until he reaches that 
 condition, he is not for one moment in a state of 
 safety, nor do his principles resemble, even in degree, 
 those exhibited by the high examples of Christian love. 
 Coming down, however, to men as seen in com- 
 mon life, we find that selfish passion too often tri- 
 umphs over all their better feelings, and desolates 
 the moral aspect of the world. There is no fear 
 that they will ever be too kind or generous : now, 
 at least, all fear is from another quarter. Still it is 
 not true that they act exclusively on a selfish rule. 
 They cannot destroy all those kindly elements of 
 their nature which lead them to mingle their own 
 happiness with that of others. In ordinary cases 
 they act on mixed motives ; and their practical stand- 
 ard of right and wrong is the opinion of their fellow- 
 men. No wonder that worldly minds should take 
 their rule of life from the world's opinion. And 
 how operative this rule is upon the human heart, may 
 be seen in the patient endurance of the captive 
 savage on the bed of torture — in the courageous 
 acts of which even vulgar minds are capable when 
 hurried on by the applauding sympathy of those 
 around them — in the fantastic but highminded chi- 
 valry of the middle ages — in the heroic deeds of 
 self-devotion adorning the history of Greece and 
 Rome. Sentiments of honour, founded on opinion, 
 have ever been among the living springs of national 
 glory — and should any one doubt their power in 
 our days, he has only to reflect, how often the love 
 of life, the suggestions of conscience, and the hopes 
 
73 
 
 of the favour of God, have all been swept away be- 
 fore them. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood; I am not com- 
 mending the law of honour as the rule of a Chris- 
 tian's life, I am only speaking of its power : and while 
 its power exists in society, it is of the utmost conse- 
 quence that its rule be as elevated as is compatible 
 with its worldly nature. Whatever exalts the na- 
 tional sentiments, and extends the dominion of con- 
 science by working on the better feelings, must prac- 
 tically influence the moral judgments of mankind, 
 and tend to purify the law of opinion. The indirect 
 influence of the religion of Christ has been in this 
 respect of inestimable value. It has banished slavery 
 from our houses, thrown a charm over the relations 
 of social life, taught us to abhor, and hardly to name, 
 crimes against society once perpetrated in the light 
 of day, and thrown a thousand links about the bad 
 passions of men, who neither feel its sanction, nor 
 for one moment think of it as a law proclaimed for 
 their acceptance by the mouth of the Almighty. 
 And thus it is that the law of honour, however false 
 and imperfect as a rule of life, has been exalted and 
 purified by the law of God. 
 
 If the poet's song inflamed, and the funeral ora- 
 tion sanctified, the heroic courage of the citizens of 
 Greece and Rome, they were taught also to believe 
 in the supremacy of conscience, and to regard vice 
 as a violation of the law of their moral nature. A 
 lofty standard of right and wrong was ever set up 
 before them ; and, however corrupt their practice, 
 virtue was honoured at least in word, and was never 
 permitted to pass before their view without its fitting 
 eulogy. 
 
 The law of God is indeed written in the heart in 
 
74 
 
 characters too plain to be easily misunderstood ; and 
 hence, unless when fettered by system or blinded 
 by passion, men have seldom wandered far from the 
 truth in their speculative judgments between right 
 and wrong — Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
 things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
 things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
 things are of good report ; if there he any virtue, and 
 if there be any praise, think on these things *. This is 
 the language of St. Paul — a man quite as deeply 
 impressed with a conviction of the depravity of our 
 nature as the other Apostles ; and in fervent zeal 
 and knowledge of mankind superior to them all. 
 Yet does he never shut out the better feelings of 
 the heart — strip us of our power of natural judge- 
 ment between right and wrong — or put aside the 
 authority of conscience. Still less, in speaking of 
 things honest and just and pure and lovely and of 
 good report, did he for a moment fix their price by 
 a standard of utility, or estimate their worth by any 
 reference to mere worldly good. 
 
 Utilitarian philosophy, in destroying the domi- 
 nion of the moral feelings, offends at once both 
 against the law of honour and the law of God. It 
 rises not for an instant above the world ; allows not 
 the expansion of a single lofty sentiment ; and its 
 natural tendency is to harden the hearts and de- 
 base the moral practice of mankind. If we suppress 
 the authority of conscience, reject the moral feelings, 
 rid ourselves of the sentiments of honour, and sink 
 (as men too often do) below the influence of religion : 
 and if at the same time, we are taught to think that 
 utility is the universal test of right and wrong ; what 
 is there left within us as an antagonist power to the 
 
 * Philip, iv. 8. 
 
75 
 
 craving of passion, or the base appetite of worldly 
 grain ? In such a condition of the soul all motive 
 not terminating in mere passion becomes utterly de- 
 void of meaning. On this system, the sinner is no 
 longer abhorred as a rebel against his better nature — 
 as one who profanely mutilates the image of God: 
 he acts only on the principles of other men, but he 
 blunders in calculating the chances of his personal 
 advantage : and thus we deprive virtue of its holi- 
 ness, and vice of its deformity ; humanity of its 
 honour, and language of its meaning ; we shut out, 
 as no better than madness or folly, the loftiest sen- 
 timents of the heathen as well as of the Christian 
 world ; and all that is great or generous in our na- 
 ture droops under the influence of a cold and wither- 
 ing selfishness. 
 
 Were it true, that as we grow up to the stature 
 of manhood we cast behind us our passions and 
 affections — that the judgment determining between 
 right and wrong, and the will carrying us into ac- 
 tion, are but the measured consequences of abstract 
 reason pointing to us the greatest good ; then might 
 the system of utility have some claim to our accept- 
 ance. But this is not our moral nature. Our will 
 is swayed by passion and affection : and if we sup- 
 press all the kindly emotions which minister to vir- 
 tue, do we thereby root up the bad passions that 
 hurry us into crime? Incontestably not. On the 
 contrary, we destroy the whole equilibrium of our 
 moral nature, giving to the baser elements a new 
 and overwhelming energy — we sow the icind and reap 
 the whirlwind — we unchain the powers of darkness 
 which, in sweeping over the land, will tear up all 
 that is great and good and lovely within it, will 
 upset its monuments of piety, and shatter its social 
 
76 
 
 fabric into ruins ; and should this hurricane be fol- 
 lowed by a calm, it will be the calm of universal 
 desolation. These are no ideal evils. The his- 
 tory of man is too often but a sanguinary tale of 
 the devastations produced by the licence of bad 
 passion. 
 
 It is notorious that no man acts up to the pure 
 rule of his religion — that many are indifferent to 
 it, or openly deny its sanction. In examining the 
 effects of the utilitarian philosophy, we have no right 
 to bind up its maxims with the book of life, thereby 
 producing an incongruous system, offensive alike to 
 sound philosophy and true religion — we must try it 
 among men acting on worldly principles, and know- 
 ing no higher sanction than the current sentiments 
 of honour : and, not appealing to extreme instances, 
 but taking men as they are, it may, I think, be 
 confidently stated, that the general acceptance of 
 Paley's moral rule in any Christian society, would 
 inevitably debase the standard of right and wrong. 
 It strikes indeed at the very root of the higher 
 virtues which in the past history of mankind have 
 ever been held up to honour, as the strong bonds of 
 social happiness, and the foundation of national great- 
 ness. And while human nature is what it is, every 
 system that is sterile in great virtues will be fruitful 
 in great crimes. On this truth history is but a con- 
 tinued comment. 
 
 If we accept a system of philosophy which looks 
 on actions only as the means to obtain a worldly 
 end, have we not cause to fear that the end will be 
 made to sanctify the means ; and that sensual sin, 
 in its most hideous form, will be endured, or perhaps 
 impudently recommended, as a counterpoise to the 
 ewils that are wound about our nature, and enter into 
 
77 
 
 the very elements of a condition of probation ? Have 
 we not cause to fear that private virtue will, before 
 long, be set at nought, or sink under the domination 
 of universal selfishness — and that, in the prevailing 
 disbelief in individual honour, public men will become 
 the mere implements for carrying into effect the 
 basest aims of faction? In such a degraded state 
 of public opinion, bad, unscrupulous, and boasting 
 men may be elevated to places of high authority ; 
 and in their hands the fountains of law and justice 
 may become polluted — the sacred cause of liberty 
 bartered or betrayed — and the national faith sacri- 
 ficed to vanity, to personal interest, and to party 
 violence. When once sunk to this condition, a na- 
 tion has parted with the materials both of its strength 
 and glory — the very elements of its cohesion are 
 passing away: and should there not be found ten 
 just men within it to turn away the avenging wrath 
 of heaven, before long its high places will be laid low, 
 and its pleasant land will he laid desolate. 
 
 The moral system of utility resolves virtue into 
 a single principle, from which our social duties are 
 all to be evolved as a rational consequence. This 
 simplicity (constituting in truth the greatest fault 
 of the system) gave it a ready acceptance in so- 
 ciety : for however impatient man generally is in 
 tracing the unascertained connexion of phenomena, 
 he is never wearied with following out the conse- 
 quences of an hypothesis. In the latter case his 
 natural pride is flattered — he stands forth not as a 
 humble seeker after truth, but as a dispenser of 
 the laws of nature — and he looks on every conclu- 
 sion he deduces from his principles, as his own intel- 
 lectual progeny, to be supported by him at whatever 
 cost. 
 
78 
 
 If a rash spirit of generalization have often re- 
 tarded the advance of physical science, its conse- 
 quences are incomparably more baneful in moral 
 reasoning. A false theory in physics affects only our 
 views respecting the connected properties of dead 
 matter ; and may be set right, sometimes by a single 
 experiment. But moral theories have no simple 
 experimenta cruris whereby their truth or falsehood 
 may be tested ; and in their application they may 
 effect the social dignity and the happiness of millions, 
 each gifted with an immortal nature. I am not 
 fighting with ideal evils. Who has not witnessed 
 the effects of false principles carried into the social 
 system? In severe science a reductio ad absurdum 
 drives us at once from a false position. But in 
 moral and political reasoning, a man must be a piti- 
 ful advocate whose breast is not hardened against 
 such a weapon, and who, in defending his theory, is 
 not ready to bear up against its most preposterous 
 consequences. 
 
 False opinions on moral questions are then not 
 mere idle aberrations of the mind : for they produce 
 a direct, and sometimes an overwhelming, influence 
 on the practical judgments of mankind — on all the 
 maxims of society by which men are generally go- 
 verned. Not, however, to dwell on the strange 
 errors in modern moral speculations, we may, I think, 
 conclude that utilitarian philosophy, wherever it is 
 received and acknowledged, will teach man to think 
 lightly of the fences the God of nature has thrown 
 around him, and so prepare him for violent and ill- 
 timed inroads on the social system, and for the per- 
 petration of daring crimes. 
 
 To return once more to the questions with which 
 I started ; I think that to reject the moral sense is 
 
79 
 
 to destroy the foundation of all moral philosophy — 
 that the rule of expediency, as stated by Paley, is 
 based in false reasoning on the attributes of God — 
 that the rule itself is ill-suited to the capacity of 
 man — that it is opposed to the true spirit of the 
 Christian religion — and that, however honestly it 
 may be accepted, it tends inevitably to lower the 
 standard of what is right and good. Lastly, we 
 may, I think, assert, both on reason and experience, 
 that wherever the utilitarian system (avowedly based 
 on a rejection of the moral feelings, and an abroga- 
 tion of the law of conscience) is generally accepted, 
 made the subject of a priori reasoning, and carried, 
 through the influence of popular writings, into prac- 
 tical effect ; it will be found to end in results most 
 pestilent to the honour and happiness of man *. 
 
 Having examined at so much length the doc- 
 trine of expediency, considered as the foundation 
 of moral right, I shall not dwell long on its appli- 
 cation to questions of political philosophy, especially 
 as these subjects form so small a part of our system 
 of academic instruction. I may however remark, 
 that as every state is but an assemblage of indi- 
 viduals, each of whom is responsible to moral law, 
 the state itself cannot be exempt from obedience 
 to the same law : and hence if expediency be not 
 (as I have endeavoured to shew) the general test of 
 right in abstract questions of morals, neither can it 
 be the general test of right in questions of political 
 philosophy. 
 
 " Right is consistency with the will of God :" and 
 strange must be our notions of the attributes of the 
 Godhead if we can suppose individual and national 
 
 * See Appendix, Note (H). 
 
80 
 
 right to be essentially different from each other. 
 We believe that a nation's honour is a nation's 
 strength ; that its true greatness consists in the vir- 
 tue of its citizens ; and that the decay of principle 
 and the frequency of crime are the sure preludes of 
 its downfall. Truths like these are attested by 
 every chapter in the written history of our race : 
 and what do they prove, except that God is a moral 
 governor of the world ; and therefore, that in the 
 end high principle and sound policy will be found in 
 the strictest harmony with each other? If in the 
 probationary condition of the world, nations, as well 
 as individuals, be sometimes involved in calamities 
 they seem not to deserve, we have no right on that 
 account to argue from an exception to a rule, or to 
 deny a general truth, attested at once by the voice 
 of history and the repeated declarations of the word 
 of God. 
 
 But if principle and policy be thus in general 
 accordance, may we not admit expediency as the 
 basis of political right ? I reply, incontestably not. 
 All the objections urged against the utilitarian prin- 
 ciples of moral philosophy apply with threefold force 
 in questions of national policy : and for this reason 
 among many others, that men, acting for the state 
 with a divided responsibility, have generally a less 
 elevated standard of right than when acting for them- 
 selves. Were utilitarian philosophy ever practically 
 recognized among the leading nations of Europe, 
 bodies of men, already base and sordid, would become 
 more base and more sordid, under the shelter of 
 pretended principle ; and national faith and honour 
 would soon be banished from the world in the public 
 contests of unblushing selfishness. 
 
 I have before remarked that, as a matter of his- 
 
81 
 
 torical experience, religion is essential to the social 
 happiness of man, and consequently to the well- 
 being of every nation. The Christian religion is 
 however of national importance not merely because 
 it is expedient, but because it is true ; and because 
 its truths are of an overwhelming interest to every 
 individual member of the state. It is not my pre- 
 sent object to speak either of the proofs or the doc- 
 trines of our religion; but I may point out, by the way, 
 its humanizing influence on the whole complexion of 
 society. The life and happiness of a fellow-being is, in 
 a Christian's eye, of a thousandfold more consequence 
 than in the cold speculations of infidel philosophy. 
 
 If there be a superintending Providence, and if 
 his will be manifested by general laws operating both 
 on the physical and moral world, then must a viola- 
 tion of those laws be a violation of his will, and be 
 pregnant with inevitable misery : and if it be for- 
 bidden to man to " do evil that good may come ;" 
 for like reason it is forbidden to a nation to seek 
 any end, however great and important it may seem, 
 by evil means. Prudence is however a virtue in pri- 
 vate life; and a wise regard to utility is indisputably 
 the duty of a state. Truths like these are denied 
 by no one : all we contend for is — that the maxims 
 of utility must ever be held subordinate to the rules 
 of morality and the precepts of religion. And to 
 what does this conclusion lead us ? Only to refer all 
 right to the supreme authority — to look to the will 
 of our lawgiver as our ultimate rule — and to believe 
 that nothing can, in the end, be expedient for man, 
 except it be subordinate to those laws the author of 
 nature has thought fit to impress on his moral and 
 physical creation. 
 
 If in moral reasoning it be mere mockery to 
 s.d. F 
 
82 
 
 use the language of demonstration, and to build up 
 systems by trains of a priori reasoning upon a single 
 principle ; it is assuredly not less absurd to affect 
 the forms of inductive proof in political speculation. 
 Every political, as well as every moral principle, prac- 
 tically involves the determination of the will, and 
 thereby becomes at once separated from that class of 
 investigations in which we consider the immutable 
 relations of physical phenomena. That the will is in- 
 fluenced by motives, no one pretends to deny — on that 
 subject enough has been said before : but to compare 
 that influence to a physical cause, followed by an un- 
 varied physical effect, is only to confound things essen- 
 tially different, and must ever end in metaphysical 
 paradox or practical folly. 
 
 Again, discussions on the principles of govern- 
 ment are not merely removed from the province of 
 demonstration, but are encumbered with difficulties, 
 peculiarly their own, arising out of the blindness of 
 party spirit or the violence of bad passion. We may 
 argue on the powerful influence of the social affec- 
 tions — we may assume, as a general truth, that man 
 is sufficiently watchful of his worldly interests — we 
 may deduce conclusions from our principles, not as 
 mere abstractions (in which case they would be little 
 worth), but as results founded in long experience and 
 fortified by numerical details : yet with all this, which 
 may be called an extreme case of moral certainty, 
 do we find men ready to accept our conclusions ? 
 Do we not find, on the contrary, that their eyes are 
 shut to every gleam of light not reflected from their 
 own preconceived opinions — that the small voice of 
 truth cannot be heard amidst the brawlings of fac- 
 tion — and that reason is compelled to hide her head 
 among the contentions of vulgar passion ? 
 
83 
 
 Nor have we yet done with difficulties in the 
 application of abstract political principles. Men are 
 commonly ruled by habit and affection. The love of 
 our friends and of our native land — the love of the 
 institutions under which we have been trained, and 
 which, in common cases, give to the mind its whole 
 stamp and character — a feeling of participation in 
 our country's glory — a veneration for forms of govern- 
 ment that are blended with historical recollections: — 
 sentiments such as these are honourable and natural 
 to man ; and without them, no one, considered as a 
 member of the state, could be a good citizen ; nor, 
 as an individual, could he possess either social hap- 
 piness or moral elevation. Without these feelings, 
 laws would be no more binding than a rope of sand, 
 and the complex and artificial fabric of society would 
 lose its best principles of cohesion, and soon crumble 
 into its first elements. 
 
 It is not true that national habits and sentiments 
 are merely the fruit of reason, or that they become 
 confirmed only through an experience of utility. We 
 might, perhaps, assert. that they are most inveterate 
 when they are least reducible to any rules of abstract 
 reason. Is it not true, that in the Eastern world 
 many centuries and dynasties have passed away, 
 while social institutions, and habits of thought, to 
 European eyes the most strange and fantastical, have 
 continued to flourish in full ascendency, as if exempt 
 from that power of time which changes all things 
 else? In the great Christian families of Europe, 
 similar institutions, and a common religion, have put 
 men more nearly on the same level, and hindered the 
 growth of strongly contrasted national sentiments. 
 Still, whatever be his external condition, there will 
 remain the same original principles in the inner man ; 
 
 f2 
 
84 
 
 and we know, not merely from the evidence of times 
 past, but from the experience of our own days, that 
 civil institutions are not commutable — that a form 
 of government, securing peace and happiness in one 
 country, may be followed by anarchy and misery in 
 another — and that sudden changes in any part of 
 the social system, whatever may be their ultimate ad- 
 vantage, are always accompanied by enormous evils. 
 The axe of the despot, or the sword of the conqueror, 
 may have sometimes succeeded in lopping off all na- 
 tional sentiments and cutting men down to a common 
 type and pattern. But such a change implies the 
 destruction of every germ of freedom and national 
 honour : it can only be introduced under the dread- 
 ful symbols of servitude, and is the sure prelude of 
 misery and moral degradation. 
 
 To what then are we led by considerations such 
 as these? To the belief, that all systems of political 
 philosophy based on the doctrines of utility, and 
 deduced by a priori reasoning from assumed simple 
 principles (without comprehending all the great ele- 
 ments of man's moral nature, and without, perhaps, 
 even regarding his social condition), are either mis- 
 chievous or impracticable. Universal systems, like 
 universal nostrums, savour more of political quackery 
 than political philosophy. They are nearly akin to 
 that system of morals which resolves virtue into general 
 benevolence, while it sets at nought the domestic 
 and social affections : and should they hereafter be 
 found applicable to the government of any portion 
 of mankind, it can only be where men have parted 
 with those sentiments and feelings which have hitherto 
 supplied the firmest cement of social happiness and 
 national strength. 
 
 In mechanical philosophy we may make what 
 
85 
 
 hypotheses we please ; we may theoretically construct 
 an arch, without considering the friction of its com- 
 ponent parts, and obtain results, which (however 
 unlike any thing found in a natural condition of 
 equilibrium) are mathematically true, and are not 
 without their speculative use. But political philoso- 
 phy, in this abstract form, has no certainty and no 
 value of this kind. Its objects are essentially prac- 
 tical ; and it must be applicable to some real condi- 
 tion of society, or it is worse than nothing. And 
 most strange and mischievous is that philosophy, 
 which, in considering the stability of a state, over- 
 looks that moral friction whereby its social elements 
 are kept in their true position. 
 
 Perhaps it may be said, that the preceding ob- 
 servations are mere truisms denied by no one. But, 
 practically, they have too often been contradicted or 
 overlooked ; and more, I believe, in modern than in 
 ancient times. 
 
 A wide examination of such facts as throw light 
 on the statistical history of mankind, and a laborious 
 observation of the causes regulating the accumula- 
 tion and distribution of national wealth, are among 
 the circumstances by which modern political philoso- 
 phy has been most distinguished : and as we believe 
 that the knowledge of truth will always, in the end, 
 minister to the honour and happiness of man, we must, 
 as honest lovers of our neighbour, rejoice in the pro- 
 gress of economical science. The economist is mainly 
 employed in observing and classifying phenomena, 
 from which he deduces consequences that are to him 
 in the place of moral laws. The legislator, on the 
 contrary, assumes the principles he carries into action, 
 applies them to a given condition of society (perhaps 
 never contemplated by the economist), and antici- 
 
86 
 
 pates the results of moral causes working on new 
 social combinations. Under this view the position 
 of the two philosophers is seen in the strongest con- 
 trast. The one, like the early observers of the 
 heavens, marks the phenomena out of which he 
 endeavours to trace the relative position and move- 
 ments of the great bodies of the social system. The 
 other, more like the physical astronomer, not merely 
 takes for granted all the great movements of the 
 political fabric ; but combining with this a knowledge 
 of the perturbations proceeding from the mutual ac- 
 tions of its parts, dares to look into futurity, and to 
 speculate on events, that time may hereafter bring 
 to light within the world he contemplates. The 
 labours of the one belong chiefly to the elements of 
 political philosophy, the labours of the other belong 
 to its consummation. 
 
 The great objects, with a wise legislator, are the 
 security of the state and the happiness of its sub- 
 jects. But national wealth (in however extended a 
 sense the term may have been used) is, after all, but 
 one of the means of securing these great ends. And 
 among the greatest blunders the economist has com- 
 mitted, has been a hasty spirit of generalization (and 
 what infant science has not suffered by that spirit?), an 
 affectation of deductive reasoning, and a rash attempt 
 to usurp, before his time, the chair of the lawgiver. 
 Political economy has, however, now a permanent 
 place among the applied moral sciences, and has 
 obtained an honorable seat in most of the academic 
 establishments of the civilized world. Surely then 
 we may dare to hope (without being accused of rash- 
 ness in counting on the coming fortunes of mankind), 
 that it may, in the end, assist in enabling men to 
 see more deeply into the sources of social happiness 
 
87 
 
 or national greatness — that it may allay the bitter- 
 ness of national animosity ; teaching kingdoms, as 
 well as individuals, how much they gain from mutual 
 support and mutual good-will — and, more than all, 
 that it may (when combined with Christian know- 
 ledge) help to lighten the pressure of such evils as 
 belong to our fallen nature, and are among the un- 
 avoidable conditions of our probation. 
 
 No one denies that the moral and political cha- 
 racters of men are in a great measure formed by the 
 institutions under which they live ; and were it asked, 
 whence these institutions derive their permanency 
 and power ; we might reply in general terms — only 
 from being well fitted to the social condition of the 
 state. But if we take a historical view of this great 
 question, we shall see more deeply into the origin of 
 national sentiments. We shall generally find that 
 national character has not been formed merely by 
 national institutions ; but on the contrary, that the 
 institutions themselves (so far as they are peculiar 
 and permanent) have for the most part taken their 
 original form and impress from the moral condition 
 of the state — that they have grown with its growth — 
 that they have (like the external covering of the 
 bodily frame) been secreted from its life-blood — and 
 that they are the representatives of opinions and 
 feelings called into being from time to time, and too 
 often during successive ages of conflict and struggle. 
 Happy is that country which is rising in the moral 
 scale of nations, and where the constitution contains 
 within itself a provision for the perpetual adaptation 
 of its institutions to the healthy movement of the 
 state ! Laws, like those of the Medes and Persians, 
 which alter not, must soon be followed by premature 
 decay, by secret crimes, or bloody revolutions — the 
 sure attendants of unbending despotism. 
 
88 
 
 Lastly, before I quit the subject of political 
 philosophy, let me endeavour to impress upon you 
 the great truth, that no human system can bring 
 the rebellious faculties of man under the law of 
 obedience ; and that no external change of govern- 
 ment whatsoever can make him even approach to- 
 ward a state of moral perfection — an idle dream of 
 false philosophy, contradicted by all the records of 
 mankind, and directly opposed to the word of God. 
 In the latter part of last century there existed a 
 large body of men calling themselves philosophers, 
 the best of whom (as they were seen in a neighbour- 
 ing kingdom) might be described under the name of 
 moral fanatics : for with all the evils they helped to 
 bring upon the world, they still dreamt of doing 
 good. In the internal goverment of the kingdoms 
 of Europe they saw enormous evils ; sufficiently ac- 
 counting, on their theory, for all the wickedness and 
 misery they saw around them. Hence, they sought 
 not merely to improve, but to re-model the whole 
 social fabric of the world ; and they looked forward 
 to a time of moral perfectibility, when the image of 
 philanthropy was to be set up in the high places of 
 the earth, and all the people, the nations, and the lan- 
 guages, were to fall down and worship it. Unhappily 
 for themselves and for their country, the leaders of 
 this school of fanaticism were, almost without excep- 
 tion, sunk in infidelity. Had they accepted, even in 
 the humblest degree, the doctrines of the religion of 
 Christ, they never could have made such portentous 
 errors in estimating the moral character of man. 
 With all the sanctions of religion, the terrors of the 
 law, and the numerous links thrown round him by 
 the domestic and social affections, how hard is it to 
 keep him in the right way ! And if we free him 
 from these complicated bonds, there is nothing left 
 
89 
 
 for him but the base servitude of brutal and selfish 
 passion. 
 
 Errors like those just pointed out are not per- 
 haps likely ever to rise again into political import- 
 ance, although they may long continue more or less 
 to taint the speculations of one school of moral and 
 political writers. 
 
 Having now glanced over the course of your 
 academic studies, let me endeavour shortly to give 
 this discourse a more personal application. I need 
 not tell you, that your high privileges imply cor- 
 responding duties — I need not call upon you by the 
 love of honour and the fear of shame — by the duties 
 you owe to yourselves, to your country, and your 
 God, to buckle on your armour while yet you may, 
 and to be prepared at every point, before you go into 
 the world, and enter on those fields of conflict unto 
 which hereafter you may be called. Topics like these 
 are felt by every soul not sunk in sloth and sensual 
 sin ; and by generous natures, like those I am now 
 addressing, perhaps the only fear is, that they should 
 be felt too much. 
 
 But there still remains untouched another sub- 
 ject, which, by the laws of our foundation, is the end 
 of all our studies. To enter on the subject of sacred 
 learning at any length is foreign to my purpose ; and 
 I have a right to take for granted that I am speak- 
 ing to Christian men instructed in the record of 
 their religion — believing in its authority — and ac- 
 knowledging its sanctions. Are then our lives and 
 affections in accordance with the religion we profess 
 and the high privileges we enjoy ? Let every one 
 put this question to himself — let him look into his 
 innermost soul by the light of the word of God, and 
 
90 
 
 his own conscience will find the proper answer for 
 him. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of 
 angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding 
 brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I ham the 
 gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all 
 knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I 
 could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am 
 nothing... Charity suffer eth long and is kind ; charity 
 envieth not ; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed 
 up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her 
 own, is not easily provoked, thinkeih no evil; rejoic- 
 eth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth 
 all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endut- 
 eth all things*. If our conscience reply that such is 
 our temper, it is well with us. But if, on the other 
 hand, we find lurking within us a spirit of pride, of 
 bitterness, of intolerance, of harsh judgment, of 
 party-spirit, and of other feelings the very opposite 
 to those described in this most touching passage of 
 St. Paul ; then, whatever be our condition and our 
 attainments in the wisdom of the world, we are out- 
 casts from the flock of Christ, and have no inherit- 
 ance in his kingdom. 
 
 Learning, almost beyond that of man — a happy 
 power in tracing out the proofs of natural religion — 
 a critical knowledge of the word of God — a grasp 
 of the sharpest weapons of polemical theology, may 
 coexist in a mind manifesting hardly one single Chris- 
 tian grace : nay, hardly performing the most vulgar 
 acts of moral obligation, enjoined, between man and 
 man, by the sanction of the law, and without which 
 the very frame- work of society could not be held toge- 
 ther. I will not however dwell on any extreme case 
 like this, but appeal once more to your own cxperi- 
 
 • 1 Cor. xiii. 
 
91 
 
 ence. We have capacities for the perception of moral 
 truth; we know the difference between right and 
 wrong ; we naturally approve the one and contemn 
 the other ; and our natural perceptions are cleared 
 and elevated by the light of Christian truth : our 
 duty is plainly pointed out, and enforced by the 
 most awful sanctions. Nay, more than this ; while 
 removed from the influence of temptation, we wish 
 to obey the word ; we wish to walk in the paths of 
 the great and the good : and yet we are infirm of 
 purpose, and cannot do what our heart approves and 
 our conscience dictates. 
 
 The sensualist surrenders his liberty to base 
 appetite ; binding day by day fresh fetters about 
 his limbs, till they have no power of movement. 
 His course of life is often followed by judicial blind- 
 ness : his mind loses its upright attitude, and becomes 
 tortuous, because it finds no rest ; and he casts about 
 his soul the mist of scepticism to keep off that light 
 of truth his eyes cannot endure. A religion with- 
 out power over the heart is deprived of its best evi- 
 dence ; and hence he learns to doubt the truth of a 
 system of which he feels not the benefit, and to turn 
 away from that doctrine by which his own life is 
 condemned. A character like this is of no unfre- 
 quent occurrence in the ordinary commerce of life. 
 
 But I will suppose you sincere believers in the 
 word of God, and not weighed down by the habitual 
 burden of any flagrant sin. Still, if you look into 
 yourselves, you will find that you not only come im- 
 measurably short of the standard set up by the Word 
 of God, but far short of that you could yourselves 
 set up by the natural light of conscience. Thoughts 
 like these must pass through the minds of every 
 reflecting Christian : and, at times, while toiling in 
 
92 
 
 his earthly vocation, or even when striving after what 
 he thinks his duty, he will be weighed down with a 
 feeling of self-abasement, and be ready to cry out 
 with St , Paul, Oh wretched man that I am, who shall 
 deliver me from the body of this death ? Religion gives 
 an answer to this question. We have the power of 
 discerning good and evil ; this coexists with our 
 natural condition ; but the power of acting steadily 
 and undeviatingly on the dictates of conscience, is 
 not given us by nature : and here religion steps in 
 and points out the only remedy for this discordance 
 and confusion in the moral world. 
 
 If we.be not the basest hypocrites in our religion 
 — if we do not utter within this sanctuary a mere 
 idle form of words, opposed both to the conviction of 
 our reason and the approval of our conscience — then 
 must we believe that there is a superintending Pro- 
 vidence who governs the world. To this doctrine 
 we can make an approach, even by the feeble light 
 of natural religion. We must further believe, that 
 for the moral ruin and confusion we see around us 
 God has provided a special remedy, by the sacrifice 
 of his Son ; who now sits exalted at his right hand, 
 as our mediator and spiritual head. And, lastly, 
 we must believe, that by communion with this our 
 head (sustained by all the ordinances of religion — 
 by public and by secret prayer), we obtain at once 
 the benefit of this sacrifice, and the covenanted pro- 
 mise of a new principle of life, and a new power of 
 moral obedience. It is by winding itself into our 
 affections — by reanimating the principle of love — 
 that religion has this power. In expelling from the 
 heart its corrupt affections, it leaves it not an open 
 prey to still baser appetites, but fills it with its first 
 and noblest occupants : and thus restores the moral 
 
93 
 
 man to his Maker's image and his Maker's favour. 
 It is thus that the religion of Christ does not oppose, 
 but lends support, to all those high faculties that 
 give its only true elevation to the character of man : 
 in proof of which (were there any doubt of what I 
 am stating), we need only cast our eyes over Chris- 
 tendom, and contrast its glories with the intellectual 
 darkness of every land whereon the light of the Gos- 
 pel hath not yet shone. 
 
 Finally, to bring this home to ourselves : we are 
 no true children of our Lord and Master — we are no 
 part of his flock — if we honour him not by the out- 
 ward forms of allegiance he has himself enjoined ; if 
 we seek him not by the way he has himself appointed 
 — by acts of public devotion — by the earnest peti- 
 tions of private prayer, lifted up to him, not only as 
 the giver of all good, but as the giver of that power 
 by which alone we can root out our corrupt affec- 
 tions, and bring into full life the better principles of 
 our nature. Let, then, prayer be the beginning and 
 the end of our studies ; and so they will be conse- 
 crated to God. In this way, by his blessing, may 
 we persevere unto the end ; treading in the steps 
 before trodden by the great and good men, whose 
 names are the precious inheritance of thjs house. 
 
 Feelings of Christian devotion, unlike ordinary 
 movements of the soul, lose not their strength by re- 
 petition : and habits of devotion, like all other habits, 
 gain strength by frequent exercise. But if the habit 
 of secret prayer be suspended, though for a short 
 time, I ask your conscience, whether, during that 
 interval, your moral fences have not been broken 
 down ; and whether the spoiler hath not entered in, 
 and committed havoc among some of the best facul- 
 ties of your inner nature ? 
 
94 
 
 Let, then, this ceremonial at which we meet, be 
 an occasion of communion with the living God — let 
 us pray for his protection over ourselves and our 
 household ; so that we may all be enabled to walk in 
 the light of truth, and in imitation of the great pat- 
 terns of Christian life he has vouchsafed to give us. 
 So shall we do our duty to God and man — so shall 
 we be bound together by holy bonds no worldly 
 power can break asunder — and so may we hope that 
 God, as he has done abundantly in times past, will 
 continue, in times to come, to vouchsafe to this 
 Christian family the proofs of his protecting love. 
 Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain 
 that build it : except the Lord keep the city, the watch- 
 man waketh but in vain. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Note (A), p. 15. 
 
 The paragraph here referred to requires no explanation 
 to any one instructed in the first "principles of physical 
 astronomy. The following note is therefore addressed 
 exclusively to those who are unacquainted with the severe 
 parts of exact science. 
 
 In order to understand the nature and importance of 
 Newton's discoveries, we must remember that, in the pre- 
 ceding century, the Copernican system had been promul- 
 gated ; and that Kepler, after incredible labour, had esta- 
 blished the following general propositions on the evidence 
 of direct observations. 
 
 1 . That if each planetary orbit be considered as an area 
 traced out by a line drawn from the sun to the revolving 
 body ; this line traces out equal successive areas in equal 
 successive times. 
 
 2. That the planets move in elliptical orbits, having 
 the sun in a common focus. 
 
 3. That the squares of the times of revolution of the 
 several planets and the cubes of their mean distances from 
 the sun, are in a fixed proportion to each other. 
 
 It must also be admitted that, before the discoveries of 
 Newton, there was current in the philosophic world a 
 vague and general notion of some material action of the 
 planets on each other. No one, for example, doubted that the 
 tides were some how or other influenced by the moon: 
 and, perhaps no one who had adopted the Copernican sys- 
 tem, and speculated on the nature of mechanical motion, 
 could doubt that the planets were affected by some action 
 
96 APPENDIX. 
 
 or power emanating from the sun. Before the time of 
 Newton, no one had, however, ventured to promulgate any 
 definite or numerical law of gravitation ; still less had any 
 one, on the assumption of a definite law, demonstrated a 
 single fundamental proposition in astronomy. What had 
 been done by preceding philosophers, takes no more from 
 the glory of Newton, than the predictions of Seneca take 
 away from the honour of Columbus. 
 
 If any one anticipated Newton, in the application of 
 the law of gravitation to the system of the Universe, it was 
 Kepler, and not Hook, as has been sometimes erroneously 
 asserted. Hook did not demonstrate a single fundamental 
 proposition in astronomy ; and Newton, I believe, preceded 
 him in the very speculations on which his claims have been 
 sometimes set up. For we must remember that Newton, 
 when a very young man, had just notions of the nature of 
 a central force ; and that he endeavoured to prove, by cal- 
 culation, that the moon was held in its orbit by the sole 
 force of the earth's attraction ; and failed, only because the 
 distance of the moon had been falsely estimated by prac- 
 tical astronomers. Leaving, however, mere historical dis- 
 cussion, let us consider one or two of the early steps of 
 his philosophic progress. 
 
 He first appeared as the improver of the elements of 
 mechanical philosophy, giving the laws of motion a gene- 
 rality they had not before, and extending their application 
 to the investigation of motions arising from the combined 
 action of many forces. Starting, then, with the laws of 
 motion (which, in the first instance, may be regarded as an 
 enunciation of certain material phenomena ascertained by 
 direct experiment), his next grand generalization led him 
 to extend these laws to all the bodies of the solar system : 
 and, combining this assumption with the first proposition 
 of Kepler (above quoted), he at once demonstrated that 
 the planetary bodies are retained in their orbits by a 
 force tending to the center of the sun. Combining this 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 97 
 
 demonstrated truth with the second proposition of Kepler 
 (above quoted), he then went on to prove, by a new and 
 most refined geometry, that the force emanating from the 
 sun must vary inversely as the square of the distance from 
 its center ; or, in other words, must diminish in the exact 
 proportion in which the square of the distance increases. 
 Having once established this great truth, he then proved 
 that the third proposition of Kepler was a necessary conse- 
 quence of the demonstrated law of central force. Nothing 
 can be conceived more perfect than this induction ; which, 
 starting with laws ascertained by observation, ascended 
 by successive demonstrations, and proved that the most 
 striking phenomena of the solar system were necessary 
 truths involved in the operation of one single mechanical 
 law. 
 
 By a similar train of demonstrative reasoning, Newton 
 proved that the planets act on the several satellites revolving- 
 round them according to the same law by which the sun 
 acts on them ; and that the moon is retained in her orbit 
 by the same power which, on the earth's surface, brings a 
 heavy body to the ground. Generalizing the truths at 
 which he had so far arrived by demonstrative reasoning, 
 and asserting of gravitation only what was known of its 
 nature by direct experiment at the earth's surface, he proved 
 that the center of each planet may be considered as a dis- 
 tinct center of a force, not primarily impressed upon the 
 center, but derived as a secondary phenomenon from the 
 combined action of every particle composing the planetary 
 mass ; and he also demonstrated (with a skill almost super- 
 natural, considering the feeble instruments at that time 
 placed within his hands,) that the irregularities of the 
 moon's motions are necessary consequences of this univer- 
 sal law of material action. 
 
 Again, knowing as a matter of fact that the planets 
 are not perfect spheres, he proved that their forms are 
 necessary effects of his own theory : and combining these 
 
 s.d. G 
 
98 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 conclusions with the law of universal gravitation, he proved, 
 by most subtle calculations, that certain irregularities in 
 the annual motion of the earth (producing the phenomena 
 of equinoctial precession) are the necessary consequences 
 of the sun's action on the mass of a spheroidal body. 
 
 In tracing out the consequences of the law of gravita- 
 tion, and explaining the minute secular inequalities of the 
 heavenly bodies, much, no doubt, was left by him unfinish- 
 ed. But he had lighted the way for those who were to 
 follow, had given them the key whereby the mysteries of 
 the kingdoms of nature were to be unlocked, and had laid 
 the foundations of every part of that superstructure which 
 has been since reared only by the united labours of the phi- 
 losophic world. 
 
 The refined geometry of Newton, however beautiful as 
 a mode of exhibiting known truths, is now thrown aside as 
 an implement of discovery. " It was like the bow of Ulys- 
 ses, which none but its master could bend;" and the diffi- 
 cult questions of physics are now assailed by weapons of 
 greater power*. We must not however forget that he 
 was a great inventor in pure mathematics : and though he 
 had neither made a single optical experiment, nor taken a 
 step in expounding the laws of the material world, he 
 would still have had an exalted place in the philosophic 
 history of man. 
 
 Of the theory of universal gravitation, in the form it 
 has at length assumed, it is not too much to say, that it 
 can be changed by no hand but that which first impressed 
 on matter the laws whereby it continues to be governed. 
 Should man be ever permitted to ascend to some higher 
 universal law, binding together the phenomena of light, 
 heat, magnetism, and all the other subtle agents of our 
 system, still no part of the foundations of physical astro- 
 nomy would be shaken ; and the utmost change to be 
 
 * Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy , by Sir John 
 Herschel, p. 273. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 99 
 
 introduced into it would be a trifling modification of the 
 formal language of some of its propositions. 
 
 In the following words (taken from the preface of the 
 first edition of the Principia) Newton has recorded with 
 great simplicity his own method of arriving at philosophic 
 truth. Omnis philosophic difficultas in eo versari videtur, 
 ut a phcenomenis motuum investigemus vires naturae, 
 deinde ab his viribus demonstremus phcenomena reliqua. 
 Ex phcenomenis igitur ccelestibus, per propositiones mathe- 
 matice demonstratas derivantur vires Gravitatis, quibus 
 corpora ad solem et planetas singulos tendunt : deinde, ex 
 his viribus, per propositiones etiam mathematicas, dedu- 
 cuntur motus planet arum, cometarum, linice, et maris. 
 
 Near the end of his book of Opticks, he writes in the 
 same philosophic spirit — " As in mathematics, so in natural 
 philosophy, the investigation of difficult things by the 
 method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of 
 composition. This analysis consists in making experiments 
 and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from 
 them by induction, and admitting of no objections against 
 the conclusions, but such as are taken from experiments, or 
 other certain truths. For hypotheses are not to be regard- 
 ed in experimental philosophy. And although the arguing 
 from experiments and observations by induction be no 
 demonstration of general conclusions, yet it is the best way 
 of arguing which the nature of things admits of, and may 
 be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the 
 induction is more general. And if no exception occur 
 from phenomena, the conclusion may be pronounced gene- 
 rally. But if at any time afterwards any exception shall 
 occur from experiments, it may then begin to be pro- 
 nounced with such exceptions as occur. By this way of 
 analysis we may proceed from compounds to ingredients, 
 and from motions to the forces producing them ; and in 
 general, from effects to their causes, and from particular 
 causes to more general ones, till the argument end in the 
 
 g2 
 
100 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 most general. This is the method of analysis. And the 
 synthesis consists in assuming the causes discovered, and 
 established as principles, and by them explaining the phe- 
 nomena proceeding from them and proving the explana- 
 tions." 
 
 The former of these methods, when applied to the inves- 
 tigation of physical phenomena, has long been known by 
 the term induction: the latter, in one of the writings of 
 Sir John Herschel, is called the method of deduction. 
 This word had nearly been forgotten, but was wanted, and 
 is again becoming current in the language of philosophy. 
 
 In the method of analysis and induction Newton stands 
 without a rival in the history of man ; whether we regard 
 the boldness and certainty of his generalizations, or the 
 inventive skill by which he linked together truths before his 
 time sterile and unconnected. In the power of deductive 
 reasoning he may perhaps have had some equals ; but it 
 must ever be difficult to form any just comparison of the 
 intellectual powers of men labouring during distinct periods 
 in the advance of science. 
 
 Deductive reasoning is the consummation of exact 
 science, and its importance is shewn in two ways — First, 
 in deducing from first principles physical truths already 
 known by observation ; in which view it not only offers 
 the highest possible confirmation of the principle from 
 which we start, but it assists and perfects the results of 
 observation. Secondly, in deducing consequences hitherto 
 concealed in the unexplored regions of nature. Such were 
 some of the great secular inequalities, and astronomical 
 periods discovered by Laplace — and such (to quote more 
 recent instances) was the conical refraction brought to light 
 by Professor Hamilton, and the modifications of Newton's 
 coloured rings predicted by Professor Airy before they had 
 ever been exhibited by any experimental test. To this list 
 we may now add, the determination (by most intricate and 
 laborious calculations founded on the theory of gravitation) 
 
APPENDIX. 101 
 
 of the place of a new Planet exterior to Uranus, made by 
 Mr. Adams in 1845 ; and in course of the year following 
 made, independently, by M. Le Verrier, of Paris. These 
 two philosophers, starting from the same principles, arrived 
 by independent methods at the same result; and thereby 
 enabled astronomers to see the new planet by telling them 
 to what spot in the heavens their telescopes were to be 
 pointed. A greater confirmation of the soundness of a 
 theory, or a more striking proof of deductive skill in follow- 
 ing out its consequences, is not to be found in the history 
 of exact science*. 
 
 It must however be obvious, that deductive reasoning 
 can never have any value, except when we have to do with 
 the laws of fixed and unchangeable elements : without this 
 condition it leads only to the extension and complication of 
 error. In moral and psychological questions (for example) 
 where all the elements are ill defined, the analytic is the 
 only method of approaching truth. Logic may teach us 
 to disentangle sophistry, to marshal our ideas, and to limit 
 our conclusions: but it cannot, without a miracle, draw 
 fixed consequences from unfixed elements. Those who, on 
 psychological questions, have dealt in the forms of deduc- 
 tive proof, have perhaps done the least harm when they 
 have allowed the imagination entirely to usurp the seat of 
 reason. Their works may then amuse and instruct man- 
 kind, though not perhaps in the way the authors first in- 
 tended. But the affectation of the language of synthetic 
 demonstration on moral questions, has, almost without ex- 
 ception, been followed by practical evils ; giving rise to a 
 train of shallow reasoners, venders of trifling propositions, 
 or propagators of antisocial paradoxes. 
 
 * On the effects of inductive and deductive habits of thought on 
 the mind of man, see two very original and beautiful chapters in the 
 latter part of a work published during the year 1833, by the Rev. W. 
 Whewcll : Astronomy and General Physics considered ivith reference 
 to Natural Theology. 
 
102 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note (B), p. 17. 
 
 When the great bodies of our system are described as 
 revolving in vacuo about the sun, we merely understand 
 by such words, that they revolve in a space offering no 
 sensible resistance to their motions ; and even this assump- 
 tion must now be modified, for the most attenuated of these 
 bodies (the comets) probably meet with a resistance sen- 
 sibly changing the periods of their return. That Newton 
 did not suppose the existence of an extensive vacuum 
 within the limits of our system, is evident from his specu- 
 lations respecting the nature of light and the cause of gra- 
 vitation ; and in the tenth proposition in the third book of 
 the Principia he gives the following reason for supposing 
 that the motions of the planets may be continued for an 
 indefinite period of time ; si ascendatur in ccelos ubi pon- 
 dus medii, in quo planetce moventur, diminuitur in im- 
 mensum, resistentia prope cessabit *. 
 
 We may perhaps make the words this note refers to 
 somewhat better understood by taking an imaginary case. 
 Let us suppose a sentient being sustained in any part of our 
 system, which is not occupied by the grosser matter of the 
 planetary bodies, and endowed with a power of sight as 
 great as is our own when assisted by the best telescope yet 
 invented. To such a being all the bodies of our system 
 would at once become visible, and the firmament around 
 would be seen by him glittering with the light of many 
 million stars. But we must remember that each of these 
 shining points is seen only through the intervention of a 
 beam of light sent down by it directly to the eye. There is, 
 therefore, not a single point in the empty spaces of our 
 system through which millions of beams of light do not 
 pass unceasingly, yet with a material action so subtle that 
 one beam interferes not with another, but each passes on- 
 
 * See also the concluding parts of Newton's Opticks, especially 
 Queries 18, H>, 20, and 28. 
 
APPENDIX. 103 
 
 ward, as if moving by itself — the sole messenger from the 
 center of light to the sentient beings of the universe. 
 
 In general considerations like these the mind seems to 
 lose its power, and becomes almost bewildered: and if we 
 call in the aid of calculation, though we build on demon- 
 stration and clothe our results in numbers, our conclusions 
 seem, perhaps more than ever, removed from the grasp of 
 sense. If we accept the theory (considered, by some of 
 those who have most deeply studied it, as well established 
 as the theory of gravitation) which derives the sensation of 
 sight from vibrations propagated through an elastic ether, 
 by the visible object to the eye ; then is each beam of light 
 but a part of a distinct system of vibrations, every wave of 
 which diverges through space with a sustained velocity suf- 
 ficient to carry it eight times round the earth in a single 
 second, and each wave is followed by another at so short an 
 interval, that 1 00,000 of them are packed within the space 
 of every inch. Millions of such systems of vibrations pass, 
 then, unceasingly through every point of visible space, yet 
 without disorder and confusion : so that each system of 
 waves goes on unobstructed by the others, preserving the 
 individual powers impressed upon it, and through them 
 ministering to the wants of millions of sentient beings. 
 
 Our knowledge of the complicated fabric of the material 
 universe (even in those parts we sometimes describe as mere 
 vacuities) does not end here. There is not a point in any 
 portion of our system through which millions of material 
 influences (implied indeed in the law of universal gravita- 
 tion) are not constantly transmitted. That they differ 
 from the subtle material action last considered is certain ; 
 yet no one will deny that they belong to some mode of 
 material action, though he knows nothing of the mechanism 
 whereby they are propagated and maintained. 
 
 Had there been any extended vacuities in the universe, 
 it might, perhaps, have been said, that such portions of 
 space were without any manifestation of the Godhead. But 
 
104 APPENDIX. 
 
 what has been stated is enough to shew that there are no 
 such places within the ken of our senses or the reach of our 
 thoughts. That God is every where is the language of re- 
 vealed religion ; that God manifests his power every where 
 is, in like manner, the voice of natural religion spoken 
 through the universal domination of material laws. 
 
 Considerations like these fill the mind with feelings of 
 the vastness of the power and skill employed in the mecha- 
 nism of the world ; yet of the great Architect himself and 
 of the materials employed by him, they give no adequate 
 notion whatsoever. Still we are (in part at least) permitted 
 to ascend to the laws impressed on matter, and to see how 
 they have been adapted to each other, so as to work toge- 
 gether for a common end, and to minister to the wants of 
 man and his fellow-beings; and this is enough for the argu- 
 ment built upon such knowledge. 
 
 Truth depends not on authority : but it may be well to 
 fortify this conclusion by two quotations from the latter 
 part of Newton's Opticks. " Though every true step made 
 in this philosophy brings us not immediately to the know- 
 ledge of the first Cause, yet it brings us nearer to it, and on 
 that account is to be highly valued." Again, he writes, 
 " If natural philosophy in all its parts, by pursuing this 
 method (of analysis and induction), shall at length be per- 
 fected, the bounds of moral philosophy will be also enlarged. 
 For, so far as we can know by natural philosophy what is 
 the first Cause, what power he has over us, and what bene- 
 fits we receive from him ; so far our duty towards him, as 
 well as towards one another, will appear to us by the light 
 of nature." 
 
 Note (C), p. 27. 
 
 In the preceding discourse, as well as in the notes 
 affixed to it, my object is to teach, as far as I am able, the 
 
APPENDIX. 105 
 
 junior Members of the University to think correctly on the 
 more important branches of academic study. The mere 
 building up of knowledge is labour ill-bestowed, if not fol- 
 lowed by improved habits of thought. But no man is passive 
 during the acquisition of such habits. They exist only where 
 the best powers of the mind have been steadily employed 
 in their formation. This is a law affecting every human 
 being. Perfection (in the limited sense in which the word 
 can be used in speaking of the feeble powers of man) comes 
 only by continued and well-applied labour : and the remark 
 bears on our moral condition as well as our intellectual. 
 
 The studies of mankind have sometimes been divided 
 into natural, moral, and religious. Each branch requires 
 its appropriate training, and yields its own peculiar fruit. 
 A study of the natural world teaches not the truths of re- 
 vealed religion, nor do the truths of religion inform us of 
 the inductions of physical science. Hence it is that men, 
 whose studies are too much confined to one branch of know- 
 ledge, often learn to overrate themselves, and so become 
 narrow-minded. Bigotry is a besetting sin of our nature. 
 Too often it has been the attendant of religious zeal : but it 
 is perhaps most bitter and unsparing when found with the 
 irreligious. A philosopher, understanding not one atom of 
 their spirit, will sometimes scoff at the labours of religious 
 men ; and one who calls himself religious will perhaps re- 
 turn a like harsh judgment, and thank God that he is not 
 as the philosophers — forgetting all the while, that man can 
 ascend to no knowledge, except by faculties given to him 
 by his Creator's hand, and that all natural knowledge is 
 but a reflexion of the will of God. In harsh judgments- 
 such as these there is not only much folly, but much sin. 
 True wisdom consists in seeing how all the faculties of the 
 mind and all parts of knowledge bear upon each other, so 
 as to work together to a common end ; ministering at once 
 to the happiness of man and his Makers glory. 
 
 Again, a man may be skilled in many branches of know- 
 
106 APPENDIX. 
 
 ledge; and yet his affections may be wrong-placed and his 
 bad passions unsubdued. Our conduct in each instance in 
 which we are called on to act is mainly determined by the 
 feelings and thoughts excited by the things around us. One 
 man pursues natural knowledge, but soars not in imagina- 
 tion beyond material phenomena. Another sees the indi- 
 cations of design, and perhaps goes on to mark the wise 
 adaptation of the various parts of the material world. A 
 third, while contemplating the world around, thinks nothing 
 of these things ; but his imagination takes wing, and his 
 soul is borne away in poetical emotion. A fourth feels with 
 greater or less power what all the others feel, but adds to 
 it a movement of thankfulness to the Giver of all good; and 
 this new feeling, when joined to a firm belief in the word 
 of God, blends itself in the animating principle of Christian 
 love. Contrasts such as these in the emotions of our inner 
 nature while we are under the same external conditions 
 (and every hour's experience shews us examples of them in 
 some form or other), arise from different habits of the soul, 
 whether we regard them as moral, intellectual, or religious. 
 But such habits, I repeat, have been gained only by appro- 
 priate training. If they be intellectual, they have been 
 gained by intellectual toil: if religious, they have come 
 only by well-directed religious studies and religious exer- 
 cises. 
 
 After every new combination, the properties of matter 
 are essentially changed, and present a new set of phenomena. 
 It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that, in like manner, 
 after every new act or voluntary thought, the soul is put 
 in a new psychological condition. Its powers of doing or 
 forbearing are changed : for things are ever after present 
 to it in the memory, and brought out by the associating 
 principle, in new intellectual combinations. We know the 
 inveteracy of habits ; and it is mainly through the associat- 
 ing principle that they gain their strength. By every fresh 
 commission of sin we lose both the power and the inclina- 
 
APPENDIX. 107 
 
 tion to escape from the bondage of bad passion : for the 
 storehouse of the memory becomes tenanted by images of 
 darkness, mingling themselves with the recollections of 
 past good, and tempting us on in the way of evil. Acts of 
 forbearance done on principle give us, on the other hand, 
 new inclinations and new capacities for virtue. The mind 
 becomes stored with remembrance of moral victories ; the 
 associating principle is then the source of happy recollec- 
 tions and good resolves ; and above* all, the soul is taught 
 to seek for strength where it is to be found — in the fountain 
 of all goodness. And thus a good man learns, at length, 
 to do without effort, and with inward joy, what another, 
 were he to offer the whole world for it, has no power of 
 performing. 
 
 If such be the conditions of our being, and such the 
 relations of our thoughts to the things around us, a good 
 training and the commencement of good habits in early life 
 must be matters of inexpressible moment. This is equally 
 true whether, according to the bent of our minds, the ques- 
 tion be considered in a metaphysical or a religious point of 
 view. The remark is by no means confined to our intellec- 
 tual capacities— it applies with fuller meaning to our moral 
 and religious sentiments — to all those feelings of the soul 
 which call our moral powers into visible activity. A philoso- 
 pher may be cold-hearted and irreligious — a moralist may 
 be without benevolence — and a theologian may be wanting 
 in the common charities of life. All this shews that know- 
 ledge is not enough, unless feelings and habits go along 
 with it, to give it its meaning, and to carry it into practical 
 effect. Religion reaches the fountain-head of all these 
 evils; and she alone gives us an antagonist principle whereby 
 we may effectually resist them. 
 
 In natural knowledge we may mount from phenomena 
 to laws ; but in doing this we are held by fetters we cannot 
 break— we cannot alter one link in the chain of natural 
 causes— we can only mark the traces of an unvarying power, 
 
108 APPENDIX. 
 
 external to ourselves, and to which we are ourselves in bond- 
 age. If this be our condition in acquiring natural know- 
 ledge, what right have we to think, that in gaining religious 
 knowledge we are permitted to be more free ? — that in 
 regard to our spiritual relation to God and a future state 
 we may indulge in any fantastical notions we think fit; 
 while we shut our eyes to the light that he has given us, 
 and despise the law that he has set before us ? Madness 
 and folly like this, in any one professing to be a Christian 
 (and to Christians only is this Discourse addressed), would 
 be utterly incredible, did we not see it every moment before 
 us, and did we not find all its elements lurking within our 
 own bosoms. 
 
 But if the Bible be a rule of life and faith — a record of 
 our moral destinies — it is not, nor does it pretend to be, a 
 revelation of natural science. The credibility of our religion 
 depends on evidence, internal and external. Its internal 
 evidence is seen in the coherence of its design from its first 
 dawning to the fulness of its glorious light — in its purity 
 and moral dignity — in its exalted motives fitted to call forth 
 man's highest moral and intellectual energies — in its suit- 
 ableness to his wants and weakness — in its laying bare the 
 inner movements of his heart — in its declarations of the 
 reality of a future state, and of other truths most important 
 for him to know, yet of which he has but a faint and insuf- 
 ficient knowledge from the light of nature. Its external 
 evidence mingles itself in a thousand ways with the internal ; 
 but finally resolves itself into the strength of human testi- 
 mony, proving that God has at many times made a visible 
 manifestation of his power on earth ; promulgating among 
 mankind a rule of life, enforcing it by the terror of penal 
 sanctions, and confirming it by miracles publicly wrought 
 in attestation of its truth. Physical science, on the con- 
 trary, derives no support from internal evidence or external 
 testimony : but it is based on experiment alone, is perfected 
 by induction, and is drawn out into propositions by a rational 
 
APPENDIX. 1 09 
 
 logic of its own. To confound the ground-works of philoso- 
 phy and religion is to ruin the superstructure of both : for 
 the bases on which they stand, as well as their design, are 
 absolutely separate ; and we may assume it as an incontro- 
 vertible truth, that the inductions of philosophy can be no 
 more proved by the words of revelation, than the doctrines 
 of Christianity can be established by the investigations of 
 natural science. 
 
 Should some one ask how men can overlook truths like 
 these after they have been once enunciated ? we may reply, 
 that men have often been led into such folly by vanity and 
 arrogance — the one shutting from their senses the narrow 
 bounds of their own ignorance — the other teaching them 
 to contemn what they do not comprehend. Another source 
 of error, on physical questions, has been a mistake respect- 
 ing the import of certain scripture phrases. These'writings 
 deal not in logical distinctions or rigid definitions. They 
 were addressed to the heart and understanding, in popular 
 forms of speech such as men could readily comprehend. 
 When they describe the Almighty as a being capable of 
 jealousy, love, anger, repentance, and other like passions, 
 they use a language accommodated to our wants and capa- 
 cities, and God is put before us in the semblance of 
 humanity. They tell however what it is essential for us 
 to know — our relations and our duties to him, and the 
 penalties of disobedience : and were it possible for them to 
 make even an approach to the perfections of his glory, no 
 man could by looking on them comprehend their meaning j 
 and they would be at once unfitted to be the vehicle either 
 of religious truth or moral rule. If this principle of inter- 
 pretation be adopted in numberless parts of Scripture 
 describing the moral attributes of God ; we may surely 
 extend it to other passages (unconnected with any religious 
 doctrine, and therefore of comparatively small importance) 
 in which the fabric of the material world is the subject 
 of some passing allusion or figurative illustration. 
 
110 APPENDIX. 
 
 A philosopher may smile at the fulminations of the 
 Vatican against those who, with Copernicus, maintained 
 the motion of the Earth : but he ought to sigh when he 
 finds that the heart of man is no better than it was of 
 old, and that his arrogance and folly are still the same — 
 that bigotry and ignorance still go hand in hand, and are 
 ever ready to entrench themselves in any lurking-place, 
 whence they may assail with maledictions and words of 
 evil omen all those who are enjoying a light of truth their 
 eyes cannot bear to look upon. There are still found some 
 who dare to affirm that the pursuits of natural science 
 are hostile to religion. An assertion more false in itself, 
 and more dishonourable to true religion, has not been 
 conceived in the mind of man. Of other sciences I am 
 not called on to speak ; but having, in this Discourse, 
 (p. 25 — 28) described some of the general truths brought 
 to light by Geology, I may be permitted to add a few 
 words in its vindication. 
 
 The Bible instructs us that man, and other living 
 things, have been placed but a few years upon the earth ; 
 and the physical monuments of the world bear witness to 
 the same truth. If the astronomer tells us of myriads of 
 worlds not spoken of in the sacred records, the geologist 
 in like. manner proves (not by arguments from analogy, 
 but by the incontrovertible evidence of physical pheno- 
 mena) that there were former conditions of our planet, 
 separated from each other by vast intervals of time, during 
 which man, and the other creatures of his own date, had 
 not been called into being. Periods such as these belong 
 not, therefore, to the moral history of our race ; and come 
 neither within the letter nor the spirit of revelation. Be- 
 tween the first creation of the earth and that day in which 
 it pleased God to place man upon it, who shall dare to 
 define the interval ? On this question Scripture is silent : 
 but that silence destroys not the meaning of those physical 
 monuments of his power that God has put before our eyes ; 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 giving us at the same time faculties whereby we may 
 interpret them and comprehend their meaning. 
 
 In the present condition of our knowledge, a statement 
 like this is surely enough to satisfy the reasonable scruples 
 of a religious man. But let us, for a moment, suppose 
 that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions 
 of Geology. How then are we to solve them ? Not by 
 making a world after a pattern of our own — not by shifting 
 and shuffling the solid strata of the «earth, and then dealing 
 them out in such a way as to play the game of an ignorant 
 or dishonest hypothesis — not by shutting our eyes to facts, 
 or denying the evidence of our senses ; but by patient 
 investigation, carried on in the sincere love of truth, and 
 by learning to reject every consequence not warranted by 
 direct physical evidence. Pursued in this spirit, Geology 
 can neither lead to any false conclusions, nor offend against 
 any religious truth. And this is the spirit with which 
 many men have of late years followed this delightful 
 science— devoting the best labours of their lives to its 
 cultivation — turning over the successive leaves of nature's 
 book, and interpreting her language, which they know 
 to be a physical revelation of God's will — patiently working 
 their way through investigations requiring much toil both 
 of mind and body — accepting hypotheses only as a means 
 of connecting disjointed phenomena, and rejecting them 
 when they become unfitted for that office, so as in the end 
 to build only upon facts and true natural causes. All this 
 they have done, and are still doing ; so that however un- 
 finished may be the fabric they have attempted to rear, its 
 foundations are laid upon a rock, and cannot be shaken, 
 except by the arm of that Being who created the heaven 
 and the earth — who gave laws to the material world, and 
 still ordains them to continue what they are. 
 
 But there is another class of men who pursue Geology 
 by a nearer road, and are guided by a different light. 
 Well-intentioned they may be, but they have betrayed no 
 
112 APPENDIX. 
 
 small self-sufficiency, along with a shameful want of know- 
 ledge of the fundamental facts they presume to write about: 
 hence they have dishonoured the literature of this country 
 by Mosaic Gee logy, Scripture Geology, and other works of 
 cosmogony with kindred titles, wherein they have over- 
 looked the aim and end of revelation, tortured the book ol 
 life out of its proper meaning, and wantonly contrived to 
 bring about a collision between natural phenomena and the 
 word of God. The Buggs and the Penns — the Nolans and 
 the Formans — and some others of the same class, have 
 committed the folly and the sin of dogmatizing on matters 
 they have not personally examined, and, at the utmost, 
 know only at second hand — of pretending to teach man- 
 kind on points where they themselves are uninstructed. 
 Authors such as these ought to have first considered, that 
 book-learning (in whatsoever degree they may be gifted 
 with it) is but a pitiful excuse for writing mischievous 
 nonsense ; and that to a divine or a man of letters igno- 
 rance of the laws of nature and of material phenomena 
 is then only disgraceful, when he quits his own ground and 
 pretends to teach philosophy. Their learning (if perchance 
 they possess it) has been but ill employed in following- 
 out the idle dreams of an irrational cosmogony : and they 
 would be labouring at a task better fitted for their capacity, 
 were they studying the simple and affecting lessons of 
 Christianity, and trying to make its maxims of charity 
 their rule of life. — A Brahmin crushed with a stone the 
 microscope that first shewed him living things among the 
 vegetables of his daily food. The spirit of the Brahmin 
 lives in Christendom. The bad principles of our nature 
 are not bounded by caste or climate; and men are still 
 to be found, who, if not restrained by the wise and humane 
 laws of their country, would try to stifle by personal vio- 
 lence, and crush by brute force, every truth not hatched 
 among their own conceits, and confined within the narrow 
 fences of their own ignorance. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 113 
 
 We are told by the wise man not to answer a fool 
 according to his folly ; and it would indeed be a vain and 
 idle task to engage in controversy with this school of false 
 philosophy — to waste our breath in the forms of exact 
 reasoning unfitted to the comprehension of our antagonists 
 — to draw our weapons in a combat where victory could give 
 no honour. Before a Geologist can condescend to reason 
 with such assailants, they must first learn Geology. It is 
 too much to call upon us to scatter our seed on a soil at once 
 both barren and unreclaimed — it is folly to think, that we 
 can in the same hour be stubbing up the thorns and reaping 
 the harvest. All the writers of this school have not indeed 
 sinned against plain sense to the same degree. With some 
 of them there is perhaps a perception of the light of 
 natural truth which may lead them after a time to follow it 
 in the right road : but the case of others is beyond all hope 
 from the powers of rational argument. Their position is 
 impregnable while they remain within the fences of their 
 ignorance, which is to them as a wall of brass : for (as was 
 well said, if I remember right, by Bishop Warburton, of 
 some bustling fanatics of his own day) there is no weak 
 side of common sense whereat we may attack them. If 
 cases like these yield at all, it must be to some treatment 
 which suits the inveteracy of their nature, and not to the 
 weapons of reason. As pyschological phenomena they are 
 however well-deserving of our study ; teaching us, among 
 other things, how prone man is to turn his best faculties to 
 evil purposes — and how, at the suggestions of vanity and 
 other bad principles of his heart, he can be so far deluded, 
 as to fancy that he is doing honour to religion, while he is 
 sacrificing the common charities of life, and arraigning the 
 very workmanship of God. 
 
 The recent attacks on physical science, and the gross 
 misapprehension of its moral tendency, have been singu- 
 larly wanton and ill-timed. The living philosophers of this 
 
 s. D. H 
 
114 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 country are a set of sober-minded men, who have betrayed 
 no hostility to revealed truth. An exclusive devotion to 
 one subject inevitably makes a man narrow-minded ; and a 
 successful career of intellectual toil may make a man proud 
 and full of self, and so take from him the best graces of a 
 Christian character. But failings like these belong to the 
 infirmities of our nature, and are not confined to any one 
 profession or pursuit : they may be seen in the characters 
 of sagacious lawyers or learned divines, as well as of labo- 
 rious philosophers. It would, indeed, be ridiculous to say, 
 that all living philosophers are religious men. Like their 
 neighbours, they have their besetting sins : but many of 
 them are firm believers in revelation ; and among them 
 may be found some who shine forth as illustrious patterns 
 of Christian life. 
 
 A sceptic may, indeed, think that the whole system of 
 things, moral and physical, has no principle of continued 
 rest — that it has only been jostled into a condition of 
 unstable equilibrium, which may be destroyed by the first 
 movement of any of the component elements. Such a one 
 may reasonably fear the progress of discovery ; for his 
 system wants the essential principles of cohesion. But a 
 sincere believer in the word of God has no fear of this 
 kind : for he knows that all the parts of the natural world 
 are wisely fitted together — that the Lord of all nature is a 
 being without variableness or shadow of turning — and 
 that truth, of whatever kind, as seen in the mind of man, is 
 but a perception of his Maker's will. 
 
 A man of deep thought and great practical wisdom — 
 one whose piety and benevolence have for many years 
 been shining before the world, and of whose sincerity no 
 scoffer (of whatever school) will dare to start a doubt — 
 recorded his opinion in the assembly of men of science, 
 who during the past year were gathered from every corner 
 of the Empire within the walls of this University, that 
 Christianity had everything to hope and nothing to fear 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 115 
 
 from the advancement of philosophy* . These are golden 
 words, and full of meaning to those who have wisdom to 
 understand them. But there are some to whom this great 
 assembly has been a topic of offence. They belong to a 
 pyschological class of their own ; gifted indeed with very 
 humble powers in following out true consequences, either 
 moral or physical ; but compensated, in return, with gifts 
 of another kind. Like birds of bad omen, they can croak 
 of coming ills and smell corruption from afar; and by the 
 powers of a new analysis — a perverted moral alchemy — 
 they can extract evil out of good and dross out of gold. 
 
 Another indiscretion (far different however from the 
 egregious follies I have just noticed) has been committed 
 by some excellent Christian writers on the subject of Geo- 
 logy. They have not denied the facts established by this 
 science, nor have they confounded the nature of physical 
 and moral evidence : but they have prematurely (and there- 
 fore, without an adequate knowledge of all the facts essen- 
 tial to the argument,) endeavoured to bring the natural 
 history of the Earth into a literal accordance with the book 
 of Genesis — first, by greatly extending the periods of time 
 implied by the six days of creation (and whether this may 
 be rightly done is a question only of criticism, and not of 
 philosophy) — and secondly, by endeavouring to shew, that, 
 under this new interpretation of its words, the narrative of 
 Moses may be supposed to comprehend, and to describe in 
 order, the successive epochs of Geology. It is to be feared 
 that truth may, in this way, receive a double injury ; and I 
 am certain that the argument, just alluded to, has been 
 unsuccessful. The impossibility of the task was however 
 (as I know by my own experience) a lesson hard to learn : 
 but it is not likely again to be attempted by any good 
 Geologist. The only way to escape from all difficulties 
 pressing on the question of cosmogony has been already 
 
 * Speech of Dr. Chalmers at the Meeting of the British Associa- 
 ciation for (he Advancement of Science. June, 1833. 
 
 H2 
 
116 APPENDIX. 
 
 pointed out. We must consider the old strata of the earth 
 as monuments of a date long anterior to the existence of 
 man, and to the times contemplated in the moral records 
 of his creation. In this view there is no collision between 
 physical and moral truth. The Bible is left to rest on its 
 appropriate evidences, and its interpretation is committed 
 to the learning and good sense of the critic and the com- 
 mentator: while Geology is allowed to stand on its own 
 basis, and the philosopher to follow the investigations of 
 physical truth, wherever they may lead him, without any 
 dread of evil consequences ; and with the sure conviction 
 that natural science, when pursued with a right spirit, will 
 foster the reasoning powers, and teach us knowledge fitted, 
 at once, to impress the imagination, to bear on the business 
 of life, and to give us exalted views of the universal pre- 
 sence and unceasing power of God. 
 
 The subjects discussed in this note are of great impor- 
 tance ; and I am anxious to take away any wrong impres- 
 sions which may have been produced by the writings of a 
 false and unphilosophical school. In the furtherance of 
 this object (though at the risk of being taxed with the 
 fault of egotism and useless repetition) I will add one more 
 passage, taken from an anniversary address to the Geolo- 
 gical Society, especially as it appears in the pages of a 
 periodical work not perhaps accessible to all the readers of 
 this Discourse. 
 
 "There have issued from the English press, within a 
 few years, such dreams of cosmogony as I believe find no 
 parallel in the recent literature of continental Europe. It 
 would be in vain to point out to such authors the nature of 
 our data, or the method of our inductions ; for they have a 
 safer and a readier road to their own conclusions. It would 
 be in vain to tell them that the records of mankind offer no 
 single instance of any great physical truth anticipated by 
 mere guesses and conjectures— that philosophical wisdom 
 consists in comprehending the last generalizations derived 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 117 
 
 from facts each of which is only known hy experiment and 
 observation ; and in advancing, by such means, to those 
 general laws by which all things are bound together. They 
 seem not to know that inventive power in physics, unlike 
 inventive power in works of art or of imagination, finds no 
 employment in ideal creations, and only means the faculty 
 by which the mind clearly apprehends the relations and 
 analogies of things already known ; and is thereby directed 
 and urged on to the discovery of new facts, by the help of 
 new comparisons — that the history of all ages (and I might 
 add, the written law of our being, where it is declared that 
 by the sweat of our brow shall we gather up our harvest,) 
 has proved this way of slow and toilsome induction to be 
 the only path which leads to physical truth. 
 
 " Laws for the government of intellectual beings, and 
 laws by which material things are held together, have not 
 one common element to connect them. And to seek for 
 an exposition of the phenomena of the natural world among 
 the records of the moral destinies of mankind, would be as 
 unwise as to look for rules of moral government among the 
 laws of chemical combination. From the unnatural union 
 of things so utterly incongruous, there has from time to 
 time sprung up in this country a deformed progeny of 
 heretical and fantastical conclusions, by which sober phi- 
 losophy has been put to open shame, and sometimes even 
 the charities of life have been violated. 
 
 " No opinion can be heretical but that which is not 
 true. Conflicting falsehoods we can comprehend; but 
 truths can never war against each other. I affirm, there- 
 fore, that we have nothing to fear from the results of our 
 inquiries, provided they be followed in the laborious but 
 secure road of honest induction. In this way we may rest 
 assured that we shall never arrive at conclusions opposed 
 to any truth, either physical or moral, from whatsoever 
 source that truth may be derived : nay rather (as in all 
 truth there is a common essence), that new discoveries will 
 
118 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 ever lend support and illustration to things which are 
 already known, by giving us a larger insight into the 
 universal harmonies of nature*." 
 
 Note (D), p. 27. Nebular Hypothesis. 
 
 The Nebular Hypothesis is well known ; but it is so nearly 
 connected with the discoveries of our own time, and with 
 some of the speculations of this Discourse, that it requires 
 a passing notice. It supposes our solar system to have 
 arisen from the condensation of a nebula, or a great ex- 
 panded mass of incandescent luminous vapour. There are, 
 however, some preliminary questions, which must be an- 
 swered before we can accept this hypothesis, and consider 
 it either probable or true. Has it been drawn by fair 
 induction from second causes ? Is it based on any general 
 truth of observation or experiment? Is it suggested to 
 the mind by any prevailing analogy of the natural world ? 
 If not, we must banish it to those dark regions where idle 
 dreams have been feigned to dwell : 
 
 Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci 
 * * * * quam sedem Somnia vulgo 
 Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus hozrent. 
 
 While on this subject, the reader will, I trust, forgive 
 me for endeavouring to adorn my pages with some words 
 of oracular wisdom drawn from the great prophet of natural 
 learningt. M God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror 
 or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, and 
 joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth 
 to receive light ; and not only delighted in beholding the 
 variety of things, and vicissitude of times, but raised also 
 
 * Anniversary Address to the Geological Society, Annals of 
 Philosophy, April 1^30. 
 
 t Bacon, On the Advancement of Learning j Book L 
 
APPENDIX. 119 
 
 to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees, which 
 throughout all those changes are infallibly observed." * * • 
 14 ff, then, such be the capacity and receipt of the mind of 
 man, it is manifest that there is no danger at all in the pro- 
 portion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it 
 should make it swell, or out-compass itself: no, but it is 
 merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity 
 more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective 
 thereof, hath in it some nature of \nenom or malignity, and 
 some effects of that venom, which is ventosity and swell- 
 ing." * * * " As for the censure of Solomon, that there is 
 no end of making books, and that much reading is a wea- 
 riness of the flesh; and that admonition of St. Paul, that 
 we be not seduced by vain philosophy ; let these places be 
 rightly understood, and they do indeed excellently set forth 
 the true bounds and limitations whereby human knowledge 
 is confined and circumscribed ; and yet without any such 
 contraction or coarctation, but that it may comprehend all 
 the universal nature of things." — We must not (Bacon tells 
 us) " place our felicity on knowledge, as we forget our 
 mortality ;" and we must not " presume by the contem- 
 plation of nature to attain to the mysteries of God." * * * 
 " If any man shall think, by view and inquiry into sen- 
 sible and material things, to attain that light whereby he 
 may reveal unto himself the nature and will of God, then 
 indeed is he spoiled by vain philosophy : for the contem- 
 plation of God's creatures and works produceth, (having 
 regard to the works and creatures, themselves) knowledge ; 
 but, having regard to God, no perfect knowledge, but won- 
 der, which is broken knowledge." * * * " And hence it is 
 true, that divers great learned men have been heretical, 
 whilst they have sought to fly up to the secrets of the 
 Deity by the waxen wings of the senses. As for the con- 
 ceit that too much knowledge should incline a man to 
 atheism, and that ignorance of second causes should make 
 a more devout dependence upon God which is the first 
 cause ; — it is good to ask the question which Job asked of 
 
120 
 
 PPENDIX. 
 
 his friends: Will you lie for God an one man will do for 
 another to gratify him ? For certain it is that God vvork- 
 eth nothing in nature but by second causes ; and if they 
 would have it otherwise believed, it is mere imposture, as it 
 were in favour towards God ; and nothing else but to offer 
 to the Author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie." 
 
 These sentences are full of wisdom, and point out to us 
 the true bounds and limitations of natural knowledge. We 
 may expatiate freely and fearlessly among second causes, 
 so far as we can comprehend them by sense and reason, 
 and can draw conclusions from them by fair induction. In 
 so doing we perform one of the purposes of our being. 
 But if we take one step beyond these natural boundaries, 
 we part with the implements of our strength, and at every 
 turn of thought are led from the right way by "the seduction 
 of a vain philosophy," and may go on building on nothing 
 better than an empty dream. Should the'Nebular Hypothe- 
 sis be ever established on the firm ground of physical in- 
 duction, we shall then gain from the contemplation of the 
 heavens — what we have already drawn from a study of the 
 earth — some knowledge of the second causes whereby the 
 Maker of the universe has gradually fashioned the world of 
 sense into its existing form. And should these contempla- 
 tions give us some conception of physical changes brought 
 about during countless ages before the first creation of 
 man, and unrecorded in his traditions ; what would be such 
 changes, after all, but works of nature bounded both by 
 time and space ; and therefore as a speck in comparison of 
 infinity ; and all their long periods of elaboration but as a 
 moment in comparison of eternity ? They can, therefore, 
 give us but a " broken knowledge." They may give us a 
 conception of a great First Cause ; but they can give us no 
 conception of His essence — of His councils — of the move- 
 ments of His will — of that which determined Him to show 
 His sovereign power in works elaborated during periods 
 defined by time and within bounds comprehended by sense 
 — of what creation itself implies and in what it consists — of 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 121 
 
 what was the first beginning of material things — of what 
 is, or is not, a fitting exercise of His almighty power. 
 Speculations on such points as these are unprofitable and 
 irreverent, and belong to "the seductions of a vain phi- 
 losophy, that seeks to fly up to the secrets of the Deity on 
 the waxen wings of sense." We are invited to ascend the 
 steps of the great temple of the God of nature, and we may 
 be conducted within its courts ; but we dare not draw aside 
 the veil that hides the sanctuary, nor could the eye endure 
 the brightness that is within it. 
 
 In the remotest regions of sidereal space are multitudes 
 of nebulae, or masses of cloudy light, of irregular but per- 
 manent forms. That such masses existed, had been long 
 known to all who observed the heavens : for (not to men- 
 tion the " milky-way," which is a vast expansion of nebu- 
 lous light connected, perhaps, more immediately with our 
 solar system,) several nebulae are visible to the naked eye, 
 and may more become revealed to the senses by the help of 
 instruments of ordinary power. But Sir William Herschel, 
 the greatest of all discoverers in the remote regions of the 
 sky, by help of Reflectors, of his own invention and of 
 enormous power, saw farther into the heavens than any 
 observer had done before him, and thereby determined the 
 figure, position, and other external conditions of a great 
 multitude of nebulae : and the younger Herschel, first re- 
 peating his father's observations and greatly adding to 
 them, carried these Reflectors to the southern hemisphere, 
 and, after several years of labour in this new field, has 
 swept over the whole surface of the sky, and pierced all the 
 remoter regions of sidereal space. Through the labours of 
 these two illustrious astronomers we are now enabled to 
 count these nebulae by thousands. 
 
 While, seen through instruments of low power, all of 
 them (as their name implies) look like masses of shining 
 vapour : but when tested by the high power of the Her- 
 schelian Reflector, many of them are resolved into a mul- 
 titude of luminous points, which have been well compared 
 
122 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 to " spangles of diamond-dust." Under such conditions 
 a nebula loses all analogy to an elastic luminous vapour, 
 and is but a great cluster of small stars at a vast but un- 
 known distance from our system. Others, however, have 
 resisted the severest test of the reflecting telescope, and not 
 only seem to retain their nebulous condition, but present 
 forms, apparently derived from a rotation about a fixed 
 axis; and centers of bright illumination, that seem to 
 indicate a condensation of nebulous matter round our own 
 more fixed centers. Under this view, different nebulce are 
 seen in different stages of condensation : and though no 
 changes have been traced in the forms of any one of 
 them (and may not be traced for many ages to come), 
 yet by bringing them all under a common law, and pass- 
 ing in imagination from one to another, we may, it has 
 been concluded, trace the successive effects which, dur- 
 ing by-gone ages, have been brought about through the 
 gradual progress of condensation. Led by this assumed 
 analogy, Sir William Herschel threw out his Nebular 
 Hypothesis — that the whole solar system might once have 
 been expanded through space as a great mass of elastic 
 vapour; and assumed its present form by successive natural 
 changes, like those inferred from the supposed condition of 
 the nebulous masses in the remotest regions of the visible 
 world. 
 
 Taking up this hypothesis, where it had been left by its 
 author, La Place gave it a dynamical consistency by con- 
 siderations which admit of an easy statement. If the 
 matter of our system have been once expanded in the form 
 of a spherical nebula, slowly revolving round a fixed axis, 
 it might undergo a continual contraction of its mass by the 
 radiation of heat into sidereal space. During the progress 
 of such a change its velocity of rotation must continually 
 increase ; and we may suppose it, several times over, to 
 have reached such a dynamical condition that the centri- 
 fugal force of its equatorial surface would exactly balance 
 the whole attraction of the spherical mass within. After 
 
APPENDIX. 123 
 
 each such condition a nebulous ring might be thrown off 
 by a further contraction of the whole central mass ; and 
 each nebulous ring would revolve, in obedience to Kepler's 
 law, by a physical necessity implied in that very balance of 
 forces by which the several rings were produced. Again, as 
 this hypothesis involves no cause to produce any change in 
 the first axis of rotation, each ring must revolve in the 
 same direction and in the same plane. On this simple 
 hypothesis the whole revolving nebula might pass into a 
 system composed of a large central body surrounded by 
 nebulous rings — all revolving in one direction, in one 
 equatorial plane, and in periodic times corresponding to 
 Kepler's law. 
 
 But the same cause which produced the contraction 
 of the original mass must also produce a contraction of 
 the nebulous rings. In this way each of them may be 
 supposed to break up and roll into a spherical mass of 
 more condensed nebulous matter. This change would, 
 however, produce no dynamical force to disturb the ori- 
 ginal planes of movement ; so that these secondary re- 
 volving nebulas would continue to move in the common 
 equatorial plane, and might finally pass into the condi- 
 tion of planetary bodies. But, before they reached this 
 final state, these secondary nebulas might pass through 
 the critical conditions above indicated, and so might throw 
 off a succession of rings ; and these rings might in 
 like manner undergo condensation, break up, and finally 
 pass into the state of satellites ; revolving, as before, in 
 one direction and in a common equatorial plane. Thus, 
 through progressive natural changes, we should end with a 
 system having a central body surrounded by planets, and 
 the planets, it might be, surrounded by satellites or rings — 
 all obeying Kepler's law, and all revolving in one direction 
 and in a common equatorial plane. 
 
 We may further remark, that however attenuated may 
 have been the revolving nebulous mass, its parts may have 
 possessed some tenacity which may have interfered with 
 
124 APPENDIX. 
 
 the mathematical consistency of the result. Again, as each 
 ring was thrown off, the attraction of the central mass 
 must have been, in a small degree, diminished. This of 
 itself would produce a slight perturbation of the first nebular 
 movements. Other irregularities would arise out of the 
 deviations from a perfectly spherical form in the revolving 
 bodies, and the mutual attractions of the rings must have 
 produced mutual perturbations in their movements. But the 
 limits of such perturbations can be defined by calculation, 
 and could not throw the system into inextricable confusion. 
 
 The planes of planetery movement might therefore 
 slightly deviate from the equatorial plane of the revolving 
 nebula, out of which they had been formed ; and the cir- 
 cular orbits would, by physical necessity, pass into elliptical 
 orbits of small excentricity, in which the several bodies 
 must continue to revolve in obedience to Kepler's law. 
 
 Thus we may suppose our system to have passed through 
 all its transformations. The equator of the primaeval ne- 
 bula becomes the ecliptic plane of the system, with the sun 
 in its center and the several planets and satellites revolving 
 round the sun in the same direction, nearly in the same 
 plane, in orbits that are nearly circular, and all moving in 
 obedience to Kepler's law. 
 
 The oblate figure of the earth, its central heat, and the 
 crystalline structure of the lower portions of its crust, seem 
 to prove a former condition approaching that of igneous 
 fusion. But we should far transgress the bounds of fair 
 induction were we to affirm that the earth had been once in 
 a nebulous condition; and still more, were we to assume 
 that it had ever been in the condition of a nebulous ring, 
 thrown off by a revolving mass of igneous vapour. I have 
 just alluded (in this Discourse) to such an hypothesis ; but 
 only as a speculation, and nothing is built upon it. If, by 
 strict dynamical reasoning upon the Nebular Hypothesis, 
 we had reached consequences opposed to the phenomena of 
 the solar system, we should have proved the hypothesis to 
 be false. But because we can deduce a series of conse- 
 
APPENDIX. 125 
 
 cjuences from this hypothesis, which conform approximately 
 to the phenomena of our system, we by no means prove it 
 to be true. All we can dare to assert is, that the hypo- 
 thesis lends itself readily to many phenomena of the solar 
 system : but many an ingenious hypothesis, put forth with 
 all the confidence of truth and long received with favour, 
 has in the end proved worthless and untrue. We must ever 
 bear in mind one of the three golden rules of Newton — 
 " Causas rerum naiuralium non pluses admitti deberi, quam 
 quoe et verce sint, et earum phcenomenis explicandis suffi- 
 cianty The hypothesis we have been discussing rests only 
 on an assumed analogy ; and, should that fail, passes at 
 once out of the rules of sound philosophy. 
 
 So far I have stated the reasonings which seem to give 
 support to the Nebular Hypothesis. Let me now state 
 some considerations that may be urged against it. 
 
 (1). It is not brought before us as a sure induction from 
 tact or observation ; but rather belongs to a class of specu- 
 lations, which, whether true or false, go beyond our material 
 knowledge. Men have ever been willing to desert the beaten 
 track of natural science, and, instead of ascending step by 
 step to the conception of laws by which separate pheno- 
 mena are bound together, have dared to speculate about 
 the beginning of things — to put themselves in the Creator's 
 place, and to make a world after their own conceits. Such 
 speculations have perhaps never done any good, and often 
 do much mischief. Heat has a continual tendency to 
 diffuse itself ; yet the hypothesis commences by supposing 
 its concentration in many large, but definite, portions of 
 space. Whence came this concentration ? It is not sug- 
 gested by any conception we can form of heat, but seems 
 rather in direct opposition to it. But, it may be said, the 
 incandescent nebulae have emanated from the fiat of Crea- 
 tive Will, and contained within themselves the germs which 
 (when guided by the second causes ordained by God) pro- 
 duced in due time all the beauty and harmony of the 
 natural universe. There may, perhaps, be no moral objec- 
 
12G APPENDIX. 
 
 tion to sucli a view, provided it trencli not on the pheno- 
 mena of organic life ; for it takes not from us our belief in 
 Providence and final causes ; and God, so far as our senses 
 are concerned, appears only to work by second causes : but 
 the whole speculation carries us out of the province of 
 natural science, and is condemned by Bacon in some of the 
 sentences quoted in the early part of this Note. 
 
 (2), The planets do not revolve in one plane. Can 
 their different obliquities to the ecliptic plane be accounted 
 for by the perturbations of the nebular rings ? If not, we 
 have a difficulty in the way of the hypothesis. 
 
 (3). The density of the planets does not conform to 
 any law we might expect from the nebular hypothesis. 
 This is an unexplained difficulty. 
 
 (4). The satellites of Uranus revolve not, like the other 
 bodies, from west to east, but from east to west, and their 
 orbits are inclined at great angles to the ecliptic plane. 
 Here, then, we have a very great unexplained difficulty. 
 
 (5). Of all bodies in our system the comets are most 
 nearly in a nebulous condition. They move in obedience 
 to Kepler's law ; but they cut through the ecliptic plane at 
 various angles and in highly excentric orbits, which baffle 
 all our conceptions of analogy with condensed rings thrown 
 off by a revolving body. 
 
 (6). The formation of nebulous rings, on certain 
 assumed conditions of condensation, has been explained by 
 strict mechanical reasoning, and illustrated by direct experi- 
 ment : but the formation of planetary nebulae, by the break- 
 ing up of nebulous rings, has neither been explained by 
 strict mechanical reasoning, nor illustrated by any direct 
 experiment. 
 
 (7). Lastly, The original hypothesis of Sir W. Her- 
 schel has not been confirmed by the progress of discovery. 
 
 The apparently nebulous light of the " milky-way" is 
 produced by confluent streams of light proceeding from 
 innumerable telescopic stars. In like manner multitudes of 
 smaller nebulae have been resolved into luminous points. 
 
APPENDIX. 127 
 
 Tliey are only great clusters of stars at immeasurable dis- 
 tances from the eye. Hence arises a question suggested 
 by Newton's second rule, " Effectuum naturalium ejusdem 
 generis ecedem sunt causce" May not all the apparent ne- 
 bulae be formed by the confluent light of stars ? If many 
 of them have been "resolved," might not all of them 
 become " resolved," had we telescopes of sufficient power ? 
 Should astronomers be enabled to give a positive answer to 
 this question, there will be an end- of the Nebular Hypo- 
 thesis ; for it will have no analogy to rest upon : and, 
 since the last edition of this Discourse was printed, the 
 truth of such an answer has, to say the least of it, been 
 made probable by the discoveries of Lord Rosse ; who, by 
 help of his gigantic Reflector, has succeeded in resolving 
 into luminous points several of those remote masses of 
 sidereal light, which had been appealed to as giving the 
 surest evidence of a true nebulous condition. 
 
 However great the names connected with it, and how- 
 ever favourable its acceptance with the scientific world, the 
 Nebular Hypothesis verges not, as has been asserted, " on 
 the region of ascertained truth." It is at present nothing 
 better than a splendid vision ; and before it can be received 
 as a physical reality, it must be supported by better evi- 
 dence, and placed on a firmer foundation than that whereon 
 it is at present made to rest. 
 
 Note (E), p. 31. 
 
 As I am anxious that this passage, and the one imme- 
 diately following it on the same page, should not be mis- 
 understood, I will endeavour, in the simplest words I can 
 find, to explain my meaning. 
 
 The preceding Discourse offers to the reader no scheme 
 of ideal perfection ; but, on the contrary, gives a short 
 comment on the physical, classical, and moral studies of 
 our academic course; and against certain parts of them 
 
128 APPENDIX. 
 
 brings forward some grave objections. Any discussion on 
 the evidence of our religion, on its doctrines, its hopes, or 
 the course of life pointed out by it, was beyond the direct 
 purpose of my argument : and in an address to a Christian 
 assembly, I had a right (as has been stated in the conclud- 
 ing words of this Discourse) to assume the truth of all the 
 great fundamental doctrines of our religion, while discussing 
 other truths of a different kind, and resting on a different 
 foundation. 
 
 In an early part of the preceding pages (p. 14... p. 31) 
 I have endeavoured, from the light of nature, to establish 
 the following conclusions : — 
 
 (1). The being, power, and wisdom of God, as shown 
 in the whole fabric of the material world ; all the parts of 
 which are bound together by material laws ending in har- 
 mony and order. 
 
 (2). A confirmation of this conclusion, drawn from the 
 skill and prescience shown in the whole framework of 
 animated nature. 
 
 (3). A further confirmation, drawn from the adaptation 
 of all parts of nature, whether animate or inanimate, to one 
 another. No parts are independent. Each part is governed 
 by its own peculiar laws ; yet subordinate to higher laws, 
 by which the several parts are kept together under one 
 common plan and purpose. 
 
 (4.) The proof of a continued providential government, 
 derived from the creative introduction, during many suc- 
 cessive periods of time, of new organic structures adapted 
 to new physical conditions of the earth. 
 
 (5). The probability of a future state of being, grounded 
 on analogy. The organs of every animal are knit together 
 with consummate skill ; and wisely adapted to all external 
 nature, for the use and support of the beings endowed with 
 them. In man, moral powers and capacities are superadded 
 to his animal organs. He not only forms a conception of 
 the future, but he has a " longing after immortality." To 
 believe that such capacities and appetencies were given for 
 
APPENDIX. 129 
 
 no purpose — were to have no fruition in futurity — would 
 be against all analogy, and imply a phenomenon that 
 jarred with the universal harmony of nature. On grounds 
 such as these many heathens "have built their hopes of 
 continued being and future glory." 
 
 Again, in a following part of the Discourse (p. 44), I 
 have stated it as a fact, drawn from our knowledge of all 
 past history, that under no form of government can man be 
 maintained in personal happiness or'social dignity, without 
 the sanction of religion. This assertion is not new : were 
 it so, it would contradict itself. It has been emphatically 
 urged by some of the old heathen historians ; and we may 
 assuredly conclude, as a fair induction of reason grounded 
 on analogy, that the religious nature, implied in the very 
 existence of this historical fact, was given to man for the 
 purpose of directing him in the way of truth, and guiding 
 his soul towards the highest objects of his creation. 
 
 While on this question, I may allude to a conversation 
 I once held with the illustrious philosopher La Place. It 
 was in his sick-chamber, which, I believe, he never left ; 
 and not many days before his death. Among other sub- 
 jects, he inquired into the nature of our endowments, and 
 our course of academic study ; which I explained to him at 
 some length. He then dwelt earnestly on the religious 
 character of our endowments, and added (as nearly as I 
 can translate his words), " I think this right ; and on this 
 point I should deprecate any great organic changes in your 
 system ; for I have lived long enough to know, what I did 
 not at one time believe, that no society can be upheld in 
 happiness and honour without the sentiments of religion." 
 The dying philosopher may, while using these words, have 
 had nothing in his mind beyond the principles of worldly 
 wisdom, and the bearing of religious sentiments on the 
 order and well-being of the state. On this point I venture 
 not to inquire. But the words record a great practical 
 
 S. D. I 
 
130 APPENDIX. 
 
 truth ; and, having fallen so impressively from his lips, are 
 surely worth recording. 
 
 I believe that all the preceding conclusions of this Note 
 are incontestably true — based, as they are, both on reason 
 and experience ; and if they be true, they must be of deep 
 importance. On this subject I may refer the reader to the 
 early parts of the two following Notes (F) and (G), and 
 need not repeat what is, perhaps, there stated with suffi- 
 cient fulness. 
 
 On the other hand, every Christian must allow that the 
 light of natural religion is too dim to guide a man securely 
 along the thorny path of life, and offers him sanctions 
 much too feeble to hold him upright in the time of tempta- 
 tion. Again, in old age, and in the approaching hour of 
 death, what secure comfort is left to the heathen ? All the 
 faculties which have ministered to his strength are on the 
 point of dissolution. He knows that in many things he 
 has offended against his Maker. The world he is about to 
 leave has many penal dispensations. How knows he when 
 those penal dispensations are to end ? Supposing him to 
 believe in a future state, what security has he for his own 
 condition in futurity ? Doubt and perplexity are on every 
 side of him. He may have learnt to smother the feelings 
 of his nature in a stoical indifference ; or he may, under 
 the very best view we take of his condition, comfort himself 
 with some feeble hopes, and apply to himself some words 
 like those of Tacitus — "Si quis piorum manibus locus ; si, 
 ut sapientibus placet, ?ion cum corpore extinguuntur magnce 
 animce ; placide quiescam." But how cold and cheerless 
 are words like these when confronted with the declarations 
 of an inspired Apostle ! — " To me to live is Christ, and to 
 die is gain... I am now ready to be offered, and the time of 
 my departure is at hand. I have fought a good Jtght, I 
 have finished my course, I have kept the faith : henceforth 
 there is laid, up for me a crown of righteousness, which the 
 
APPENDIX. 131 
 
 Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day ; and 
 not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appear- 
 ing." A firm believer in revealed religion has both support 
 in life and comfort in death. The evidence of his religion 
 is full and clear, and is addressed both to his heart and 
 understanding. His hopes of a future state are sure and 
 certain ; the grounds of his acceptance before God are 
 plainly set before him ; his rule of life is simple ; and, if he 
 be a faithful follower of his Master, he has a power of 
 obedience which comes from above, and will not fail him. 
 It is true that some of the mysterious doctrines of his 
 religion are so far above reason, that no man by the natural 
 powers of his understanding could have ever risen to any 
 conception of them ; yet they end not in mystical abstrac- 
 tions ; but, when rightly understood and heartily accepted, 
 they have a direct bearing on the daily business of life : and 
 though above natural reason, they are not contrary to 
 reason ; but have been proved by many pious Christian 
 writers (especially Bishop Butler) to come within the ana- 
 logy of God's dealing with his creatures in the government 
 of the natural world. 
 
 What mercies God may have in store for a heathen who 
 has done his best with the feeble light that has been given 
 him, is a very vain and unprofitable inquiry. But we do 
 know, from the solemn denunciations of God's word, that to 
 turn away from the light of the revealed word, when that 
 light has been plainly set before us, is deadly sin. While 
 this light is offered to us, to turn away from it, and to seek 
 any other light as our guide towards the throne of mercy, 
 would be madness and folly, like that of an arctic savage 
 who should remain in his hut of snow by the side of his 
 dismal winter-lamp, after the sun of a new summer had 
 again visited his frozen country. All the preceding conclu- 
 sions of this note appear, in one form or other, in the early 
 editions of this Discourse, and are repeated here that I may 
 the more directly meet some objections which have been 
 
 i2 
 
132 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 urged against them. To prevent mistake I will endeavour 
 to state these objections in the words of their author ; and 
 I will begin with his attacks on the moral portions of the 
 Discourse * . 
 
 " You, Sir, make creation religion and moral religion 
 to lead to the everlasting enjoyment of God, independently 
 of all revelation; and that, too, while your principle- 
 poisoned youth, and followers, are enveloped in the anti-re- 
 velation delusion of your Geological speculations." (p. 123.) 
 
 " Here, Sir, you lead all your instructed youth to build 
 their hope of the everlasting enjoyment of the God of 
 nature, and of eternal glory, upon the volition of their 
 intellectual powers, acting on the works of nature, without 
 the Word of God. And not only so, but, with an unparal- 
 leled presumption, you as it were challenge the eternal God 
 to deceive any mortal that lives and dies in such a religion ! 
 And these your doctrines, and your unheard-of challenge of 
 the Almighty, are precisely the same in your anti-scriptural 
 and anti-christian presumptuous moral code ; and you fear- 
 fully aver that man can attain to the eternal enjoyment of God 
 and of glory equally by the one as by the other." (p. 125.) 
 
 "And this was the destructive philosophizing delusion, 
 under the prostrating enchantment of which the Rev. Adam 
 Sedgwick was carried through the preaching of that enor- 
 mous Christian and ministerial anomaly — a geologizing 
 and moralizing sermon, in the public academic worship of 
 God, which openly professed to treat of questions that had 
 nothing to do with divine revelation, or divine revelation 
 with them ! — but which at the same time maintained, that 
 the discussion of these questions laid down sure roads to 
 everlasting glory ; and that no one who aspired to that 
 
 * The work to which I refer is entitled. Popular Geology subversive 
 of Divine Revelation, (London, Hatehard and Son, 1834.) In itself 
 it deserves perhaps no reply ; but I notice the objections in this edition 
 of my Discourse, as some of them have been repeated by other writers, 
 and in a form which requires a respectful consideration. 
 
APPENDIX. 133 
 
 eternal glory by walking in them, should either be deceived 
 or rejected of God." (p. 130.) 
 
 " While science envelopes him in her enchanting robe, 
 and the hands of a kindred age's applause lend their aid to 
 hold it on, none but God himself, by an intervention of 
 sovereign mercy can prevent such a one from drifting down 
 the tide of philosophic fame to everlasting perdition : as 
 the same eternal wisdom saith, The prosperity of fools shall 
 destroy them ; and, The lips of a fool shall swallow up 
 himself" (p. 136.) 
 
 Do I then plead guilty to such a list of formidable 
 charges ? Not to so much as one iota of them. They are 
 nothing better than the dreams of a disordered imagina- 
 tion: and were they true, their impression would be far 
 deeper had they been conveyed in less turgid language. 
 All reasoning must lead us into inextricable confusion 
 if we keep not separate the different provinces of human 
 knowledge ; and while we vainly blend together truths 
 human and divine — neither discriminating the foundations 
 on which they rest, nor the evidences on which they are 
 built up — we must end, to use the words of Bacon, in 
 an heretical religion, and a fantastical philosophy. But 
 we may compare together the streams of knowledge, 
 though springing from different fountains ; and we can 
 sometimes show that in their course they become blended 
 together at some common point : and hence we may con- 
 clude, as all truth centers in the ordinance of God's will, 
 that the different kinds of truth must harmonize and lend 
 support to one another. It is, therefore, a delightful intel- 
 lectual task (and I might add a wholesome moral task) to 
 trace the analogies of our Maker's dealings with us in the 
 natural and spiritual world. 
 
 While Bishop Butler was employed, during years of 
 patient thought, in tracing the analogies of natural and 
 revealed religion, was he thereby endeavouring to set up 
 natural religion in the place of revealed ? His thought and 
 
134 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 purpose were far different. He was destroying the strong- 
 holds of deism — giving a wholesome food to the intellect 
 of man — taking a film from the eyes of the sceptic — and 
 using such powers as God had given him in bringing back 
 to the light of revealed truth many who were wandering 
 amidst doubt and darkness. 
 
 I can pursue this subject no farther. A flat denial is the 
 best answer to give to the inflated charges above quoted ; 
 and I again affirm that I have not, in thought or word, set 
 up natural in the place of revealed religion, or dared to 
 affirm " that we can attain the eternal enjoyment of God 
 and glory equally by the one as by the other." The impu- 
 tation has no foundation whereon to stand, and the vitu- 
 perative comment of its author must fall along with it. 
 
 Strong objections have been urged, from more than one 
 quarter, against the following passages of the Discourse :— • 
 " The rejection of the moral sense on religious grounds is 
 one of the errors of fanaticism. — Amidst all the ruin that is 
 within us there are still the elements of what is good," &c. 
 &c. {supra, p. 58.) — " Some men have rejected natural 
 religion through mere fanaticism. They believe our cor- 
 ruption to be so entire that they deny to the natural man 
 all perception of the beauty of moral truth — all knowledge 
 of God — and almost shut out from him the faculty of rea- 
 son." {infra, p. 158.) — " High principle directs and con- 
 trols the capacities and affections of our moral nature, but 
 compels us not to root them out." (infra, p. 169.) 
 
 Let me endeavour, so far as I am able within the narrow 
 limits of this note, to explain my words, which have been 
 misunderstood and strangely tortured from their meaning. 
 The following are among the great fundamental doctrines 
 of our religion. — That " man is very far gone from original 
 righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil "— 
 that our Maker is pure and holy, and requires from us 
 nothing less than perfect obedience — perfect both in will 
 and deed. — That every son of man is, therefore, guilty before 
 
APPENDIX. 135 
 
 God, and under sentence of condemnation.- — That a remedy 
 lias been provided for us in the person of Jesus Christ ; who 
 not only showed in himself an example of perfect purity 
 and holiness, but opened for us a way to future happiness, 
 by the voluntary sacrifice of himself — thereby satisfying 
 the severe attribute of God's justice, and blotting out 
 the written sentence of our condemnation.— That a faithful 
 acceptance of this doctrine is the principle and foundation 
 of our forgiveness, and by inherent moral necessity fills the 
 heart with thankfulness and love. — That a full perception 
 of these doctrines is not enough. — That after we are forgiven 
 and restored to our Maker's favour, infirmity and corruption 
 still clings to us. — That we require, after admission to the 
 covenant of mercy, through our whole lives continual support 
 and renovation, — to be maintained only by communion with 
 God and the sustaining grace of his Holy Spirit.— That 
 in this way God may dwell in our hearts as our Maker, 
 our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. — That from first to last 
 this scheme of salvation is the free gift of God ; not pur- 
 chased by our own works, or claimed by us on any score 
 of self-sustained inherent personal merit of our own. — The 
 proper effects of these great doctrines, when faithfully re- 
 ceived in the heart, are an enlarged charity — a purity of 
 life grounded on the highest sanctions — and a ready ac- 
 knowledgement of the goodness and providence of God in 
 all his dealings with us. — The film which dims our vision 
 falls away — the passions which desolate the world become 
 obedient to law and order— we see in everything around us 
 the power and benevolence of our Maker — all the higher 
 faculties, moral and intellectual, receive their noblest exalt- 
 ation ; and now at length subservient to the true purposes 
 of our being, become " a rich storehouse for the glory of 
 the Creator and the relief of man's estate." 
 
 Whatever view we take of the inborn faculties of 
 man — whether we regard them as physical, social, moral, 
 intellectual, or religious — we sec enough to make us com- 
 
136 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 prehend, at least, in part, the great purposes for which they 
 were first given, and the dreadful evils to which they are 
 turned by the depravity of the human will. But this perver- 
 sion of the original powers which we derive from our Maker's 
 hand, is no proof that every germ of them has been utterly 
 rooted out. Under the government of a renovated will 
 the same powers may be brought again into subordination, 
 and made to fulfil the original purpose of their being. 
 While we confine our thoughts to the combined physical 
 powers of man we can as easily conceive they should last 
 for ever, as that they should last only a hundred years : but 
 we know, as a matter of fact, that after a few years, under 
 whatever guidance they may be held, and by whatever care 
 maintained, they sink into decay and end in death. So 
 also we know that the moral and intellectual powers — 
 all that belong to the inner man — if left to themselves must 
 end in decay and spiritual death. Meanwhile, however, 
 our moral and intellectual powers are not utterly extin- 
 guished : they are present with us from first to last, though 
 dimmed, obscured, and perhaps unheeded ; and at every step 
 of our lives we are responsible both for the use and the 
 abuse of them. 
 
 On the mere physical powers of the animal frame I 
 need not dwell ; for they manifestly exist, whether they be 
 instruments of good or evil — The social affections exist in 
 all men, although most noble when under the guidance of 
 high principle. They are good in themselves ; though, 
 like everything else in human nature, they may become per- 
 verted to evil. Not to lose ourselves among the compli- 
 cated relations of social life, let us confine our view to 
 the example of maternal love. This natural affection is as 
 plainly seen in the untaught wife of a savage as in a 
 christian matron. That the moral faculties are not utterly 
 blotted out from the mind of man is proved by the language 
 of every civilized nation, heathen as well as christian. 
 What are the terrible sanctions of all penal law, but a 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 137 
 
 natural struggle, in one form or other, of moral principle 
 against base passion ? That the intellectual powers, em- 
 ployed in the discovery of abstract truth, are independent 
 of religious faith, is most certain. Yet are they good in 
 themselves ; and when kept in their proper place, minister 
 at once to the good of man and the glory of God. Lastly, 
 there is a religious capacity in man, and a religion of 
 nature. 
 
 For the invisible things of God from the creation of 
 the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
 that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead: 
 so that the heathen nations are without excuse; because 
 when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, 
 neither were thankful. It was not, then, so much a dim- 
 ness in the light of nature or a defect in the understanding, 
 as a disorder in the heart and affections, which led men 
 into the fantastical rites of idolatrous worship — often end- 
 ing in impurity and blood. But even among such dis- 
 eased and convulsive struggles toward the worship of God — 
 impure, cruel, and unhallowed as they are — we can discern 
 the proofs of an inherent religious nature which cannot be 
 rooted out, however much it may be denied or misdirected. 
 
 Can we then affirm that the ruin of the natural man is 
 so complete that there remains not within him one element 
 of good — that he is one mass of corruption — that he is 
 born without kindly affections or moral capacity — that he 
 has from nature no conception of a Godhead? Unques- 
 tionably not. This is not the nature of man. Were such 
 his condition, he could not even form the conception of any 
 moral law to which he was bound to give obedience ; and 
 being without law, he would, in the language of the Bible, 
 be without transgression. 
 
 In the language of our Church " man is very far gone 
 from original righteousness, and is of his own nature in- 
 clined to evil." — Again, she tells us, " We have no power 
 to do good works pleasing and acceptable to God, without 
 
138 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may 
 have a good will, and working with us when we have that 
 good will." — These two propositions are drawn from the 
 Word of God. The first contains a doctrine of the Bible 
 and a fact of universal experience — the second tells us that 
 through all the duties of a religious life, from its beginning 
 to its end, we can only be upheld by a steady communion 
 with our Maker. There is not, I believe, one sentence in 
 the preceding Discourse that is in conflict with either of 
 these propositions. 
 
 While we speak of fallen man we may figure to our- 
 selves a being prostrate on the ground, entangled in the 
 mire, and incapable of onward movement. But he is lifted 
 up by a power superior to his own — a new spirit is breathed 
 into him — new strength is given him — and a staff is placed 
 in his hand whereon he may lean securely and go on his 
 way rejoicing. The office of spiritual religion is not to 
 destroy the faculties of the mind and body, but to renovate 
 them and restore them to their proper use, as obedient 
 instruments in their Maker's service. Without religious 
 government they are the slaves of passion and the im- 
 plements of mischief ; under it they are the willing instru- 
 ments of good. 
 
 The views against which I have been contending are 
 fanatical, mischievous, and untrue ; and they naturally end 
 in uncharitable judgments, in sour ascetical religion, or in 
 some form of monastic superstition. But while combating 
 one class of errors, let no one accuse me, without proof, of 
 falling into another. I set not up natural religion in the 
 place of revealed : I am no advocate of modern " Ratio- 
 nalism :" nor have I once asserted (as I have been made 
 to do by a pretended, but false quotation from this Dis- 
 course) that man, as a religious being, can be converted 
 from evil to good by the mere natural power of persuasion 
 acting on the moral elements within his bosom, and with- 
 out spiritual help. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 139 
 
 Objections have been taken to the language of a pre- 
 vious note (Note C), and it has been described as too 
 bitter to bring conviction with it, or serve a good purpose. 
 If in a single sentence I have offended against Christian 
 charity, I am sorry for it ; but it is now too late to change 
 the language of this note. It describes the inveterate follies 
 of a class of men, and was written without ill will to any 
 one of them ; and the words I hare used do no more than 
 express my meaning. Perhaps my best justification will be 
 found in the following passages, taken from the work I 
 have already quoted in the present note. They were writ- 
 ten, in reply to the first edition of this Discourse, by a 
 Clergyman and a member of the University of Cambridge ; 
 and they show (it may be in a grotesque and somewhat 
 exaggerated form) the sentiments and comments of the 
 class to which I have just alluded. 
 
 " Every common-sense being knows, and every honest 
 Geologist must confess, that, to find the date of any one 
 deposit in the earth's bowels, is beyond the limits of mortal 
 ability, and defies that of the Geologian himself. God has 
 given these deposits a date, and no mortal can give them 
 any other." 
 
 " What is the sum and substance of all pre-creation 
 Geology ? What is the true amount both of its basis and 
 its superstructure? We sacredly defy all the Geologians 
 upon earth to prove it to be more than bare hypothetical 
 supposition — or, to use the words of the academic Geolo- 
 gical standard, ' mere (philosophically) expanded nebulosity.' 
 And yet this is the exactness of truth which infidelity now 
 hails, and sets up as proving the eternal Word of God to be 
 untrue /" 
 
 " The speculative Geologist who gathers up phenomena 
 left by the revealed creation and the flood, and out of these 
 vamps up a baseless fabric of human imagination .... is 
 but the deluded vassal of the enemy of God and man in his 
 day and generation, and stands a monument of pity and of 
 
140 APPENDIX. 
 
 folly before the eyes of the most unlettered child of ever- 
 lasting Wisdom /" 
 
 " No specific science which the researches of the chil- 
 dren of Ham have bequeathed to the world, is either so 
 baseless in itself, so hostile against God, or so destroying 
 to the souls of men, as the this-day's visionary fabric of the 
 revelation-instructed Geologian !" 
 
 Has this rash author studied the physical records of 
 Creation, or examined so much as one single fact on which 
 the inductions of Geology are founded ? He has done no 
 such thing. He knows not one element either of the lan- 
 guage or reasoning of the science. But he has a shorter 
 way to knowledge. In his comment on the opening pas- 
 sages of the Bible (about which, in all ages of the Church, 
 wise and honest writers have expressed doubt and diffi- 
 culty,) he tells us he " has found the brightness of revealed 
 veracity concerning the Creation open itself upon him with 
 more and more self-evident demonstration/' and discovered 
 " the baseless foundations upon which all the nebulous 
 superstructure of the admired new science has been built." 
 With all the confidence of a critic, strong in his own 
 infallibility, he tells us that he has " insubvertibly estab- 
 lished, from the lips of eternal veracity, that neither the 
 earth, nor the materials of which it was formed, nor any 
 creature that is found therein, had existence before the first 
 (Mosaic) day of Creation." — " That truth he has undeni- 
 ably and everlastingly established, insubvertible and im- 
 movable by mortal ability !" 
 
 Words like these would better become one sitting on 
 the throne of the Vatican, and invested with the triple 
 crown. 
 
 Extremes will sometimes meet — ignorance and confi- 
 dence will sometimes go hand in hand. This rash author 
 (only deserving notice as the representative of a class) has 
 dared to bring revealed and natural truth into unseemly 
 collision. Were Geology nothing better than an airy fabric 
 
APPENDIX, 141 
 
 of hypotheses, this might, perhaps, be done without moral 
 mischief. But Geology is a firm fabric, and is built on a 
 secure foundation. Its leading truths are based on nothing 
 less than a physical demonstration : and no natural truths 
 within the range of human knowledge are more certain 
 than those of Geology. No moral evidence, no matter from 
 what source that evidence may come, can ever shake them. 
 If they be not true, then is there jio such thing as natural 
 truth to be apprehended by the mind of man, and spite 
 of himself he must sink into hopeless scepticism. But we 
 have no fear of any such dismal end of human knowledge. 
 The utmost evil (if indeed it be an evil) that can arise from 
 the collision of the records of physical and religious truth, 
 will be a slight change in our first literal interpretation of 
 one or two obscure passages, which have no immediate 
 bearing on a single doctrine of Christianity, and are neither 
 concerned with our conduct in life, nor our hopes of a 
 state of future being. 
 
 Meanwhile there are (in this pretended and unnatural 
 collision) evils of another kind, which every good man will 
 do his best to shun. Fanaticism and intolerance ever go 
 hand in hand. One who presumes on his own infallibility, 
 who thinks himself strong in his one-sided knowledge, and 
 who rushes to conclusions without troubling himself with 
 the grounds of them, must not be expected to show forbear- 
 ance or charity towards those who remain one step behind 
 him. In illustration of this point, I will give two more 
 extracts from this rash and intolerant author. On his own 
 literal explanation of the opening verses of the Mosaic 
 records, he tells us that they are " simple, plain, divinely 
 majestic, and self-explanatory." " And yet (he adds) it is 
 in this fair, pure, luminous, holy field of everlasting truth, 
 that the impious progeny of infidelity has ever delighted to 
 deposit their accursed spawn ! It is beneath this self- 
 evident surface of heavenly Verity that infernal policy has 
 ever exulted in sinking its hell-deep pitfalls of satanic 
 
142 APPENDIX. 
 
 interrogation !" " Abhorrent mortal impiety has 
 
 ever reasoned and interrogated thus — Well I but if this 
 world only began at the first day of Creation, where was 
 God, a?id what was he doing, all the eternity before ?" 
 But what is the answer to this most profane and idle ques- 
 tion ? The author gives it in the form of a quotation, 
 which he tells us is bold, true, and comprehensive — " God 
 was decreeing from everlasting a hell for all infidel en- 
 quirers." I accuse not this author of dishonesty or bad 
 intention : fanaticism may however sometimes be the more 
 mischievous because it is honest. Language such as I 
 have quoted might have better suited the mouth of a 
 Dominican monk of the fifteenth century ; but during no 
 period can it do good service to the cause of truth. 
 
 What has been above stated is, I hope, enough to 
 vindicate some portions of the Discourse which had been 
 exposed to unfavourable comment, and at the same time to 
 justify the severe language of a previous Note [Note (C), 
 p. 104 — 1 18]. To make some amends to the reader for 
 having placed before him so many unpleasant passages, I 
 will end with a well-known, but noble, quotation from the 
 works of Bacon, as it comes home to the meaning of this 
 long note : — 
 
 " It is an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, 
 that a little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may 
 incline the mind of man to Atheism, but a farther proceed- 
 ing therein doth bring the mind back again to religion : for 
 in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, 
 which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the 
 mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may induce some 
 oblivion of the highest cause ; but when a man passeth on 
 farther, and seeth the dependence of causes, and the works 
 of Providence ; then, according to the allegory of the poets, 
 he will easily believe that the highest link of Nature's chain 
 must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair. To con- 
 clude therefore, let no man, upon a weak conceit of sobriety, 
 
APPENDIX. 143 
 
 or an ill-disposed moderation, think or maintain that a 
 man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book 
 of God's word, or in the book of God's works ; divinity or 
 philosophy ; but rather let men endeavour an endless pro- 
 gress or proficience in both ; only let men beware that they 
 apply both to charity, and not to swelling ; to use, and not 
 to ostentation ; and again, that they do not unwisely 
 mingle or confound these learnings together." 
 
 Note (F), p. 32. 
 
 It has been sometimes objected to natural religion that 
 it misleads men by a dim and deceitful light, on matters 
 clearly put before them in the word of God. The objection 
 is sound, so far as it applies to those who set up natural, in 
 the place of revealed truth : but it is invalid in any other 
 sense, as it strikes at the root of all knowledge that is not 
 religious. If the conclusions of natural religion be true, 
 then must they well deserve our study ; and they are of no 
 small moral worth, provided they be kept in their proper 
 place, and in subordination to truths of a higher kind. Were 
 all men honest believers in the word of God, then could the 
 inductions of natural religion add nothing to the strength 
 of their convictions of his being and providence. But to 
 doubting minds, entangled in the mazes of a false philoso- 
 phy, or lost perhaps in sense, and unused to any severe 
 exercise of thought, the ready inductions of natural religion 
 may bring convictions of the greatest moral worth — at 
 moments, too, when proofs of a different kind would be 
 denied all access to the understanding. Moreover, the 
 habit of contemplating God through the wonders of the 
 created world, and its adaptation to the wants of man, is 
 not only compatible with firm religious belief, but with the 
 highest devotional feeling ; as is proved by passages, almost 
 without number, in the sacred poetry of the Bible. 
 
144 APPENDIX. 
 
 The chief ground, however, for urging the habitual 
 study of natural religion upon those to whom the preceding 
 Discourse is addressed, is the belief that it is a wholesome 
 exercise for the understanding. In rising, step by step, to 
 an apprehension of the great laws of the material world, it 
 is surely well for us to have ever present to our thoughts 
 the conviction that these laws are but a manifestation of 
 the will of a preordaining mind ; and in noting the count- 
 less relations of material things around us, and their fitness 
 for each other, we surely ought not to shut our eyes to the 
 ever-living proofs of wisdom and creative power. The 
 study of the kingdoms of nature, conducted in such a spi- 
 rit, not only strengthens and elevates the natural powers of 
 man, but tends, I believe, to produce a cheerful sobriety of 
 thought most favourable to the reception of sound religious 
 impressions. Such appears to have been the temper of 
 Paley, especially during the latter years of his life : and, in 
 mentioning his name, I cannot but urge on all those who 
 are commencing their academic course, the habitual study 
 of his delightful work on Natural Theology. It is hardly 
 possible to read this book without catching part of the 
 Author's spirit ; and if this spirit be gained, we shall then 
 find the material world with a new life breathed into it, and 
 speaking a language which, to those uninstructed in its 
 meaning, may fall upon the ear without suggesting a single 
 appropriate train of thought. 
 
 Since the preceding Discourse was delivered, some very 
 important and elaborate treatises have appeared (and others 
 are in progress), enforcing different parts of the great argu- 
 ment to be drawn from final causes. It is, I think, impos- 
 sible, that any one of them, or all of them together, should 
 supersede the work of Paley. They may expand and en- 
 force his argument by new and pregnant illustrations ; and 
 they may supply some deficiencies in his work, especially in 
 the part that treats of the adaptation of the mechanical 
 laws of the universe to each other, and to the wants of man. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 145 
 
 With one part of the mechanical argument he has indeed 
 attempted to grapple ; but not, I think, with the same 
 power he has put forth in the other portions of his volume. 
 
 To comment on the treatises just alluded to would be 
 quite out of place in a note like this : but I may be allowed 
 to rejoice, in common with many other Members of the Uni- 
 versity, at the appearance of a work (referred to in a former 
 note, p. 101) which, combining a philosophic view of the 
 highest generalizations of exact science with an original 
 and well-sustained argument drawn from the universal proofs 
 of wisdom and design, falls in admirably with the course 
 of reading of our best class of student*. It is assuredly 
 not too much to say, that this author has well earned the 
 honour of filling up a chasm in the moral literature of his 
 country. 
 
 Paley has stated with his usual clearness and skill the 
 importance of comparative anatomy to the doctrine of final 
 causes*. The philosophic anatomist tells us that the 
 organs of each animal may be described as parts of a 
 machine well fitted together, and exactly suited to the func- 
 tions they have to perform. He 'reasons from the function 
 to the organ, or from the organ to the function, with per- 
 fect confidence ; and in cases too where the living type has 
 been never seen. This adaptation may now be called a law 
 of organic structure; and it has been proved only by pa- 
 tient observation, like every other inductive physical truth. 
 When once established it becomes the animating principle 
 of every department of natural history : both helping us in 
 the arrangement of known objects, and in the interpretation 
 of new phenomena. To form an adequate notion of the 
 importance of this law, we have only to bear in mind how 
 it enabled Cuvier to reassemble the scattered organs of many 
 beings of a former world — to determine their place in the 
 scale of animated nature — and to reason on their functions 
 
 * Natural Theology, Chap. xu. 
 S.D. K 
 
146 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 with as much clearness as if they were themselves still liv- 
 ing before him. 
 
 In passing from one order of beings to another as they 
 stand arranged in a museum of comparative anatomy, we 
 see a continued repetition of the same organs, yet in each 
 successive instance we find them changed in a greater or 
 less degree in their proportions and manner of adjustment. 
 This most striking fact bears directly on the argument for 
 design. " Whenever we find a general plan pursued, yet with 
 such variations in it as are, in each case, required by the 
 particular exigency of the subject to which it is applied, we 
 possess, in such a plan and such adaptation, the strongest 
 evidence that can be afforded of intelligence and design ; an 
 evidence which the most completely excludes every other 
 hypothesis." This view of the argument admits of endless 
 illustrations. To each man those instances are the best that 
 spontaneously offer themselves to his mind. The real diffi- 
 culty is to teach men first to enter on such trains of 
 thought, and to shake off that torpor in which their senses 
 seem often to be steeped. Paley's instances are well put, 
 and full of meaning : I will endeavour to add one or two 
 familiar examples to them, though at the risk of extending 
 this note to an unreasonable length. 
 
 Of all the solid parts of the animal frame, the most 
 obviously mechanical are the jaws and teeth ; we know, in 
 each instance, the office they have to perform, and we 
 know that they perform it well. Let us then examine, 
 in a museum of comparative anatomy, the jaws of some 
 one order of animals — for example, the carnivorous. In 
 each instance we find cutting teeth in front, sharp fangs 
 on the sides, and molar teeth in the back part of the jaws. 
 The molar teeth rise into sharp lance-shaped points of hard 
 enamel, and overlap each other in the upper and lower jaw, 
 like the edges of a pair of shears. We see at once an ap- 
 paratus will fitted for tearing and for clipping flesh, and, 
 
APPENDIX. 147 
 
 in some cases, fitted also for cracking bones ; but not at all 
 suited for grinding the seeds or stalks of vegetables. Let 
 us then observe the manner in which the jaws are fitted to 
 one another. At each end of the lower jaw rises a well- 
 defined transverse process, working in a corresponding de- 
 pression of the skull; in short, the jaws work together by 
 a firm hinge, allowing them to open and shut like a pair of 
 shears, but admitting of no grinding motion. That such 
 an articulation is important for the carnivorous animal no 
 one can doubt, who has observed how ill a pair of scissors 
 perform their office with a loose hinge. Thus we see, from 
 one end to the other, an implement well suited for its 
 work, and all its parts in good adjustment. But all these 
 nice adjustments would be lost, were there not levers at- 
 tached to the jaw, and muscles to work the levers — were 
 not each part of the animal frame adapted to all the other 
 parts — and were not the instincts and appetites of the ani- 
 mal such as are fitted to give to this framework its appro- 
 priate movement. 
 
 Let us then turn to another order of animals of strongly 
 contrasted habits — for example, the ruminating. We find 
 the lower jaw armed with incisor teeth, working against a 
 hard callous pad, placed upon the upper. This prevents the 
 animal from inflicting a severe bite, but enables it readily 
 to crop grass and to tear off the stalks of vegetables. The 
 sharp fangs are wanting ; but, were this the place for the 
 observation, we might shew how it is protected from the 
 fiercer beasts by the instinct of fear combined with acute 
 senses and great fleetness — by gregarious habits — and by 
 formidable weapons of defence placed on its brow, and 
 given, be it observed, to none of the carnivorous tribes. 
 Its flat-topped molar teeth are not formed for cutting, but 
 for grinding ; and its jaws are loosely fitted together, so as 
 to allow of a grinding movement. With a change of form 
 in one part, is a change of adjustment in another, and the 
 parts continue to work well together. Had the articula- 
 
 k2 
 
148 APPENDIX. 
 
 lation of the carnivorous jaw remained unchanged, the 
 herbivorous tooth could not have performed its office. But 
 we have not yet done with the adjustments. In the ru- 
 minating animal, enamel covers not the top of the tooth, 
 as in the carnivorous ; but the hardest portion of each 
 tooth is arranged in deep vertical layers, alternating with 
 bony matter ; and this arrangement, in all states of the 
 tooth, secures a rough grinding surface. These layers are 
 arranged in irregular curves running lengthwise in the jaw, 
 and their convex and concave portions are so delicately 
 opposed in the upper and lower jaw, as to produce, during 
 a lateral movement (like that of a cow chewing the cud), 
 the greatest possible quantity of friction. Again, we might 
 go on to shew the adaptation of the muscles of the head 
 to the apparatus here described ; and, beginning with the 
 jaw, we might go through the whole animal frame, and 
 prove that all the parts were skilfully contrived and fitted 
 together so as to minister to the wants of the beings they 
 belong to. 
 
 Let us next see what is the structure of the jaw in ani- 
 mals of some different and intermediate order. Perhaps the 
 best for our selection are the rodentia, or gnawers. Like 
 the ruminating animals, they are without fangs ; but they 
 have long sharp cutting teeth, meeting together like a pair 
 of pincers That these implements are useful to the crea- 
 tures possessing them, no one can doubt. It is by their 
 help that the beaver saws down a tree for his water-dam, 
 that the rat gnaws his way through a board, and that the 
 squirrel drills a hole through the shell of a nut, and extracts 
 the kernel. Most of the animals of this order are herbi- 
 vorous, and therefore grind their food with flat-topped 
 molar teeth. But how is this duty to be performed, as 
 the front teeth lock together in such a way as to make a 
 transverse grinding movement almost impossible? It is 
 provided for by a new adjustment. A process of the lower 
 jaw works in a depression of the skull, as in the carnivo- 
 
APPENDIX. 149 
 
 rous order. The articulation admits however of more play, 
 and its direction, instead of being transvere, is lengthwise, 
 and thus allows the lower jaw to rub, like a carpenter's 
 plane, backwards and forwards upon the upper. Every 
 one must have been struck with this movement who has 
 seen a rabbit eating the leaf of a cabbage. The work of 
 nature would still be left incomplete, were there not also a 
 corresponding adjustment in the structure of each tooth. We 
 find then, on inspection, that the hardest portions of the 
 molar teeth are arranged in vertical layers (as in the rumi- 
 fiantia), and that they form a good grinding surface; but 
 the direction of the layers is now transverse to the jaw. 
 This is what it ought to be, in order that the teeth may 
 work to the best advantage. The hard layers are transverse 
 to the teeth, for the same reason that the iron of a carpen- 
 ter's plane is transverse to the direction in which the work- 
 man uses it. But this is not the only new adjustment in 
 the teeth of these animals. The incisors being implements 
 of perpetual use, are renewed by perpetual growth ; there 
 is a special provision for their support in a bent socket, 
 and being enamelled only in front they are always kept 
 sharp. By the very act of gnawing, the hinder part of 
 the incisor wears away quicker than the fore part, and in 
 that way always preserves a sharp inclined edge like that 
 of an adze or chisel — the very form that is wanted by the 
 animal. It is not enough to say that all these adjustments 
 are complete : what would be their value, were not the 
 muscular frame also fitted to them, and the animal powers 
 such as to call them into action ? 
 
 These instances are among the most obvious and well- 
 known, in comparative anatomy, and have been quoted on 
 that very account. The same kind of reasoning might be 
 applied to the organs of all animated beings ; and there is 
 literally no end to the examples of mechanical adjustment. 
 Considered in this way, they put the proofs of contrivance 
 and design in the clearest point of view, and give the 
 
150 APPENDIX. 
 
 argument a unity and connexion it cannot have by the 
 mere consideration of detached instances. 
 
 Once for all, and by way of recapitulation, we see the 
 proofs of wisdom and design in the structure of every being 
 endowed with life. The argument is cumulative ; each 
 instance being perfect in its kind. We see the proofs of 
 wisdom still more clearly when we review the classes and 
 orders of animated nature ; for we find the God of nature 
 working upon a plan, and adapting the same organs to 
 different ends, by a series of delicate mechanical adjust- 
 ments. Our argument gains strength as we ascend to a 
 consideration of the mechanical laws impressed on matter : 
 for law implies a lawgiver, and without that notion the 
 word law is without meaning. Still more strengthened is our 
 argument as we learn to comprehend the exquisite adapta- 
 tion of these laws to the organs and functions of all living 
 beings. We see, then, through all nature, animate and 
 inanimate, but one unbroken impress of wisdom and power : 
 and the conclusion at which man thus arrives, elevates his 
 intellectual condition, and falls in with the appetencies of 
 his moral nature. Surely then we may conclude with 
 Paley, that the world around us proceeds from design and 
 intelligence — " intelligence properly and strictly so called, 
 including under that name foresight, consideration and re- 
 ference to utility."..." After all the schemes of a reluctant 
 philosophy, the necessary resort is to a Deity. The marks 
 of design are too strong to be gotten over — design must 
 have a designer — that designer must have been a person — 
 that person is God*." 
 
 Note (G), p. 41. 
 
 In confirmation of what is stated in page 41, I may 
 refer the reader to Xenophon's Memorabilia, Book i. chap. iv. 
 * Paley's Nat. Theol., end of Chap, xxiii. 
 
APPENDIX. 151 
 
 The following dialogue shews Socrates' strong and graphic 
 manner of putting the argument from final causes. It is 
 carried on in his own method of piling question upon ques- 
 tion, and immediately follows a sentence in which Aristode- 
 mus had expressed some doubt whether animals were made 
 by chance or design : — 
 
 Tcoi/ he aTeK/ja'jOTOK eyovriav otov eveKo. ea-Ti, nai twi/ 
 <pavepu)<; eV (a(pe\eia ovtwv, irdrepa rvyti* kcli froTepa 
 yvHOfxns epya Kpiveis ; — Ylpeirei fxev ra eV' dipeXeia yevdfxeva 
 yviafst]^ epya elvai. — Ovkovu hoKe'i <roi 6 e£" dpytj*; ttoiujv 
 avdpwTrovs eV wcpeXeia. irposOeivat auTO?e, iV du al<rddvovrai t 
 €Kct<rTa, o(pdaXiJLov<i /mev, a>90' dpdv ret dpaTa, ojtci he, wW 
 ctKoveiv ra a.Kov<TTd ; oafioou ye fitjv, el jut/ p?ve<s irposeTe- 
 vrjcrav, t'i dv t)jjiiv oipeXos fjv ; t/s £' dv a'tcrdrjo-is r]v yXvtceoov 
 ko.1 epifxewv ku\ iravriav tcoi/ hid o-to'jucitos rjheojv, el fitj 
 7A&)TTa tovtiov yvco/jLtav eveipydcrdn ; Ylpo<s be toutoj?, ov 
 cone? <roi ncti tohe wpovoias epyia eoiKevai, to, eVet dadevrj^ 
 pev ea-Tiu r] o\|/-i9, &Xe<pdpoi<; avTrjv dvptacrai, d, otccv fxev 
 ctvTrj y^prj<r6ai ri her], dvaireTavvvTai, ev he t» vttvoo <rvy- 
 KXeierat; of? h* dv pnhe dve/xoi fixdttTiacriv, tidpov fiXe(papiha<: 
 ep.(pv<rai' otppvai tc airoyeKraxrai to. virep tiov oju/xartoi/, 
 a>9 /jirjh d ck Tt}<i K€(f)aXr]9 ihpios Kaaovpyrj' to he ttjv aKotjv 
 heyeo-dai fxev Trcecra? ^mat, e/jL-iriTrXacrdai he /jLtjirore' kcu 
 tou5 jjl€v irpdcrdev dhdvTCt<: Tratrt £a>ots 6iov<s Tep-veiv elvai, 
 tou<? he yo/jKpiovs o'tovs irapd tovtuov he^a/jievovs Xeaiveiv 
 kcu to crTOfxa p.ev, hi ov utv eiriQvp.ei Ta ^ioa ehwefXireTai, 
 irXtja-lov 6(pQaXfj.tov kcii pivtav nciTcideTvai* eirei he to? airo~ 
 yiopovvra hvsyeprj, aTroaTpeyj/ai touc tovtohv dyenrovs, kcu 
 direveyKcTv, r) hvvaTov irpoa-wraTia, dird twv ala-drjerecov' 
 raiTa ovtio 7rpovor)TiKio<; irerrpayixeva, diropert, iron-epa 
 Tuyr)? tj yviafjit]<i epya ea-Tiv ; — Ov jua rdv Af, e<f>t}, aXX* 
 ovTio ye (TKOTrovfxevba iraw eoiKe TauTa (ro(f)ov t«i/o? hrjjxiovp- 
 yov ku\ (piXo^iaov TeyyrjfxaTi. 
 
 The following translation is, I hope, sufficiently close 
 to convey a correct notion of the argument : — 
 
 S. As some things have no character to mark the pur- 
 pose of their being, while others are obviously made for 
 
152 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 use ; which of these, think you, are works of accident, and 
 which of design ? 
 
 A. It is clear that things made for use must be works 
 of design. 
 
 S. Does not then the Being who first made men, 
 appear also to have given them the several organs of 
 sense for their use — eyes to see things visible — ears to 
 hear things audible f Moreover, what good should we 
 have from smells, were nostrils not given us to inhale 
 them ? And what perception should we have of things 
 sweet and tart, and of. all the pleasures of the palate, had 
 not a tongue been formed within the mouth to give us a 
 discriminating taste of such matters? To pass on to other 
 examples ; think you not that it looks like the work of 
 prescience, because the sight is delicate, to have guarded 
 it with eye-lids, which open when we want to see, but 
 shut when we go to sleep — to have fenced these lids with 
 eye-lashes ; which, like a sieve, strain the dusty wind and 
 kinder it from hurting the eyes, — and over the eyes to have 
 placed eye-brows, as eaves, to carry off the sweat of the 
 brow from disturbing the sight : — again, to have given us 
 ears capable of taking in all sounds without being ever 
 crowded by them — in all animals to have placed the cutting 
 teeth in front, and the molar teeth behind, fitted to grind 
 down what they have received from the cutting teeth — and 
 near the eyes and nostrils to have placed the mouth through 
 which the food, each animal delights in, finds an entrance 
 into its body — on the other hand, as the excretions are 
 offensive, to have turned away the ducts by which they 
 escape, and carried them off to the greatest possible dis- 
 tance from the senses : — can you doubt whether organs such 
 as these, framed with so much forethought, are works of 
 chance or of design f 
 
 A. No, in very truth, (said he,) I have no doubt; 
 for, in this view, these various organs seem altogether the 
 contrivance of some wise artificer who loves the beings he 
 has created. 
 
APPENDIX. 153 
 
 I have quoted this passage in the hopes of inducing the 
 reader to reconsider the whole chapter ; both for its own 
 value, and because it is in itself an ample refutation of an 
 opinion unaccountably maintained by some writers, that the 
 heathen philosophers of antiquity had no knowledge of 
 God except what was derived through a corrupted tradition. 
 
 Were it true (which it certainly is not) that the heathen 
 writers never argued from finar causes to the being of a 
 God, still we should not be justified in saying that the 
 argument had no weight when handled by a Christian. 
 Truths, whether physical or moral, are not less real because 
 they have been hidden for many ages, and are only brought 
 to light by the progress of other truths. No wonder that 
 the truths of natural religion should have been oftener 
 pressed by Christian than by heathen writers. The Chris- 
 tian makes them not the foundation of his faith. He 
 seeks them not because he doubts, but because he believes : 
 for they are the external means of communion with a 
 being whom he is taught to love, and in whose more im- 
 mediate presence he hopes hereafter to dwell. It is through 
 these embodied truths, that in the mechanism of his own 
 material frame, in the wonderful adaptation of his senses to 
 the material world without, in the constitution of his mind 
 whereby he learns the existence of intellectual natures 
 like his own, in his power of modifying the order of events 
 by the operations of his will, in his capacity of ascending 
 from phenomena to laws, and of contemplating through 
 them the marks of preordaining wisdom — it is through 
 such truths as these that in all the world around him, in 
 whatsoever manner his soul regards it, he is taught to 
 read an everliving lesson of the benevolence and the power 
 of God. 
 
 We think that we have some adequate knowledge of 
 our fellow-beings, because they resemble what we have a 
 consciousness of within ourselves. Without stopping to 
 inquire how we come by this knowledge, let us suppose 
 
154 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 some one to ask how we come by the knowledge of a God : 
 we can only reply, as has often been done before, that we 
 know him by his works, animate and inanimate, and by 
 the written revelations he has given of himself. Should 
 however this interrogator go on to say, that God speaks 
 not to us through his works, but only through the words 
 of his revelation, wherein he told us from the beginning 
 that He created the heaven and the earth; we may then 
 retort another question, and ask, What knowledge could 
 mere sounds like these convey through the ears to the 
 heart, were there not already placed within it some know- 
 ledge of the being of a God ; or at least were there not in 
 the soul some natural and inborn power of rising to the 
 apprehension of a general religious truth when presented 
 to it in the form of a mere abstraction ? 
 
 That our knowledge of God is in a certain sense inade- 
 quate, whether it be conveyed to us as a truth of natural 
 or revealed religion, no one can for a moment doubt. It 
 may be suited to our wants, but it can bear no measure to 
 his glory. No man hath seen God at any time, because he 
 is every where. And if he has sometimes, during the brief 
 history of man, given a sensible manifestation of his more 
 immediate presence, it has been by stripping himself (if 
 I may so speak) of his attribute of ubiquity, and conde- 
 scending to put on the semblance of some material power, 
 or the glorified similitude of the human form. So also 
 in the language of his written word, he is either described 
 by negatives, or divested of his immaterial attributes, that 
 he may be brought down to the grasp of human thought. 
 Not only in the extent and power of his operations, but 
 assuredly also in their very kind, he is infinitely above the 
 reach of man's imagination. If revelation cannot, without 
 a miracle, give to a blind man any knowledge of the sen- 
 sations caused by the pulsation of light upon the eye ; 
 still less can it convey to the mind's eye any knowledge 
 of God that is not limited by the conditions of our being. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 155 
 
 Surely we may, then, believe that in religious knowledge 
 there is much that is imperfectly comprehended : and if in 
 the natural world each step of discovery bring to light new 
 and unexpected truths, we may well believe that a revela- 
 tion (expounding our moral condition in relation to God, 
 and giving us a glimpse of our future destinies) must also 
 bring to light something that is above reason — something 
 that is new and unlooked for. * 
 
 Let me not, however, be misunderstood. If revelation 
 teach knowledge above reason, it does not thereby destroy 
 the fair inductions of reason, otherwise the God of nature 
 would be in contradiction with himself. A demonstration 
 is not the less true because it is confined to its own pre- 
 mises: and if we deny the value of natural truth because 
 of the narrowness of our faculties ; we might, by like rea- 
 soning, set religious knowledge at naught, because it is 
 limited by the conditions of our intellectual nature. In 
 one word, whether we argue from man's ignorance or 
 knowledge, we have no right to rob him of his inborn 
 capacities — of the power of ascending from phenomena to 
 the contemplation of laws, and of deducing general truths — 
 of discerning the marks of designing wisdom in the uni- 
 verse — and of seeing that there is over all matter and all 
 mind the will of a presiding God. 
 
 It may perhaps be well to consider some of the causes 
 that have led men to reject the proofs of natural religion. 
 One cause is the affectation of originality. " The proof of 
 a Deity drawn from the constitution of nature, is not only 
 popular but vulgar ; and many minds are not so indisposed 
 to any thing which can be offered to them, as they are to 
 the flatness of being content with common reasons*." This 
 remark of Paley's is applied to certain writers, who, to rid 
 themselves of an intelligent Creator, have loaded natural 
 history and physiology with the wildest and most pre- 
 posterous hypotheses. 
 
 * Natural Theology, Chap. xxm. 
 
156 APPENDIX. 
 
 Another cause is ignorance of the laws of nature. Man 
 is unwilling to think himself ignorant ; and he naturally 
 enough thinks lightly of the proofs he does not under- 
 stand. Religious men may easily fall into this error : for 
 their minds dwell on proofs not derived from any study of 
 the material world, and they know full well, that the hopes 
 and sanctions of natural religion are little fitted to satisfy 
 the wants of man. Hence they reject it altogether. But 
 they ought to know that the laws of nature, when properly 
 understood, are records of the will of God, and are there- 
 fore fit matter for exalted study : and they have no right 
 to argue from their own ignorance. 
 
 A third cause for rejecting natural religion is the recep- 
 tion of a narrow and false psychological system. This 
 cause has, during the past century, tainted some of the 
 best writings of the Ecclesiastical Members of our Church. 
 Let us suppose some one to start with such propositions 
 as the following : Knowledge is only a perception of the 
 agreement and disagreement of our ideas — we can form 
 no ideas without perception — and we have no perceptions, 
 except through impressions on the organs of sense. If all 
 this be taken for granted, he may soon go on to prove 
 that, out of such beggarly elements, it is impossible to rise 
 to any moral or religious truth; and therefore that all 
 knowledge which is not physical, must be supernatural, 
 and can come to us only by the teaching of revelation. 
 Without stopping to ask whether man, if such were the 
 whole of his immaterial powers, could be a fit recipient 
 for any religious truth, or could ever comprehend it, we 
 may ask the supporters of this hypothesis what account 
 they have to give us of the thousand abstractions which, 
 by our nature, we are compelled to form — of our moral 
 sentiments — of the creative energies of the imagination — 
 of the efforts by which we mount from individual pheno- 
 mena to the comprehension of general laws, and of the 
 skill by which we elicit from them unknown truths. There 
 
APPENDIX. 157 
 
 are incontestably, in the mind of man, innate capacities 
 for the reception of knowledge according to the measure 
 of his intellectual nature ; and to these there are super- 
 added innate active principles (absolutely distinct from the 
 passive reception of impressions from without) whereby he 
 is constrained to fashion the materials of thought into such 
 forms as he is taught to seek after or his soul desires. 
 These active principles are as thuch a part of the inner 
 man as his eyes and his fingers are portions of the frame- 
 work of his body. Religion takes these inner powers and 
 capacities for granted. She appeals to them, sets them 
 in a new movement, and makes them the levers of her 
 strength ; but she creates them not anew, any more than 
 she gives to the outer body new limbs for motion and new 
 senses for perception. 
 
 We know from our own experience two kinds of mate- 
 rial changes — one chiefly dependent on the will of man— 
 the other, as far as our senses are concerned, dependent on 
 the mere qualities of matter. From the nature of an effect 
 produced, we can also judge whether it be the result of 
 mere material action, or a production of design and skill. 
 Starting from these elements, we can ascend to the know- 
 ledge of a higher order of causation—of what we call 
 material laws regulating a succession of material actions — 
 and of a preordaining will manifesting its power in contriv- 
 ance and adaptation. Whether we stop short, or whether 
 we ascend to the highest truth, we are immeasurably above 
 the reach of that narrow system of psychology which, in 
 denying innate knowledge, deprives man also of those innate 
 capacities and active powers whereby his whole knowledge 
 is built up. 
 
 Those who start with a psychological foundation on 
 which nothing can be built, and end by rejecting the moral 
 sense, and the power of discerning God in the wonders of 
 his creation, ought also (if they mean to be consistent) to 
 deprive man of the capacity of apprehending general truth 
 
158 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 of every kind. Let them, however, look well to it, whether 
 they do not contradict the plain declarations of the word of 
 God ; and whether, in mutilating the best faculties of man, 
 they do not shut out from religion both its evidence and 
 meaning. In plain truth, they cheat themselves by the 
 mere jargon of metaphysics ; and, without knowing it, they 
 surrender one of the strongest outworks of religion to a 
 cold and atheistical philosophy. 
 
 Lastly, some men have rejected natural religion through 
 mere fanaticism. They believe our corruption to be so 
 entire, that they deny to the natural man all perception of 
 the beauty of moral truth — all knowledge of God — and 
 almost shut out from him the faculty of reason. That the 
 powers of natural reason are in a great measure indepen- 
 dent of religious light is, however, certain from the fact — 
 that some of the greatest discoveries in exact science have 
 been made by men notoriously not religious. Again, reli- 
 gion herself appeals to reason, and has nothing whereon to 
 rest, if we abrogate all the natural powers of reason. Were 
 this the proper place for the discussion, we might say that 
 man's depravity is in his heart — that it is shewn not so 
 much in the dimness of his moral and intellectual vision, as 
 in love of self, in impurity of thought, and in the want of 
 an inherent power of struggling with temptation and keep- 
 ing in order the fiercer passions. If we deprive man of all 
 power of moral judgment, does he not cease to be responsi- 
 ble ? and do we not seem at one breath both to impugn the 
 justice of God, and to contradict his written word ? But 
 with the persons here considered, it is in vain to argue. 
 They may, however, be open to an appeal of another kind. 
 They may see in many Christian writings (for example, in 
 the works of Dr. Chalmers and the late Robert Hall*) how 
 
 * In mentioning the name of Hall, I may, I hope, be permitted to 
 state that on reading (now many years since) some of his admirable 
 discourses, I first learned to doubt the truth of that system which re- 
 gards utility as the test of moral right. At a time when this doctrine 
 generally prevailed in England, he set himself against it, with a power 
 
APPENDIX. 159 
 
 possible it is for man to feel a deep conviction of the 
 natural depravity of his heart, at the time that he has sub- 
 lime and philosophic views of those moral and intellectual 
 capacities he derives from God. 
 
 In conclusion, I may briefly notice an hypothesis, put 
 forth, perhaps, in the hope of reconciling conflicting no- 
 tions*. It assumes that we have no knowledge of God or 
 his attributes from the light of nature : but when this know- 
 ledge has been given by revelation, it presumes that we can 
 then begin to reason from natural phenomena, and confirm 
 the truths of religion by almost irresistible arguments, 
 which may be deduced from every object around us. Now 
 this hypothesis labours, if I mistake not, under three insu- 
 perable difficulties. It has to explain away some of the 
 clearest passages in the New Testament — it has to fight for 
 a most untenable position : namely, that the heathen world 
 knew nothing of God, except what first came through a 
 corrupted tradition — and, lastly, it puts man in a new 
 logical condition unsupported by any rational analogy. The 
 inductions of natural religion are of a positive nature, and 
 must be either true or false. If they be false, they cannot 
 confirm what is true— if they be irresistibly true, then must 
 their truth depend on their own proper evidence, and not 
 on an extrinsic authority. 
 
 of moral reasoning — with a subtilty and fervid eloquence, which placed 
 his works at once among the highest productions of the human mind. 
 While this Discourse was printing, it was not my wish to look out for 
 authorities ; as that would have been but a vain and false affectation 
 of research. But it would have been well to have fortified my feeble 
 argument with some passages from the immortal works of Hall ; and 
 I cannot do better now, than refer the academic reader to them — espe- 
 cially to his two discourses entitled Modern Infidelity considered, and 
 Sentiments proper to the present Crisis. In them both there is some- 
 thing of an academic cast; and for moral grandeur, for Christian truth, 
 and for sublimity, we may doubt whether they have their match in 
 the sacred oratory of any age or country. 
 
 * See the Boyle Lecture, Vol. n., by the Lord Bishop of Durham. 
 
160 APPENDIX. 
 
 Note (H), p. 79. 
 
 My object in this note is to bring forward, as briefly 
 and distinctly as I can, though at the risk of repeating what 
 has been stated before, some specific objections to Paley's 
 Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. 
 
 1. The first objection is to the title of the work. If 
 we reject the moral sense, and overlook all the inherent 
 capacities and active principles whereby man becomes a 
 responsible being ; we deprive moral speculation of all the 
 essentials of philosophy. It may however be said, that the 
 objection is of small moment, provided Paley's ethical rules 
 be true, and of general application. 
 
 2. He first examines the rules of life by which men 
 are ordinarily governed — The Law of Honour — The Law 
 of the Land — and the Scriptures. 
 
 His account of the Law of Honour is both meagre and 
 unphilosophical. It may be said, that he has a right to 
 limit the meaning of his words as he thinks fit : but his 
 definition partakes of the fault that taints all his system — 
 it gives a rule, but overlooks the principle. The Law of 
 Honour is not confined to rules of fashionable life. It is 
 deep rooted in human nature — is felt by all beings from 
 the savage to the monarch — and its power is implied in the 
 very instinct which leads men to congregate in societies. 
 Were man cut off from all regard to the opinion of those 
 around him, he would be deprived of a principle planted 
 in his breast by the hand of God, as a safeguard against 
 what is base, and an incentive to what is great and good — 
 The principle of honour may have been abused — may have 
 led to much evil. But in that respect it shares but the 
 common fate of all the principles of our wayward nature. 
 All of them have been abused. Religion roots not out the 
 elements of human nature, which are part of God's work : 
 but she brings them under the law of obedience, and restores 
 
APPENDIX. 161 
 
 them to that place and office for which they were destined 
 by the Author of our being. 
 
 In considering the Law of the Land, Paley points out, 
 with great skill, some of its defects as a moral rule, but he 
 overlooks a most important distinction. Laws are but ex- 
 pedients for the well-governing of particular states. They 
 are founded in utility, and limited in their application. But 
 moral rules are not so limited, neither have they the same 
 foundation. This distinction seems both certain and obvious. 
 We may further remark, that the expediency of a law must 
 ever be held subordinate to moral rules : otherwise we only 
 raise our social fabric, by dragging away the stones from 
 its foundations. 
 
 Of the Scriptures he remarks, that in them Morality is 
 taught by general rules, occasionally illustrated by ficti- 
 tious examples, or by such instances as actually presented 
 themselves. All this is true. The Bible is unquestionably 
 not a formal book of casuistry : neither does it by any 
 means supersede the importance of rules, founded in gene- 
 ral expediency, for determining questions of social right 
 between man and man. Many of our duties in society are 
 artificial, and can only be ascertained by usage or positive 
 enactment. But on questions of moral right, not only are 
 the Scriptures the supreme authority in all cases where they 
 contain specific declarations ; but their maxims are ever 
 directed through the affections to the moral sense : and I 
 believe that any man who has studied them, and honestly 
 acts upon their principles, is a thousand times more likely 
 to determine rightly on any difficult moral point, than one 
 who interrupts all the movements of his moral sense, and 
 resolves not to decide till he has calculated the chances of 
 utility. 
 
 3. Having already considered the argument by which 
 Paley rejects the moral sense, I need not repeat what is 
 stated in the preceding Discourse, (p. 57, &c.) His con- 
 clusion is, I think, untrue ; and his reasoning is of no 
 s. d. L 
 
162 APPENDIX. 
 
 weight, except for the intent of shewing the feeble sanction 
 of mere moral rule. 
 
 In the ordinary course of life, men act through passion, 
 affection, or habit. A good system of moral philosophy 
 ought to analyze the active principles of our nature, and 
 then shew their bearing on moral duties, and their subordi- 
 nation to the faculty whereby men know right from wrong. 
 It may deal in general rules : but its rules are w T orse than 
 nothing if not constructed with immediate reference to our 
 moral capacities — in one word, if they do not ultimately 
 rest on the supremacy of conscience. A system that defines 
 moral right by the standard of worldly utility, not merely 
 leaves out of account the best active principles of our 
 nature ; but makes them worse than nothing — a set of per- 
 turbations interfering with the calm results of a dispassion- 
 ate calculation. Such a system has no fitness for man's 
 nature. 
 
 4. In an opening paragraph of the chapter on " Hu- 
 man Happiness," Paley writes as follows : — 
 
 J will omit much usual declamation on the dignity 
 and capacity of our nature ; the superiority of the soul to 
 the body, of the rational to the animal part of our con- 
 stitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy, 
 of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sen- 
 suality, of others: because I hold that pleasures differ in 
 nothing but in continuance and intensity. 
 
 With the early part of this sentence we may agree ; for 
 there has been much idle declamation against sensual plea- 
 sure. The sensualist will continue to act on his own feel- 
 ings, of which he is the only judge ; and we gain little by 
 declaiming against his pleasures, and telling him they are 
 worthless. But the concluding words are, I think, physio- 
 logically and psychologically untrue ; and appear in direct 
 antagonism with the happy train of moral sentiments, and 
 the homely but manly wisdom which runs through the 
 remaining parts of the chapter. They would have found 
 
APPENDIX. 163 
 
 their proper place in the scheme of a rank materialist, or in 
 the essays of a heathen disciple of Epicurus. 
 
 (I). Pleasurable emotions, considered as mere physical 
 phenomena (which seems to be Paley's view of the matter, 
 in the words above quoted, and in the note affixed to the 
 same page), differ in their origin. Some proceed from 
 without, such as the grosser sensual pleasures : others from 
 within, such as intellectual pleasures. As anatomists have 
 proved that our sensations and volitions are conveyed to, 
 and from, the mind by a separate nervous apparatus ; we 
 may, perhaps, conclude that the two classes of pleasures 
 which are most widely separated in their modes of beginning, 
 are also separated anatomically in their whole development. 
 It maybe true that the pleasures of both these classes often 
 shew themselves in kindred physical emotions ; but we 
 have no right, on that account, to confound things that 
 differ, absolutely, as to their origin ; and (I may add) which 
 are manifested to the senses through the intervention of a 
 distinct set of organs. 
 
 (2). Pleasures come under the rules of right and 
 wrong ; and have, therefore, a moral difference quite dis- 
 tinct from the continuance or intensity of our physical emo- 
 tions. 
 
 (3). We have only to look into ourselves to see the 
 monstrous incongruity of confounding intellectual, moral, 
 and physical pleasures, and pretending to weigh them one 
 against another on the nervous filaments of our bodies. 
 We gain nothing by confounding things of a different kind 
 under one general term, and then trying to draw out some- 
 thing like an arithmetical comparison between them. We 
 can no more do this, to any good purpose, than we can 
 weigh time on a balance, or teach a deaf man music by a 
 scale of colours. 
 
 (4). Pleasures differ in their effects. Sensual pleasures 
 are often of a mixed nature, and blended with the imagi- 
 nation ; and, thereby, fasten on the memory, poison the 
 
 1-2 
 
164 
 
 A I'PKNOIX, 
 
 springs of thought, and disorder all the movements of the 
 will. But keeping to our idea of sensual pleasures in their 
 simplest form, we may say of them generally — that they are 
 of short duration — that they are soon forgotten — and that 
 while we retain them in the memory we gain no profit from 
 them. Intellectual and moral pleasures, connected as they 
 ever must be with efforts of the mind and will, remain 
 longer in the storehouse of the memory. But let no one 
 say that, on this account only, they are better than plea- 
 sures which are merely sensual. For we may suppose a 
 succession of intellectual and moral acts, each at the time 
 accompanied by a strong emotion of innocent pleasure, to 
 be afterwards blotted entirely from the memory. But their 
 effects may remain (and such I believe to be a very common 
 case) in an improved strength and capacity of the mind for 
 what is great and good — derived from these very acts that 
 are utterly forgotten. Herein, I think, exists a true, meta- 
 physical distinction between intellectual and merely phy- 
 sical pleasure. 
 
 (5). Lastly, religious and devotional pleasures differ 
 from all others. They most nearly resemble the pleasures 
 we draw from the benevolent affections of our animal 
 nature : but they differ from them in their origin, in their 
 object, and in the support by which they are upheld. 
 
 The subjects, barely glanced at in these remarks, are 
 both of great importance and great difficulty. Though we 
 cannot, without mischief, pretend to compare together our 
 different pleasures by any measured estimate of their in- 
 tensity and duration ; yet when viewed collectively we may 
 judge of their value, by observing (as Paley himself has 
 admirably done,) their ordinary effects, both physical and 
 moral, on the character and condition of man. 
 
 5. Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience 
 to the will of God and for the sake of everlasting happi- 
 ness. This is the definition adopted by Paley ; and it is, 
 I think, open to many grave objections. 
 
APPENDIX. 165 
 
 In the first place, without straining its meaning beyond 
 what the words can well bear, it does not include many 
 important Christian virtues ; such as self-denial, resigna- 
 tion to the will of God, and voluntary suffering for the sake 
 of conscience. It may be said that these virtues indirectly 
 benefit mankind : but the good of mankind is not, at least, 
 their immediate object. — Again,, a man may act well from 
 habit or affection, without ever thinking of reward, either 
 here or hereafter. Surely such actions cease not to be vir- 
 tuous ; yet they come not within the words of Paley's defi- 
 nition. — Lastly, if such be our definition of virtue, what 
 becomes of the virtues of the heathen world — of men who 
 knew nothing certain of a future state, and perhaps seldom 
 thought of it ? We know that they possessed a moral 
 nature — that they reasoned correctly and beautifully on 
 moral questions — that many of them acknowledged the 
 supremacy of conscience — and that they sometimes per- 
 formed heroic deeds of self-denial. Are we then, (for the 
 sake of a mere moral definition) to blot out the recorded 
 sentiments and actions of mankind — to destroy the distinc- 
 tion between good and evil — and to denounce all the deeds 
 of the heathen world as violations of the law of nature, and 
 moral wrongs, because performed by men, who, having no 
 clear revelation of a future state, could not erect their rule 
 of life upon its sanctions ? In answering this question by 
 a decided negative, I wish to fence myself against an objec- 
 tion which may rise in the minds of some religious men. 
 I consider these as questions of morality, and not of reli- 
 gion. If it be from revelation only that we have any 
 certain knowledge of a future state and of the conditions 
 of our future acceptance, it must be from the records of 
 revelation only that we can learn what are the qualities of 
 the soul which are to fit it for the future presence of God. 
 
 Bishop Butler commences his Dissertatiofi on the Na- 
 ture of Virtue, with the following assertion : That which 
 renders being* capable of moral government is their having 
 
166 APPENDIX. 
 
 a moral nature, and moral faculties of perception and of 
 action. He soon after adds, That however much men may 
 have disputed about the nature of virtue, and whatever 
 ground for doubt there may be about particulars ; yet that 
 in general there is an universally acknowledged standard 
 of it. It is that which all ages and all countries have made 
 a profession of in public : it is that which every man you 
 meet puts on the shew of it : it is that which the primary 
 and fundamental laws of all civil constitutions, over the 
 face of the earth, make it their business and endeavour to 
 enforce the practice of upon mankind: namely justice, 
 veracity, and regard to the common good. Here every 
 thing remains indefinite : yet all the successive propositions 
 have their meaning. The author knew well that the things 
 he had to deal with were indefinite, and that he could not 
 fetter them in the language of a formal definition, without 
 violating their nature. But how small has been the number 
 of moral writers who have understood the real value of this 
 forbearance ! 
 
 One great injury done to moral reasoning has arisen 
 from an attempt to assimilate it too closely to the method 
 of the exact sciences. By confounding moral with physical 
 causation, and by considering moral motives as the neces- 
 sary precursors of undeviating moral consequences, men 
 have contrived to reach the most revolting and unnatural 
 conclusions. They have denied to man all freedom of will, 
 and liberty of action ; and bound him up, physically and 
 morally, in the fetters of an unrelenting fatalism. We 
 know nothing of the inner movement of the soul except by 
 consciousness — by reflecting on what passes within our- 
 selves. In this way we learn that, within certain limits de- 
 fined by the condition of our being, we have freedom of will 
 and liberty of action ; and our moral sense falls in with this 
 belief, and teaches us that we are responsible for our choice 
 between good and evil. Practically at least, we know that 
 we are free, and the sophistry of man can never make us 
 
APPENDIX. 167 
 
 part with this knowledge*. To pretend, by any subtilties of 
 inductive proof, to reach a psychological conclusion that 
 interferes with those first elements which we know by in- 
 ternal consciousness, is not one atom less absurd, than it 
 would be for a mechanical philosopher to mock us with 
 the pretended proof of some physical law, while the law 
 itself was falsified by the evidence of direct experiment. 
 
 Another great injury done to" moral inquiries, has been 
 the affectation not only of logical definitions, but of deduc- 
 tive proofs. Paley's system of morals is included in this 
 remark. The subject has been hinted at above, and is so 
 important that I may be permitted to return to it again t. 
 There is in the human mind a passion for general truths, 
 and a restless desire of deducing conclusions from first princi- 
 ples. This passion, while under controul, is a most valuable 
 attribute of our intellectual nature: but it has sometimes 
 done much mischief. In physical questions it has led men to 
 grasp at generalizations beyond their reach, and to entrench 
 themselves among hypotheses, while they ought to have been 
 moving onwards among the foundations of knowledge, by 
 the light of experiment. In moral questions, this passion 
 has led men to false definitions and false opinions on the 
 nature of virtue. An excellent but most paradoxical writer 
 — not excluding (as Paley does) the moral sense in his 
 estimate of right and wrong, but seeking for a definition 
 to comprehend every act of moral obligation — ended by 
 regarding virtue as a mere passion for the general good ; 
 or, in his own language, as, benevolence to being in general%. 
 But what, on such a definition as this, is to become of the 
 private affections ? They lead us to seek the happiness of 
 certain individuals far more than that of other men ; and 
 
 * Connected with this question, the Reader is requested to consult 
 Butler's Analogy, Chap. vi. Of the Opinion of Necessity considered 
 as influencing Practice. 
 
 f See above p. 77 : and the end of Note (A), p. 101. 
 
 % See A Dissertation on the Nature of (rue Virtue, in the works 
 of President Edwards, Vol. u. 
 
168 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 therefore they militate against this rule of virtue. In 
 severe science a rule which is found not to comprehend 
 every particular case, is at once either limited or rejected. 
 In like manner, unless we wish to surrender all the social 
 affections — unless we wish to look on maternal love and all 
 the train of blessed consequences following after it, as moral 
 evils — we must reject this definition of virtue, and along 
 with it the moral system of which it forms a part. 
 
 The domestic and private affections are the very chan- 
 nels through which the God of nature ordained man's 
 benevolence first to flow. His happiness and social dignity 
 are wound up in them ; and deprived of them he becomes 
 at once devoid of moral strength. To reject them, is to 
 mutilate and not to elevate his moral nature ; and is not a 
 jot more wise than it would be for a philosopher to pluck 
 out his eyes in the hopes of speculating with the greater 
 clearness on the general properties of light. The general 
 good of man is incontestably a noble object ; but it can be 
 promoted by those means only which God has given us. 
 And those men have ever been found to follow this noble 
 object most steadily and wisely, who have obeyed the laws 
 of their moral nature, and fortified themselves by the prac- 
 tice of the humbler virtues first placed within their reach. 
 
 The author to whom I have just alluded saw not the 
 obvious effects of his own principles. But bold and irre- 
 ligious men were glad to follow them out, and to abide by 
 their basest consequences. In their scheme all virtue 
 merged into universal philanthropy — the private affections 
 were but drains, carrying the waters of life away from their 
 proper channel — marriage was a monopoly — patriotism a 
 prejudice — and the common bonds of social life but the 
 fetters of ignorance and intolerance. 
 
 This is a most pregnant instance of the mischief of 
 general definitions and deductive reasoning in moral ques- 
 tions : and these remarks were suggested by some striking 
 passages in Hall's discourse on Modem Infidelity, to which 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 169 
 
 the reader is referred. Those who are interested in the 
 inquiry would do well to consult also the Dissertatioii on 
 the Nature of true Virtue, and the notes in which the 
 Editor endeavours to vindicate the definition above quoted. 
 The attempt, however, is to no purpose. In bad hands the 
 definition has led to base consequences : and in no hands 
 can it lead to any good, as it is not fitted to the nature of 
 man. It is in vain to tell us thaUthe love of our neighbour 
 and our country, if detached from a tendency of affection 
 to universal being, is not truly virtuous — That attachment 
 to an object, not founded on the comparative value of 
 that object, belongs not to the nature of true virtue — That 
 a heart enlarged to the love of being in general, includes 
 all particular objects ; and is then only capable of virtu- 
 ous love when the attachment to each object is for the 
 sake of the whole system of being. There is, I repeat, nei- 
 ther truth nor practical wisdom in all this. The particular 
 affections are virtuous, because they are manifestly in 
 accordance with the will of God. By their exercise our 
 higher capacities are matured ; without their exercise, no 
 moral virtue could ever germinate. Suppose a man to 
 reach a higher grade of moral virtue ; is he then called on 
 to throw down the very scaffolding by which he mounted — 
 to strip himself of all the feelings which have manifested 
 themselves in his heart from the first dawnings of his moral 
 nature ? He is called on to make no such sacrifice : and 
 were he called on, the sacrifice would be impossible*. High 
 principle directs and controls the capacities and affections 
 of our moral nature, but compels us not to root them out. 
 
 * Many other examples of the evil effects of a priori reasoning 
 on moral questions might be found in the works of Jonathan Edwards. 
 He was an acute, honest, and pious man, and a most intrepid rea- 
 soner : fearlessly accepting the conclusions (no matter how startling) 
 to which he was carried by deductive reasoning from the principles he 
 accepted. For an instance of this kind, I may refer the Reader to the 
 new edition of his works, Vol. vn. p. 480. London, 1817. 
 
170 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 6. Under the preceding heads, I have considered the 
 principles laid down in the first book of Paley's Moral Phi- 
 losophy. The fundamental propositions of his system are 
 drawn out in the second book : but they have been ex- 
 amined in so much detail in the preceding Discourse, that 
 it is unnecessary to go over the same ground again. Some 
 one may, however, ask, how the principle of utility can be 
 rejected, if such a well-digested moral system can be built 
 upon it. We may reply as follows to such a question : 
 
 First. That in moral, as in physical philosophy, there 
 has been no end to plausible hypotheses ; and that the in- 
 genuity of man has never wanted plausible arguments to 
 support a system. 
 
 Secondly. That many parts of Paley's system relate to 
 questions of (what may be called) legal ethics, having no 
 other basis than the general good. 
 
 Thirdly. That it calls in the aid of Scripture rules — 
 though these rules are not derived from principles in com- 
 mon with itself. 
 
 Fourthly. That God is a moral Governor of the world — 
 or in other words, that the rules of conduct derived from 
 man's moral nature, and from the declarations of the word 
 of God, have a general tendency to secure our worldly hap- 
 piness. But we have no right, on this account, to invert 
 the order of our moral reasoning — to put consequence in 
 the place of cause — to look only to the worldly effects of 
 actions, and overlook their principles. Such a system 
 places us in a false position, supposes us gifted with a power 
 of tracing consequences which belongs not to our nature, 
 blunts our perceptions of moral truth, and leads many men 
 to make a wreck both of common principle and common 
 sense. In natural history and natural philosophy, we see 
 beautiful examples of contrivance and adaptation. But 
 who would ever think of making contrivance the first 
 principle of arrangement in natural history ; or adaptation 
 the foundation of physical science ? In these sciences, at 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 171 
 
 least, all men have acknowledged the necessity of sepa- 
 rating primary cause from secondary consequence. And 
 why should they not be bound by the same principles in 
 moral reasoning ? 
 
 7. In despite of a bad system, Paley was saved, by 
 the rules he derived from Scripture (as well as by extra- 
 ordinary good sense, and the kind feelings of his moral 
 nature), from many great mistakes-in the application of his 
 principles. Sometimes, however, his system led him to 
 play into the hands of bad men ; and to take low grounds 
 of reasoning, ill suited to the high tone of a Christian mo- 
 ralist. 1 will not dwell at any length on examples of this 
 kind : but it is important for my present object to point 
 out some of them. 
 
 (1). The first example of the base conclusions of a 
 utilitarian system of morals, occurs among the practical 
 observations in the chapter on Virtue. It is only necessary 
 in this place to request the reader to reperuse the remarks 
 at p. 66 of this Discourse, as well as the note affixed 
 to it. 
 
 (2). A most offensive instance of sacrificing common 
 honesty and common sense to nothing better than utili- 
 tarian special pleading, may be seen in Book m. Chap, 
 xxii. on Subscription to Articles of Religion. These 
 Articles may be true or may be false — to demand our sub- 
 scription to them may be wise or unwise — these are not 
 the question?. But shall a man seek the emoluments of a 
 sacred office, and pledge himself before God to perform the 
 duties of it in conformity with the word and spirit of these 
 Articles, and then forget them altogether, or try to blind 
 his conscience by poring over the inky blots and rotten 
 parchment bonds that are piled among the archives of our 
 parliament ? An act of parliament may give the legal sanc- 
 tion to these Articles ; but it gives them not their meaning; 
 which can be found only in the vulgar way of honest inter- 
 pretation. The preceding instances are taken from the 
 
172 
 
 A P P E N U I X . 
 
 moral part of Paley's work. The following are derived from 
 the political part ; where the principle of utility may (for 
 obvious reasons) be applied with much more safety, and 
 sometimes with great advantage. 
 
 (3). Why is it our duty to obey the civil government ? 
 Paley replies, because it is the will of God as collected from 
 expediency so long as the established government can- 
 not be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, 
 it is the will of God that the established government be 
 obeyed — and no longer. This principle being admitted, 
 the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced 
 to a computation of the quantity of danger and grievance 
 on one side, and of the probability and expense of redress- 
 ing it on the other. But who shall judge of this ? We 
 answer, every man for himstlf*. A more loose and mis- 
 chievous doctrine — one more certain to be turned to base 
 purposes by bad men — was never, I believe, upheld by any 
 Christian moralist. In times of excitement, men are too 
 much blinded by passion ever to enter fairly on a computa- 
 tion of civil grievance : and as for danger — brave men of 
 sanguine tempers are not restrained by it, but on the con- 
 trary, are urged by it into action. On Paley's principles, 
 civil obedience cannot continue to be regarded as a duty : 
 and if civil order be retained at all, it can only be through 
 selfishness and fear on the one hand, and by corruption and 
 brute force on the other. Such a state of things can only 
 lead to ruin and confusion, or the establishment of a despo- 
 tic executive. 
 
 An unbeliever may ground his duty of obedience in 
 expediency : but a Christian finds, in the word of God, a 
 ready answer to the question we started with. Obedience 
 to the civil governmenment is a duty, because the word of 
 God solemnly and repeatedly enjoins it. But does this 
 doctrine lead us to the slavish maxims of non-resistance 
 
 * Moral and Political Philosophy, Book vi. Chap. iii. 
 
APPENDIX. 173 
 
 unci passive obedience ? Undoubtedly not. The Apostles 
 of our religion gave us an example and a rule for the re- 
 sistance of a Christian. They resisted not the powers of 
 the world by bodily force ; but by persuasion, by patient 
 endurance, and by heroic self-devotion : and the moral and 
 civil revolutions, which they and their followers effected, 
 were incomparably the most astonishing that are recorded 
 in the history of man. 
 
 Should it, however, be said, that ordinary men, not hav- 
 ing the powers given to the inspired Apostles, must, on 
 that account, adopt less exalted maxims as their rules of 
 life ; we may state in general terms (without loading this 
 discussion with extreme cases which lead to no practical 
 good in moral speculation), that where the Christian reli- 
 gion prevails in its purity, it is impossible there should ever 
 exist an unmitigated despotism ; and where the power of 
 the executive is limited (in however small a degree) there 
 will always be found within the constitution some place 
 where the encroachments of bad and despotic men may be 
 met by a moral and legal resistance. Rebellion is pro- 
 scribed by human law, and is forbidden by the law of God. 
 But a moral opposition to the executive, conducted on con- 
 stitutional grounds, is proscribed by no law, either of God 
 or man : and if it be wisely and virtuously carried on, it 
 has in its own nature the elements of increasing strength, 
 and must at length be irresistible. Tf, however, during the 
 progress of a state, the constituted authorities be in open 
 warfare with each other, a good man may at length be 
 compelled to take a side, and reluctantly to draw his sword 
 in defence of the best inheritance of his country. Such an 
 appeal, to be just, must be made on principle, and after all 
 other honest means have been tried in vain. 
 
 Unfortunately, the opposition to the encroachments of 
 arbitrary power has too often been commenced by selfish 
 men for base purposes. Instead of taking their stand in 
 
174 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 a moral and constitutional resistance — instead of trying, 
 by every human means, to concentrate all the might of 
 virtue and high principle on their side, they have broken 
 the laws of their country, dipped their hands in blood, 
 and needlessly brought ruin on themselves and their party. 
 The vices of the subject are not only the despot's plea, 
 but the despot's strength. Where the virtuous elements of 
 social order are wanting in the state, whether men be wil- 
 ling slaves or not, they are unfit for freedom. 
 
 (4). In the Chapter On the British Constitvtion* 
 we may, J think, find some examples of mere utilitarian 
 reasoning, where the author ought (in part at least) to 
 have taken the higher ground of a moral philosopher. It 
 is impossible to deny that there is in this chapter much 
 good sense and sound reasoning. Reviewing the popular 
 part of our constitution, he points out the vast advantages 
 we have derived from it, and the contingent evils of any 
 material change in the system of popular representation. 
 But, the corruption — the perjury — the baseness connected 
 with the system — the mean shifts to which great men were 
 compelled by it to stoop — the chance that the very foun- 
 tains of law and honour might become polluted by it — 
 the never-failing topics of offence it held out to discontented 
 and designing men — these things are all passed over, 
 though in the eyes of some they seemed to form a deadly 
 canker in the state. Had he considered these flagrant 
 evils, and then shewn that, while men continue what they 
 are — little better than the slaves of their bad passions — 
 any other system might bring along with it, as great, or 
 perhaps greater, moral evils, he had done well. His con- 
 clusions might have been right or wrong ; but his argument 
 would have been not only more complete, but placed on 
 higher and truer grounds. — I am offering no opinion on 
 any subject discussed in this chapter ; the attempt would 
 
 * Moral and Political Philosophy , Book vi. Chap. vii. 
 
A I' PEN HIX, 
 
 175 
 
 be entirely out of place in this note : my object is, not to 
 examine the weight of Paley's arguments, but his tone of 
 arguing. 
 
 (5). Near the end of the Chapter On Crimes and 
 Punishments, is the following sentence* : Another maxim 
 which deserves examination, is this: — " That it is better 
 that ten guilty persons escape, thqji that one innocent man 
 should suffer." If by saying it is better, be meant that 
 it is more for the public advantage, the proposition, I 
 think, cannot be maintained. It would, I believe, be an 
 easy task to prove that this conclusion is wrong on Paley's 
 own principles. We are, at least, certain that it contra- 
 dicts the moral feelings of mankind, and this is quite 
 enough to condemn it. 
 
 No man perhaps ever used the disjunctive form of 
 reasoning with more advantage than Paley. It sometimes 
 however led him into error. The worst example of this 
 kind has been considered in a former page of this Dis- 
 course + : another occurs in the chapter just quoted. There 
 are (he observes) two methods of administering penal jus- 
 tice — The first method assigns capital punishments to few 
 offences, and inflicts it invariably — The second method as- 
 signs capital punishments to many kinds of offences, but 
 inflicts it only upon a few examples of each kind. All 
 this is true ; but when he argues as if there never had 
 been, or could be, any other methods besides these two ; 
 his conclusions (whether true or false) are not derived from 
 any rules of sound logic, and are open to a charge of 
 sophistry. This last remark is not however of much im- 
 portance, and bears not directly on my present object. 
 
 From all that has been stated above, we may conclude, 
 that Paley was wrong in overlooking the innate moral 
 capacities of our nature — that the principle of utility is 
 derived from false reasoning — that it places man in a false 
 
 * Moral and PolUiciil P/tifosophy, Book VI. Chap. ix. 
 t See above, p. tiO. 
 
1 7() APPENDIX. 
 
 position — lowers his standard of right and wrong — and 
 inevitably leads him, whether in speculation or practice, 
 into false and unhallowed consequences. In accepting 
 these conclusions, we merely assume, that man has a mora) 
 nature ; and that, in almost every act of his life, his per- 
 ception of right and wrong is incomparably clearer than 
 his knowledge of the general consequences that may follow 
 from the act itself. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX, 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 A SERIES OF NOTES TO THE PREFACE. 
 
 An unhappy fatality seems to hang over the publication of this Volume. 
 Not many days after the concluding note to the Preface of this Edi- 
 tion was printed the Author went out of College ; but he returned 
 about a week afterwards, for the express purpose of passing the fol- 
 lowing Supplement to the Appendix through the Press, during the 
 Christmas vacation ; for he was anxious that the Volume should be 
 out by the beginning of the Lent Term. But very soon after his return 
 he met with a painful and dangerous accident, which for five months 
 made him unfit for any continued intellectual labour: and he now re- 
 sumes his task, though still crippled in his right arm, and anxious on 
 many accounts to make the following supplementary Notes as short as 
 he can without obscuring their meaning. 
 
 Trinity College, 
 May 20, 1850. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 Additional Remarks on the Nebular Hypothesis. 
 (p. ix. and p. xxi.) 
 
 It may have appeared strange to the reader of note D, 
 that no allusion is made in it to The Telescopic Survey of 
 the whole surface of the visible Heavens, by Sir John 
 Herschel. The note was, however, printed several months 
 before the first appearance of that great work. Supra, 
 p. ccexxxiii., and note to p. ccccxli. 
 
 On reconsidering note D, I find that I have expressed 
 
 myself inaccurately in referring to the ecliptic as if it were 
 
 La Place's invariable plane of the Solar System. The 
 
 ecliptic is, in fact, inclined to that plane at an angle of 
 
 s. d. M 
 
178 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 1° 35', and not one of the planetary orbits coincides exactly 
 with it. On the Nebular Hypothesis, we must suppose that 
 the equator of the revolving Nebula was very nearly coin- 
 cident with the invariable plane : for the successive nebular 
 rings must have been thrown off from the equator of the 
 revolving mass ; and the different inclinations of the result- 
 ing planetary orbits to the invariable plane must have been 
 caused by subsequent perturbation. 
 
 When the following Discourse was first printed, I was a 
 believer in the Nebular Hypothesis ; not only because it lent 
 itself to the mechanical explanation of many phenomena 
 in the solar system ; but also because it seemed (after the 
 discoveries of Sir William Herschel) to be a vera causa ; or, 
 at least, to be supported by good analogical evidence drawn 
 from the phenomena in the remote regions of the visible 
 heavens (infra, p. 27)* But the discoveries of Lord Rosse 
 have very greatly weakened, if they have not altogether de- 
 stroyed, these assumed analogies of condensing nebulae. So 
 many of the nebulae are now resolved that we are almost 
 constrained to believe that all of them might be resolved 
 had we instruments of sufficient optical power. Nor is this 
 our only difficulty. The luminous points of the resolved 
 nebulae have no arrangement indicating the condensation of 
 a nebulous mass about distinct centres, by any force re- 
 sembling that of gravity. Several of them exhibit, in Lord 
 Rosse's figures, a kind of complicated spiral arrangement, 
 which it is impossible to see, pictorially represented, with- 
 out referring it in imagination to some great physical 
 cause — some mighty vortices in the remotest regions of the 
 sky. Without indulging in idle speculation, we may at 
 least affirm, that the grouping of the luminous points in the 
 resolved nebulae is quite abhorrent from any conception 
 we can form of a nebular mass in a gradual progress of 
 condensation. 
 
 The arguments, both for and against the Nebular Hypo- 
 thesis, have, perhaps, been given at sufficient length in note 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 1 79 
 
 D : but I may be permitted to state, more distinctly and 
 technically than is done in that note, some of the difficul- 
 ties we meet with in attempting to reconcile the hypothe- 
 sis to the well-known phenomena of the solar system. 
 
 1. The time of the Sun's rotation round its axis is 25 
 days 10 hours, nearly ; and the periodic time of Mercury is 
 nearly 88 days. When that nebulous ring was thrown off, 
 out of the consolidation of whiclT (on the hypothesis) came 
 the planet Mercury, the great solar nebula must have been 
 revolving in 88 days nearly. Now there is a mechanical 
 principle (technically called the conservation of areas) 
 whereby mathematicians are able to determine approxi- 
 mately the velocity of rotation belonging to every subse- 
 quent period of contraction of the solar nebula, provided 
 they know the composition of its mass, or the law of its 
 density, and the time of its rotation corresponding to any 
 given magnitude of its diameter. And reasoning on this 
 principle, they would (on any purely Nebular Hypothesis) 
 expect a very much greater velocity of rotation than that 
 which is exhibited in the Sun's period of 25 days 10 hours. 
 This difficulty is fully admitted in an article of the Quarterly 
 Review, attributed to Sir John Herschel. But it is not 
 insuperable ; for we may believe it probable, that before the 
 nebulous ring of Mercury was thrown off, the greater part 
 of the Sun's mass was already consolidated near its centre ; 
 and hence, that the law of "the conservation of areas" 
 might be kept entire, while the remaining nebulous portion 
 gradually contracted towards the surface of the Sun ; and that 
 all this might be effected without giving the Sun a greater 
 velocity of rotation than we find by actual observation. 
 
 2. There are other difficulties presented by the Sun 
 and Mercury. The axis of nebular rotation could not 
 change during contraction. The equator of the Sun and 
 the orbit of Mercury ought therefore nearly to coincide with 
 the invariable plane of the solar system : but they do not 
 nearly coincide with it. The Sun's equator is inclined to 
 
 m2 
 
180 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 the ecliptic at an angle of 7° 14', and the orbit of Mercury at 
 an angle of 7°, nearly. From these numbers we may de- 
 duce two angles of inclination to the invariable plane that 
 cannot be well accounted for by perturbation. Again, the 
 longitude of the ascending node of the Sun's equator is 
 about 80° : but the longitude of the corresponding node of 
 the orbit of Mercury is 45° 58'. Combining these positions 
 of the nodes with the angles above mentioned, we also infer 
 that the plane of the orbit of Mercury is not nearly coinci- 
 dent with the Sun's equator, as it ought to be on the 
 Nebular Hypothesis. 
 
 3. The orbits of some of the other planets are still more 
 anomalous. The orbit of Pallas is inclined to the ecliptic at 
 34° and a half, and at 34° to the " invariable plane." The 
 orbit of Ceres is inclined to the same plane at more than 
 10°. These numbers seem to be incompatible with a simple 
 Nebular Hypothesis. They are, at least, far too great to be 
 accounted for by mere planetary perturbation. 
 
 4. On the Nebular Hypothesis, all the planets were 
 first thrown off as circular rings ; and after condensation 
 they ought not only to move nearly in the "invariable 
 plane," but they ought also to move in nearly circular 
 orbits. The eccentricity of Mercury is, however, more than 
 one-fifth ; that of Juno is more than one-fourth ; that of 
 Pallas a little less than one-fourth. These numbers are far 
 too great to be explained by mere perturbation. They 
 require the intervention of some additional hypothesis. 
 
 5. If Venus was first thrown off as a nebulous ring 
 having its plane nearly coincident with the invariable plane, 
 how comes it to pass that the axis about which Venus 
 revolves should coincide nearly with the plane of the 
 ecliptic? The position of the axis of this planet is twisted 
 almost 90° out of the place in which we should expect to 
 find it on the Nebular Hypothesis. 
 
 6. Compatibly with the same hypothesis, how comes 
 the axis of the earth to be inclined to the ecliptic at 23° 30'? 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 181 
 
 And, again, if the Moon was thrown off during the con- 
 traction of the nebulous earth, it must have been thrown off 
 at the equator of the revolving mass. How, then, comes 
 it to pass that the orbit of the Moon (which is inclined to 
 the ecliptic at an angle only ot 5°) does not much more 
 nearly coincide with the actual equatorial plane of the 
 earth? These discrepancies are much too great to be ac- 
 counted for by perturbation. 
 
 7. Difficulties of a like kind are presented by other 
 planets. Thus, the ring of Saturn is inclined 28° 40' to 
 the ecliptic. The nearer satellites of Saturn are nearly in 
 the plane of its ring — the most distant satellite is nearly in 
 the plane of the ecliptic. Again, the satellite of Neptune 
 moves in an orbit that is inclined to the ecliptic at an angle 
 of more than 30°. Surely these numbers throw very great 
 difficulties in the way of those who receive the Nebular 
 Hypothesis. 
 
 8. The orbits of the satellites of Uranus are almost per- 
 pendicular to the ecliptic; and their motions, when pro- 
 jected on the ecliptic plane, are retrograde. The positions 
 of these orbits, and the directions of these motions, are 
 therefore in most perfect antagonism with the Nebular 
 Hypothesis : and the explanation of these phenomena at- 
 tempted by the author of the Vestiges, only shews the loose 
 manner in which a man, who is not well acquainted with 
 mechanical philosophy, will deal with facts and first prin- 
 ciples. It is, mechanically, inapplicable and worthless. 
 
 9- If the returning Comets be considered as an original 
 part of the Solar System, they in no respect conform to 
 the Nebular Hypothesis: for their orbits are, in general, 
 very highly inclined to the ecliptic plane; some of them 
 {e.g. Halley's famous Comet) are retrograde; and all of 
 them move in very eccentric orbits. In whatsoever way our 
 system may have originated, it seems however best to regard 
 the Comets as stray bodies, out of all strict analogy, either 
 of composition or origin, with the Planets : — as bodies that 
 
182 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 have perhaps been caught by the attraction of the Sun and 
 Planets and brought within our System during its motion 
 through sidereal space. 
 
 Professor Plateau's experiments practically illustrate the 
 truth of La Place's dynamical reasoning on one part of the 
 Nebular Hypothesis. To a person who is unacquainted with 
 the principles of mechanical philosophy, these experiments 
 may give, through his senses, an evidence he did not 
 comprehend before : but they give no new evidence to 
 one who is acquainted with exact mechanical science : for 
 La Place's dynamical reasoning stood in no need of experi- 
 mental illustration, and was universally admitted as true. 
 But the truth of La Place's reasoning is no proof of the 
 hypothesis that suggested it : for there arise such questions 
 as these. (1) Is there any evidence, based in fact or analogy, 
 to prove that the solar system ever did exist as a revolv- 
 ing nebula ? (2) Do the changes of a condensing nebula 
 explain the phenomena of the solar system? To these 
 questions we are compelled, in the present state of our 
 information, to give a negative reply. I hardly need add, 
 that M. Comte's reasoning on this subject (though quoted 
 with praise by more than one writer) is utterly worthless ; 
 inasmuch as it involves a palpable sophism. 
 
 Are we then to reject the Nebular Hypothesis alto- 
 gether? This I venture not to affirm ; for it does lend itself 
 to many phenomena or our system, and it seems to con- 
 tain some elements of truth that should not be overlooked. 
 Humboldt, in his Kosmos, seems to regard it as a well- 
 established theory ; and some of the greatest mechanical 
 philosophers of the present day still look on it with favour. 
 What I contend for is — that we have, at present, no right 
 to accept it as a theory which is demonstrated, or as the 
 foundation of any general reasoning on the System of 
 Nature. 
 
 An American astronomer has endeavoured to establish 
 some new and remarkable analogies in the Solar System, 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 183 
 
 involving the masses of the Planets, their distances, and 
 their times of rotation. I shall return to this subject in a 
 following note (No. VII.) ; and I only remark by the way, 
 that should these analogies be hereafter so far confirmed as 
 to become an accepted law of our System, they seem not 
 to have any very obvious bearing on the hypothesis discussed 
 in this Note. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 On Animal Creations by Galvanism. 
 (p. xxv.) 
 
 What are we called on to believe when we are told of 
 the galvanic creation of an Acarus? That galvanic forces 
 can, without the help of any pre-existing vital germ, at 
 once assemble together the particles of dead matter, and 
 arrange them in the complicated organic structure of an 
 Acarus; and that the same forces can give this organic 
 structure all the attributes of life, and the powers of repro- 
 duction. We know something of elective affinities, and we 
 can modify these affinities by new modes of galvanic action. 
 We can produce definite compounds, and definite crystalline 
 forms, out of the definite combinations of dead and inor- 
 ganic particles. But the formation, in this way, of a compli- 
 cated organic structure is nothing less than a miracle, unless 
 we suppose the pre-existence of some vital germ among 
 the particles on which we experiment : for it refers to one 
 system of causation effects that are most widely apart in all 
 their manifestations ; and it is utterly abhorrent from all our 
 experimental conceptions of chemical action and molecular 
 arrangement. 
 
 I do not believe that galvanic action can give any of the 
 true attributes of life to the particles of dead and inorganic 
 matter : and if (only for the sake of argument) we were to 
 give up this point, and assume at once — with Lamarck, 
 
184 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Oken, and other materialists — that organic life may begin 
 by the direct action of the galvanic fluid on certain gela- 
 tinous forms of matter that is dead and inorganic, what 
 should we gain by the assumption? On this assumption, 
 life begins only in the very lowest organic forms of nature, 
 multiplies afterwards by fissiparous generation, and then 
 rises gradually on some line, or lines, of the organic scale, 
 by progressive development. On no sane view of this 
 theory can we produce an Acarus experimentally from dead 
 matter without a long ascending process of development — 
 a process implying many specific transmutations, and many 
 transcendental leaps from Order to Order. To derive an 
 Acarus at once from inorganic matter is, therefore, just as 
 abhorrent from any rational view of the theory of develop- 
 ment, as it is abhorrent from any known law of atomic 
 combination. 
 
 That there are difficulties in accounting for the genera- 
 tion of some of the very humble forms of organic life, no 
 one pretends to deny. It is surely the part of wisdom to 
 be guided, in all such cases, by the analogies that are pre- 
 sented to us by other parts of nature which are neither 
 obscure nor doubtful. In this view, we do not reject, but 
 we vindicate, the grand uniformity in the organic laws of 
 nature. At any rate there is no wisdom in explaining the 
 obscurest phenomena of organic life by hypotheses which 
 utterly shut out the light given to us by the help of 
 analogy. 
 
 Multiplied blunders were made by those who first told 
 us of the galvanic creation of an Acarus. Its species was 
 mistaken — its exuviae were mistaken for its ova. It was 
 affirmed that its ova could not be transported through the 
 air because of their size and gravity. Other spurious 
 organic creations were asserted, &c. &c. The transporting 
 power of the air is sufficient to bear bodies, that are speci- 
 fically heavy (provided they be in a state of great commi- 
 nution), to vast distances. The air teems with the invisible 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 185 
 
 seeds of animal and vegetable life, that are borne mechani- 
 cally on its wings, and begin to germinate the moment they 
 fall on a spot fitted to call forth their organic functions. 
 The specifically heavy siliceous castings of microscopic In- 
 fusoria are probably borne, as we learn from Ehrenberg, 
 across the Atlantic to the coasts of Africa and Europe ; and 
 they are certainly borne, in millions of millions, from the 
 interior of Africa to the southern coasts of France and 
 Italy. This transporting power of the air at once explains 
 many of the supposed cases of spontaneous generation. 
 
 Again, we know that some of the lower forms of the 
 animal kingdom are so tenacious of life that they will 
 endure, without vital injury, the extreme temperatures of 
 boiling water and long-continued polar frost : and we also 
 know that the ova of these low animals are far more tena- 
 cious of life than the animals themselves. In such facts as 
 these we have an explanation of many cases of supposed 
 spontaneous generation, and of experiments that pretend to 
 teach us conclusions that violate all our experimental know- 
 ledge of molecular action, and all the best analogies of the 
 living world. 
 
 No. III. 
 
 On the Placoid and Ganoid Fishes of the Palaeozoic 
 Strata, and their places in the Organic Scale. 
 
 (Supra, p. lxv. p. lxxi. and p. cccxxiii.) 
 
 The claims of the Cestracion (to which some of the 
 oldest fossil fishes are very nearly allied) to a high rank 
 in the scale of its Class, rest on the following facts : 
 
 1. Its cerebellum is absolutely and relatively larger than 
 in the great bulk either of osseous or of cyclostomous 
 Fishes ; and its cerebrum is absolutely and relatively larger 
 than in any osseous or cyclostomous Fish. 
 
186 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 2. Its heart approaches close to the condition of a low 
 form of Reptile-heart ; for its bulbus arteriosus is large and 
 muscular; and it has rows of valves like those of the, 
 so-called, Sauroid Fishes. 
 
 3. Its organs of reproduction are of a high organic 
 grade ; far higher than in any osseous Fishes. In one sex 
 it has distinct and compact testes, vesiculce seminales, and 
 claspers. In the other sex, the oviduct is distinct from the 
 ovarium ; and it has the morsus diaboli, as well as the 
 nidamental gland. 
 
 4. Its jaws are terminal, and its teeth, being fitted both 
 for prehension and mastication, are superior to those of 
 ordinary Plagiostomes. 
 
 5. The above characters are taken, almost word for 
 word, from Professor Owen ; and to them we may add, the 
 position of the fins, which put the whole skeleton in sym- 
 metry with that of a Reptile or a Mammal. This last point 
 is well urged by Mr. Hugh Miller, Footprints of the Creator, 
 p. 153, and p. 160, &c. 
 
 6. Not to dwell exclusively on the Cestracion, we may 
 assert generally, that all the higher forms of cartilaginous 
 Fishes (Sharks, &c.) have a very high organic grade in their 
 Class, determined collectively from their brain and nervous 
 system, their heart and arterial system, from their organs 
 of reproduction, from their whole economy of gestation and 
 parturition, and from their functions during life. 
 
 7. Again, not dwelling exclusively on the Cestracion, 
 we may add, "that the highest forms of cartilaginous Fishes 
 are brought into connexion with Amphibious Reptiles by 
 the existence of temporary gills, which disappear while 
 these Fishes are in an early embryo state. These temporary 
 gills, similar in function to the temporary respiratory tufts 
 of certain Amphibious Reptiles (e. g. Frog and Salamander), 
 seem (together with other points of analogy) to con- 
 nect the cartilaginous Fishes with the Amphibia. They are 
 seen in the Squalus and Raia, in the Pristis and Torpedo^ 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 187 
 
 all of which are ovoviviparous ; and (regarding these gills 
 teleologically) they seem to be for the purpose of respiration 
 while the creature is surrounded by the gelatinous fluid of 
 the oviduct." (Note by Dr. Clark). 
 
 On the whole then, — taking for our guide the brain, the 
 heart, the organs of reproduction, the symmetry of the 
 whole skeleton, the locomotive power, and the despotic office 
 of the higher cartilaginous Fishes' in the economy of nature, 
 — we are compelled to place them on the very summit of their 
 Class. At one end of the scale of cartilaginous Fishes are 
 certain species (such as the CyclostomesJ which descend 
 lower than any hard-boned Fishes : but at the other end of 
 the scale, the cartilaginous type ascends higher, beyond com- 
 parison, than any hard-boned species of the whole Ichthyic 
 Class : and if, on the development theory, a transition is to 
 be made from Fishes to Reptiles, it must be made through the 
 higher cartilaginous Fishes. But the chronological history 
 of the Class entirely stultifies the theory of development ; by 
 proving, on the evidence of geology, that the very highest 
 types were called into being first, while Fishes were the 
 despots of creation ; and that, afterwards, they not merely 
 lost their place at the head of organic creation, but that the 
 collective Class, so far as it was increased by the accession 
 of new Orders and Genera, was developed on a degraded 
 pattern. 
 
 Against this conclusion it has been argued, that most 
 of the high cartilaginous Fishes are plagiostomous. True ! 
 and this embryonic character may be one mark of inferiority 
 among Fishes on the same line of ascent, and nearly on the 
 same grade. It might, for example, be one reason for put- 
 ting a common Shark below a Cestracion. But it offers by 
 itself no proof of inferiority, when Fishes far apart, and on 
 a different line of ascent, are compared together ; and their 
 organic grade determined by such collective characters as 
 are above enumerated. Embryonic development may sug- 
 gest, or confirm, some good principles of classification ; — it 
 
188 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 may explain the place and meaning of certain organs among 
 animals of a kindred grade: but we should monstrously 
 abuse its application, if we set it up against the collective 
 evidence of the fully-developed organs of the perfect 
 animal. It has suggested to some minds the theory of 
 development; and some of those who have accepted the 
 theory, have clung to embryonic evidence, against all reason, 
 and against the evidence of pregnant facts, which shew how 
 utterly inapplicable it is as a sole guiding principle of clas- 
 sification. 
 
 Most of all is the embryonic argument pushed out of 
 its legitimate application, and utterly puerile and absurd, 
 when two animals, far apart in their organic structure, 
 have their place on the scale fixed by the embryonic 
 type of a single organ. For it is well known to physiolo- 
 gists, and is proved by examples quoted in the Edinburgh 
 Review, and in the Footprints of the Creator, that organs 
 of the first importance in the animal economy are, in some 
 instances, degraded, or entirely obliterated, in the progress 
 of a single being from the larva type to its complete deve- 
 lopment. Again, it has been urged that the higher cartila- 
 ginous Placoids have heterocercal tails (like that of a sal- 
 mon's embryo), and are therefore of an organization below 
 the hard-boned fishes. It is true that they have heterocercal 
 tails; but who would determine a fish's place on the scale 
 by a single organ, while he studiously keeps out of sight 
 the brain, the heart, the sexual system, the animal symmetry, 
 and the whole vital economy ? Neither is it true that (re- 
 garding the whole scale of nature) the heterocercal tail is a 
 mark of degradation. On the contrary, so far as it goes, 
 it is, when seen in a Fish, a mark of nobility : for the hetero- 
 cercal tail is very closely analogous to the tail of a Reptile and 
 a Mammal. The tail of a Shark is very closely analogous to 
 the tail, for example, of an Ichthyosaurus; while the homo- 
 cereal tail of hard-boned Fishes is out of all near analogy 
 with the tails of any animals of the higher Classes. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 189 
 
 Lastly, we have this other precious argument thrown 
 into the balance. The very low Cyclostomous Fishes are 
 cartilaginous ; and Sharks and Cestracions are cartilaginous: 
 therefore Sharks and Cestracions are of a low type, and fall 
 below the hard-boned fishes! It is hard to believe that 
 such a sophism could have been used for any purpose but 
 that of throwing dust in the reader's eyes. If its author 
 has used it in sincerity, there is -then an end of all argu- 
 ment ; and we can only, in mercy, recommend him without 
 delay to seek for cerebral renovation by a voyage to Anti- 
 cyra. 
 
 I here suppress several pages of a discussion I had 
 drawn out on the organic grades of the Palaeozoic Ganoids 
 (see note to p. lxxi. and p. cccxxiii.), as they appear among 
 the remains of the old red sandstone and carboniferous 
 rocks : for the subject has now been amply treated in the 
 Footprints of the Creator, and to that work I refer the 
 reader. As, however, the terms homocercal tail and hetero- 
 cereal tail have been mentioned, it may, perhaps, be well to 
 explain, in a few sentences, what these terms mean, without 
 asking the reader to consult any other book. In the hete- 
 rocercal type, the back-bone tapers to a point (in accordance 
 to a common Lacertian type), but is abruptly bent upwards 
 at its extremity. The upper surface of the tail is generally 
 fortified with strong elongated scales called fulcral rays: 
 but it has no true caudal rays interpolated among the upper, 
 or neurapophyses. The under side of the tail has, however, 
 a series of true rays interpolated among the under, or hcema- 
 pophyses ; and as these rays gradually shorten towards the 
 extreme caudal vertebras, they form collectively a cartilagi- 
 nous caudal fin. In the homocercal tail the back-bone of 
 the fish diverges greatly from the Reptile type. It does not 
 converge to a point, but at its extremity we find an enlarged, 
 anomalous, and laterally compressed vertebral mass; from 
 the outer edge of which proceed all the caudal rays, so as 
 to form a nearly equal lobed tail in a vertical plane. Such 
 is the tail of a trout or a herring. 
 
190 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Ill many of the Ganoids we have a back-bone converging 
 to a point without being turned upwards; and, so far, on the 
 true Lacertian type ; and many of the same Fishes have true 
 caudal rays interpolated among both sets of the apophyses, 
 above and below, so as to have a double-lobed tail, of which 
 the lower lobe is generally larger than the upper. This 
 Professor M'Coy calls the diphycercal tail. It is certainly 
 of such a distinct structure as to deserve an anatomical 
 name : and it probably comes very near the Enaliosaurian 
 tail. There are other caudal varieties on which I must 
 not dwell ; and I may again refer to the Footprints of the 
 Creator, pp. 171, 173, and to the excellent figures and de- 
 scriptions of the homocercal and heterocercal structures there 
 given. 
 
 Another point I may also touch upon before I conclude 
 this note. Nearly three years since Professor M'Coy pointed 
 out to me the spiral structure of certain coprolites of Ganoid 
 Fishes, in our Museum, derived from the old red sand- 
 stone and carboniferous rocks. The structure proved that 
 these Fishes must have had intestinal valves — and he further 
 remarked, that all Ganoids with intestinal valves had also 
 (as had been proved by Miiller) a muscular bulbus arteriosus 
 with an apparatus of valves, that brought the heart close to 
 the Amphibian type. Thus, from what, at first sight, might 
 be looked on as an obscure and worthless fossil, we obtain a 
 very important step in our estimation of the organic grade 
 of a very large division of the Palaeozoic Fishes. 
 
 In justice to Professor M'Coy (who has been involved in 
 some controversy on subjects here alluded to), I subjoin, in 
 his own words, a Note which he left with me before he com- 
 menced his new duties at Belfast ; and I may remark, that 
 it partly takes the place of the comments which I have sup- 
 pressed. 
 
 Note by Professor M'Coy, on the place, in the organic 
 scale, of the Palceozoic Ganoid Fishes. 
 
 " The popular impression that all the Fishes of the Palaeo- 
 zoic rocks belong to a low organic type, and that in the 
 

 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 191 
 
 oldest strata in which perfect remains of Fishes occur, (the 
 old red sandstone), we have stereotyped, as it were, the 
 1 embryonic ' stage of development of Fishes as a Class, 
 seems to have originated in two interesting and important 
 statements of Prof. Agassiz : — 
 
 "1st. That all the ganoids of the Palaeozoic Rocks dif- 
 fered from those of the newer periods in having f hetero- 
 cercal ' tails — that is, the body tapered gradually to a point, 
 and ran to the upper angle of the tail, the caudal fins being 
 only developed from the under side ; a structure which he 
 remarked existed in the embryo of the 'homocercal' salmon, 
 &c. 
 
 " 2nd. That in the Devonian fishes the vertebral column 
 (observed in the Coccosteus latus) was not composed of 
 separate ossified vertebra?, but consisted of a continuous 
 cartilaginous (or rather mucous) cord, as in the embryo 
 condition of bony fishes ; the spinous processes alone being 
 separately ossified. I do not suppose Prof. Agassiz meant 
 those laws to be accepted so literally and extended so widely 
 as they have been by some geologists ; for, in the first place, 
 heterocercal Ganoids occur as high as the top of the Oolites 
 (e.g. the Coccolepis Bucklandi of the Solenhofen schists); 
 but, at any rate, both positions are clearly disproved by 
 specimens from the old red sandstone, in the Cambridge 
 University Collection. 
 
 " To begin with the first position : we have the whole of 
 that great group to which I gave the name Placodermata 
 (including Pterichthys, Coccosteus, &c.) in which the tail 
 tapers to a simple point without any caudal fin, almost 
 meriting the name ' acercal/ But of those with developed 
 tails we find all the species of one of the most abundant and 
 well-preserved genera, Diplopterus, (though described in 
 both of Prof. Agassiz's works on fossil Fishes as having 
 'heterocercal' tails, and figured in the last work, Plate E 
 of restored outlines, as identical in the form of their tails with 
 the 'heterocercal' Osteolepis and Dipterus on the same plate), 
 
] 92 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 to have really a very different structure, to which (in the 
 Annals of Nat. Hist, for Nov. 1848) I gave the name 
 ' diphy cereal/ (from h«f>vti<; — daas habens naturas, and 
 k6/>ko? — cauda). In these, as in the * homocercal ' types, the 
 body is nearly medial, or with a scarcely perceptible upward 
 deflexion ; and there is nearly as great an expanse of caudal 
 fin above as below : but it differs from the homocercal Fishes 
 in having, like the ' heterocercal/ the body tapering gradu- 
 ally to a point; and the fin-rays obviously must have been in- 
 tercalated with the spinous processes of a great number of the 
 caudal vertebrae, instead of being connected with the short 
 terminal mass only. It is obvious that we cannot anatomically 
 regard this as a homocercal tail, although it most nearly 
 approaches it in appearance. 
 
 "Precisely the same construction of tail is found in all the 
 species of another Devonian genus, to which I have given 
 the name Gyroptychius, both genera having rhomboidal 
 caudal fins, with a nearly medial point towards which the 
 attenuated body runs. 
 
 " As to the second position, the vertebral column is not 
 always a continuous soft cord, as is proved by a new species 
 of Coccosteus in the Cambridge collection, which I have 
 called C. microspondylus, which has all the bodies of the 
 vertebrae as separate, and as distinctly ossified, as their 
 spinous processes; these latter being in proportion much 
 smaller than in the C. latus (Ag.) 
 
 " As further disproving this notion of the general degra- 
 dation of the Palaeozoic fishes, it is worthy of note that the 
 coprolites which have been found are marked by the spiral 
 grooves indicative of a spiral valve in their intestines, which, 
 according to the numerous recent dissections of Prof. M til- 
 ler, of Berlin, invariably co-exists with a true muscular 
 bulbus arteriosus with a power of forcible contraction, and a 
 complex system of valves enabling it to perform the function 
 of a second auricle to the heart, as in sharks and higher 
 animals. We have here then an unexpected proof that, in 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 193 
 
 the most important points of their anatomy, these ancient 
 types actually equalled the Batrachian Reptiles in the com- 
 plexity of their hearts, and of necessity ranked far higher 
 than the bulk of our recent Fishes, in which the bulbits arte- 
 riosus is a mere thickening of the tunics of the artery — 
 without muscular structure or pulsating power, and having 
 the valves so placed that such power would be useless if 
 it existed — leaving the heart with but one auricle and one 
 ventricle." 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 On the supposed Interchange of' Vegetable Species — Hybrid- 
 ization. Alternate Generations of Steenstrup. Par- 
 thenogenesis of Owen, Sfc. 
 
 (p. xliii.) 
 
 After the Author of the Vestiges had asserted, in edition 
 after edition, that the Cerealia were all of one species, be- 
 cause they might be made, by artificial means, to interchange 
 forms and pass one into another, the Edinburgh Reviewer 
 replied — that this was an old story and probably not true, 
 and that its truth or falsehood might readily be tested by 
 experiment. I do not complain of this assertion respecting 
 the transmutations of the Cerealia; but I do complain of 
 the unqualified form in which it has been reproduced by an 
 Author ivho is ready to snatch at any supposed fact that 
 makes for his theory, without sifting, as he was bound to do, 
 the evidence on which it ought to rest. Acting on a con- 
 trary principle, I first consulted Professor Lindley, who 
 replied (in a letter I have before me) that he had not 
 ascertained these vegetable transmutations — that he had not 
 intended to lend his name to them — and that he had been 
 improperly quoted. All he had said was this: "he thought 
 such vegetable changes not impossible, and that they ought 
 to be believed on good evidence." This differed not in sub- 
 s. d. N 
 
194 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 stance from what was stated by the Reviewer. I then con- 
 sulted Professor Henslow, who had so little faith in the 
 asserted transmutations, that he thought the experiments 
 hardly deserved a trial: and I afterwards obtained the 
 opinion of Dr Hooker, who told me, without hesitation, 
 that the asserted changes were not true — that they were 
 most unphilosophical — and that the experiments had been 
 tried and had failed. I finally consulted one, who, by 
 almost common consent, is placed at the head of the 
 botanists of Europe, and he gave the asserted interchanges 
 of form among the Cereals what appeared to me an unqua- 
 lified and contemptuous denial. And so I let this matter 
 rest. 
 
 'Within the last three years, several remarkable papers, 
 on the Hybridization of Plants, have been published ; among 
 which I may mention two by the late Dean of Manchester. 
 He followed up his experimental conclusions by some un- 
 tried, and some persons may think rash, speculations on the 
 extent to which the animal kingdom might, during past ages, 
 have been modified by fruitful hybrids derived from animals 
 of different species. The same subject has also been ably 
 handled by Dr Morton of the United States. 
 
 I can, in this Note, barely allude to these subjects; but 
 two remarks seem to be called for — 1st, Hybridization can 
 throw no light on spontaneous generation. — 2ndly, It can 
 throw no light on the theory of progressive development, 
 unless it can be shewn, that some fruitful hybrid animals 
 are higher on the organic scale than their parents. I believe, 
 however, that hybrids are always of an intermediate type — 
 and that, in case they continue fruitful, their progeny 
 return, inevitably, to one of the parent types. Were it not 
 so, and were fruitful hybrids so commonly produced, even 
 among wild animals, as some have asserted, there could be 
 no constancy in the forms of animated nature, and the 
 animal kingdom could not now be the same it was before 
 the days of Aristotle. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 195 
 
 In the next paragraph, of the same page of the Preface 
 (p. xliii), I have asserted "that larvae, when they leave the 
 ovum, have no sexual developement, and cannot, therefore, 
 have the power of generating any new continued forms of 
 animal being ; " and in a previous page (p. xxxv) I have 
 asserted that larvae, such as the tadpole, " are immature, and 
 without one exception are unfruitful." These remarks were 
 meant to be applied more especially to the vertebrate divi- 
 sions of the animal kingdom : but they may be extended 
 much farther ; for it is, I believe, literally true, that in no 
 known part of the animal kingdom have male and female 
 larvce been ever seen with true sexual developement, and 
 capable by their union of originating a cycle of foetal 
 changes, out of which shall be perfected either an old or new 
 continued species of animal. 
 
 In another sense, however, it may be asserted, that in 
 some of the lower families of the animal kingdom larvae are 
 incredibly fruitful, and for several successive generations 
 (sometimes amounting to eight or ten) have an inherent power, 
 without any new sexual union, of maturing, and bringing 
 forth, new forms of larval life, till the specific organic cycle 
 is complete: and then the two sexes are perfected, either 
 in the same or in different individuals (as the case may be), 
 by the union of which the same cycle may begin again, 
 with similar successive changes of larval development. 
 But in cases such as these there is no specific change in 
 the perfect animals. They are of the same species with the 
 parents from which they originally sprang. And though 
 they may originate once again a most complicated series 
 of organic changes, yet all such changes are governed 
 by stern laws, whereby they are resolved into cycles, and in 
 the end produce but another repetition of the old animal 
 forms. 
 
 Facts of this kind have long been known and dwelt 
 upon ; but a new prominence was given to them by Pro- 
 fessor Steenstrup, of Copenhagen, who marshalled them 
 
 N2 
 
196 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 together, added to them by many original observations, and 
 endeavoured to give them a symmetry and coherence by a 
 new terminology based on the recorded facts. His views 
 are given in detail in his work on the Alternation of Genera- 
 tions, translated and published by the Ray Society in 1845. 
 The same subject was also, during the past year (1849), 
 again taken up by Professor Owen, who endeavoured, in his 
 work on Parthenogenesis, to explain physiologically the 
 successive larval changes, and to establish what we may 
 perhaps call a series of true connecting generative links be- 
 tween them. To these two works I must refer the reader 
 for details which would be out of place here. 
 
 If animals, from the first appearance of their nascent 
 germs to their full specific maturity, exhibit a cycle of organic 
 changes, what is the beginning of the cycle ? What are 
 the conditions of generation ? It is the union of a sperma- 
 tozoon with the germinal vesicle of an ovum. And these 
 two (the spermatozoon and the ovum) are the organic pro- 
 ducts of two perfect animals — male and female. These 
 conditions being satisfied, there commences that cycle of 
 changes, which, however complicated, are defined by the 
 constant laws of nature, whereby two beings are again 
 produced identical in species with the two beings from 
 which the two fecundating elements, above-mentioned, were 
 in the first instance derived. 
 
 The first set of changes is, in all animals, of the same 
 kind ; and consists in the formation of a vital germinal cell, 
 and its propagation of a numerous offspring by repeated 
 spontaneous divisions — an act defined sometimes by the 
 terms "fissiparous generation." The whole congeries of 
 germ-cells thus derived is called the rt germ-mass." In 
 the very lowest forms of animal life the process is here 
 arrested ; but if the germ-cells be derived from animals of 
 a higher organic grade, other changes follow in regular order 
 for each species. The derivative germ-cells now perform 
 a part somewhat analogous to the atoms of the chemist, or 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 197 
 
 the ultimate molecules of the mineralogist. They run 
 together by what has been called organic affinity. "As 
 individuals they may be said to die; but by their death 
 they minister to the life of a being higher than themselves*." 
 They combine to construct its organs, and to impart to it 
 new properties: they thus begin, in subordination to law 
 and in harmony with nature, a series of metamorphoses, 
 that lead, step by step, to a preordained end — the perfection 
 of an animal species, fitted mechanically to its own place in 
 the organic world, and with vital instincts to put this 
 mechanism in its proper movement. 
 
 But in using language like this let us not be led too far 
 by mere analogies. The atoms of the chemist combine 
 agreeably to simple numerical laws of affinity, and produce 
 new compounds ; and the molecules of the mineralogist in 
 like manner combine and produce new crystalline forms: 
 but these compounds and crystalline forms have no neces- 
 sary connexion with any subsequent change ; whereas the 
 new organic forms in successive embryonic changes (by 
 whatever powers produced) have reference to something 
 which is to follow ; they are a preparation for it ; and in a 
 certain sense they are the physical cause of it. These suc- 
 cessive forms are not the simple result of affinities of dead 
 matter, but are the result of vital affinities that have a pro- 
 spective reference to some subsequent vital function. What 
 is here intended is perhaps sufficiently explained in a pre- 
 vious discussion on Foetal Development {supra, p. xxvii... 
 p. xliv) ; and I must not dwell any longer on the subject 
 here. 
 
 Among the higher vertebrate animals all the "derivative 
 germ-cells" are employed in the formation of the fcetal 
 tissues and organs, and all the fcetal changes up to the 
 moment of full development are represented in one simple 
 cycle. Not so, if we descend low on the organic scale. 
 All the germ-cells are not employed in laying down the 
 * Owen on Parthenogenesis, p. 5. 
 
198 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 embryonic tissues. Part of them, with their full sper- 
 matic power, are entangled among the tissues, "and by 
 virtue of their assimilative and fissiparous forces lay the 
 foundation of a new organism*." In this way we not merely 
 state a fact, but we give a physiological reason for it (com- 
 patibly with elementary vital laws), when we say that a new 
 form of larval life may spring from a previous larva by 
 Parthenogenesis — i.e. without sexual union: but at the 
 same time by an organic process actually dependent on, 
 and directly derived from, a true sexual union; out of 
 which union sprang the first larval form in the complicated 
 cycle of changes. Thus, a pair of Aphides may produce, 
 compatibly with this view, a larval progeny that is fruitful 
 without any new sexual union ; and this may go on, time 
 after time, till out of one union shall spring a progeny 
 amounting to millions of millions. Still this cycle of trans- 
 formed vitality has its termination ; and it ends inevitably 
 with a brood of perfect animals, male and female, of identical 
 species with the two out of which the cycle was set in its 
 complicated movement. 
 
 The larval changes above referred to throw no light on 
 the theory of spontaneous generation; but leave it just 
 where it was. Neither does the most complicated cycle of 
 embryonic changes throw any light on the theory of de- 
 velopment; unless we can show (which we cannot) that 
 one cycle interferes with, or runs into, another. It matters 
 not whether, in speaking of the marvellous transformations 
 in the larval forms of any given species, we tell of Par- 
 thenogenesis with Owen, or of Ammen or wet nurses with 
 Steenstrup. Each set of phenomena is in a true organic 
 cycle, and the perfect animal with which the cycle ends is 
 but a repetition of the same species with which the cycle 
 started. To this rule there appears to be no exception ; and 
 the theory of transmutation, from one perfect species to 
 another, derives no support from modern microscopic ob- 
 * Owen on Parthenogenesis, p. 31. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. J 99 
 
 servations carried on with unwearied skill in illustrating 
 the generative progress of the lowest animals on nature's 
 scale. 
 
 It is not my object to confirm the views advanced here 
 by quoting many instances that might seem in point ; for in 
 doing so, I should expand this Note beyond its proper 
 limits. All I wish to do is to guide the reader, so far as I 
 am able, to just conclusions, ancl to direct him to good 
 sources of information. The whole subject is almost in its 
 infancy ; yet a marvellous series of facts has been estab- 
 lished; and as some of them have been so interpreted as to 
 give support to the theory of specific transmutations among 
 the lowest creatures of animated nature, I am compelled 
 just to allude to one or two of them, and to shew that they 
 may be philosophically interpreted so as to point to a dif- 
 ferent conclusion. 
 
 A plant may spring from the germination of a fruitful 
 seed, and the incipient process is in appearance identical 
 with the first germination of an animal tissue from a fruitful 
 ovum. But all the derivative germ-cells of the seed are 
 not employed in laying down the organic tissues of the 
 incipient plant ; some of them pass onward unchanged 
 through portions of the plant, and with continued powers 
 of fissiparous multiplication ; and they are thus so accumu- 
 lated on certain portions of the organic tissue as to originate 
 buds, out of which may spring a plant, of the same species, 
 by gemmation. A long period of time, marked by many 
 complicated organic changes, may elapse before the plant, 
 either by natural or artificial means, can throw out that 
 sexual blossom which completes the cycle of changes, by 
 ending in a seed-vessel containing a fruitful seed like that 
 out of which the vegetable species first began to germinate. 
 
 The lowest creatures in the animal kingdom propagate 
 their kind by three different modes — by Ova — by Fission — 
 and by Gemmation : and in these respects there are at least 
 very close analogies between the propagation of certain 
 
200 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 plants and animals. Thus, "in the growth of the Conferva, 
 which is analogous to that of Gemmation, each filament 
 originates from a germ, which is first developed from a 
 single cell; this cell increases, and it either divides, or its 
 germ-granules give origin to two cells within it, which take 
 the place of the former; and by a repetition of this increase 
 and multiplication, a long and single series of tubular cells, 
 attached at one end and free and constantly growing at the 
 other, is at last produced.". . ." Except in the juxtaposition 
 of the cells end on end, the process here described is the 
 same as that with which the development in ovo of a Mam- 
 mal, and doubtless also of Man himself, begins" (Partheno- 
 genesis, p. 46). Again, '* Dr Carpenter truly compares the 
 fertilized ovum of the Medusa-parent to the seed of a plant ; 
 the Polype which grows from it (with its progeny by gem- 
 mation), to leaf-buds — and those discoid portions developed 
 between the base and summit of the Strobila, to flow er-buds. 
 For these discoid segments, when separated, become either 
 male or female Medusae, and developing the generative 
 organs justify the above comparison" (Parthenogenesis t y>. 50). 
 Lastly, " there is a close and beautiful analogy between the 
 stages in the development of the Medusae and those of the 
 Tree — between the larva of the one and leaf of the other — 
 between the ovum of the animal and the seed of the plant. 
 Yet this comparison does not explain the essential condition 
 of gemmation in either." (Parthenogenesis, p. 51). 
 
 But I must not dwell longer on the analogies presented 
 by the growth of plants and animals. Coming back, there- 
 fore, to a well-known case of Gemmation in the Polype 
 Hydra: — "the first step in the formation of a bud in the 
 Hydra, is the multiplication of cells, which are aggregated 
 together as in the ovum, and not set end on end as in the 
 Conferva" . . . " The young Hydra from the bud is identical in 
 organic structure and character with that which comes from 
 the ovum ; and when the effects of organic development are 
 the same, their efficient causes cannot be altogether distinct." 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 201 
 
 ..."The retention of* the nnused-up germ-cells in the 
 tissues of the Hydra is the condition which explains the 
 fact — that, when favourable external circumstances of light, 
 heat, and food concur, it may be propagated by buds" (p. 47)« 
 . . . Many derivative germ-cells and nuclei are retained in the 
 body of the Hydra, each being, in its degree, impregnated ; 
 "and this (says Professor Owen) I continue to regard as the 
 condition of its power of Gemmation ; and also of the fact 
 that, when cut into numerous parts, many Hydrae may be 
 thus artificially propagated" (p. 48). 
 
 In all cases where propagation occurs by ova, the species 
 possesses sexual organs ; but among the lower animals these 
 organs are sometimes very difficult to make manifest to the 
 senses. When discovered by the help of microscopic exa- 
 mination, the female organ is recognized by the ova which 
 it contains, consisting of the germinal vesicle and spot, and 
 the yelk-cells — the male organs by their possessing cells 
 from which proceed spermatozoa. 
 
 Infusory animalcula afford the simplest instance of Fis- 
 sion, which is their usual mode of propagation. They also 
 propagate by germs; whether they propagate by ova is 
 debated. The fact has not been observed, but is main- 
 tained, on philosophical grounds, by Ehrenberg, Owen, and 
 others, and is denied by Siebold and Dujardin*. 
 
 It has been asserted, by some physiologists, that the 
 generation of certain Entozoa is effected by the transforma- 
 tion of a pre-existing organized tissue into a new animal, 
 and this might be called spontaneous generation. " But," 
 replies Professor Owen (p. 31), " no one has ever seen a 
 portion of a mucous membrane, muscular fibre, or other 
 organized tissue detach and transform itself into an Ento- 
 zoon. Such a process is as gratuitously assumed, and as 
 little in accordance with observed phenomena, as spon- 
 taneous generation in the abstract." "The fissiparous 
 
 * See the second note to p. 05 of the Parthenogenesis. See also 
 Owen's Lectures on the Invertebrate Animals, p. 05. (1043). 
 
202 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 nucleated cells of the ovum once transformed into tissue can 
 produce nothing higher" ..." but the cells which retain their 
 primitive state amidst the various tissues of the new animal, 
 may, by virtue of their assimilative and fissiparous forces, 
 lay the foundation of a new organism*." 
 
 " In Polypes propagation occurs in all the three modes, 
 but Fission is infrequent — Gemmation is a very ordinary 
 mode ; and probably all Polypes are also propagated by Ova. 
 But all the individual Polypes on a Polype-stem, or Poly- 
 pary, have not necessarily sexual organs. Some are without 
 sex : and then there are produced on the stem, at certain 
 seasons of the year, sexual individuals, which are of a very 
 different form. In some species the sexual individuals, after 
 budding from the stem, are detached in the form of bells or 
 discs, even before the sexual organs are fully formed, and 
 swim about freely like Medusae ; and have frequently been 
 mistaken by naturalists for such, and have been recorded as 
 new species. 
 
 " In very many Polypes a metamorphosis takes place 
 during the development of the ovum : it probably occurs in 
 all of them. 
 
 " The development of the fertilized ovum of a Polype 
 proceeds by the usual continual division of the yelk-mass, 
 whence arises a multitude of embryonal cells (called by 
 Professor Owen germ-mass) enclosed in a ciliated covering. 
 The embryo- Polype thus resembles an Infusory, rolling on 
 its longer axis in the water by means of its vibratile cilia. 
 After a time, it rests on some appropriate object; the cilia 
 usually disappear, the body suffers dehiscence on the unat- 
 tached surface, and allows the Polype, developed within, to 
 send forth its arms. It multiplies by Gemmation, and so 
 forms a new colony. 
 
 * The three following pages, containing examples in point, are ex- 
 tracted from an essay by Dr Clark, On Larval Transformations of the 
 lowest Animals, in which he refers principally to the Comparative Ana- 
 tomy of Professor Siebold of Frieburg. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 203 
 
 " Generally speaking, Gemmation does not occur in- 
 differently at any point of the body of a Polype, but in the 
 same situations in the same species. 
 
 ** Some may choose to assert that here we have a trans- 
 formation of species : e.g. that, on Campanularia geniculate, 
 Medusae are first formed and then detached, and that these 
 Medusae by retrograde development produce ciliated Infu- 
 sories. 
 
 " The true explanation is obvious : the Medusae-shaped 
 are the sexual individuals ; and the ova of the female, in the 
 earliest embryonal form of Infusories, swim about for the 
 purpose of distributing the species. This embryonal form 
 is little more than a bag of germ- cells. Of these cells a part 
 is employed in the development of the Polype when fixed, 
 and a part retained for the future development of the germs, 
 which are non-sexual, and sexual, in their proper order and 
 position on the stem. ,, 
 
 " In many of the Parasitic Worms a still more complicated 
 series of changes prevails in the development of the ovum. 
 In no one species indeed has the whole series of these 
 changes been connected by direct observation. But still 
 enough has been done to establish the remarkable fact, that 
 the embryo after leaving the egg t is not always changed into 
 an individual resembling the parent ; but into a new larval 
 being, which produces broods of other larval forms. These 
 last individuals undergo changes which close the series of 
 metamorphoses; and in the end they become perfect ani- 
 mals like their parents. 
 
 " To instance in the Trematodes — (such creatures as the 
 Liver Fluke.) In the ovum, after the germinal vesicle has 
 disappeared, several large embryonal cells are observed 
 within the yelk-mass — this last not having undergone the 
 divisional process. It is the embryonal cells themselves 
 which here undergo division and multiplication ; the entire 
 mass of them growing and multiplying at the expense of the 
 yelk-mass, and at last occupying its place. The embryo is 
 
204 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 now composed of exceedingly minute germ-cells,, enclosed 
 in a ciliated epithelium, is of an oval form, and at one end 
 has a suctorial disc. Succeeding stages in the Trematodes 
 have been observed : especially two larval stages, of which 
 one is cylindrical in form, the other caudate. The cylindri- 
 cal larvae are more or less perfectly organised ; and in their 
 interior new generations of larvae are formed from original 
 germ-cells, not from ova. This brood of new larvae, again, 
 may be either cylindrical, or caudate. But it is the caudate 
 form which at length brings the series of metamorphoses to 
 a close — by losing the tail and developing perfect sexual 
 organs, and passing into the form of a complete Trematode. 
 
 " When the caudate larvae have been so far developed as 
 to burst the cylindrical body of the earlier larvae which en- 
 closed them, they swim about in search of a very different 
 habitat from that of the parent The Trematode was the 
 parasite of a Mollusc : the caudate larva seeks about for the 
 larva of some Insect. Siebold saw the Cercaria armata, the 
 larva of a Trematode, readily penetrate the larvae of Ephemera 
 and other insects, which are developed in water, penetrating 
 between the rings. Here it casts its tail, and surrounds 
 itself with a covering, the secretion of its own body, in order 
 to undergo its last change. But Siebold sees reason to 
 doubt that this is completed within the body of the larval 
 insect. Because, though he found numerous Trematode 
 parasites in the bodies of the most different insects, whose 
 larvae live in water, — as of species of Libellula, Ephemera, 
 Phryganea, &c. — yet he could never discover that their 
 sexual organs were perfectly developed. He suspects that 
 these organs, though they are visible in a rudimentary 
 state in these parasites of insects, can only be developed in 
 another locality ; and that the animal obtains this develop- 
 ment when it is swallowed, together with the insect it in- 
 fests, by some bird or other animal. 
 
 " Here the original embryonal mass, beginning with the 
 impregnated ovum, passes through a still more remarkable 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 205 
 
 series of changes than those before considered. 1st, An 
 infusorial form ; 2nd, Cylindrical larvae, worm-shaped, pro- 
 ducing a brood from a portion of the unappropriated germ- 
 cells ; 3rd, Caudate larva?, like Cer carta, the progeny of the 
 former ; 4th, Final change from the Cercarial form to that 
 of the perfect creature with sexual organs." (Dr Clark). 
 
 In vertebrate animals, the whole spermatic force diffused 
 among the germinal vesicles of the OVum is exhausted in the 
 development of the tissues and organs of the individual. 
 The cycle of foetal changes is in each case simple, and but 
 one form of larval life is produced. But it does sometimes 
 happen, though very rarely, even in the human species, that 
 a germ-cell has been carried forward, among the animal 
 tissues, with sufficient powers pf embryonic development to 
 produce disease and death; but never with sufficient power 
 to bring a fcetal form * to maturity. 
 
 The essence of the peculiarity in the embryonic deve- 
 lopment of the lower creatures of the animal kingdom is (on 
 Owen's theory of Parthenogenesis) only this — All the germ- 
 cells of the ovum are not at once appropriated to the forma- 
 tion of the embryo. A portion of such cells passes on, un- 
 changed — from embryo to larva, and from one larval form 
 to another — whilst other portions are changed at each stage 
 of advance, and employed in laying down the organs 
 belonging to that period of development: and in this way 
 a complicated cycle is at length completed according to the 
 law assigned to each Species. 
 
 " How the retained spermatic force (says Professor 
 Owen) operates in the formation of a new germ-mass from 
 secondary, ternary, or quaternary derivative germ-cells, I 
 
 * "I have myself (says Dr. Blundell) seen a foetus, on the whole not 
 imperfectly formed, about the size of six or seven months, and which 
 was taken from the body of a boy where it lay in a sac, in communi- 
 cation with the child's duodenum, the boy being pregnant." ( See Lec- 
 tures on the Principles and Practice of Midwifery, by James Blundell, 
 M.D., London, 183y. p. 481.) 
 
206 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 do not profess to explain" (p. 72). Neither is it known 
 how the same force operates in the development of the 
 primary germ-mass from the first vital germ of the ovum. 
 We witness certain centres of attraction and repulsion, and 
 we find a definite result. We know an anterior cause — the 
 union of a spermatozoon and a germinal vesicle — out of 
 which these attractions and repulsions began. In each 
 species we know also the consequences that follow the first 
 set of organic combinations. The sequence of the pheno- 
 mena is in each case invariable, and we can therefore pro- 
 perly define it under the terms of an empirical law. But a 
 wise physiologist presumes to go no farther. 
 
 The spermatic force seems to be soonest exhausted where 
 the complexity and vital power of the perfect animal is 
 greatest; and to be longest retained in cases where the 
 structure and vital powers are of the lowest order. Thus 
 this force is longest retained, and furthest transmitted, in the 
 vegetable kingdom — the zoophytes manifest it in the next 
 degree — and the power of the retained germ-cells to pro- 
 duce a perfect germ-mass and embryo, by the remnant of 
 spermatic virtue they inherited, is finally lost, so far as is 
 known, in the class of Insects, and in the lower Mollusca. 
 In some creatures, however (such as Crabs and Lobsters, 
 and certain Lizards), which can reproduce portions of their 
 bodies that have been mutilated or broken off, we seem to 
 trace the last fading energy of that transmitted force we 
 have been here describing. In such creatures benevolent 
 nature has deposited a store of unused derivative germ-cells 
 on certain fixed points where they are most likely to be 
 wanted ; and it is from such fixed points, and from them 
 alone, that the reproduction of a mutilated organ can begin. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 207 
 
 No. V. 
 
 On the Development of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms 
 in the oldest known Fossiliferous Strata. 
 
 (p. lxviii.) 
 
 The best illustration of this point is found in Hall's 
 Palaeontology of New York: and I here place before the 
 reader a synopsis of some of the facts brought to light by 
 the American Geologists. 
 
 1 . Potsdam Sandstone. The very lowest fossil-bearing 
 deposit of North America. 
 
 Fucoids (one Genus). 
 Brachiopoda (Lingula, Orbicula ?) 
 
 2. Calciferous Sandstone. 
 
 Fucoids (Two Genera). 
 
 Crinoidea ? an obscure plate. 
 
 Brachiopoda (Atrypa, Lingula). 
 
 Gasteropoda (Euomphalus, Maclurea, Ophileta, 
 
 Turbo, Pleurotomaria). 
 Cephalopoda (Orthoceras). 
 
 3. Chazy Limestone. 
 
 Zoophyta (Lam.) Streptoplasma. 
 
 Zoophyta (Polyzoa.) Retepora, genus resembling 
 
 Gorgonia, Stictopora, Chceteles. 
 Echinodermata (Actinocrinus, Asterias ?) 
 Crustacea — Illcenus, Asaphus, Ceraurus. 
 Brachiopoda (Leptce?ia, Orthis, Atrypa y Orbicula). 
 Gasteropoda (Metoptorna, Maclurea, Scaliles, 
 
 Pleurotomaria, Capulus, Murchisonia, Raphis- 
 
 tomd). 
 Cephalopoda — Bucania, Orthoceras. 
 
 4. Bird's-eye Limestone. 
 
 Fucoids (One Genus.) 
 Crustacea — Cytherina ? 
 Lamellibranchiata — Modiola ? 
 
208 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Gasteropoda — Murchisonia, Natica ? Pleuroto- 
 maria. 
 
 Ceph al opoda — Ortk ocera s. 
 5. Black-river Limestone. 
 
 Zoophyta (Lam.) Columnaria, Streptoplasma. 
 
 Zoophyta (Polyzoa.) Stromatocerium, Chcetetes, 
 Stictopora. 
 
 Echinodermata (crinoidal Stems). 
 
 Cephalopoda — Lituites, Gonioceras, Ormoceras, 
 Endoceras, Orthoceras. 
 Next follows the Trenton Limestone, containing all the 
 well-known forms characterizing the rocks of Europe — 
 from the Wenlock Shale downwards. But I think it un- 
 necessary to quote the succeeding members of the American 
 Palaeozoic series. 
 
 I do not assert this very old series to be perfect. I only 
 state that it is one of the very best and oldest with which 
 we are acquainted. The oldest series in the British Isles is 
 in general accordance with it. The same may be said of 
 the corresponding series in Scandinavia and a part of Russia; 
 and the naturalists who are now working out the organic 
 sequence in Bohemia, so far as their results are published, 
 seem to be gradually arriving at similar conclusions. 
 
 There is a vast Palaeozoic region, extending from the 
 Ural Mountains to the northern frontier of China, which 
 may, perhaps, hereafter, give us some fuller information on 
 the oldest traces of animated nature. We have, on this 
 subject, nothing to look for among the old, well-explored 
 regions of France and Germany: South America gives us 
 no assistance ; and among the Isles of the Southern hemi- 
 sphere, including New Holland, we have no known Palaeo- 
 zoic deposits that descend much below the Devonian system 
 of Britain. Many geologists (and I profess myself to be one 
 of their number) think that we have nearly reached the limit 
 of the oldest fossil-bearing deposits. Sir Charles Lyell very 
 properly warned geologists " against the hasty assumption 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 209 
 
 that in any of these (Palaeozoic) sections we have positively 
 arrived at the lowest stratum containing organic remains in 
 the crust of the earth." But what geologist ever asserted 
 that he had seen in any of his sections the lowest of all 
 fossil-bearing strata ? The Author of the Vestiges did indeed 
 assume that these old sections threw a clear light on the 
 theory of development : but in making out his case he com- 
 mitted a series of blunders such as we shall look for in vain, 
 within the compass of a few pages, in any other work on 
 Natural History in the English tongue. Sir Charles Lyell's 
 remark is no rebuke to the Edinburgh Reviewer; for the 
 Edinburgh Reviewer started no theory. He simply com- 
 bated a most unwarrantable abuse of theory : and this he 
 did by an appeal to facts, which had been misquoted or 
 unfairly interpreted by the Author of the Vestiges, in support 
 of a theory. And what is the Author's reply in his pub- 
 lished Explanations (p. 43) ? " The weakness (of the Edin- 
 burgh Reviewer) consisted in looking only in one little por- 
 tion of the earth, and believing it to be a criterion for all the 
 rest. The writer seems yet to have to learn that knowledge 
 is to be acquired by communication as well as by examina- 
 tion. Were a philosopher (supposing there could be such 
 a being) to limit his view of mankind to juvenile schools, 
 he might with equal rationality deny that there is any such 
 thing in the world as an infant in the arms. f We speak of 
 what we have seen,' he might say, 'and finding no specimens 
 of humanity under three feet high, we were weak enough 
 to bow to nature, and believe that babes are a mere fancy'." 
 This is, no doubt, a pleasant way of diverting the reader's 
 attention from the egregious blunders on points of fact, and 
 very discreditable mis-statements, published in the first four 
 editions of the Vestiges. But surely the Author was bound, 
 before he dared to publish such a passage as I have quoted, 
 to tell us (out of his profound "knowledge acquired by 
 more ample communication") of some section or other where 
 the historical development of organic life was in accordance 
 B.D. O 
 
210 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 with his own theory, and in plain antagonism with the facts 
 quoted against him by the Edinburgh Reviewer. But he 
 has done no such thing, and I defy him to do so now. 
 Nature still refuses to speak the language of the Vestiges ; 
 and the Author's pleasantry only returns upon himself, and 
 gives us a new illustration of a good old saying — risn inepto 
 res ineptior nulla est. 
 
 As I am on the subject of the Author's pleasantry, I may 
 quote another instance of it {Explanations, p. 87). " Of a 
 somewhat different character are the Edinburgh Reviewer's 
 remarks on the first relics of mammalia — the few bones of 
 Cetacea from the Lower Oolite and of Marsupials from the 
 Stonesfield-slate. Here the very first mammal family is 
 undoubtedly marine ; and, if it were to receive equal con- 
 sideration with the grallatorial foot-prints, he ought certainly 
 to admit that it favours the development theory. But he 
 escapes from this claim by a mode of his own. He has not 
 seen these relics ! The American foot-prints were good 
 evidence without being seen; but a fact which makes 
 against his theory requires personal inspection, even though 
 it may come forward with the authority of Baron Cuvier." 
 
 I have no doubt but several hundred readers of this ex- 
 tract have thought that for once, the Author of the Vestiges 
 had his Reviewer on the hip. But what are the facts? 
 Some years before the appearance of the first edition of the 
 Vestiges, it had been satisfactorily proved, and was well 
 known to all English Geologists, that the supposed Cetacean 
 bones (in the Oxford Museum), found in the Great Oolite 
 near Woodstock, were the bones of large Reptiles. Cuvier 
 in a hasty view of these fossils naturally mistook their Class. 
 He was an incomparable anatomist ; but at the time of his 
 visit, he knew little of fossil Reptiles, and he could not pro- 
 phetically anticipate the great discoveries that would after- 
 wards be brought to light by a study of the Oolitic genera. 
 
 What then does this last extract prove ? It proves that 
 the Author of the Vestiges (spite of his "knowledge ac- 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 211 
 
 quired by communication as well as examination") started 
 his theory before he had well studied the facts on which 
 it must stand or fall : — It proves, moreover, how hard it is to 
 argue with a dreamer whose knowledge is below the level of 
 his own day. At any rate, his sneer against the Edinburgh 
 Reviewer (who on this point was unquestionably right, while 
 he was unquestionably wrong) returns with interest against 
 himself. 
 
 To come back to Hall's list of Palaeozoic fossils: — I have 
 quoted the genera and not the species ; and the six groups, 
 taken collectively, give us one good specimen of the oldest 
 known Palaeozoic Fauna. The vegetable kingdom must, in 
 some form or other, have preceded the animal ; and as all 
 the six groups are marine we have no right to expect in 
 them any but marine-plants : but this by no means proves 
 that, coeval with No. ] , there was no dry land, and that there 
 were no contemporaneous forms of land-plants. The author 
 of the Vestiges tells us of encrinital beds in No. 2, {Explana- 
 tions, p. 40). Hall only describes one single and doubtful 
 specimen of an encrinital plate : and we may remark, that 
 in the lower part of these protozoic groups we do not meet 
 with great beds and masses of petrified corals and encri- 
 nites, as we should certainly expect to do on the theory of 
 development. The same remark applies to the lowest palaeo- 
 zoic strata in Britain and Scandinavia, and I believe also to 
 the corresponding strata in Bohemia. In No. 3, Crustacea first 
 appear ; but they are preceded, in No. 2, by Cephalopoda, 
 which are still higher on the scale. Considering the six for- 
 mations as the deposits of a deep sea, there is no reason 
 for considering their collective fauna " as a scanty and most 
 defective development of life ;" and assuredly the arrange- 
 ment of the Genera and Orders suggests not the theory of 
 development. 
 
 o2 
 
212 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 No. VI. 
 
 On the supposed derivation of the Terrestrial Flora from the 
 Marine, by a natural Transmutation of Species. 
 
 (p. lxxix.) 
 
 When I wrote the paragraph to which the reference to 
 (No. VI.) is appended, I was guided by phenomena re- 
 peatedly witnessed on the shores of the great Bedford-Level ; 
 where we find marine and land productions encroaching 
 one upon the other — sometimes partly mingled together, 
 — and sometimes alternating in distinct layers of deposit. 
 I afterwards, through the kindness of Mr. H. Miller, became 
 acquainted with The Rambles of a Geologist, — a work pub- 
 lished in a series of communications in The Witness news- 
 paper during several months of the years 1848 and 184,9: 
 and I intended, when the reference to (No. VI.) was printed, 
 to end this Note with a long extract from one of Mr. Miller's 
 chapters, where he has ably criticised the asserted transmu- 
 tations, from marine to terrestrial species, by an appeal to 
 facts observed on the coast of Scotland. As, however, he has 
 now recorded his matured opinions in his Footprints of the 
 Creator, I suppress my intended extract from The Humbles, 
 and am happy to refer the reader to the Chapters of the 
 Footprints, commencing at p. 181, and more especially to 
 the Chapter commencing p. 238. 
 
 No. VII. 
 
 On the Use and the Abuse of the word Law ; and on the 
 methods by which we rise to a right conception of it 
 among physical phenomena ; Kepler's Laws ; Bode's 
 Laws ; Kirkwood\s Laws ; fyc. 
 
 (P- cl.) 
 
 I have made repeated allusions to the loose manner in 
 which some writers make use of the word Law ; thereby 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 213 
 
 throwing' doubt and confusion on the nature of inductive 
 evidence, and showing their very feeble conception of the 
 severity, and I might almost say the sanctity, of philosophic 
 truth. Our first conception of a physical law is suggested 
 by some observed, and regularly recurring, sequence of 
 phenomena. We are naturally led to a belief that such a 
 sequence must originate in some invariable cause ; and we 
 thus bring the phenomena under a conception implied by 
 the word law. Such a law is at first purely empirical ; but 
 it may at length rise to a very high degree of certainty by 
 further evidence, and by the application of one of Newton's 
 rules, viz. that effects of the same kind must be derived 
 from the same causes. On the other hand, our supposed 
 empirical law may be upset by the evidence of new experi- 
 ments, and therefore cease altogether to be regarded as a 
 natural law. 
 
 Again, we can in some instances not merely comprehend 
 the law of phenomena, but we can rise by demonstrative 
 evidence to the conception of a higher law of nature that 
 gives us the true physical cause of the phenomena. We can 
 then derive, by a reversed process, the phenomena from the 
 physical cause, and establish them, not as empirical, but as 
 necessary truths ; and we can thereby bring also a multitude 
 of new phenomena under our conception of necessary truths 
 {infra, note A. p. 99.) But we must ever bear in mind that the 
 truth of a physical law —using that word in its highest sense 
 — depends upon the demonstrative severity of our induc- 
 tion ; and that its deductive application, as a vera causa in 
 the explanation of phenomena, can only be justified in those 
 cases where the results demonstratively derived from it are 
 in exact agreement with the observed facts of nature. The 
 moment we deal in hypothetical causes, and in results drawn 
 from them, which are but in a loose and approximate agree- 
 ment with phenomena, we desert all our higher conceptions 
 of law : and while we use the term, in a new and degraded 
 meaning, we may be sanctioning some of those phantastical 
 
214 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 speculations which have distorted and hindered the onward 
 movements of true science. I here subjoin a few examples 
 both of the use and the abuse of the word Law. 
 
 (1) It appears to be a law of nature, that, in each species, 
 individual organic life begins by the reception of a spermato- 
 zoon within the germ-cell of an ovum. This is one of the best 
 established inductive truths within the range of natural sci- 
 ence. For it is based on consistent observations carried almost 
 through all animated nature ; with the exception of the very 
 humblest forms of animal life, among which optical instru- 
 ments of the highest power sometimes fail to give such defi- 
 nite results — fairly appreciable by the senses — as would at 
 once confirm the law. We are surely justified in extending 
 one of Newton's rules to such cases, and assuming that like 
 effects must be due to like causes *. 
 
 (2) Another law of organic nature tells us, that in each 
 species (and species are now only to be counted by tens of 
 thousands), life, after it has commenced, is carried on by a 
 cycle of definite changes, far more complicated in the lower 
 animals than in the higher, but in all animals ending with a 
 species identical with that from which came the first vital 
 germ wherewith the cycle began. In the two preceding 
 instances, the word law is not used in its highest sense; 
 for the law is in both cases empirical. We are not now, 
 and we probably never shall be, able to grasp the concep- 
 tion of any higher organic law out of which we could 
 deductively evolve the multitudinous organic cycles exhi- 
 bited in animated nature. The definite conception of such 
 a law seems utterly beyond the reach of human thought. 
 
 (3) When we tell of the union of dead gelatinous mat- 
 ter with the galvanic fluid as the beginning of organic life, 
 and call this a law of nature, we violate the integrity of lan- 
 guage. We are not describing a law made out inductively; 
 but we are starting an hypothesis. 
 
 * See an elaborate and cautiously written note on this question by 
 Professor Owen. Parlhenof/enesis, p. 65. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 21 5 
 
 (4) In like manner we violate the proper application 
 of the word law when we affirm the truth of specific trans- 
 mutations and progressive development, and describe such 
 transmutations as a part of nature's laws. We merely start 
 an hypothesis, which cannot pass even into an empirical 
 law without its proper inductive proof. We need not go 
 far to find men who talk of bringing all nature in subordi- 
 nation to physical law, while they have no real grasp of 
 the meaning of the word law, and are doing their best to 
 destroy, root and branch, every principle of scientific study, 
 out of which all our true conceptions of law and order 
 have been established. 
 
 (5) But there are innumerable traces of organic life in 
 the old world, which belong not to any of the cycles of or- 
 ganic changes we now see before us. How did they begin ? 
 By physical law ? Physical law, we reply, has nothing to 
 do with the beginning and ordaining of law : it has only 
 to do with the orderly succession of phenomena, or with 
 known causes out of which the succession necessarily springs. 
 Still more should we be guilty of flagrant fraud, by talk- 
 ing of a law of development whereby one Order might pass 
 into another, and a Monad might gradually mount into a 
 Man. Our law is worthless so long as it rests not on in- 
 ductive evidence ; or, at the very least, unless it be suggested 
 by the accepted analogies of living nature. 
 
 (6) We do, however, see in nature, animate and inani- 
 mate, proofs of design and prescient wisdom ; and the same 
 constitution of the mind that led us to the conception of 
 organic and physical laws, leads us also to a conception of 
 a great First Cause — a personal power and will above all 
 nature. When we speak of the beginning of a law, we pass 
 beyond the domain of physical science : we can then only 
 tell of the great First Cause, and of the effects of His 
 creative power. At this point material and moral truths 
 become united. The God of nature has joined them toge- 
 ther, and it is not in the power of man to put them asunder. 
 
216 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 So far my illustrations, both of the use and abuse of the 
 word law, are drawn from organic nature. The following 
 instances are of a different kind. Among inorganic mate- 
 rial phenomena we constantly find the word law applied 
 in three different senses. (1) A material law may be a 
 demonstrative consequence of an accepted law about which 
 no one doubts ; in which case it is a representative of the 
 very highest form of material truth, and admits not of de- 
 grees. (2) It may be empirical — a mere law of observa- 
 tion — in which case (unlike the former conception of law) 
 it admits of degrees : but in its best form it irresistibly com- 
 pels our belief. (3) It may be hypothetical : but to be a 
 good hypothetical law, it ought to be suggested by the 
 accepted facts of nature, and tested by them j so that it may 
 pass into the form of an empirical law, or be rejected alto- 
 gether. 
 
 (7) Kepler's three laws were empirical. The first two 
 were laws derived from a limited series of observations; 
 and, at the time of their discovery, he could not prove that 
 they were necessary truths involved in any higher principle. 
 The third law was deduced arithmetically from the dis- 
 tances of the Planets — as determined by Kepler — and their 
 known periodic times. The squares of the periodic times 
 of the Planets were found to be in a constant ratio to the 
 cubes of their several mean distances from the Sun. These 
 ratios were exact, and not merely approximate : and hence, 
 by a good generalization, they led to the establishment of a 
 good empirical law. Astronomical observations, carried on 
 for more than two thousand years, gradually supplied a 
 knowledge of facts out of which Kepler at length evolved 
 his three empirical laws. A cultivation of mathematical 
 and mechanical science for as long a period of time, (how- 
 ever interrupted or sometimes misdirected) gave mankind 
 a stock of accumulated knowledge out of which Newton 
 fabricated implements of sufficient strength to bring the phe- 
 nomena of the solar system under obedience to law and 
 order. And in his hands Kepler's laws ceased to be empiri- 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 217 
 
 cal laws, and passed into the highest grade of deductive 
 laws. They became necessary truths involved in the very 
 highest and most exact conception of a physical truth that 
 man has ever reached. 
 
 (8) Bode's law of the planetary distances was only 
 hypothetical. It was a mere algebraical artifice which 
 represented approximately, but not accurately, the distances 
 of certain Planets from the Sun. ' In some points it failed ; 
 and it fails absolutely in its application to the distance of 
 the new planet Neptune ; so that it now breaks down even 
 as an hypothetical law : but as it illustrates the meaning of 
 this Note, I will dwell on it a little longer. 
 
 We cannot look at a pictorial representation of the 
 planetary system without seeing that the superior Planets are 
 much farther apart than the inferior : and the same remark 
 applies also to the Satellites of the Planets where they are 
 sufficiently numerous to offer us any suggestion of a definite 
 law of arrangement. It was first remarked that, by interpo- 
 lating hypothetically a Planet between Mars and Jupiter, we 
 might suppose the intervals between the orbits to go on by 
 continued reduplication. Thus the distance from the Earth 
 to Mars would only be about half the distance from Mars 
 to the hypothetical Planet : and in like manner the distance 
 from the hypothetical Planet to Jupiter would only be half 
 the distance from Jupiter to Saturn, and lastly, the distance 
 from Jupiter to Saturn would only be half the distance from 
 Saturn to Uranus. This hypothetical law is not mathema- 
 tically true in any single step ; and it fails absolutely in 
 defining the intervals between the three inferior Planets. 
 
 Another arithmetical artifice was therefore invented. 
 Call the distance of Mercury from the Sun = a, and the dis- 
 tance from Mercury to Venus = b. Then the whole series 
 of the planetary distances from the Sun may be represented 
 by the following numbers : 
 a ; a + b ; a + 2b; a + 46 ; a + 8 b ; a + 1 6b ; a + 32b; 
 a + G^b] a + 128 b. 
 These numbers ought to represent in order all the mean 
 
218 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 planetary distances : but they represent none of the distances 
 correctly except the first two, which are not determined arti- 
 ficially, but are assumed from nature as the basis of the 
 series. And the last term (a + 128 b) does not, even ap- 
 proximately, represent the distance of Neptune ; for it is too 
 great by more than one-fifth. This fact was not, however, 
 known to Bode. 
 
 Here then we have a good instance of the difference 
 between an empirical and a hypothetical law. Kepler 
 assumed not the existence of any particular law ; but sought 
 for some analogy among the Planets between their distances 
 and times of revolution, and at length he hit upon an 
 analogy which was mathematically true. His facts therefore 
 passed first into the condition of a good empirical law ; and 
 afterwards, in Newton's hands, rose to the rank of necessary 
 truths involved in a higher conception of law. Bode's law 
 was a hypothetical artifice to represent algebraically a series 
 of known planetary distances. His series was wanting in 
 simplicity, was not suggested by any known physical cause, 
 never represented with perfect accuracy any of the dis- 
 tances, and has now ceased altogether to be regarded as 
 the representative of a law. 
 
 The history of this hypothetical law is in other respects 
 instructive. The fifth term of the series (•* e. a+8b) repre- 
 sented the place of the hypothetical Planet ; and two small 
 Planets were afterwards discovered revolving very nearly at 
 this theoretical distance. This was, at first, a great triumph 
 to the inventor of the hypothesis : but other small Planets 
 were afterwards discovered, and it was conjectured that 
 they might have been dissipated by the explosion of a 
 Planet, of which they were only the fragments. An hypo- 
 thesis that requires another hypothesis to support it is 
 always in peril of falling to the ground. All the small 
 Planets, or Asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter (and we 
 now know eleven of them) have not one common point 
 of intersection. The orbits of Flora and Ceres are in a 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 219 
 
 position which seems fatal to the explosion-theory. The 
 mean distance of Ceres from the Sun is nearly the same 
 as that of Pallas ; but there is no risk of collision, as they 
 have different eccentricities and different inclinations to the 
 invariable plane. The distance of Flora is 2.2 — that of 
 Pallas is 2.8 — calling (1) the mean distance of the Earth. 
 It follows, therefore, that the interval between the orbits of 
 Flora and Pallas (taken at their mean distances) is equal to 
 six-tenths of the Earth's distance from the Sun. This fact 
 seems perfectly destructive of Bode's law. The most re- 
 markable fact, however, in the history of Bode's law is this. 
 It was assumed as a basis of the reasoning by which Adams 
 and Le Verrier attempted to determine the place of an 
 unknown Planet exterior to Uranus. They found, how- 
 ever, that the assumed distance was too great to give by 
 calculation the results they were seeking after. The hypo- 
 thetical distance was corrected, and after almost incredible 
 labour, aided by the powers of high analysis, the place of 
 Neptune was at length so nearly determined, that a good 
 observer, possessed of the German sidereal maps, might 
 have discovered it by the help of an astronomical telescope 
 in a few hours. Thus, by a fate not unexampled in the 
 history of science, though Bode's hypothetical law led the 
 way to a great discovery; yet that discovery destroyed 
 the law, and removed it from the list of empirical scientific 
 truths. 
 
 May not the Asteroids, it has been asked, between Mars 
 and Jupiter, be the ultimate results of one or more nebu- 
 lous rings, that were thrown off and broken up into several 
 fragments during their progress of condensation ? This is 
 far more plausible than the hypothesis of an explosion : but 
 it offers no explanation whatsoever of the great inclination 
 of some of their orbits to the invariable pla?ie, or of the 
 very variable eccentricities of their orbits; and it cannot 
 therefore be received even as a good hypothetical explana- 
 tion of the phenomena presented by the eleven small Planets. 
 
220 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 (9) I may here mention another supposed empirical law 
 of the planetary system, published last year by Mr. Kirkwood, 
 of the United States, at the meeting of the American Asso- 
 ciation for the Advancement of Science. Of the Author's 
 Memoir I have no knowledge but what is derived from the 
 reports of some scientific journals; but I trust that the follow- 
 ing short statement will correctly represent his general views. 
 Let us suppose all the Planets to be arranged on one 
 straight line at their respective mean distances from the 
 Sun; and let us further suppose all the (eleven) small 
 Planets between Mars and Jupiter to be condensed into one, 
 and placed at the mean of all their mean distances. We 
 shall thus (beginning with Mercury) have nine Planets 
 arranged in order upon one straight line. Between each of 
 the Planets determine the neutral point : i. e. the point 
 where a particle of matter would be equally attracted by 
 the next inferior and next superior Planet. In this way we 
 shall have eight successive neutral points. Next describe a 
 circle upon a diameter representing the distance from the 
 first to the second neutral point — the first point of course 
 falling between Mercury and Venus, and the second be- 
 tween Venus and the Earth. Again, describe a second 
 circle upon a diameter representing the distance between 
 the second and third neutral point, and so on through the 
 system. In this way we shall have seven successive circles 
 inclosing seven successive Planets, beginning with Venus 
 and ending with Uranus. Now the supposed empirical law 
 is this: — The square of the time of each Planet's revolution 
 about its axis varies as the cube of the diameter of the circle 
 thus inclosing it. Were this law mathematically true, it 
 would be a very valuable addition to our knowledge, though 
 the law would still be purely empirical, inasmuch as it is 
 neither derived from, nor suggested by, any known law of 
 the Solar System. And we may further remark the utter 
 want of simplicity in its first conception; wherein it entirely 
 differs from Kepler's third law, which only asserted (at first 
 

 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 221 
 
 empirically) a fixed numerical proportion between a Planet's 
 distance from, and its time of revolution about, the Sun. 
 Spite of all objections the new law must be accepted with 
 all its consequences, if it be proved true. Has it then been 
 proved ? Unquestionably not : and (unless Mr. Kirkwood's 
 views have been misrepresented in the journals) it seems 
 impossible, in the present condition of our information, to 
 prove the asserted law. We cannot determine correctly the 
 diameter of the first circle, because the mass of Mercury is 
 not yet determined with certainty. In the case of the 
 second circle inclosing the earth there is no ambiguity, 
 and we can determine the analogy required for the test of 
 the supposed law, very correctly. But in the case of Mars, 
 how are we to describe the required circle? One end of 
 its diameter (between Mars and the Earth) is known — the 
 other end can only be determined hypothetically. As for 
 the eleven small Planets, the law is entirely inapplicable to 
 them without a complication of gratuitous hypotheses. In the 
 case of Jupiter, as in the case of Mars, the law wants direct 
 evidence, for we can only determine the diameter of the 
 required circle hypothetically. Saturn we can bring to the 
 test ; and it is said that in this case the proportion, between 
 the square of the time of the Planet's rotation and the cube 
 of the diameter of the circle inclosing it, is nearly the same 
 as in the previous case of the Earth. Supposing these 
 analogies mathematically true, they would not prove the 
 empirical law for the five other cases. 
 
 If these views be correct, Mr. Kirkwood's analogies have 
 by no means risen to the rank of an empirical law. They 
 are but illustrations of a hypothetical, and many will think 
 a very improbable, law of the Planetary System. 
 
 It would be very wrong to find fault with any honest 
 efforts to trace new analogies in our System by tentative 
 methods like those used by Kepler: but we are, I think, 
 justified in asserting that such attempts will generally prove 
 but labour lost. Since the days of Newton no great dis- 
 
222 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 coveries in our System have been made in this manner : on 
 the contrary, they have been evolved by deductive reasoning 
 from the mechanical laws that govern the movements of the 
 world ; or been the results of direct astronomical observation. 
 I have been led into the previous details of this Note by 
 the very common use and abuse of the word ' Law' when 
 applied to phenomena that are ph} r sical. The abuse of the 
 word is, perhaps, still more common when applied to nu- 
 merical results derived from events implying the doctrines 
 of chance, and especially to events implying the operation 
 of social or moral causes : but on these subjects I may not 
 dwell. Numerical results derived from the operation of 
 irregular or intermittent causes are of great value ; but we 
 mistake their meaning when we apply them unconditionally 
 as we do a known mechanical or chemical law. 
 
 No. VIII. 
 
 A series of extracts from Oken's " Physiophilosophy." 
 (p. cciv.) 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 " Physio-philosophy has to show how, and in accordance 
 indeed with what laws, the Material took its origin ; and, 
 therefore, how something derived its existence from nothing. 
 It has to portray the first periods of the world's development 
 from nothing ; how the elements and heavenly bodies ori- 
 ginated ; in what method by self-evolution into higher and 
 manifold forms, they separated into minerals, became finally 
 organic, and in Man attained self-consciousness." . . . 
 
 ..." Man is the summit, the crown of nature's develop- 
 ment, and must comprehend everything that has preceded 
 him, even as the fruit includes within itself all the earlier 
 developed parts of the plant. In a word, Man must re- 
 present the whole world in miniature." 
 
supplement to the appendix. 223 
 
 Truth. 
 
 " If anything be certain it can only be one in number. 
 If, then, there be only one certainty, there can also be only 
 one science, from which all the rest must be derived.". . . 
 
 M The Mathematical is certain, and, by virtue of this 
 character, it stands also alone. . . . The fundamental proposi- 
 tions of mathematics must, therefore, be fundamental pro- 
 positions for all other sciences also." 
 
 Part I.— MATHESIS, OF THE WHOLE. 
 
 Nothing. 
 
 "The highest mathematical idea, or the fundamental 
 principle of all mathematics is the zero = 0." . . . 
 
 " Zero is in itself nothing. Mathematics is based upon 
 nothing, and, consequently, arises out of nothing." . . . 
 
 " Real and Ideal are no more different from each other 
 than ice and water ; both of these, as is well known, are es- 
 sentially one and the same, and yet are different, the diversity 
 consisting only in the form. . . . Everything which appears 
 to be essentially different from another, is so only in the 
 form." . . . 
 
 n The Real and Ideal are one and the same, only under 
 two kinds of form." 
 
 Essence of Nothing. 
 
 "The Eternal is the nothing of Nature.". . . 
 
 " As the whole of mathematics emerges out of zero, so 
 must everything which is a Singular have emerged from the 
 Eternal or nothing of Nature." 
 
 Something. 
 
 "There is no other science than that which treats of 
 Nothing." . . . 
 
 "Every Real, if it were such in itself, could not be 
 known, because the possibilities of its properties would pass 
 into the Infinite. The Nothing alone is cognizable, because 
 
224 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 it has only a single property, namely, that of* having none ; 
 concerning which knowledge no doubt can be entertained." 
 
 Pneumatogeny — Primary Act. 
 " With zero the Eternal originates directly, or both are 
 only different expressions for one and the same act, accord- 
 ing with the difference of the science wherein they are 
 employed. Mathematics designates its primary act by the 
 name of zero; Philosophy by that of Eternal. It is an 
 error to believe that numbers were absolute nothings ; they 
 are acts and consequently realities. While numbers in a 
 mathematical sense are positions and negations of Nothing, 
 in the philosophical they are positions and negations of the 
 Eternal. Everything which is real, posited, finite, has 
 become this out of numbers; or, more strictly speaking, 
 every Real is absolutely nothing else than a number." . . . 
 
 '* There exists nothing but Nothing, nothing but the Eternal^ 
 and all individual existence is only a fallacious existence. 
 All individual things are monades, nothings, which have, 
 however, become determined." 
 
 God — Form of God — Trinity. 
 
 From the pages under these heads I venture to make no 
 extracts. I wish not to misrepresent them ; but they appear 
 to me a strange, inexplicable compound of Atheism, Pan- 
 theism, and Mysticism. 
 
 Polarity. 
 
 "Every single thing is a duplicity.". . . 
 
 " The law of causality is a law of polarity. Causality is 
 valid only in time, is only a series of numbers. Time itself 
 has no causality. Causality is an act of generation. The 
 sex is rooted in the first movement of the world." 
 
 Motion. 
 " The primary motion is only possible in a circle, be- 
 cause it fills everything.". . . 
 
 "The motion of finite things by polarity may, in a 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 225 
 
 wider sense, be called life; for life is motion in the circle. 
 Polarity, however, is a constant retrogression into itself. 
 Without life there is no being. Nothing is, simply by 
 virtue of being, e. g. by its mere presence ; but everything 
 of which a being can be declared, is only, or manifests 
 itself, by its polar motion or by life. Being and life are 
 inseparable ideas." .... 
 
 " Everything in the world is endowed with life ; the 
 world itself is alive, and continues only, maintains itself, by 
 virtue of its life; just as an organic body maintains itself, 
 only while it is constantly being generated anew by the 
 vital process." 
 
 Man. 
 
 " Man is God wholly manifested. God has become Man, 
 zero has become -+ — . Man is the whole of arithmetic, 
 compacted, however, out of all numbers ; he can therefore 
 produce numbers out of himself. Man is a complex of all 
 that surrounds him, namely, of element, mineral, plant and 
 animal." .... 
 
 " Animals are men, who never imagine. They are 
 imaginative, but never of themselves wholly ; they are 
 therefore beings who never attain to consciousness concern- 
 ing themselves. They are single accounts; Man is the 
 whole of mathematics." .... 
 
 "Arithmetic is the truly absolute or divine science, and 
 therefore everything in it is also directly certain, because 
 everything in it resembles the Divine. Theology is arith- 
 metic personified." 
 
 "A natural thing is nothing but a self-moving number." 
 
 Space. 
 
 " Time remaining stationary is Space. Space is not 
 different in essence from time, but only according to posi- 
 tion; it is only time resting, while this is moved, active 
 space." 
 
 s. d. P 
 
226 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 " Space is everywhere, as time is ever. Two spaces can 
 no more exist than two times." .... 
 
 " There is no void or empty space, no time and no place, 
 where a Finite could not be ; for time and space are virtually 
 the manifesting primary act, the zero that has become 
 thing." 
 
 Point. 
 
 "For God to become real, he must appear under the 
 form of the sphere. There is no other form for God. God 
 manifesting is an infinite sphere. 
 
 " The sphere is, therefore, the most perfect form ; for it 
 is the primary, the divine form. Angular forms are im- 
 perfect. The more spherical a thing is in form, by so much 
 the more perfect and divine is it. The Inorganic is angular, 
 the Organic spherical. 
 
 "The universe is a globe, and everything, which is a 
 Total in the universe, is a globe." 
 
 Rotation. 
 "The primary sphere is rotating, for it has originated 
 through motion ; the motion of the sphere cannot, however, 
 be progressive, for it fills everything. God is a rotating 
 globe. The world is God rotating. All motion is circular, 
 and there is everywhere no straight motion any more than 
 there is a single line or straight surface. Everything is 
 comprehended in ceaseless rotation. Without rotation there 
 is no being and no life; for without it, there is no sphere, no 
 space and no time." 
 
 Gravity. 
 
 "The globe only exists in an uneasy state, because it 
 has no place in the centre. 
 
 " Every finite thing strives towards the centre." .... 
 
 " This exertion or endeavour, by virtue of which things 
 would be in the centre, is Gravity." .... 
 
 " The sphere is only produced by action. This action 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 227 
 
 must therefore manifest itself in two ways, as centrifugality 
 and centripetality. The first is the dispersion of the primary 
 act or of points, the second is the collection of the primary 
 acts or points into the unity, and this is gravity. Centri- 
 fugality originates only in a constrained manner or with 
 reluctance, for the primary act always seeks the centre, and 
 only moves towards the periphery, because it has no longer 
 any place there. If centripetality be regarded as a force, 
 then is centrifugality no force, but only centripetality itself 
 retreating from the centre ; even as cold and darkness are 
 probably no particular forces in themselves, but only weaker 
 degrees of heat or light." . . . 
 
 "The world itself has no weight, or else it must be 
 heavy in relation to something else without it. The ideas 
 of gravity and weight, as we speak of them in reference to 
 individual things, are not applicable to the world, still less 
 to God." . . . 
 
 "As the sphere has originated out of nothing, so also has 
 gravity originated out of the same. The form is a formed 
 nothing: the form is, however, no form without internal 
 forming force, and to this gravity belongs. The being of 
 form and the being of gravity are one. Gravity is a weighty 
 nothing, a heavy essence, striving towards centre, a realiza- 
 tion of the first divine idea. Gravity cannot, therefore, be 
 perceived in the universe as a whole, but only in its parts." 
 
 Matter. 
 
 " The whole universe is material, is nothing but matter; 
 for it is the primary act eternally repeating itself in the 
 centre. The universe is a rotating globe of matter." . . . 
 
 " There is no activity without matter, but also no matter 
 without activity, both being one; for gravity is itself the 
 activity, and itself the matter — There is no dead matter; 
 it is alive through its being, through the Eternal that is in it 
 Matter has no existence in itself, but it is the Eternal only 
 that exists in it. Everything is God, that is there, and 
 without God there is absolutely nothing.". . . 
 
 p2 
 
228 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 " Nothing exists if it is not material. Matter is accord- 
 ingly coexistent with the presence of God." . . . 
 
 "The Immaterial does not exist; for even the Material 
 which is not, is the Immaterial. Everything that is, is 
 material. Now, however, there is nothing that is not ; con- 
 sequently, there is everywhere nothing immaterial." 
 
 ^Ether. 
 
 " The matter, which is the direct position of God, which 
 fills the whole universe, which is the time in a state of 
 tension and motion, the formed space, the heavy primary 
 essence, I call the Primary matter, the matter of the world, 
 cosmic matter, Mther. The aether is the first realization of 
 God, the eternal position of the same. It is the first matter 
 of creation. Everything has consequently originated out of 
 it. It is the highest, divine element, the divine body, the 
 primary substance = + -." . . . 
 
 " The aether fills out the whole universe, and is, con- 
 sequently a sphere, yea, the world's sphere itself; the world 
 is a rotating globe of aether." 
 
 Heavenly Body. 
 
 " A sphere rotating for itself is called a Heavenly body. 
 A heavenly body again is the image or metatype of the 
 Eternal ; it is a whole, it is alive ; everything, even the 
 highest, can originate out of it; everything develop itself 
 out of the coagulated, individualized aether. The heavenly 
 body has a double life, an individual and an universal, since 
 it is for itself and at the same time in the general centre. 
 Every Individual must have a double life." . . . 
 
 u The heavenly bodies are as old as the aether, conse- 
 quently they are from the beginning, and endure also with- 
 out end. As they are only coagulated aether, so are they 
 susceptible of being resolved into the same, such as are pro- 
 bably the comets." 
 
supplement to the appendix. 229 
 
 Light. 
 
 " Light is from eternity, for the tense aether was from 
 eternity. The dark chaos exists only as inventive. Light 
 is time that has become real, the first manifestation of God ; 
 is God himself positing, is the dyadic God/' . . . 
 
 " The whole universe is transparent, because everything 
 has issued out of the tension of aether. Everything which 
 is matter is light, and without light there is nothing. With- 
 out light the universe is not only dark, but it is even not. 
 Light is the universe, and every Finite is only a different 
 position of light. The world is a thoroughly illuminating 
 globe, a rotating globe of light. The solar system must 
 have been created according to the laws of light. The phe- 
 nomena of the world are only representations of optics, con- 
 sequently of living geometry. What we see is nothing but 
 optical construction or figuration." 
 
 Fire. 
 
 " Light and heat were the first phenomena of the world. 
 Heat with light, however, are Fire. Fire is the totality of 
 aether, is God manifested in his totality. God, previous to 
 his determination to create a world, was darkness; in the 
 first act of creation, however, he appeared as fire. There is 
 no higher, more perfect symbol of divinity than fire. God's 
 whole consciousness, apart from individual thoughts, is fire. 
 The Holy Scriptures therefore usually admit of God appear- 
 ing under the form of a fire, as a fiery bush, a flame. The 
 world is none other than a rotating globe of fire." . . . 
 
 "Everything that is, has originated out of fire; every- 
 thing is only cooled, rigidified fire. As everything has 
 become out of fire, so must everything to be annihilated 
 have recourse to fire. If finite things be only fire singly 
 posited, so must every change occurring in the same be an 
 igneous change. Nothing changes in the world but fire. 
 The essential change of things take place only by fire." 
 
230 supplement to the appendix. 
 
 Retrospect. 
 
 " The triplicity of the primary act in the universe has 
 now been completely demonstrated. The first manifestation 
 of God is monas; to this corresponds Gravity, Mther, dark- 
 ness, the cold of chaos. The second manifestation of God 
 is the dyas ; to this corresponds the aether in a state of ten- 
 sion, the Light. The third manifestation of God is the 
 trias ; to this corresponds the want of form, Heat. God 
 being in himself is Gravity ; acting, self-emergent, Light ; 
 both together, or returning into himself, Heat. These ate 
 the three Primals in the world, and equal to the three which 
 were prior to the world. They are the manifested tri unity 
 = Fire." 
 
 I give not these extracts merely to throw ridicule on 
 Oken's system — I disclaim any such intention; but I lay 
 them before the Cambridge student that he may see the 
 depths of mysticism, pantheistic profanity, and arrant 
 nonsense, into which a very clever, inventive, and well- 
 informed physiologist may sink, when he deserts the track 
 so nobly delineated by Bacon, and so gloriously trodden by 
 men like Galileo, Newton, La Place, and Cuvier. By casting 
 away the lessons of inductive truth from the ample stores of 
 his mind, and taking on himself to spin a web of creation 
 out of his own brain, by a priori reasoning, he has not 
 illustrated the ways of truth — he has not honoured nature, 
 but most shamefully disfigured and distorted her. He 
 has suicidally shorn himself of his strength, and thereby 
 cut himself off from the only means of ascending to the 
 higher truths of nature; and he has done his best to sink 
 himself (and it was no easy task) to the level of a fantastical 
 dreamer, a profane mystic, and a babbler. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 231 
 
 Part II.— COSMOGENY. 
 
 "Through light duplicity originates in the aether, by 
 virtue of which the aether divides into central and peri- 
 pheric aether. The peripheric necessarily rotates around 
 the central. Every part of the aether is a sphere; the 
 aether therefore is separated by the light into infinitely nu- 
 merous central and peripheric spheres. . . . Creation is an 
 endless position of centres.". . . 
 
 "The central spheres are characterized by absoluteness, 
 the peripheric, however, by finiteness, division ; the former 
 are something in themselves, but the latter are so only 
 by opposition; yet the two could not be without each 
 other." . . . 
 
 " Chaos is not conceivable, without being at the same 
 time solar system. The solar systems are nothing specially 
 created, but have been given with chaos or with light, are 
 indeed only the aether separated by light." 
 
 Motion. 
 
 " The planets are originally concentric hollow globes, in 
 the midst of which the sun is formed. There are several 
 hollow globes, because the light has several points of con- 
 traction at certain distances from the sun."... 
 
 "These hollow planetary globes, on account of the 
 rarity of their mass, their rotation, and the greater tension 
 of light, could not subsist in the equatorial plane of the 
 solar system, but coagulate together in equatorial rings 
 about the centre of the whole system. The planetary 
 foetuses are only solar rings^ which rotate with the sun.". . . 
 
 '* This is the genesis of the planetary system, but every- 
 thing has become, and remained as it became, at one 
 stroke." 
 
 Form. 
 
 "As the real universe can only exist in a bicentral con- 
 dition, so is there in this respect also no universal central 
 
232 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 body. It is there, but under the form of bicentrality, as 
 sun and planet. God only is monocentral. The world is 
 the bicentral God, God the monocentral world, which is 
 
 the same with monas and dyas Self-consciousness is a 
 
 living ellipse." . . . 
 
 " Were the mass of the sun less, all the planets would 
 range nearer to it ; were it greater, they would be all driven 
 further off, as electricity repels the pith-balls of elder- 
 wood." . . . 
 
 " The circumvolution of the planets around the sun is 
 a polar process of attraction and repulsion, by virtue of 
 the primary law in the solar system, by virtue of the light. 
 The planet then can only be repelled in the neighbour- 
 hood of the sun from the sun, when it has the same solar 
 pole in itself, when it has become positive ; and can only 
 attract it at a distance from the sun, when it has received 
 the opposite pole to the sun, or has become negative.". . . 
 
 " The planet discharges its pole in the neighbourhood 
 of the sun, like a cork pellet, and reloads of itself at a dis- 
 tance from the sun; and thus oscillates to and fro, like 
 the hammer in an electrical bell. The course of the planets 
 takes place with the greatest ease. It is everywhere no 
 force of weight, of impulse, but of the easiest self-motion. 
 The planet revolves by its own force to and from the sun 
 like the blood circulates to and from the heart." . . . 
 
 "Although the planets have a centrifugal tendency, 
 they are not thrown by a prodigious mechanical force in 
 the direction of the tangent, and then drawn back by an 
 attractive force of the sun, that has no import or meaning ; 
 but they course in a playful manner round the sun. A 
 theory of attraction of this kind has no physical sense.". . . 
 
 "Were the planet dead, it could not be attracted or 
 repelled by the sun; it would have from the very begin- 
 ning always maintained a similar pole in itself, and it could 
 therefore only move in a circular manner around the 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 233 
 
 " The more living a planet is, by so much the more 
 excentric is its path, because it enters into great opposition 
 with the light." 
 
 Comets. 
 
 " The comets are heavenly bodies, devoid of a persistent 
 grade of polarity, and without any substantial change in 
 the same. They obtain their polarity solely from the sun, 
 like the cork pellet from the electrical machine. The 
 comet is therefore repelled as far from the sun as there is 
 still an action between it and the polarity that has been 
 imparted to the comet. 
 
 u At the point where all antagonism between comet and 
 sun ceases, the former must remain stationary, and resolve 
 itself again into aether. This is the case with those comets 
 that never return. These comets are temporal coagulations 
 of aether by light, and thus continued creation." . . . 
 
 " The tail follows the comet not really but only ideally. 
 . . .The tail is only an optical spectrum." — 
 
 " Returning comets are probably polarized by two 
 suns." 
 
 What will our sober Newtonians say to the last two 
 pages? We sometimes talk of circumjovial stars, but our 
 scheme is all asleep. Hegel tells us that the Planets move 
 through the sky like u blessed Gods" — Oken, that " they 
 course in a playful manner round the Sun ; " and that the 
 theory of attraction is all a sham — "a qualitas occulta — 
 an angel which flies before the Planets." The tail of a 
 Comet was, however, a splendid puzzle to astronomers; 
 and Oken has hit it off well when he turns it into an 
 ideality — an optical spectrum. 
 
 Condensation — Elements — Air — Water — Earth. 
 
 Under these heads I make no extracts. But in Oken's 
 
 hand they have a moral, as the following words will prove : 
 
 "In the creation the three primary ideas attained only 
 
234 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 by degrees to reality. First of all the trias becomes real 
 in the air, then the dyas in water, and lastly the monas in 
 the earth. The creation of the elements is none other than 
 a representation of the three divine ideas in a finite sphere. 
 Creation is a process of formation of the nothing." . . . 
 
 '* God is a threefold Trinity ; at first the Eternal, then 
 the /Etherial, and finally the Terrestrial, where it is com- 
 pletely divided. 
 
 " The holy primary number is 3 ; the second is 9. The 
 aether is 1 in 3 ; the other elements are simply the 3 of the 
 aether, together 4. 2x3, however, or 6, lies at the bottom 
 of this 4. The symbolic numbers are consequently 1, 3, 
 4, 6, 9, which fundamentally are one and the same, but 
 in different combinations. With this, however, all forma- 
 tion does not yet terminate ; to the four elements is added 
 the vegetable and animal kingdom. The number of the 
 days of creation is 6." 
 
 Functions of the Elements : — Gravity — Light — Inflexion 
 — Refraction — Reflexion— Colours. 
 These several heads I must almost pass over : but I may 
 tell our optical students : — " that matter is only condensed 
 aether" — " that it is the activity of light by which the aether 
 hardens into matter" — "that oxygen is the corporeal light" 
 — "that light is the tension of oxygen; and when this 
 reaches its maximum, light issues forth" — " that the Sun is 
 the body of oxygen, the water of the world — space, — and 
 that the Sun is four times less dense than the Earth; it is 
 thus pretty nearly in the condition of water." — I request 
 him, also, to read (in order that he may apprehend the 
 transcendental flights of high philosophy, and the folly of 
 grovelling after Newton) the whole section on Colours. 
 I will, however, quote the moral meaning of the whole. 
 
 "The symbolical doctrine of the colours is correct 
 according to the philosophy of nature. Red is fire, love — 
 Father. Blue is air, truth and belief — Son. Green is 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 235 
 
 water, formation, hope — Ghost. These are the three car- 
 dinal virtues. Yellow is earth, the Immoveable, Inexorable, 
 falsity the only vice — Satan. There are three virtues, but 
 only one vice. A result obtained by Physio-philosophy, 
 whereof Pneumato-philosophy as yet augurs nothing." 
 
 When the student has read this precious extract of 
 Physio-Philosophy, he may digest with advantage and 
 amazement the chromatic grouping of the Planets, which is 
 too long to be given here. 
 
 Crystallization and Mineralogy, I must pass over. 
 I mean not to affirm that there are no good ideas in this 
 portion of the work. A clever inventive man who has a 
 wide range of reading and dashes at everything must hit 
 something. But his philosophy is radically false. He de- 
 spises inductive truth — he dogmatizes before he has learnt 
 from nature the secrets of nature — he asserts without proof, 
 and often too against plain fact ; and a strange mysticism so 
 obscures his writings and distorts his conceptions of ar- 
 rangement, that to adopt and understand his views requires 
 nothing less than a surrender of all our old conceptions of 
 physical truth. One extract I will give, as it bears upon 
 Geology. 
 
 "In the middle of the planet there is only earth, and 
 nothing else ; the middle is not hollow, does not contain 
 any central fire, as has been imagined, nor air; and the 
 science of Geogeny will show that no metal also could be 
 contained in the interior of the earth." 
 
 Geology. 
 
 " The life of the earth consists in the formation of crys- 
 tals. The being of the earth and of the crystal are identical. 
 The solid planet Earth, has originated also according to the 
 laws of crystallization. 
 
 '* It is not, however, a single large crystal, the structure 
 of which appears to be homogeneous; but it is crystallized 
 
236 
 
 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 in its smallest parts; it is an accumulation of crystals, 
 which its atoms, integral parts, or constituent forms, pre- 
 sent for our examination.". . . 
 
 " What in the crystal is called the cleavage of the 
 laminae, is in the earth stratification. The strike of the 
 strata combined with their dip determines the crystal 
 nucleus of the earth. 
 
 w The strike and dip of the strata happened without 
 doubt according to definite laws of crystallization, and has 
 by no means been resigned to elevating force, mechanical 
 dislocation, or even to chance.". . . 
 
 " The land cannot therefore have an equal elevation 
 everywhere above the water, because the crystal consists of 
 edges, angles, and surfaces or sides. The mountain-tops 
 are probably the angles, the mountain-ridges or chains the 
 edges, the plains the lateral surfaces of the crystal.". . . 
 
 "The earth is probably a regular net of crystal edges 
 and angles, and thus of crystal surfaces also." 
 
 What have our Geologists been about for the last fifty 
 years ? They have not reached these elementary truths that 
 are without doubt, or comprehended these probabilities. 
 
 " It must not, however, be thought, that all had hap- 
 pened in a gradual manner ; that air was first converted 
 into water, and lastly, after a lapse of some thousand years, 
 the latter again into earth, without with the one element the 
 principles conducting to the others being already and 
 necessarily imparted. No; everything has been granted 
 and determined at one stroke, even as with the impreg- 
 nation of the ovum all the organs of the future embryo 
 are determined, although they first develop themselves 
 gradually.".. . 
 
 "These formations are found upon the whole to be 
 arranged on the earth, in the order of time at which they 
 were precipitated from the water. In the middle of the 
 loftiest mountains is granite, then gneiss and mica-schist; 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 237 
 
 then follow quartzose rocks, clay-slate or porphyry, talcose 
 rocks, and lastly on the edge of all these runs the chain 
 of alpine or mountain-limestone. In the last of these for- 
 mations are found fossil remains of corals and molluscous 
 animals. For these formations fell first of all after the water 
 had a solid bottom, and the granitic mountains projected 
 above it." 
 
 We see something like this in the old Geognosy of 
 Werner : but who would think of printing such nonsense 
 now? 
 
 Repeated Sedimentary Precipitations. 
 
 " The precipitating process is a process of polarization, 
 which comprises several stages. In it there are moments 
 of time.". . . 
 
 " The polarizing process* will issue from a definite 
 point, which is different from water, and thus form the 
 point upon which the light operates with greatest force. 
 
 " This is solid ground. During the calcareous precipi- 
 tation, there was no other ground present save that of the 
 mountain-tops. It was thus from these that the calcareous 
 precipitation set out. 
 
 " With each precipitation a greater number of moun- 
 tain-tops made their appearance, because the water sank; 
 for the calcareous earth is about three times denser than 
 water. 
 
 " Such being the conditions belonging to the sedi- 
 mentary periods, several consecutive centuries characterized 
 by precipitations with repeated recessions and elevations of 
 the water, elapsed and have left evidence of the time thus 
 consumed.". . . 
 
 " Marine and fresh- water animals could therefore ori- 
 ginate and perish alternately. And this is the explanation 
 of the fact why banks enclosing both kinds of animals are 
 found above and below each other. 
 
 "An alternating ingress of the sea is not therefore 
 
238 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 necessary in all cases to explain the occurrence of marine 
 fossil remains. Such an assumption is also wholly incon- 
 ceivable. Nor is alternating elevation and depression of 
 the soil necessary to the explanation of this phenomenon." 
 
 Here we have antiquated, exploded geology dished up 
 with transcendental philosophy. No practical geologists 
 can swallow the compound. 
 
 Trap Rocks and Metallic Veins, &c. 
 
 These I must pass over. It may be well however to 
 tell the reader that 
 
 "All metals have originated through magnetism, 
 through the radial polarity, or the conflict of light and 
 gravity. Magnetism is the action betwixt light and dark- 
 ness, periphery and centre. Magnetism as being a metal- 
 generating action tends towards the centre of darkness of 
 gravity.". . . 
 
 " Magnetism is still, however, not identical with gravity. 
 Gravity is the centre abstractedly from the periphery ; 
 but magnetism is the centre only in relation to the peri- 
 phery or light." 
 
 Coal. — It may be well also to tell the reader that 
 
 u During the electrical separation of the Basic of the 
 earth, or during the communication of the aerial character 
 to the Earthy, a body remains behind with positive cha- 
 racter, or the Coal. 
 
 " Coal may be regarded as volatilized metal, as a metal 
 which can change by the action of water or acid upon it 
 into air. Black-lead is a coal which is directly associated 
 with the metals.". . . 
 
 " The coal was, during the earth-formation, separated 
 from the sea, yet not, or only rarely, by itself, but along 
 with other masses of earth, while the sulphur rather accom- 
 panies the metals. Coal passes over into the earths, the 
 sulphur into the metals." 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 239 
 
 The whole of this wonderful Chapter ends with a kind 
 of moral, as it ought to do. 
 
 w Salt concludes the growth of the earths ; it is the 
 eruption or breaking out of the soul, as the metal was the 
 body of earths completed. Both finally pass into a higher 
 world, the metal into the corporeal, the salt into the psy- 
 chical." . . . 
 
 " The spiritual activity, the soul of the earth has de- 
 clared itself in crystallization, the spirit of the metals in 
 magnetism, that of the Inflammables in electrism." . . . 
 
 Part III.-BIOLOGY. 
 
 Primary Organism. — "An individual (total, self-in- 
 cluded) body, excited and moved by itself, is called Organ- 
 ism. Organism is what individual planet is. The metatype 
 of the planet is organism; or a planet upon the planet is 
 organism. The planet is not itself an organism, because 
 it is not individual or galvanic in every point." (p. 181.) 
 
 " Organism is galvanism residing in a thoroughly homo- 
 geneous mass. The galvanic column is no organism, be- 
 cause it only admits the galvanic process just as the planet 
 
 does, in individual places A galvanic pile, pounded 
 
 into atoms must become alive. In this manner nature 
 brings forth organic bodies." ... (p. 182.) 
 
 "Accordingly, what would be organic, must be gal- 
 vanic; what would be alive, must be galvanic. Life is not 
 different from organism, nor also from galvanism. For life 
 is verily the vital process. But the vital process is an 
 organic, galvanic process. Galvanism lies at the basis of 
 all the processes of the organic world. They are either 
 modifications of it, or only its combinations with other and 
 still higher actions. A living thing, which is not galvanic, 
 is a nonentity." . . . 
 
240 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 " Organic things are internal self-exciting numbers ; 
 the inorganic things are fractions/'... 
 
 Creation. — " The primary mucus, out of which every 
 
 thing organic has been created, is the sea-mucus." 
 
 (p. 185.) 
 
 "The sea-mucus, as well as the salt, is still produced 
 by the light. Everything takes place through the dif- 
 ferentialization, or by the absolution of fixed poles on the 
 earth-element. Light shines upon the water, and it is salted. 
 Light shines upon the salted sea, and it lives" . . . 
 
 "The whole sea is alive. It is a fluctuating, ever self- 
 elevating and ever self-depressing organism. '.. .(p. 186.) 
 
 " The first creation of the Organic took place, where 
 the first mountain- summits projected out of the water; and 
 thus indeed without doubt in India, if the Himalaya be the 
 highest mountain." . . . 
 
 "The first men were the littoral and mountainous 
 inhabitants of warmer countries, and found therefore at 
 once reptiles, fishes, fruit, and game for food."... 
 
 Change. — ei Death is no annihilation, but only a change. 
 One individual emerges out of another. Death is only a 
 transition to another life, not unto death." (p. 187.) 
 
 " This transition from one life to another takes place 
 through the primary condition of the Organic, or the 
 mucus." 
 
 f If new individuals originate, they could not therefore 
 originate directly from others ; but they must be redissolved 
 into mucus. Every generation is a new creation." . . . 
 
 Infusoria. — " If the organic fundamental substance con- 
 sist of infusoria, so must the whole organic world originate 
 from infusoria. Plants and animals can only be metamor- 
 phoses of infusoria.". . .(p. 189 ) 
 
 u Organisms are a synthesis of infusoria. Their gene- 
 ration is none other than an accumulation of infinitely 
 numerous mucous points, infusoria." ... (p. 190.) 
 
 "No organism has been consequently created of larger 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 241 
 
 size than an infusorial point. No organism is, nor has one 
 ever been, created, which is not microscopic." (p. 192). 
 
 H Whatever is larger, has not been created, but de- 
 veloped." . . . 
 
 Motion. — "The Inorganic consists in motion having 
 vanished from it, and in being simply mass. But the Organic 
 consists exactly in this alone, namely, that the Massive has 
 disappeared, or that the mass is in constant motion. The 
 Organic becomes destroyed, so soon as motion disappears in 
 it; the Inorganic is destroyed, so soon as motion enters it. 
 Motion is therefore the soul, whereby the Organic is ele- 
 vated above the Inorganic". . . (p. 197)- 
 
 Nervous System. — " The nervous system has a life 
 in itself, or the internal light-polarity that is without any 
 relation to the organic mass. This action of the nerves is 
 called sensibility, and its phenomenon, feeling or sensation. 
 The system of sensation is the nervous system as sun in 
 itself; in the motor-system it is as sun in a centre of 
 planets." ... (p. 203). 
 
 Vegetable Kingdom. 
 
 " Roots obey under all circumstances the gravity, and 
 would grow as far as the centre of the earth, were they to 
 meet with no impediment ; and there they would follow 
 the revolution of the earth, and consequently become spirally 
 convoluted upon themselves.". . . (p, 259). 
 
 "The straight ascent of the stalk also depends upon 
 nothing else than gravity. The upper drops of mucus 
 become lighter by means of greater heat and by decom- 
 position in light and air, and they are therefore compressed 
 by the heavier in the upward direction." . . . 
 
 " Impregnation is a simple act of light upon the matter, 
 an irradiation, as it was termed, with such an exalted appre- 
 ciation of its significance, by the ancients. The male im- 
 parts nothing in impregnation but the solar ray, or fluid 
 s. d. Q 
 
242 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 nervous mass, in its semen, which awakes, animates, and 
 inspirits the quiescent female." ... (p. 274). 
 
 Animal Kingdom. 
 
 " The essence of volition or free-will does not reside, 
 in a physical sense, in the consciousness of the action, but 
 in the autocrasy ; or in the ability to perform an action, 
 without external or terrestrial influence. The aether-actions 
 have originated from special polarity. Independent move- 
 ments must therefore be such as have been produced simply 
 by polarity, apart from material intrusion.". . . (p. 319). 
 
 "Sensation is the relation of the Central to the Peri- 
 pheric, of the sun to the planet; motion is the relation 
 of the periphery to the centre, of the planet to the sun. 
 The Animal emerges into being from the alternating play 
 of the supremest antagonism in the heavenly bodies, the 
 
 Vegetable from that of the terrestrial antagonisms." 
 
 (p. 325). 
 
 Impregnation. — "Already, in the course of the heavenly 
 bodies, has the highest act of the animal, been preindicated 
 or portrayed. The creation of the universe or world is 
 itself nothing but an act of impregnation. The sex is prog- 
 nosticated from the beginning, and pursues its course like 
 a holy and conservative bond throughout the whole of 
 nature. He therefore who so much as questions the sex in 
 the organic world, comprehends not the riddle or problem 
 of the universe." ... (p. 398). 
 
 Mesmerism. — " To perceive objects in the distance, i. e. 
 merely their polar influence, is called Mesmerism, or animal 
 magnetism.". . . (p. 449). 
 
 " Now, if it is once possible for other senses besides 
 that of sight to extend their perception into remote space, 
 it no longer matters as to the magnitude of the latter. 
 A feebly charged electrical machine only attracts bodies 
 that are near, one strongly loaded, those which are more 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 243 
 
 remote ; such is the case too with weak and strong mag- 
 nets."... 
 
 "The senses may therefore perceive their homologous 
 polarities through other bodies, walls, and such like. By 
 virtue of their perception, they stand in relation to them." . . . 
 
 " The vegetable, or in general the material body, ap- 
 pears therefore to the mesmerized like a strange world — 
 they see their own organs — are clair-voyants. Mesmerism 
 therefore comprises nothing which could contradict physio- 
 
 logy."... 
 
 Periodicity. — u The human species requires three quar- 
 ters of a year for pregnancy, one quarter for giving suck 
 to the babe, and then it can again conceive. Pregnancy 
 
 thus lasts a year, and has been based in the sun." 
 
 (p. 454). 
 
 Auditory Sense. — " Vibration is not a general move- 
 ment to and fro, but a dissolution of the material bands. 
 This dissolution can only take place according to the laws 
 of the primary motion. They are rigidified in the solid 
 masses as crystalline forms. Every law of motion is a 
 crystalline form which has become free or spiritually ma- 
 nifested. Through the vibration forms are engendered in 
 bodies, which are commensurate with the substance and 
 form of the mass and the degree of vibration. These 
 forms, being as it were the ghosts or phantoms of crystals, 
 are called sonorous Jigures" ... (p. 470). 
 
 " Melody is a retrogression of the matter into aether, of 
 the formed world into the primary world ; through melody 
 is the spirit of the world revealed. The ear is the first 
 liberation of the animal from all terrestrial matter ; through 
 the ear the animal becomes for the first time spiritual." . . . 
 (p. 471). 
 
 " Melody is the voice of the universe, whereby it pro- 
 claims its scheme, or its innermost essence. Hence the 
 wondrous, mysterious action of harmony, the secret sove- 
 reignty of music." . . . 
 
 Q2 
 
244 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Speech. — "With speech Man creates unto himself his 
 world. Without speech there is no world."... (p. 472). 
 
 " Through speech Man becomes acquainted with or 
 learns to know himself; through it he becomes a self-sub- 
 stantial essence, which resembles God, because it creates 
 for itself its world, and recognizes itself, i.e. speaks/'... 
 (p. 473). 
 
 " Speech originates gradually like the organs, like 
 Man. Speech grows like a plant ; at first it is only root, 
 next it puts forth a stem, then leaves, and finally blossoms, 
 when it is the perfect expression of the animal body." . . . 
 (p. 473). 
 
 Optic Sense. — "In seeing we perceive the aether, as to 
 how it becomes world ; in hearing we perceived the world, 
 as to how it became aether. Seeing and hearing are oppo- 
 site functions ; the first indicates the creation, the latter the 
 return of creation into chaos.". . . 
 
 "Without the ear there would be no understanding, 
 without the eye no reason." ... (p. 475). 
 
 Sensorial Fishes. — "Here belong the Chimaerae, Stur- 
 geons, Sharks, and Rays. The last ought to be held as 
 higher in rank, partly on account of their slender tail, 
 partly because the huge Rays, which are called Cepha- 
 lopterus, have the anterior thoracic rays free and so move- 
 able that they can seize their prey with them as with hands. 
 All lay, with the exception of the Sturgeons, large and 
 leathery ova, and in this approximate pretty closely to 
 the Reptilia." (p. 626.) 
 
 " It has been already remarked, that the large Cartila- 
 ginei would not pass correctly into the others, and obvi- 
 ously seem to claim the highest post. At some later 
 period the principle may probably be discovered where- 
 upon their union with the higher Osseous fishes depends. 
 Both are at all events Abdominales." . . . (p. 627). 
 
 Psychology. — "Infusoria have only sensation, nothing 
 else. . . . Their spiritual life is, in some degree, a mes- 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 245 
 
 meric condition By mesmerism they find their food, 
 
 perceive the light, and become transparent unto them- 
 selves; just as they are really in a physical point of view." 
 (p. 655). 
 
 "The mind, just as the body, must be developed out 
 of these animals. The human body has been formed by 
 an extreme separation of the neu re-protoplasmic or mucous 
 mass. So must the human mind be a separation, a mem- 
 berment of infusorial sensation. 
 
 " The highest mind is an anatomized or dismembered 
 mesmerism, each member whereof has been constituted 
 independent in itself." . . . 
 
 " A Philosophy or Ethicks apart from Physio-philosophy 
 is a nonentity, a bare contradiction, just as a flower without 
 a stem is a non-existent thing." ... (p. 656.) 
 
 "The reason why one has hitherto rambled about in 
 Pneumato-philosophy without ballast and without compass, 
 depends solely upon the disregard which has been paid to 
 the science or knowledge of Nature." . . . 
 
 " Spirit is nothing different from Nature, but simply her 
 purest outbirth or offspring, and therefore her symbol, her 
 language. With such a basis as this, we shall no longer 
 pursue the ignes fatui of the mind, but first of all endeavour 
 to banish them into the provinces or realms of Nature, and 
 there co-ordinate them in conformity with her laws ; then 
 for the first time shall we recognize the flaming lights of the 
 mind and the divine voices, which all matter proclaimeth 
 through the speech of Man. 
 
 " He, who were once in a condition to reveal or disclose 
 this conformity of Nature's phenomena with those of Spirit, 
 will have learnt the philosophy of the latter." . . . 
 
 Functions op Sexual Animals. — " The liver is the soul 
 in a state of sleep, the brain is the soul active and awaken- 
 ing. In it the spirit broods unconsciously for years, and 
 then breaks forth fearfully, as capriciousness, tyranny, and 
 sorrow, but also as earnestness and strength. 
 
246 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 " Circumspection and foresight appear to be the thoughts 
 of the Bivalve Mollusca and Snails. 
 
 M Gazing upon a Snail, one believes that he finds the 
 prophesying goddess sitting upon the tripod. What majesty 
 is in a creeping Snail, what reflection, what earnestness, 
 what timidity and yet at the same time what firm confidence ! 
 Surely a Snail is an exalted symbol of mind slumbering 
 deeply within itself.". . . (p. 657). 
 
 Functions of the Pan^esthetic Animal. — "The uni- 
 versal spirit is Man. 
 
 " In the human race the world has become individual. 
 Man is the entire image or likeness of the world. His lan- 
 guage is the spirit of the world. All the functions of 
 animals have attained unto unity, unto self-consciousness, in 
 Man."... (p. 662). 
 
 " Man expresses the ultimate goal or purpose of Nature's 
 design." (p. 663). 
 
 " The art of War is the highest, most exalted art ; the 
 art of freedom and of right, of the blessed condition of Man 
 and of humanity — the Principle of Peace." ... (p. 665). 
 
 I have not made these long extracts to throw ridicule on 
 Oken's scheme of Nature ; but to bring out the aim and 
 bearing of his Physio-Philosophy. No extracts are made 
 from the^really valuable parts of his work, where he dis- 
 cusses the functions of individual organs and their meaning 
 in the archetype of nature, or where he gives us schemes of 
 classification. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 247 
 
 No. IX. 
 
 Additional Remarks on " The Vestiges of Creation." Sup- 
 posed a priori reasons for the scheme. Its moral conse- 
 quences. Summary of inductive reasoning, fyc. 
 
 (p. clx. and p. cccxxiii.*) 
 
 I have thrown the matter of this Note into the Appen- 
 dix, that I might not encumber the Preface by multiplied 
 quotations. Enough has, I think, been stated in the text 
 to satisfy the general reader. Those who are interested 
 in the geological argument will perhaps think it worth their 
 while to read this additional note. 
 
 Why has not the Author of The Vestiges ventured at 
 length to publish his name ? The answer to this question is 
 plain and obvious. An anonymous title-page is as good as 
 a wall of brass to any man who has taken up a rash hypo- 
 thesis, and made up his mind to defend it at all cost : and 
 he may shift his ground as often as he pleases, and change 
 his colours without a blush, so long as he wears a mask. 
 He began his work without any severe knowledge of natural 
 philosophy, or of the exact methods by which men in past 
 ages have learnt to reach its higher truths : and he seems 
 to have done little since to make himself a master of these 
 methods. Perhaps Nature tells him not to attempt this 
 task ; for it is far more grateful to the imagination and the 
 senses to be flying in fancy through the airy regions of an 
 hypothesis, than to be toiling along the dull, laborious track 
 of true knowledge. 
 
 He was however well versed, from the first, in the 
 jargon of a very shallow scheme of materialism built upon a 
 misapplication of craniology, and he had ample stores of 
 knowledge, more or less exact, that he had culled from a 
 cycle of second-hand elementary reading. With this stock 
 
 * The reference to this Note, at the foot of p. clx., was omitted by 
 mistake, during the passage of a sheet through the press : it appears, how- 
 ever, in the list of Errata and Corrigenda prefixed to the Preface. 
 
248 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 in hand he took on himself the profession of a high tran- 
 scendental philosophy. 
 
 Of the rank materialism of some French writers he knew 
 something; and he could quote Comte as a demonstrative 
 authority, while it is certain that he did not understand 
 one word of what he quoted. The scheme of transmutation 
 given by Lamarck he must have known ; but of the works 
 of Oken (the great modern high-priest of the theory of 
 development) he seems to have known almost nothing. At 
 the same time he appears to have very little regarded the 
 most striking phase of modern materialism ; and he boldly 
 launched his pantheistic arguments, without ever dreaming 
 that, on logical grounds, he must himself become a Pan- 
 theist. But he was a man of lively imagination, and had 
 it seems a well tried, and certainly a ready pen. He had 
 heard of the scheme of transmutation : he believed what 
 Geologists then told him, (and what many of them continue 
 to believe true) — that there was a time when Fishes formed 
 no part of organic nature — and that Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, 
 and Mammals, came into being in successive periods, and 
 after long intervals of time. These were the elements of 
 his "grand generalizations." — Out of these assumed facts 
 he took up his theory of development. No wonder that this 
 old theory became the child of his affections, for it chimed 
 in, most harmoniously, with his adopted scheme of phre- 
 nological materialism. 
 
 Fishes do not, however, now breed Reptiles — Reptiles 
 do not breed Birds or Mammals — Mammals do not shift 
 their grade and breed Men. But, said the Author, they did 
 breed after this fashion in ancient days, and the facts of 
 Geology give us the proofs we want. Species are things 
 fugitive and ill-defined; we take "modest steps;" we make 
 no transcendental " leaps in the development process ; " we 
 ask only for " natural means" to do the whole work of trans- 
 mutation ; yet the facts of Geology bear out our theory. 
 So stood the argument when first published by the Author. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 249 
 
 He had not, to all appearance, examined a single quarry ; his 
 knowledge of Geology was incorrect and meagre; and where 
 he professed to give details they were not always drawn 
 from the best sources, or on a level with the knowledge of 
 his day. Yet out of this little modicum of knowledge he 
 span his theory, as he told us, in solitude. He knew full 
 well that it must be tested by an. appeal to the evidence of 
 facts. But how did he handle this evidence ? He handled it 
 either with very little knowledge, or very great dishonesty. 
 He asserted, again and again, things most contrary to fact : 
 and when convicted on these points, he patched, shifted, 
 refitted, and explained away his early statements as no 
 writer living would have dared to do with his face un- 
 covered. To add to our amazement at these strange sinuous 
 movements, he told us in his Explanations (p. 65) 3 " that it 
 is humiliating to have to answer an objection so mean" — 
 that he never asserted "that the animals came in this order — 
 that he only put the words into this arrangement, in accord- 
 ance with the custom commonly followed in describing the 
 ascending grades of the animal kingdom ! " I affirm in reply, 
 that there was no such reservation in the early editions of 
 the Vestiges — and that the Author, not in one instance only, 
 but in many, gave us (not wishing to deceive, but in igno- 
 rance of facts) a supposed order of Geological precedence 
 which was utterly untrue; and at the same time put it before 
 us as an illustration and confirmation of his general argu- 
 ment. — But he did battle under the guard of a visor, which 
 he will never think it prudent to lift up. 
 
 There are other reasons why our Author may still wish 
 to conceal his name. He had offended against all the rules 
 of severe induction, and therefore could look for no favour 
 from men of severe science. He had done his best to destroy 
 the force of moral evidence, by confounding material with 
 moral, and pretending to class all social acts as the unbend- 
 ing consequences of a stern physical necessity. Hence, he 
 could look for little sympathy from those who delight in 
 
250 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 schemes of social improvement, or in questions bearing on 
 life and morals. Still more had he offended against the 
 belief and feelings of all religious men, whatever their name 
 or communion. For in his scheme everything that is super- 
 natural — everything out of the vulgar course of material 
 nature — is but antiquated superstition; belongs to the nonage 
 of our race ; or is to be set down to the diseases of a brain 
 tainted by the exhalations of a Boeotian fog. 
 
 Having found little sympathy with men of science, he 
 turns round on them, and scorns them as feeble guides who 
 are sinking in the mire, or tottering under the load of their 
 worthless knowledge : and as for facts, he is almost indifferent 
 about them ; for should fifty per cent of his quoted examples 
 fail of application, they will not much affect his transcend- 
 ental flights of reasoning ! And as for the misgivings of 
 religious men, they are nothing better than the cant of 
 hypocrisy or cowardice — the mere tricks of dishonest men, 
 who are trying to shift on to the shoulders of the Author of 
 The Vestiges a burden that had been first put on themselves 
 by bigots and fanatics! Against all this injustice he appeals 
 (as we have seen) not to the facts brought out by science, 
 and to the sober deductions of scientific men, but to the 
 suffrage of the multitude. 
 
 That I may not bring charges without proof, I quote two 
 passages from the Explanations — " If men, newly emerged 
 from the odium which was thrown upon Newton's theory of 
 the planetary motions, had rushed forward to turn that 
 odium upon the patrons of the dawning science of Geology, 
 they would have been prefiguring the conduct of several of 
 my critics, themselves hardly escaped from the rude hands 
 of the narrow-minded ; yet eager to join that rabble against 
 a new and equally unfriended stranger, as if such were the 
 best means of purchasing impunity for themselves" (p. 171)- 
 In like spirit he insinuates that the nebular hypothesis is 
 received by some persons with less favour than it was for- 
 merly, only because of the use that he himself has made 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 251 
 
 of it. (i The hypothesis (he tells us) has been favourably 
 entertained in many authoritative quarters during the last 
 few years, and probably would have continued to be so, 
 if no attempt had been made to enforce by it a system of 
 nature on the principle of universal order" (p. 8). The first 
 of these two quotations is a libel on the honest convictions 
 of many good men, who, holding firmly to their religious 
 faith, are at the same time ready to listen to any material 
 truth that is presented to them on good evidence. The 
 second seems to prove that an Author's vanity may some- 
 times strangely triumph over his candour. So far as I am 
 myself concerned in these remarks, I may refer the reader 
 to the preceding Discourse (p. 27) — to Note (D) of the 
 Appendix — and to No. I. of the Supplement; and if he 
 think it worth his while to read the pages here referred to, 
 he will have the means of judging for himself. 
 
 But another question arises. Can an author, who im- 
 putes such base motives to others, have himself any high 
 feeling for the sanctity and severity of philosophic truth ? 
 I think not: but I accuse not our Author of any wilful 
 fraud upon his readers. His mind has not been trained to 
 understand and grasp the real essence of solid inductive 
 evidence; and, on that account, he is disabled from rising 
 to any just conception of the exalted grounds of philoso- 
 phical belief in other men, or of rightly comprehending 
 their motives, or their judgments, on the higher questions 
 of physical truth. 
 
 I crave the reader's patience while I discuss once again, 
 and in a few words, a question of no small interest. If 
 I draw my conclusions fairly from facts of observation or 
 experiment, they cannot but be true; and I have a right to 
 publish my conclusions, however much they may clash with 
 the venerated prejudices of my neighbours. In like manner, 
 on religious and moral questions, I commit no moral wrong 
 by arguing honestly from admitted grounds of belief. From 
 infirmity, or want of more ample knowledge, I may wander 
 
252 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 far away from what is true ; and then I must bear the con- 
 sequences of my own ignorance or folly : but I have a moral 
 right to publish my opinions if I do so in sincerity, and try 
 not to enforce them by dishonest means — by evasion and 
 suppression — by impurity — or by scorn and mockery, not 
 levelled merely against absurd conclusions, but put on in 
 the very aim of distorting or concealing truth. Were it 
 not so, civilized society would be but a great band of 
 slaves, and religious men would be degraded into the mere 
 unthinking creatures of a despotic authority ; without any 
 power of obeying the high command of God— of honouring 
 him by a reasonable service. 
 
 On the other hand, I have no right to toss out into the 
 turbid whirlpool of debate any fantastical hypothesis that 
 may have started into life within my brain ; more especially, 
 if thereby I put myself in collision with the faith and feelings 
 of the sober men around me. If this be true in questions of 
 physics, still more is it true in questions bearing on our 
 social conduct or religious belief. When a man offends in 
 this way, he deserves and meets with very little mercy. 
 Because men are equal in the sight of God, the socialist or 
 the robber may hold that therefore in society they should 
 have all good things in common — that property is usurpa- 
 tion — and that one who has less than his share has a right to 
 help himself. We deny his principles, and we wage open 
 war with their application. We attack not the Author of 
 The Vestiges (or any other Materialist of the same school), 
 because on many grave questions his conclusions differ from 
 our own; but because he published his hypothesis without 
 having tested it, or because he pretended to test it by a 
 flagrant distortion of facts, or a misconception of their mean- 
 ing. It is on these points that we first join issue with him ; 
 and little does it become him to tell us that we also wear 
 a mask (though more transparent than his own) — that we 
 are acting the part of tricksters, and soiling our tongues 
 with the cowardly cant of hypocritical pretenders. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 253 
 
 The continental Materialists and Pantheists speak out 
 more honestly and plainly. The extracts of the previous 
 Note (No. VIII.) shew us what Materialism is, and what 
 it ends in : and what a wreck a clever, inventive, and well- 
 informed man may make of sense and reason, if he try to 
 pass over the wide ocean of human knowledge without 
 a rudder or a compass. Oken.(the great hierophant of 
 transmutation) tells us that man is " God wholly manifested 
 ... is God become man . . . that no organism is or ever has 
 been created which is not microscopic . . . that man was not 
 created, but developed . . . that Plants and Animals can only 
 be the metamorphoses of Infusoria . . . that putrefaction is 
 nothing else than the division of organisms into Infusoria . . . 
 a reduction from the higher to the lower way of life . . . that 
 Death is no annihilation, but only change . . . that death is 
 only a transition to another life, not unto death . . . that dying 
 is only a multiplication of self," &c. &c. Couple these state- 
 ments with the belief that there is nothing immaterial in 
 nature — that conscience, moral sentiments, and abstract 
 thoughts, and the whole body of treasured truths, are 
 organic material functions, and nothing else ,• and then we 
 have a full-fledged Pantheism ending in the deification of 
 man. But his godlike attributes are soon to lose their per- 
 sonality and pass away ; for on this scheme of rank ma- 
 terialism we have the whole history of creation, life, and 
 death ; and there is not the shadow of any personal hope 
 or aspiration that is beyond it Man was created like the 
 beasts — he is the progeny of beasts — and with the beasts he 
 perishes personally and for ever. May God for ever save 
 the University of Cambridge from this base, degrading, 
 demoralizing, hopeless creed ! 
 
 But some of our British Materialists are far less plain 
 and honest in their views. While they profess only a phi- 
 losophic Deism, they preach the doctrines of material Pan- 
 theism. They talk of religion and Christian charity, while 
 they scoff at any supposed distinction between soul and 
 
254 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 body — lop off any semblance of religious sanction beyond 
 the authority of material nature, and virtually deprive God 
 of His Providence and Personality. How far any charges 
 such as these apply to the Author of The Vestiges, I do not 
 well know ; for his language and his views on some points 
 are inconsistent. I solemnly disclaim any wish of misre- 
 presenting him ; but this he seems to tell us (in words too 
 plain to be misunderstood) that any conception of revealed 
 or moral truth, beyond what we derive from our common 
 physical nature, is only a dream of the world's children, 
 or a phantasm of a stolid brain. And yet he scruples not to 
 tell us that the aim of his work is purely scientific, and that 
 we have no right to oppose any moral objection to it ! 
 
 Leaving, for the present, these grave questions, I come 
 to some rather minute points that were little suited to the 
 discussions of the Preface, and better fitted for a place in 
 this Note. In a previous number of the Supplement I 
 have quoted two examples of the Author's pleasantry {supra, 
 pp. 209, 21 0), and I here quote a few specimens of his critical 
 skill. 
 
 (1) " The Edinburgh Reviewer," (he tells us, Expla- 
 nations, pp. 170, 171) "speaks of the whole works of the 
 Deity as vulgar nature. I feel that the impiety which such 
 an idea expresses to my sense, is only impiety to me, who 
 cannot separate nature from God himself; but it is not 
 necessarily so to him, whose education has given him pecu- 
 liar and, I think, erroneous conceptions on this subject." 
 Our Author's horror at the Reviewer's impiety is touching, 
 and his candour is above all praise. Again and again, I 
 have, in this volume, used the word vulgar in the same 
 meaning. In its original and old-fashioned sense it conveys 
 no notion of what is base and sordid, but simply of some- 
 thing that is common, and in the ordinary course of things ; 
 and because, when used in this sense, it is somewhat old- 
 fashioned and classical, it serves a good purpose in natural 
 history, by giving a definite meaning to many a sentence 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 255 
 
 which might be, perhaps, ambiguous without it. On this 
 account only have I used the word vulgar in the above 
 sense, and from no affectation of employing a pedantic or 
 antiquated form of speech. This trifle would deserve no 
 notice here did it not help us towards the solution of a very 
 obscure question. The passage above quoted proves that 
 the anonymous Author never had a name given him at the 
 baptismal font of the Church of England. Had his ears 
 been familiarized to the good old English of our liturgy he 
 would have better comprehended the meaning of the word 
 vulgar, and been spared from all his horror at the impiety 
 of such an expression as vulgar nature. 
 
 (2) His next example is, perhaps, more formidable : 
 for he accuses the Edinburgh Reviewer of downright fraud 
 and sophistry. "The Reviewer" (he tells us) "had no title 
 to assume any plan of development, and to represent his 
 victory over that as a triumph over the hypotheses of his 
 Author. In such conduct he has thoroughly vitiated the 
 whole fabric of his criticism, and left it in reality no pre- 
 tension to remain for a moment in court." (Explanations, 
 p. 77)- Is this charge true ? If true, it is formidable ; but 
 it is utterly untrue. The Reviewer assumed no plan of 
 development, and advanced no scheme of nature. He obvi- 
 ously considered all published schemes as partly artificial, 
 and contended that none of them conveyed anything like a 
 perfect notion of the archetype and history of creation*. 
 He tracked the Author through his tangled web of hypo- 
 thetical assertions, brought them, (as far as possible) one 
 by one to the test of facts ; and by that test, and that test 
 only, denied the truth of the assertions, and thereby upset 
 the baseless hypothesis that was pretended to be built upon 
 them. 
 
 I hardly need repeat what has been stated in the 
 Preface (p. ci). It matters not what scheme of nature 
 
 * No words can, on this point, be stronger than those given in the 
 Edinburgh Review, (July, 1845.) p. 10. 
 
256 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 we take as the basis of our argument. Let it be circular, 
 or divergent, simply linear, or on a thousand ascending 
 parallel lines, and the result is still unchanged. Whatever 
 scheme we take, if we try to evolve from it the theory of 
 development, we find ourselves, at every turn, in the same 
 rude collision with the facts of geology. Out of no scheme 
 (however complicated) can we construct an ascending scale 
 that falls in with any sane theory of development, and at 
 the same time runs in parallelism with the true historical 
 development of the organic world as we read it, where it is 
 plainly written, in the old book of nature — But there is 
 nothing new in our Author's tactics. He knew that in his 
 first four editions he had committed himself to the assertion 
 of facts which could not be defended ; and he therefore took 
 up the language of an assailant. As for the Reviewer, 
 he must have been no less than a prophet to have antici- 
 pated the Protean shifts and sinuous movements made by 
 our Author, between the successive scenes of his changing 
 drama of development. 
 
 (3) He affirmed hypothetically, that the marvellous 
 succession of animal forms was brought about, during the 
 epochs of geology, in the way of natural generation. Against 
 this the Reviewer argued by a denial of the hypothesis, and 
 by an appeal to facts. Let us quote one or two examples 
 of the Author's reply : u The fallacy of the Reviewer " 
 (he tells us, Explanations, p. 32) " consists in sinking the 
 great broad palpable facts of the case, about which not the 
 least doubt anywhere exists, and giving prominence to 
 certain facts of far inferior magnitude, and comparatively 
 more obscure, but in whose obscurity there is a possibility 
 of creating a kind of diversion." Again, he writes in the 
 same spirit (p. 66), " What strikes me is the extraordinary 
 narrowness of a mind which sees nothing indicative of 
 natural procedure, no hints towards great generalizations, 
 in the simple fact of reptiles following upon fish, in this 
 grand march of life, through the morning-time of the 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 257 
 
 world.". . ./'Despising, however, the great fact, which 
 shines through these obscurities, the Reviewer, and I am 
 sorry to add geologists generally, can only fasten upon such 
 particulars as may be made out to be difficulties in the way 
 of generalization " (p. 67). 
 
 The writer, perhaps, does well to brave out a bad cause 
 by insulting language, and a confident assumption of supe- 
 rior intelligence. But his reasons, after all, are but a bold 
 and plausible misstatement of the question in debate. The 
 facts of the Reviewer are quite as certain as the facts 
 advanced by the Author of The Vestiges. The magnitude 
 of the facts has nothing to do with the question; and in 
 truth there is no real difference in their magnitude. It is 
 just as certain that the highest genera of the Class of Fishes 
 were created first, as that Fishes preceded Reptiles in the 
 order of time. Each of these conclusions is grounded on 
 induction from facts, and not on demonstrative evidence. 
 Some persons may contend that our induction is, in both 
 cases, imperfect. If such be our belief, we are bound to 
 abstain from any positive generalization ; but if we do gene- 
 ralize, it must be from such facts as are known. If we 
 pretend to genjralize from hypothetical facts that may here- 
 after be discovered, we only mock the common sense of 
 our readers. The theory of development cannot be true on 
 the whole if it be not true in its several parts. So far as 
 geology bears on the question, the argument is resolved 
 into an interpretation of acknowledged facts : but how are 
 we to interpret or enumerate the facts without a compre- 
 hensive study of details? 
 
 Allowing it as probable, on the evidence before us, that 
 Fishes preceded Reptiles, does it follow that Fishes pro- 
 created Reptiles ? " Yes," says the Author ; and they must 
 be men of "extraordinarily narrow minds" who do not 
 accept this " grand generalization." But where is the start- 
 ing-point, and what laws of organic nature has he to rest 
 upon ? Living nature tells him a different tale, and the 
 8. d. 11 
 
258 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 great organic sequence of geology, when honestly and care- 
 fully sifted, most flatly contradicts him. He reverses the 
 whole order of inductive reasoning by arguing from the 
 unknown to the known : and he forgets that " grand gene- 
 ralizations," when first thrown out in the early history of an 
 advancing science, are often nothing better than the sportive 
 fancies of rash men — that no merit belongs to a generali- 
 zation which is not suggested by experience — and that in 
 every case there is very great demerit in torturing the facts 
 of nature that we may bend them to our hypothesis. 
 
 (4) Our Author is a perfect Proteus. His face we 
 have never seen ; but no specimen, in the vast series of his 
 own hypothetical ancestry, ever changed its colours more 
 rapidly than himself: nor is it an easy task to track him 
 along the coils of his long-continued sinuous movements. 
 In one page of his Explanations he laughs the Reviewer to 
 scorn for drawing any argument from the fossils of our 
 oldest known groups of strata. In another page he rebukes 
 the Reviewer, and in no measured phrase, for denying the 
 proof (drawn by himself from the same evidence) that sea- 
 weeds existed before land-plants (p. 63). We cannot allow 
 him in this manner to blow hot and cold on the same 
 question. 
 
 Let me here remark, that Geology shews us compa- 
 ratively little of what was doing on the bare surface of the 
 earth during successive epochs. The sea, for obvious rea- 
 sons, was the great geological storehouse. In the deposits of 
 shallow seas we find, here and there, the stray productions 
 of dry land ; and in lacustrine deposits these productions 
 are, usually, more numerous. But in the deposits of a 
 deep sea we have no right to expect, and we very seldom 
 find, many traces of the far-drifted organic structures that 
 flourished contemporaneously on the land. To use the Edin- 
 burgh Reviewer's words, "it may be true that sea-weeds 
 came first, but of this we have no proof:" for our oldest fos- 
 sil sea-weeds are found in the deposits of a deep ocean, and 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 259 
 
 therefore give us little help if we wish to speculate on the 
 primeval organic conditions of the land. In one word, we 
 either know the earliest conditions of organic life or we do 
 not. If we do not, we then have no right to theorize on the 
 question : and if we do theorize, we are bound to theorize 
 consistently with such evidence (humble though it be) as 
 nature has put before us. But our Author has no such 
 forbearance. Theorize he will, no matter what the facts 
 may tell him. He has adopted a universal scheme of 
 nature — he has made some c * grand generalizations/' and by 
 them he will abide through right or wrong*. 
 
 (5) Arguing on the same principles, the Author, as a 
 matter of course, contends that marine Mammals preceded 
 the terrestrial. In support of this view he quoted the sup- 
 posed example of marine Mammals' bones in certain beds 
 below the Stonesfield Slate, and made (as we have seen) his 
 mistaken facts the topic of a sneer against the Edinburgh 
 Reviewer. When the Reviewer affirmed that the two Marsu- 
 pials of the Stonesfield Slate were the oldest Mammals yet 
 discovered, he simply stated a fact. Had he gone a step 
 farther, and affirmed that no Mammal's bones (whether 
 terrestrial or marine) would ever be discovered at a lower 
 level, he would have advanced a very rash and unwarranted 
 conclusion. But he did no such thing. I believe, on the evi- 
 dence of fact, that Cetaceans existed during the middle period 
 of the Oolites ; and I cannot give any reason why they might 
 not have existed during an earlier period. In like manner 
 I know that Marsupials lived on the dry land during the 
 lower Oolitic period, and I can give no secure reason why 
 
 * In the previous extracts, the reader may find Oken's views on the 
 beginning of life (supra, pp. 239, 240). " The primary mucus, out of 
 which every thing has been created, is the sea-mucus. The sea-mucus, 
 as well as the salt, is still produced by the light. Light shines upon the 
 water, and it is salted: light shines upon the salted sea, and it lives /" 
 May not this Author have a fall, like his great prototype Icarus, if he 
 presume to soar thus high among the mysteries of creation ? 
 
 R2 
 
260 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 they might not have lived on dry land during the time of 
 the Trias. 
 
 There is, however, connected with these Stonesfield 
 Marsupials another criticism, to be shortly noticed. The 
 Edinburgh Reviewer contended that they had no organic 
 base to act upon — in other words, that there were no 
 organic types in the older deposits from which these two 
 genera of Marsupials could spring in the way of natural 
 generation. He certainly was not ignorant of the fact, that 
 the foot-prints of birds had been seen on beds of stone that 
 are supposed to be older that our Oolites : but he was not 
 so far advanced in the history of nature as to know that 
 geese could hatch rats, or that kangaroos could leap out of 
 the eggs of cassowaries. But what is our Author's very 
 courteous reply to the Reviewer's remark on the Stonesfield 
 Mammals? — c 'It would appear (he tells us, Explanations, 
 p. 90) that the Reviewer is simply ignorant of this depart- 
 ment of natural history, and, with the self-esteem which 
 often attends upon ignorance, he has somewhat unluckily 
 ventured to give a positive contradiction to that which is 
 incontestably true." 
 
 What may have been the Reviewer's ignorance or know- 
 ledge, matters very little; for, like our Author, he is a 
 mysterious person who wears a brazen mask. But speaking 
 plainly for myself, I adopt the Reviewer's assertions to the 
 letter; and I am reckless of the imputation of ignorance or 
 falsehood, even from our well-informed, courteous, and 
 cautious Author. For I was present at all the meetings of 
 the Geological Society of London, when the true generic 
 place of the Stonesfield Marsupials was settled by Professor 
 Owen, only after a protracted and very animated contro- 
 versy. He dwelt on their affinities with other parts of the 
 animal kingdom, and contended that they were of the 
 very type we might have looked for among the records of 
 so old a period. He believed then, as geologists believe 
 now, that there was a grand archetype in nature — that 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 201 
 
 there were harmonious laws in the historical development of 
 the kingdoms of nature— that the earth had been gradually 
 matured into what it now is — and that there were gradual 
 changes in all the kingdoms of animated nature correspond- 
 ing to the gradual changes of physical conditions. Neither 
 he, nor any member present, believed that the opposite 
 extremes of the great complex scale of nature were set 
 chronologically in juxta-position, or that one end of the 
 complicated scale had ever been doubled back upon the 
 other. At the same time neither did he, nor any other 
 member of the Society, ever throw out a hint that the old 
 Marsupials had a true ancestral base shewn among the 
 organic types of a preceding period ? They were, to a man, 
 in such infantine ignorance on this question, that any one 
 of them would have been laughed to scorn who had dared 
 to tell the Society that the march of nature during these 
 morning-hours was plain and easy — that some old Struthio 
 had dropped an egg which by a cunning incubation had been 
 hatched into a Mammal — that it was but a very simple 
 process for a rising Struthio to cast its feathers, to put on a 
 garment of hair, to discharge its old bill, to transform every 
 wheel and cog of its inner mechanism, and then to hop out 
 of its egg as a full-fledged Mammal. They would have 
 told the vender of such a monstrous fable, that he was de- 
 serting the light of analogy and the plain road of physical 
 truth — and that the serious assertion of such a genealogj , 
 while it proved nothing else, proved him incapable either of 
 discussing, or pronouncing a sane judgment on any grave 
 question of organic nature. 
 
 (6) There is an argument advanced in The Explanations 
 (p. 162, &c), and repeated in all subsequent Editions of 
 The Vestiges, as if it led to a kind oS law : viz. that the 
 perfection of the fauna of any country is in proportion to 
 the time the country has been in the condition of dry land. 
 Thus the Galapagos are supposed by Mr. Darwin to have 
 been elevated " within a late geological period ; " and Lizards, 
 
262 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Tortoises, and Birds, are the highest indigenous animals. 
 " These islands (says our Author) had not the full time for 
 the completion of the series, and it is incomplete ac- 
 cordingly." Take the whole theory of transmutation for 
 granted, and all these facts may seem to run smoothly. But 
 who, in his sober senses, will believe that the sea-weeds of 
 the Pacific were transmuted into the grasses and shrubs of 
 the Galapagos ? We only know the geological date of the 
 Galapagos by conjecture ; and allowing that they are of a 
 late geological period, the flora and fauna are much too far 
 advanced to be accounted for by transmutation. If the rats 
 and mice were imported, why may not most of the aquatic 
 birds have come as colonists? If the terrestrial birds be 
 truly indigenous, where are there, within these islands, the 
 anterior forms of life from which they sprang by transmu- 
 tation ? The argument is most slippery and worthless ; and the 
 quoted example neither proves nor illustrates the transmu- 
 tation theory. It only takes it for granted. 
 
 Another example is borrowed from Australia, which is 
 called a new country — "one that has been belated in its 
 physical and organic development" (p. 163). If we suppose 
 the men of Australia to be colonists, we may conclude that 
 the highest indigenous animals are Marsupials • but how are 
 we to prove that this southern continent is a new country ? 
 The Edinburgh Reviewer, in a somewhat flippant note, writ- 
 ten more, perhaps, in jest than earnest, told the Author 
 that from its flora and fauna he ought to call it a very old 
 country. This is described, it seems, by a Westminster 
 Reviewer, as one of " the most complete miscomprehensions 
 of reasoning he ever met with" . . . and " a warning to all 
 believers in ex parte criticism." And our Author clenches 
 the matter by gravely adding, " that the note would not be 
 worthy of analysis, but that the self-complacency of the 
 writer is so apt to impose upon readers who do not inquire 
 for themselves." These, no doubt, are brave comments ; and 
 it is almost as rash for a man who has no visor to run tilt 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 263 
 
 with a Reviewer, as it would be for him to thrust his naked 
 hand into a hornet's nest: but as for the real geological 
 evidence for the antiquity of New Holland, neither the 
 Westminster Reviewer nor our Author ever seems to have 
 wasted a minute's thought upon it. 
 
 Many good geologists have thought that the Flora and 
 Fauna of the country belonged to an antique type; and 
 Cuvier ventured on the hypothesis, that some portions of it 
 had escaped the physical catastrophes which had afterwards 
 modified the types of the animal kingdom in the parts 
 of Europe which are best known. Whether he, and the 
 Edinburgh Reviewer after him, were justified in hinting at 
 any such conclusion, is a question not worth a straw ; for the 
 living species and genera in New Holland are very far 
 apart from the species and genera of the Oolitic period : and 
 all that we have a right to conclude, from the facts of the 
 case, appears to be this : viz. that the climatal conditions of 
 the Oolitic period corresponded nearly with the present 
 climatal conditions in New Holland. Are there, however, 
 any facts, untold in the Reviewer's note, to justify him in 
 his denial, " of any evidence to prove that New Holland is 
 a very new country ? " I think there is good evidence for 
 this denial; and good geological evidence to make it pro- 
 bable that the part of New Holland which is best known 
 is one of the oldest countries on the face of the earth. 
 This evidence, such as it is, I will try to explain in a few 
 words. 
 
 We are absolutely certain that in a wide geographical 
 region, through which now passes the Eastern coast-line of 
 New Holland, there was a palaeozoic marine fauna — that 
 there was at the same time, within the region, dry land with 
 trees and forests — that there were, during the same period, 
 sand-banks and shingle-banks, and all the ordinary deposits 
 of a shallow sea. But the sequence of organic life, traced 
 among these long-continued deposits, was arrested near the 
 base of the Oolitic system : and along many hundred of miles 
 
264 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 of the present coast-line no geologist has yet discovered one 
 scrap of any well-marked marine deposit of the upper 
 Oolitic, Cretaceous, or Tertiary age. What do we reasonably 
 conclude from these negative facts? That the best-explored 
 parts of New Holland were never submerged under the 
 ocean during these vast periods of time; and that they have 
 remained high and dry during countless ages until now. 
 Had the known parts of this southern continent been sub- 
 merged, again and again, like many parts of Europe, we 
 should look for some proofs of submergence in Oolitic, 
 Cretaceous, or Tertiary deposits; but we find them not: and 
 this inevitable conclusion must stand (till it is upset by 
 some, at present, unknown evidence) — that New Holland, 
 as a country of dry land, is one of the oldest on the face of 
 the Earth. The Reviewer, no doubt, knew this when he 
 wrote his remarks upon New Holland ; but did not think it 
 worth his while to state the evidence. He made a slip, 
 however, when he said that the Author of The Vestiges was 
 inconsistent. He is nobly consistent: he never flinches 
 from his hypothesis whatever be the facts, and when lie 
 deals theoretically with facts, he hardly ever blunders into 
 what is right. The facts supplied by New Holland, as 
 I have drawn them out with no warp from any hypothesis, 
 thus give us, if we wanted it, a new argument against 
 the theory of development; and also against the supposed 
 proportion between the perfection of any living fauna and 
 the past duration of the dry land on which it flourishes. 
 
 After a long blank in the old organic sequence of New 
 Holland, we at length reach the traces of some conditions 
 resembling those of Europe. We have traces of pliocene 
 terrestrial deposits ; we have gigantic Marsupials in certain 
 caverns; and in some islands, of the southern hemisphere, 
 we have gigantic birds : and these remains - mingled, as in 
 Europe, with others that are not gigantic, and of the common 
 type — belong to the predecessors, but not the progenitors, of 
 the animals that now make the \W\v\g fauna of the country. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 265 
 
 There is an archetype in nature, and the works of nature, 
 when understood, are in harmony among themselves. 
 
 (7) One example more of the Author's critical judg- 
 ment, and I have done. Baron Cuvier (he tells us) made a 
 mistake in 1826 in some speculations about a deluge. " May 
 not he, then, be wrong also in his opinion regarding the 
 development of species?" (Explatiatiofis, p. 99)> And M. 
 Agassiz (again he tells us) blundered in his explanation 
 of " the constitution and movement of glaciers ," therefore 
 he is liable to error ; " and we must be cautious in accept- 
 ing as an infallible dictum what he is pleased to say on 
 the comparatively profound doctrine of organic develop- 
 ment." Neither Cuvier nor Agassiz were great geologists ; 
 for neither of them had practically sifted the leading evi- 
 dences of that science. Ne sutor ultra crepidam is a trite 
 proverb, that applies to them as well as to feebler men; 
 and to no man living does it apply more pungently than 
 to our Author. It is but a sorry business to be raking 
 up the blunders of great men ; and who is so foolish as 
 to call any men infallible ? To have justified his criticism, 
 and given it any point or meaning, he ought to have 
 brought out some case in which Cuvier had blundered on 
 an inductive question of physiology; or Agassiz, in like 
 manner, had blundered in some great anatomical question 
 connected with fossil fishes. " The erroneous and imperfect 
 ideas, it seems, of great men often become an annoyance 
 . . . because the weak and narrow-minded are so apt, after- 
 wards, to seize upon such ideas, and brandish them in the 
 faces of advancing truths." The general sentiment, here 
 expressed, is true ; but its application is ridiculous and vain. 
 Advancing truth is the scheme of The Vestiges, and we are 
 not, it would seem, to brandish against its face the con- 
 clusions drawn inductively by great men, like Cuvier and 
 Agassjz, after labour almost incredible in the long exami- 
 nation of details bearing on the very question in debate ! 
 
 I may here remark that our Author evolves many of his 
 
266 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 general propositions with a confidence which savours little of 
 philosophic caution, and sometimes with a rash dogmatism 
 worthy of the Physio-philosophy of Oken. We will give a 
 few examples of this rashness from The Explanations and 
 the sixth Edition of The Vestiges. 
 
 (l) There was dry land unreckonable ages before there 
 were any land-animals" {V. pp. 57, 160). (2) " It is now 
 fully ascertained that the various bread-forming grains, 
 wheat, barley, oats and rye, are resolvable into one" (V. 
 p. 232). (3) "The groves which formed the coal-beds 
 might have been a fitting habitation for reptiles, birds, and 
 mammals, as such groves are at the present day" {E. p. 151). 
 (4) " Sex is fully ascertained to be a matter of development. 
 All beings are, at one stage of the embryonic process, female: 
 a certain number of them are afterwards advanced to be of 
 the more powerful sex {V. p. 219, 220). (5) "Where the 
 iguanodon lived the elephant might have lived" (V. p. 151). 
 (6) " The sea of the Lower Silurian Era was capable of 
 supporting fish, but no fish existed... I pin my opponents 
 down to this amazing fact, that the sea for numberless ages 
 was destitute of fish" (E. p. 45, 151. V. p. 57)- (7) "It 
 hence forcibly appears that the theatres of life must have lain 
 unserviceable^ or in the possession of a tenantry inferior to 
 what might have enjoyed them for many ages : there surely 
 would have been no such waste allowed on a system where 
 Omnipotence was working on a plan of minute attention to 
 specialities" (E. 151). (8) "The oldest palaeozoic Placoids — 
 the highest types of their class! — it is barely possible to esta- 
 blish their being vertebrata at all . . . of their general inferiority 
 there can be no room for doubt*" (E. p. 51). (9) The Devon- 
 ian fishes (Ganoids and Placoids) " are manifestly of an 
 inferior character to the two other Orders which afterwards 
 came into existence." (V. p. 64, &c.) (10) "The human 
 foetus is often left with one of the most important parts 
 of its frame imperfectly developed — the heart, for instance, 
 
 * Oken's opinion on this point will not, I should think, be suspected. 
 Supra, p. 244. \ 
 
SUPPLEMExNT TO THE APPENDIX. 267 
 
 goes no farther than the three- chambered form, so that it is 
 the heart of a reptile. There are even instances of the organ 
 being left in the two-chambered or fish-form . . . Seeing a 
 complete specific retrogression in one point, how easy it is 
 to suppose a simply natural process reversing the phenome- 
 non, and making a fish-mother develop a reptile-heart, or a 
 reptile-mother develop a mammal one. It is no great boldness 
 to surmise that a super-adequacy of force (and the Author 
 thinks a super-adequacy of force quite as natural as an un- 
 der- adequacy) would suffice in a natatorial bird to give it as 
 a progeny the ornithorhynchus, or give the progeny of the 
 ornithorhynchus the mouth and feet of a true mammalian, 
 and thus complete in two stages a passage from one class to 
 another" (V. p. 229). (11) "Of the transitions or trans- 
 mutations implied in the development-theory, the greatest, 
 or most violent, are those few which took place in the 
 passage from the invertebrate animals to fishes, from fishes 
 to reptiles, and from these to the higher classes . . . Here, 
 accordingly, shall we always find the affinities less distinct 
 than elsewhere ; and yet at all of them some connexions are 
 visible, leaving the general fact of the transition indubit- 
 able" {V. p. 283). 
 
 I could easily multiply my examples of very rash asser- 
 tions to four or five times the number ; but I think it best 
 to pause here, and to end my list with this general and 
 indubitable fact of transmutation from Class to Class ! 
 
 My general remarks on the assertions in these strange 
 extracts (honestly quoted from our Author's books) must be 
 short. Of the assertions conveyed under numbers one, three 
 and five, of the above list, there is not the shadow of a proof. 
 The assertion under number five may not be, perhaps, im- 
 probable; but it is purely gratuitous, and not worth dis- 
 cussing. Number two is not true, if we may trust the best 
 living botanists. Number four requires a short comment. 
 Number six is not true, as it is expressed in the Author's 
 words. I believe, however, that some of our oldest known 
 
268 SUPPLEMENT TO THK APPENDIX- 
 
 deposits were made in a deep sea, and on that account were 
 unfit for the habitation of the old Ganoids and Placoids: and 
 that these Fishes came into being when a fit habitat was 
 found for them. Number seven we can only regard as 
 a very rash conclusion, followed by a worthless, and, some 
 will think, a profane comment. Numbers eight and nine 
 are, I believe, utterly untrue. Their statements are not 
 accepted by geologists, and are in flat contradiction to the 
 classifications of Miiller, Owen, and Oken. Numbers ten 
 and eleven do require some notice, as they contain the pith 
 and marrow of our Author's system. 
 
 In a certain sense it is true, that sex is a matter of 
 development; for animals begin from a nascent fruitful 
 germ, and after passing through a natural cycle of progres- 
 sive changes, are at length perfected in every organ, are 
 capable of maintaining an independent life, and, by the 
 union of two sexes, of recommencing a cycle similar to that 
 through which they themselves began and were brought to 
 full sexual maturity. But where is the proof, that " all 
 beings are, at one step of the embryonic process, female"? 
 I know of none. If the assertion were correct, we ought to 
 prove (as a part of the general economy of nature) that after 
 the foetal form has gained a sexual development as a female, 
 it is afterwards so changed as to lose its former sex, and 
 pass into a male. Is there a single case of this kind in the 
 organic world ? I never heard of one ; and, unquestionably, 
 such a transformation was never seen in the foetal develop- 
 ment of any of the higher animals. In the early embryonic 
 state the nascent animal has no sexual organs ; afterwards 
 the sex is developed organically. 
 
 Two theories have beeen started on the question. — One 
 supposes that the future sex is implied, or potentially deter- 
 mined, in the very first embryonic conditions. The other 
 assumes that, in the first embryonic changes, there is no 
 predetermination of the future sex ; and that future con- 
 ditions determine the point. Which of these two theories 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 269 
 
 is right I know not: but the former is, I believe, supported 
 by the best names, and is, in appearance, the most philo- 
 sophical. Huber, and many other naturalists, have proved 
 that the working bees are imperfectly developed females. 
 By a particular treatment their full development is arrested. 
 But " the bees can so modify a larva, which otherwise would 
 end in a worker, that when the perfect insect emerges from 
 the pupa, it is found to be a queen, or true female" {Vestiges 
 p. 220). This was, no doubt, a very remarkable discovery ; 
 but I cannot discern in it any glimering of light to help us 
 in deciding between the two theories. It merely gives us 
 a most interesting case where, in one set of conditions 
 (under the control of the hive) a female bee is arrested in 
 her full development, while under another set of conditions 
 (also under like control) a perfect female is brought to 
 maturity. But where have we a proof, in such facts as 
 these, that the male insect was ever in the condition of a 
 female? We have no proof whatsoever. Bees are no excep- 
 tions to the general rule. In their early embryonic state they 
 have no sex ; and afterwards, through what conditions 
 matters not, some pass into males and others into females. 
 The singular economy of bees, and the history of their 
 development, throws, therefore, no new light on either of 
 the previous questions; and leaves them exactly where they 
 were before. Had Huber been able to prove that the same 
 larva might, by peculiar treatment, be developed either into 
 a drone, or into a queen-bee, he would have done some- 
 thing towards settling a long-disputed question ; but this 
 he has not done. And were this point proved, it would not 
 justify the assertion of our Author, "that all beings are in 
 one state of their embryonic progress female j and a certain 
 number of them are afterwards advanced to be of the more 
 powerful sex." In these words he has given us a rash 
 generalization, and an assertion of facts that is incorrect 
 and un philosophical. 
 
 But I must, in the next place, notice the argument 
 
270 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 drawn from certain unhappy cases of monstrosity. In some 
 (fortunately rare) cases a child is born with a free com- 
 munication between the lower chambers of its heart, the 
 septum between its ventricles not having been completed. It 
 has an imperfect Mammal's heart ; but it is not true that its 
 heart, considered as a whole, looks like that of any Reptile ; 
 and in other parts of its framework it is like all other 
 children. Its imperfect heart is out of organic harmony with 
 its functions. It is therefore a blue, miserable, and sickly child. 
 Were it true that a blue child could grow up to a healthy 
 blue manhood — that it could unite with another being like 
 itself, and produce a human family of its own peculiar 
 structure, we should gain a kind of downward step in the 
 theory of development : for we should have a variety of the 
 human family, of a lower grade, in one of its vital organs, 
 than other human beings. But who ever heard of such 
 a race ? 
 
 Again, it may be true that a monstrous human foetus 
 may be born with a single heart. Every son of man has 
 once lived in a watery fluid, and had a single (or two- 
 chambered) heart ; but never the heart of a perfect fish : 
 and we can readily conceive (what indeed sometimes hap- 
 pens) that the progress of one organ should be stunted 
 while the other organs go on to a natural maturity. But 
 were such a monstrous human foetus to be born alive, it 
 could not continue to live in the air for a single moment. 
 It would be organically more helpless than a fish; for it 
 would have no gills to enable it to breathe in water, and it 
 would want the apparatus which would enable it to breathe 
 the air. By such a case of monstrosity the theory of deve- 
 lopment gains not one grain of help. 
 
 Among many lower animals, when the larva quits the 
 mother, and maintains (like the tadpole) an independent life, 
 we have a far more plausible shew of evidence for the 
 theory, and among phenomena, moreover, which belong not 
 to monstrosities. Our Author tells us that in such cases a 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 27 1 
 
 specific transmutation is realized, although on a descending 
 grade, and " that the progeny of a Reptile literally becomes 
 a Fish" (V. p. 226). But mere resemblances, as we have 
 said before, will not serve the purposes of his theory. 
 The larva of a Reptile may look like a Fish ; or the foetus 
 of a Mammal may, during one stage of its growth, have 
 one portion of its structure in .analogy with the corre- 
 sponding portion of a perfect Reptile. But still he gains 
 nothing, unless he can shew us a case of two monstrous 
 larvae, of perfect sex, producing a continued progeny on a 
 lower grade than the parents from which they sprang. Such 
 monsters would be organically in advance of all other larvae, 
 and might breed on this hypothesis a race of animals on a 
 descending grade. But what naturalist has ever seen such 
 larvae, or such a degraded progeny, since men have em- 
 ployed themselves in the study of the works of Nature? 
 Our Author's assertions are not anatomically true, and his 
 theory gains not by this part of nature, when truly sifted, 
 one atom of new evidence. 
 
 When the Author tells us {V. p. 224) that the cases of 
 human monstrosity are cases of under -adequacy of develop- 
 ment in a particular organ, he states what is physically true, 
 and only what experience has taught us : but when he 
 states that a super-adequacy of development seems as natural 
 as an under-adequacy , and "that it is easy to suppose a 
 simply natural process making a Fish-mother develop a 
 reptile- heart, or a Reptile-mother develop a mammal one," 
 he deserts nature, tells us of the conceptions of his fancy, 
 and no longer of the inductions of his reason from the 
 observation of what Nature does. He tells us of something 
 out of harmony with Nature, and which no mortal e}^e has 
 ever witnessed since the world began. And in pretending 
 to hatch a Mammal from a web-footed Bird only by two 
 stages of incubation, he theorizes without a fact to lean 
 upon, talks of a law which violates every thing we know of 
 law, and mocks the whole economy of Nature. 
 
272 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 What conceptions a man may mature in the teeming 
 womb of his imagination, is not a question for inductive 
 physics. While we trust to Nature, we may send such 
 abortive visions, along with all the idle dreams of ideal 
 or material Pantheists "into (what Milton calls) a limbo 
 large and broad, since called the paradise of fools." Cases 
 of monstrosity, such as those above quoted, are cases of 
 imperfection in early organic progress, and have a place in 
 Nature. Cases of organic progress beyond the parental 
 grade are. cases unknown, and out of all Nature's organic 
 cycles. We may fancy anything : we might make a scheme 
 of Nature out of the wildest Oriental visions. I can fancy 
 a rat to come by hatching from a goose's egg : and I can 
 fancy, with just as much inductive reason (for while I body 
 forth, out of the storehouse of my fancy, the form of things 
 unseen, what have I to do with inductive reason?) a full- 
 dressed, slippered pantaloon to start by natural incubation 
 out of an owl's nest, and begin his pantomimic dances, to 
 the delight of all who love to pry beyond the secrets of 
 Nature. 
 
 The last passage (No. 11) in the list of quotations from 
 The Vestiges, deserves, if I mistake not its purpose, a far 
 sterner reprehension. I have a right to construct and pub- 
 lish a scheme of animated nature based on fact and observa- 
 tion, and I should do well to reflect light upon it by the aid 
 of all kindred departments of physical knowledge within 
 my reach : and if I can shew that my scheme of animated 
 nature derives support or illustration from the past history 
 of organic nature, as it is written in the old records of 
 the earth, so much the better. If, again, my scheme derive 
 illustration from a broad view of the development of organic 
 life while in the foetal state, so much the better. We all 
 believe (as has been stated before) that there was an arche- 
 type of Nature in the prescient mind of the great Creator of 
 the universe, and we fully believe that all parts of Nature 
 are in harmony among themselves, and that the laws, under 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 273 
 
 which they make their ordained movements, are as un- 
 changeable as the attributes of the Godhead. 
 
 Again, if I take up (like Oken) a pantheistic view of 
 material development, I have a right to shew that my scheme, 
 or arrangement of the organic world (though in the first 
 instance derived honestly and historically from fact and 
 observation) is in harmony with my pantheistic faith, and 
 gives it colour and support. But if, while I am evolving as 
 a natural historian my scheme of Nature, I forget the duties 
 of an historian ; and, while I profess only to describe facts, 
 covertly insinuate my theory, and describe Nature, not as 
 she is, but as she ought to be in conformity with my theory, 
 I thereby put a direct fraud upon my readers. Let any one 
 who casts his eye over this page turn to The Vestiges 
 (p. 283), and he will understand what I mean by this kind 
 of logical fraud. The Author tells us, most truly, that in 
 the animal kingdom connexions are visible between Class 
 and Class. No one denies this ; and were it not so, there 
 would be an end of comparative anatomy, and of all that is 
 built upon it. But when he tells us, that these connexions 
 leave the general fact of the transition (from Class to Class) 
 indubitable, while he uses in the same paragraph (p. 283) 
 the words transition and transmutation as terms convertible, 
 he thereby deserts the language of a natural historian, and 
 imposes on the reader by the affirmation of an hypothesis. 
 I think this remark not unimportant as a caution ; and 
 it applies to many other passages in the longest chapter 
 of The Vestiges (p. 254. . .p. 368). 
 
 In one word — the beginning of some of the lowest ani- 
 mals, for want of microscopic evidence, is involved in inex- 
 tricable obscurity. Known species do not change; for 
 organic cycles, like all other laws of Nature, are unchange- 
 able. There is no proof of any transmutation among well- 
 established species, and there is (« fortiori) no proof or pro- 
 bability of any transmutations from Order to Order, or from 
 Class to Class, in the actual world. And in the old world, 
 S. d. S 
 
274 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 though creation has been progressive on the whole — probably 
 because adapted to progressive conditions — yet has this pro- 
 gress (when studied in detail) been so effected as to bid 
 defiance to the pantheistic theory of development : so that 
 were the theory made even probable by the phenomena of 
 the living world, it would still be in direct antagonism with 
 many of the most prominent facts in the old phenomena 
 of extinct nature. I know that I am now doing little more 
 than repeating what has been told before ; but some may turn 
 over the leaves of the Preface who will not trouble them- 
 selves with this Note; and some may, perhaps, read this 
 Note who would not trouble themselves with the Preface. 
 
 If our Author, while maintaining his hypothesis, has 
 been rash and inconsiderate in stating facts, he has been 
 equally inconsiderate while quoting his authorities. Within 
 the compass of two pages he has professed to muster against 
 the Edinburgh Reviewer the names of Harvey, Grew, 
 Lister, Meckel, Professor Owen, Dr. Roget, and John 
 Hunter (Explanations, pp. 106, 107); and in another page 
 (p. 56) he has sheltered himself under the names of Cuvier 
 and Linnaeus. Some of these are mighty names, and 
 enough to make a strong man quail should he find them 
 honestly put in array against him. Let us then shortly sift 
 this evidence. Speaking of the palaeozoic Fishes (Placoids 
 and Ganoids), he denies their high organic type, in the first 
 place, on the authority of Cuvier, who in his Regne Animal 
 puts cartilaginous Fishes on a second grade, yet " in some 
 measure parallel to the Jirst." Such words as these (how- 
 ever taken) make very little for our Author's case ; and it 
 is notorious that Cuvier had neither studied the palaeozoic 
 Fishes, nor ever given an opinion respecting them. More- 
 over, in another page of the Explanations, our Author tells 
 us that he had given up the linear arrangement of Cuvier ; 
 and he reproves the Reviewer, in no measured phrase, and 
 talks of " turning him out of court," because he presumed 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 275 
 
 to argue upon the linear scheme. Had the Author, then, 
 any right, in page 50, to come back once more to the system 
 he had deserted, in order to find an apparent argument 
 against the Reviewer? There was clearly either a moral 
 or a logical bar against his argument ; and he had obviously 
 no right whatsoever to take up Cuvier's system for one pur- 
 pose, and, within a few pages, to discard it for another. 
 
 Next he tells us, " that as for these (palaeozoic) Placoids, 
 (the highest types of their Class /) it is barely possible to 
 establish their being vertebrata at all." . . . But how is this 
 position to be made good? By the misstatement of an ana- 
 tomical fact, and by the authority of Linnaeus, " who was 
 so impressed by the low characters of many of this (cartila- 
 ginous) Order, that he actually ranked them with the 
 Worms." But, in the name of common sense, what had 
 the organic grade of Linnaeus' s worms — Cyclostomes — to do 
 with the organic grade of the old Placoids ? I wish not to 
 discuss this question here. I only give these facts in illus- 
 tration of our Author's manner of using his authorities : 
 and leaving the old Placoids, we may affirm with great con- 
 fidence, that had Linnaeus seen the fragments of the noble 
 Ganoids that are found so abundantly in the old Red 
 Sandstone and Carboniferous rocks of Scotland, he would, 
 on his own system, have removed them out of their proper 
 Class (as was indeed done at first sight by Dr. Hibbert and 
 Professor Agassiz himself), and pronounced them Reptiles — 
 so far are they elevated above all ordinary types of known 
 Ganoid Fishes. Such is the use made of the names of 
 Cuvier and Linnaeus. 
 
 Let us next come to Owen and Roget. It is notorious 
 that neither of them holds to the theory of development ; 
 and little can be gained for it by special pleading on some 
 casual sentence that may have found a place in their pub- 
 lished works. I have alluded to these Authors before (supra 
 p. xxxvii). " Mr. Owen says, that man's embryonic meta- 
 morphoses would not be less striking than those of a 
 
 s2 
 
276 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Butterfly, if subjected like them to observation . . . that 
 the human embryo is first vermiform — next stamped with 
 the characters of the apodal Fish — afterwards indicative of 
 the Enaliosaur, and so forth" {Explanations, p. 106). Not 
 one of these assertions was denied by Dr. Clark or the 
 Edinburgh Reviewer: they only contended against the 
 absurd and hypothetical conclusions that were drawn from 
 the observed foetal resemblances. They contended, for ex- 
 ample, that a Mammal's foetus never had the anatomical 
 structure, or the reproductive organs of a worm — that it 
 never breathed by gills, or had such a perfect ichthyic struc- 
 ture, that if thrown off by abortion it could live as a Fish, 
 and in that Class continue its species — that the hearts of 
 Birds and Mammals do not pass through forms which are 
 permanent in Fishes and Reptiles, &c. &c. On all these 
 points Professor Owen is in most literal agreement with 
 them. What right then has our Author to trifle with the 
 reader, by quoting the Professor's authority against the 
 Reviewer ? 
 
 I am anxious neither to overlook nor overstate a single 
 essential fact that bears on the question. In the case of 
 a Mammal, life begins in the manner above stated (p. xxix), 
 and then advances by the fission and multiplication of 
 the first vital germ. The living molecules then run by 
 a specific, organic affinity into a streak, out of which is 
 elaborated the backbone and spinal chord. The outside 
 of the cylindrical streak is gelatinous, and by attracting 
 phosphate of lime within its substance gradually becomes a 
 bone : but the central line of the streak is albuminous, and 
 by a similar process of attraction, or appropriation, passes 
 into a true nervous substance, and becomes a spinal chord. 
 On these points I can afford not merely to be just, but 
 generous. Owen calls the streak "vermiform;" but the 
 great Harvey actually calls it a worm. His words are as 
 follows: ef Processus secundus qui post quartum diem in- 
 cipit, est primi cujusdam concrementi, quod ego vermiculum, 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 277 
 
 seu galbam dixerim ; vitam enira et motum galbae obscurum 
 prae se fert." De Generatione Animalium. Exercitatio 55, 
 de ordine partium in generatione. Had our Author known 
 this passage, he would I think have quoted it: yet he 
 quotes the name of Harvey as an opponent of the statements 
 of Dr. Clark, and a supporter of the theory of develop- 
 ment. 
 
 I have before alluded to a quotation from the Bridge- 
 water Treatise of Dr. Roget (p. xxxvii): but justice to that 
 physiologist compels me to take some further notice of it 
 in this place. The quotation from this Treatise is as follows : 
 "that the animals which occupy the highest stations in 
 each series possess, at the commencement of their existence, 
 forms exhibiting a marked resemblance to those presented in 
 the permanent condition of the lowest animals of the same 
 series ; and that, during the progress of their development, 
 they assume in succession the characters of each tribe, cor- 
 responding to their consecutive order in the ascending 
 chain." Let us admit all this, and let us admit further, 
 and for the sake of argument, that it was " hinted at by 
 Harvey, and afterwards shadowed forth by John Hunter," 
 {Explanations, p. 107): but what does it prove for the 
 theory of development, unless we can also prove something 
 more during foetal development than marked resemblance? 
 unless we can shew some one case (which no one has ever 
 done) where the fcetus (e.g.) of a Mammal is, during its 
 progress, so perfect a Fish or Reptile that it might be thrown 
 off by abortion and continue its species on the lower grade. 
 As we have stated again and again, there is not the similitude 
 of any evidence for such a change as this in Nature : and 
 were it true, so as to become a law of Nature, it could only 
 produce a multiplication or confusion of specific types, and 
 no development (without the help of a new hypothesis) on 
 any ascending scale. I am not however now dealing with 
 this question ; but, historically, with the testimony of certain 
 quoted authorities ; and 1 have now before me a letter from 
 
278 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Dr. Roget, in which he complains of the construction put 
 upon his Treatise by the Author of The Vestiges. " I had 
 hoped," he says, "when I wrote the passage (relating to 
 the unity of composition), that by designating the successive 
 stages of fcetal growth as exhibiting a resemblance only (not 
 a true analogy) to the forms of the lower animals in the same 
 series, I should have been secured from the imputation 
 of being a disciple of that school, or of having adopted that 
 
 hypothesis (i. e. the theory of development) I certainly 
 
 never ventured to assert that a Mammal-foetus, in any stage 
 of its growth, ever breathed by gills, or exercised any of 
 the functions peculiar to Fishes or Reptiles — for such is not 
 the fact." But we have a better evidence even than this for 
 ascertaining the opinions of Dr. Roget — we have his matured 
 judgment, on the question in debate, formally recorded in 
 his Treatise. "Whatever (he says) may be the apparent 
 similarity between one animal and another, during different 
 periods of their respective developments, there still exist 
 specific differences, establishing between them an impassable 
 barrier of separation, and effectually preventing any con- 
 version of one species into another, however nearly the two 
 may be allied. The essential characters of each species, 
 amidst occasional varieties, remain ever constant and im- 
 mutable" (Bridgewater Treatise, Vol. u. p. 636 of the first 
 and second, or p. 569 of the third Edition). This quotation 
 is not taken from the middle of a great work where it might 
 easily have escaped notice ; but from a concluding summary, 
 on the "Unity of Design," which no careful reader could 
 possibly have overlooked. If our Author had read it, would 
 he be morally justified in afterwards quoting Dr. Roget as 
 an evidence on his own side, and in support of the theory of 
 development? I might leave this question in the hands 
 of better casuists than I am. 
 
 I have an undoubted right to draw my own conclusions 
 from the facts brought out by other men who differ from me 
 in opinion ; but I have no right to quote their works in such 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 279 
 
 a way as to put them among the maintainers of opinions 
 which they have formally repudiated. No one denies the 
 wonderful sequence of phenomena during embryonic growth 
 in the teeming womb of Nature, or pretends to undervalue 
 the discoveries in this part of Nature brought to light in 
 modern times. No one denies the high meaning of analogies 
 in the works of Nature, made manifest to our enlightened 
 senses and bearing the stamp of one great contriving Mind. 
 Who has decried the researches of those great men who, since 
 the days of Harvey, have continually advanced our know- 
 ledge of foetal development? And who has pretended to 
 overlook the value of resemblances, which, before long, may 
 help us to a more perfect scheme of classification, and en- 
 able us to make some approach towards the archetype of 
 Nature ? The Edinburgh Reviewer did not dare to level 
 a single shaft against the labourers in this field of truth. 
 He protested only against a misinterpretation of these 
 labours by shallow, ignorant, or rash men ; who, by a fla- 
 grant abuse of facts, built up an hypothetical scheme that 
 was out of Nature — that, in defiance of Nature, broke in 
 upon the constancy of organic laws, warred against moral 
 sense, and had not one fragment of any true inductive evi- 
 dence to rest upon. It was against such a scheme as this 
 that the Reviewer lifted up his voice, and pronounced it, 
 "from first to last, nothing but a pile of wildly gratuitous 
 hypotheses" (Explanations, p. 107)* But I am on the sub- 
 ject of authorities; and I here dismiss the names of Linnaeus, 
 Cuvier, John Hunter, Owen, and Roget; and little has the 
 Author gained by producing them. 
 
 " The Edinburgh Reviewer," says the Author (Explana- 
 tions, p. 103), "puts trust in Dr. Clark of Cambridge, while 
 I have resorted, for the support of my general theory, to the 
 views advocated by other physiologists . . . For the one au- 
 thority that he has called into court, it would be easy to 
 summon many as good on the other side; for instance, 
 Harvey, Grew, Lister, and Meckel" (p. 106). Meckel was 
 
280 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 a physiologist of good name during the last century, but 
 I know nothing of his works. Lister is a good Cambridge 
 name, and in his voluminous works there is not, I believe, 
 a word written in support of the theory of development. 
 Grew was a physiologist of reputation, a Secretary of the 
 Royal Society, and a contemporary of Newton. He published 
 three large works — (1) "On the Comparative Anatomy of 
 the Stomach and Guts." (2) "On the Anatomy of Plants." 
 (3) fi Cosmologia Sacra, or A Discourse of the Universe, as 
 it is the Creation and Kingdom of God." (4) Also a shorter 
 work, " Tractatus de Sal is Cathartici natura et usu." In 
 which of these volumes our Author has found a word in 
 support of his theory of development, is more than I can 
 tell. As for Harvey, his name stands out and shines in 
 the glorious ancestral history of Cambridge, and he must 
 not be passed over without some further notice. 
 
 The first question is this : Are the opinions of these four 
 physiologists, either on the foetal question, or on any hypo- 
 thesis arising out of it, essentially different from those 
 expressed by Dr. Clark ? I believe not. And certain I am 
 that the works of Harvey, if brought into court as evidence, 
 would very little serve our Author's purpose. He has done 
 ill to sport with evidence, and he has shewn how very little 
 he comprehends the severe simplicity which belongs to it. 
 Dr. Clark quoted a remarkable discovery (perfected by three 
 great German anatomists) in illustration of the gradual foetal 
 development of a Mammal's heart. Harvey also, in his im- 
 mortal work " De molu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animations" 
 discussed the structure of a Mammal's heart, and knew the 
 leading facts in the history of its gradual development ; but 
 it would be folly to contend that his authority is opposed to 
 the statements of Dr. Clark, because he had not done more 
 than belongs to the powers of one man — because he had not 
 anticipated the discoveries made two hundred years after- 
 wards by the concurrent labours of such anatomists as 
 Valentin, Rathke, and Bischoff. I thank, however, our 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 281 
 
 Author for quoting Harvey's name, as he has thereby in- 
 duced me to read another work of that great philosopher — 
 his Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium — in the hopes 
 of finding some sentence in it bearing on the theory of 
 development. 
 
 As to the manner in which vitality is given to the ger- 
 minal vesicle of the ovum, he entertained some notions which 
 are now generally repudiated by physiologists: and like many 
 of the older naturalists (who were lost among the intricacies 
 of minute observation, and without the powerful help of the 
 modern microscope), he had some ill-defined notions of am- 
 biguous generation. Thus (Exercitatio 44) he tells us of 
 insect generation, " ubi vermis per met amor phosin ex ovo nas- 
 citur ; vel ex materia putrescente primordia procreantur, a 
 quibus per metamor phosin papilio vel musca oritur" &c. On 
 the other hand, describing the pullet's egg, he writes as 
 follows : " Absque gallina nonjit ovum ; nee fcecundum evadit 
 sine gallo. Quod opinioni illi adversatur, qua? primum ani- 
 malium ortum e limo terra? deducit" (Exercitatio 27). Again, 
 speaking of the animal kingdom, he tells us, e< Eodem modo 
 generantur, tarn ea, qua? sponte oriri dicuntur, et materiam 
 suam primam, primave exordia a putridine, cceno, rore, excre- 
 mentis, vel partibus stirpium aut animalium, casu fortuitove 
 nanciscuntur ; qucim ilia qua? ex semine animalium proveniunt. 
 Quippe omnibus viventibus id commune est, ut ex semine, seu 
 ovo, originem ducant" (Exercitatio 56). 
 
 No one will now maintain the distinction ex semine seu 
 ovo, whatever be his opinions on cases of ambiguous genera- 
 tion. But the moment Harvey escaped from phenomena 
 he had not mastered, he expressed himself plainly and 
 emphatically. Thus describing the hatching of a pullet's 
 egg, he says, " Quomodo scilicet ex mare et fcemina ovum pro- 
 creetur, et quo pacto ex ovo, gallus et gallina proveniant, isto- 
 que circuiiu, illorum genus a?temitatem, natura? munere, con- 
 seqnatur" (Exercitatio 12). And, in like manner, though he 
 was perplexed with the generation of insects, and spoke of 
 
282 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 them as genus suum minus servanlia minusve perpetua ; yet of 
 the higher animals, whether terrestrial or aquatic, he affirms 
 that " ab univoco principio (nempe ab eddem specie) ozternita- 
 tem consequuntur : hujusque rei causam primam naturae, et 
 virtuti vegetative assignamus" (Ex. 44). It is impossible to 
 affirm the continuity of species in stronger words *. Nay, 
 he protests against the idea of progressive development, 
 affirming that the offspring cannot rise above the parent 
 grade — "non efficienlibus suis primis, sive genitoribus, nobilior 
 censeri potest :" and he describes all this fixed order as spring- 
 ing from the provident wisdom of God — "providentid, sapien- 
 tid item, bonitate, et intelleclu, rationalis animoe nostra? captnm 
 longe superantibus" (Ex. 49)- There is also an admirable 
 passage on the doctrine of a Final Cause in Exercitatio 4*5, 
 which I cannot quote. I have already quoted one passage 
 from Exercitatio 55, De ordine Partium in Generations It 
 is allowed by all authorities to be a wonderful chapter 
 on foetal development, considering the time when it was 
 written ; and, so far from contradicting, it falls in with, and, 
 as far as it goes, confirms the essay on the same subject 
 written two hundred years afterwards by our living Cam- 
 bridge Professor of Anatomy. 
 
 What, then, I may well ask, does our Author gain by 
 summoning the works of Harvey into court ? Had he read 
 the works? I have given one quotation which seems to 
 prove that he had at least not read them carefully ; and it 
 would be far less to his discredit to have quoted Harvey 
 wantonly and at random, than to have read his works, and 
 then tortured them to give evidence for a theoretical scheme 
 of development. 
 
 * Harvey never finished his investigations on insect generation, nor 
 were his opinions on this subject matured in his published works. His 
 studies were interrupted, and his papers, containing a record of his experi- 
 ments on this and other parts of comparative anatomy and physiology, 
 were burnt or scattered by a ferocious fanatical mob (to the irreparable loss 
 of British science), at the breaking out of the civil wars. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 283 
 
 Our Author is enamoured of what the Edinburgh Re- 
 viewer calls "the Philosophy of Resemblances ;" and so are 
 the neophytes of both the pantheistical schools. A scheme 
 that gives unbridled license to hypothesis, and indulges the 
 fancy in its wildest movements — which deifies man, and tells 
 him to reject all knowledge but what is created by himself, 
 or can be collected organically by himself out of the world 
 of his senses — is flattering to his pride and self-love, and is 
 sure to have its followers. Let us again glance at some of 
 the dogmatical positions of Oken's system. (< Man is God 
 
 wholly manifested" (Extracts, supra, p. 225) " For God 
 
 to become real, he must appear under the form of a sphere 
 . . . God is a rotating globe. . . The world is God rotating. . . 
 Without rotation there is no being and no life" (p. 226). 
 u The whole universe is nothing but matter . . . The universe 
 is a rotating globe of matter ... There is no dead matter" 
 (p. 227). " The aether is the first realization of God" (p. 228). 
 " Fire is the totality of aether — is God manifested in his 
 totality" (p. 229). " Life is not different from organism, nor 
 also from galvanism; for life is verily the vital process" 
 (p. 239). " A galvanic pile pounded into atoms must be- 
 come alive. In this manner Nature brings forth organic 
 bodies" (p. 239). " Light shines upon the water, and it is 
 salted. Light shines upon the salted sea, and it lives" (p. 240) 
 &c. &c. Such are the fundamental propositions of a system. 
 Life begins with infusoria — development does all the rest — 
 and in the end we have man, or " God wholly manifested !" 
 Such a system, considered as philosophy, is not inductive, 
 but insane. It is not merely rank materialism, but rank 
 atheism. 
 
 The materialism of the Author of The Vestiges is not 
 so horrible as this; because he assumes the being of a 
 God, and accepts many of the great conclusions drawn from 
 our moral and immaterial nature; yet at the same time 
 takes up a fantastical scheme of physical philosophy, which 
 gives us no rational account of the highest and noblest 
 
284 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 elements of our nature. There are many pages of Oken's 
 work in which I cannot discover a glimmering of common 
 sense. To my mind they have no more sense than we 
 could gather from the whining of an idiot or the bellowing 
 of a madman. Yet, in many insane passages, a kind of 
 spectral light will now and then break out through an 
 atmosphere of mist and moonshine. And sometimes he 
 forgets his materialism, and dreams, even while describing 
 the lower animals, of circumspection, and jorelhougkl, and 
 sentiment, and a spiritual character, and a soul in a state of 
 sleep, and a spirit brooding unconsciously for years, then 
 breaking forth fearfully in earnestness and strength! ' f Gazing 
 upon a Snail (he says, Physio-philosophy, p. 657), one be- 
 lieves that he finds the prophesying Goddess sitting upon 
 the tripod . . . Surely a Snail is an exalted symbol of mind 
 slumbering deeply within itself." 
 
 We may gather meaning from the untamed ravings of 
 a lunatic; we may collect lessons of material and moral 
 truth from the wildest wanderings of the fancy ; for all these 
 things come from Nature's storehouse ; and there is a philo- 
 sophy in all Nature. But Oken's materialism does not reach 
 the threshold of Nature's temple ; nor does his soul compre- 
 hend the worship due to the Divinity who dwells within it. 
 
 Though clothed in a less odious garb, there are passages 
 in The Vestiges quite as offensive to common sense as the 
 slimy sentimentality that offends our taste in the last quota- 
 tion from the Physio-philosophy. And no wonder ; for both 
 of the authors reject that teaching which tells us of our 
 position in Nature, of the attributes of the God of Nature, 
 and of the homage by which we may worship Him, and do 
 His will. Rank materialism grasps neither man nor God. 
 It is a baseless scheme, engendered in ft the limbo large and 
 broad" of a diseased imagination. Though earth-born, it 
 sometimes seems to float in mid-air, neither touching earth 
 nor heaven; yet, like many a madman's dream, it is positive 
 and proud. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 285 
 
 I can find, here and there, within The Vestiges, some- 
 thing almost to match Oken's Snail — " the exalted symbol 
 of mind slumbering deeply within itself — the prophesying 
 goddess sitting on a tripod !" Both Authors have long sat, 
 slumbered, and dreamed under the arbor Diance. The 
 Edinburgh Reviewer exhorted our Author to quit his seat; 
 and told him that if he remained there, he might be stricken 
 on the head, and have his cerebral organs shamefully put 
 out of tune, and made to jar against all rules of harmony. 
 The goddess, though chaste, is very mischievous. No 
 divinity of the sky so fickle, and of so many faces : — and 
 her motions are so wandering and inconstant, that they 
 have puzzled and confounded the wisest heads since the 
 days of Newton. But under the arbor Dianas our Author 
 still is sitting ; and there it was that he evolved, in solitude, 
 some of the queerest visions of his fantastical philosophy. 
 We may take a passing view of one or two of them. 
 
 (1) After Man, the Order of Primates takes in Monkeys, 
 Lemurs, Bats, and Sloths; and this Order rests on the 
 Dolphin family. In this family each cerebral hemisphere is 
 made of three lobes, as in Men and Monkeys. " It might 
 be rash," says the cautious Author {Vestiges, p. 341), "to 
 found any thing upon ancient accounts of the Dolphin — its 
 familiarity with man, and its helping him in shipwreck — 
 although it is difficult to believe these stories to be altoge- 
 ther without some basis of fact." He must have been 
 napping under Diana's tree, thus to cut short his tale. Why 
 did he not tell us of a man who, while Periander was king 
 of Corinth, came over from Sicily riding cheerily upon a 
 Dolphin's back? There is better historical evidence for 
 this fable than for some others, quite as strange, that are 
 vouched for in the Vestiges. But he adds, even while 
 broad awake, " there is no doubt that the Dolphin evinces a 
 predilection for human society, and charms the mariner by 
 the gambols which it performs beside his vessel" — especially 
 (he should have added) while it is catching the flying fishes. 
 
286 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 But does not the Shark also shew the strongest internal 
 love of the human family, though our Author thinks it 
 hardly deserving of a place among the Vertebrates ? 
 
 (2) " He may not be held a very fanciful naturalist who 
 would regard the Megatherium as eager to climb the tree 
 which he could only shake, and thus producing a progeny 
 fitted to do that which was the object of his wishes — or the 
 Rock-nose Whale, which loves to rest its head on rocks 
 beside the beach, as wishful of that mode of life which was 
 at length vouchsafed to a more highly developed descendant. 
 Such too may be found to be the true principle of perfecti- 
 bility in nature — a continual, though it may be an irregu- 
 larly shewn tendency, to press on to better and better powers 
 — and indefinite improveableness, which may work as seconds 
 in the individual, or strike hours in the species" (V. p. 34>6). 
 But why does our author thus venture to steal the mantle 
 of Lamarck and the elder transformationists ? He had no 
 right to stick their feathers in his plume. They told us 
 that the Elephant rose upon the earth with a short neck — 
 that he gazed unhappily on foliage he could not reach, and 
 so his face was lengthened — that it was afterwards more 
 lengthened till his snout could reach the branches — that his 
 nose became prehensile — that he tugged at the branches 
 with it till it was pulled into a trunk — and that then this 
 feature became as stable as that of any other happy Mammal. 
 But our Megatherium worked another way. She was too 
 heavy in her hinder parts to climb ; but nature had given 
 her gigantic strength; so she shook the trees of the old 
 forests and tore them down, and then fed on their branches. 
 But she was weary of this work, and sometimes (as we 
 know) broke her head in doing it. So she wished for some 
 mechanism to spare her all this trouble. Nature heard her 
 prayer, and she brought forth a litter of climbing Sloths ; 
 which now disport themselves joyfully in the tree-tops, and 
 spend their lives among the dishes of their ready banquet ! 
 We have all heard of the "vanity of human wishes," and 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 287 
 
 we have all read, in our younger days, the merry tale of the 
 three wishes and the ladle. Wishing, after all, seems to be 
 but a sorry business. But, says our Author, Creation is 
 now "a fact accomplished;" and we have no right "to 
 expect the origination of species to be conspicuously ex- 
 emplified (after this fashion) in the present day" (V. p. 80). 
 We do indeed still hear of the marvellous effects of pregnant 
 longings even in the human species : but they sink into the 
 shade in comparison of the natural progeny of wishes in the 
 days of the Megatherium. The wishes of the Megatherium 
 or the Rock-nose Whale, and the perfectibility of nature 
 which strikes hours in the species, are, after all, I fear, 
 but the jarring sounds of a smitten organ — the cerebral 
 blights of Diana's tree. 
 
 (3) "It is singular, (says Dr. Roget) that the Frog, 
 though so low in the scale of vertebrated animals, should 
 bear a striking resemblance to the human conformation in 
 its organs of progressive motion." ..." It is the only animal 
 (says the Author of The Vestiges) besides man with a calf to 
 its leg." But why stop short in such mere crural resem- 
 blances? The Frog is natatorial, and so is Man. The 
 Frog is saltatorial, and so is Man. The Frog makes music 
 in solemn concert, and so does Man. The biggest of all 
 Bati achians, the Labyrinthodon, left hand-like footsteps in 
 the New Red Sandstone. " Not for nothing is it that we 
 start at the picture of that strange impression — ghost of 
 anticipated humanity ! ... In these things the superficial 
 thinker will only see matter of ridicule; a large-hearted 
 and truly devout man, who puts nothing away from him, 
 will, on the contrary, discover in them interesting traces of 
 the ways of God to man, and a deeper breathing of the 
 lesson, that whatever lives is to him kindred" {V. p. 344). 
 What is this but another vision under the arbor Diana? — a 
 melancholy phantom of a moon-stricken brain, to be put in 
 the same prison-house of delusions with the Snail philo- 
 sophy of Oken? We allow all living creatures to be our 
 
288 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 kindred because they are the creatures of the God who 
 made us ; and we owe to them the duties of kindness and 
 humanity. No truly devout and large-hearted man will 
 rashly and wantonly mar the humblest specimens of the 
 workmanship of God. But we deny our Author's rank 
 materialism, and his bestial genealogy of the human race : 
 nor will we permit him to mock us by adorning his scheme 
 with feelings and words of reverence drawn from a far 
 different view of our relation to the Godhead ; or to talk of 
 devotion while he is virtually sapping the only foundations 
 on which pure, rational, uncontaminated moral sentiment is 
 or can be built ; and impotently striving to drain, to perfect 
 dryness, the living, heavenly springs of humanity, and piety, 
 and mutual love. 
 
 He is confident enough to tell us (p. 344), that he claims 
 for his scheme "the character of being the only approach 
 yet made to a truly natural classification." I discuss not the 
 merits or demerits of his classification. But while he writes 
 historically, he commits nothing short of a literary fraud if 
 he dresses his facts in the language of his hypothesis ; and 
 not once, but many times, while he states only what is true, 
 he contrives to insinuate only what is false. The true 
 meaning of the Author's scheme of nature may be read in 
 the honest works of Oken, who blinks and fears no con- 
 sequences. If our Author knew them not at first he knows 
 them now; and I hesitate not to pronounce his scheme, 
 and his defence of it, as false to all the rules by which 
 Nature may be interpreted — as shallow, demoralizing, and 
 mischievous. 
 
 But I beg the reader's pardon; I am only speaking 
 of the Author's dreams; and in truth he is an honest 
 dreamer. Many a time during past years (while the Chim- 
 panzee was living) have I wished for some clew to guide 
 me to his hiding-place, that I might have the comic happi- 
 ness of drawing him from the shade of Diana's tree, and 
 going with him to the Zoological Garden of London, there to 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 289 
 
 witness the emotions of his filial love while he was gazing 
 on the solemn visage of one in the very type of his imme- 
 diate ancestors. tl Not for nothing would he have started" 
 at that perfect image of ei anticipated humanity !" 
 
 (4) Speaking of the Primates, he tells us, "that so- 
 ciality, vocality, a prehensive use of the extremities, ima- 
 ginativeness, drollery, sagacity, aH form characteristics 
 generally applicable to this line of animals". . ." In the 
 mammalian stage they suddenly ascend to pre-eminence ; 
 not by superior strength, but by greater relative magnitude 
 of brain, by agility, and by the use of the hand. The 
 signal superiority of the human species is thus prepared 
 for and betokened in the immediately preceding portions of 
 the line. It might have been seen, ere man existed, that a 
 remarkable creature was coming upon the earth" (V. p. 355). 
 Again, the arbor Diance : but the Snail of Oken sitting on 
 a tripod gives us an oracular vision of the future just as 
 clear as this. To be quite sure, however, in cases of pre- 
 diction, let me, above all things, have a judgment upon them 
 after the event. 
 
 (5) "Verily, it would give us a curious conception of 
 organic nature if we could satisfy ourselves that, like 
 chemistry, it had a mysterious foundation in mathematical 
 proportions. Threes under threes, each subordinate three 
 reflecting the trinity to which it belongs, and all others ! 
 Such an idea is obviously favourable to the development- 
 theory ; as arguing a unity in animated nature, and the 
 definite character of its entire constitution.. . .the Natural 
 appears to sink into and merge in a higher Artificial" (V. 
 p. 350). I object not to the latter part of this extract, for 
 I believe it true No one denies a unity of plan in nature: 
 but on that great truth rests not the theory of development. 
 The first sentence belongs not to Diana's outer grove ; but 
 rather to the visions of a brain that has been blighted before 
 the altar of her sanctuary. Many a sentence like this, and 
 far worse than this, may be found in Oken's Philosophy. 
 
 s. d. T 
 
290 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 But I wish again to come to plain matters of fact, and to 
 honest reasons drawn from them. 
 
 Our Author, as we have seen, contends ** that his Mate- 
 rial scheme may be true, though one half the illustrations 
 presented by its first explanation should be wrong" (supra, 
 p. cli.) True ! for a man may argue ill, though his princi- 
 ples be right. The positive facts bearing on the question 
 have been discussed at sufficient length in the Preface, and 
 in this Note: but are there any reasons a priori why we 
 should accept the material hypothesis? Let me here en- 
 deavour to examine these pretended reasons, some of which 
 have been but little noticed in the Preface. 
 
 (1) He affirms that the distinction of Species is purely 
 arbitrary. I believe that this is not true. It is not the 
 opinion of our best naturalists ; and of whom, if not from 
 them, are we to learn the truth ? Again, on his system, not 
 only is a change from Species to Species, but from Class to 
 Class, to be called ct a simply natural procedure." We reply, 
 that such changes are contrary to all experience; and 
 therefore we can make no true induction from their asser- 
 tion : and if we describe our hypothetical conclusions in the 
 words of exact inductive philosophy, we thereby put a 
 cheat upon our readers. 
 
 (2) He next contends that if the origination, not of 
 Species only, but of Orders and Classes, came under our 
 congnizance, it would prove to be a natural process. I 
 think this not merely true, but very like a truism : for if 
 we had cognizance of such a process it could only be by 
 natural means; unless, indeed, we admitted, and believed 
 in (which no one pretends to do), a special revelation of 
 physical phenomena. (E. p. 141.) 
 
 (3) When he states that in such cases of organic pro- 
 gress "general considerations," conducted in a scientific 
 spirit, throw the balance of likelihood on the side of ordi- 
 nary natural causes" (V. p. 154), I think the assertion 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THB APPENDIX. 291 
 
 inexact and erroneous; for even admitting, for sake of 
 argument, that such changes were wrought by second 
 causes; still they were not wrought by ordinary natural 
 causes ; but by extraordinary causes, such as have not been 
 ever submitted to the reason and senses of man. They 
 belong not, therefore, to the province of inductive science. 
 In the present condition of our knowledge they belong not 
 to second causes; and if we describe them at all with 
 reference to Cause, we have only the First Cause to look up 
 to; and (as before stated) we are logically exact when we 
 describe their origin by the word creation. 
 
 (4) He constantly describes his system as a scheme of 
 universal law and order, and seems to claim for it on that 
 account a great a priori merit; while he denounces all 
 other views of nature as superstitious and miraculous. He 
 tells us that we put nature under a Boeotian rule, and 
 explain her mysteries by the fraud and trick of special 
 miracles and miraculous creations, &c. We use no such 
 language. A Pantheist or rank Materialist may attribute 
 such language to us ; but we use it not ; though we do 
 believe in miracles, and believe that, in a certain sense, all 
 nature is miraculous : meaning, thereby, that there is a God 
 of nature, and that his creative secrets are above our ken, 
 and out of the narrow limits of our knowledge. If we 
 admit a First Cause, why banish Him from his own works 
 of nature, and deny His continued control over his own 
 ministering subjects ? We utterly repudiate that gross ma- 
 terial conception (formerly put forth against us by the Au- 
 thor of The Vestiges), that would represent Him as a Being 
 travelling from place to place to regulate the provinces of His 
 kingdom. In one sense we are Pantheists — we believe in 
 His ubiquity — a personal, creative, and sustaining ubiquity. 
 This very doctrine seems to be admitted by our Author: 
 and if it be admitted, why not lean upon it when our specu- 
 lations stretch beyond the limits of our material knowledge ? 
 Within the limits of our knowledge we reason only of 
 
 t2 
 
292 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 second causes ; for they are the ministering implements by 
 which God communicates with us, and by which we learn 
 what are his material laws ; and we have no other or better 
 way of learning and understanding what these laws are. 
 We believe then in universal law and order extending 
 through the whole known domain of nature : but as to crea- 
 tion, and the commencement of laws, we dare not dogmatize 
 beyond our knowledge: and, in all such speculations, we 
 think ourselves not only more consistent in our verbal logic, 
 but more rational and philosophical, by acknowledging our 
 ignorance and looking up to the First Cause, than we 
 should be, were we to dare (like our Materialists) to break, 
 in imagination, into inaccessible provinces of nature and 
 there profanely pretend to do God's work, by contriving 
 laws, for his unknown kingdoms, which he has in no way 
 condescended to reveal to us. 
 
 In doing what we dare not do, our Author is at once 
 illogical and inconsistent. A material Pantheist would, in- 
 deed, be consistent; but our Author professes to believe in 
 a great personal First Cause. Oken tells us ie that life is 
 not different from organism. . .that fire is God manifested in 
 His totality. . .and that Man is God wholly manifested," &c. 
 &e. Just as well might he tell us that man differs not from 
 the implements made by his hands — that a steam-engine is 
 man wholly manifested — or that a cotton-mill implies no 
 contriving cause, no mind exterior to itself. But Oken's 
 material Pantheism, and the blasphemous fooleries he has 
 contrived to string upon it, have their antidote in such 
 extracts as are printed in Note VIII. The inconsistent 
 logic and rank Materialism of The Vestiges have a more 
 subtle and concealed mischief; yet is their end the same, and 
 they lead us to no moral consequences of a better nature than 
 might be drawn from Oken's Pantheism. 
 
 (5) It is now generally admitted, as a fundamental prin- 
 ciple in sound physical reasoning, that inductive evidence 
 has nothing to do with the commencement of natural laws. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 293 
 
 It deals only with established laws and the phenomena 
 arising out of them. But if the organic world be now 
 governed by law, can we believe, says our Author, that it 
 began without law ? I reply, No ! It began in obedience to 
 a creative law — the emanation of the Divine Mind : but this 
 is no question of physics. Surely, says our Author, if our 
 faculties cannot comprehend such a physical point as this, 
 " they must be equally unable to pronounce decisively upon 
 points so abstruse as law being subordinate to will, and the 
 attributes of that will shewing us the Deity as a personal 
 and superintending God" (-E. p. 137). This is a question of 
 mental philosophy I cannot here discuss at any length. I 
 may, however, affirm (what our Author cannot consistently 
 deny), that we can prove, from the light of Nature, the ex- 
 istence of a personal God and Creator, and, by a study of 
 His works, make some approach towards a conception of His 
 attributes : but we have no power to penetrate the secrets of 
 His will, or to tell why, at any moment in the past history of 
 the Universe, he exercised or withheld his creative energy. 
 Every turn of our Author's reasoning shews us how closely 
 his scheme verges on material Pantheism. When he affirms 
 that the system of Nature is carried on by natural laws, and 
 therefore began by natural laws, he uses very slippery lan- 
 guage; for natural law has two distinct meanings in this pro- 
 position. In the former sense it is the proper subject of true 
 inductive reasoning, in the latter it is not. Oken, indeed, 
 makes no difference between the two ; for on his material 
 scheme every instance of new life is a new creation. But our 
 Author repudiates Oken's material Pantheism ; and with what 
 consistency is no question here. I admit, in all its fulness, a 
 sentiment which follows the last quotation : " No truth can 
 be derogatory to the presumed fountain of all truth ;" and 
 he, I contend, is practically an infidel who dreads the pub- 
 lication of any general truth of Nature, or any conclusion 
 fairly drawn from it. Our objection to the Author's rank 
 Materialism is this: viz. that it is not based on the facts of 
 
294 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Nature, or upon a good interpretation of her laws — that it is 
 not worked out as the consequence of any fair induction — 
 that it is shallow and pantheistical — and mischievous be- 
 cause untrue. 
 
 (6) (t The most rigid disproof (he tells us) of primitive 
 creation, as a fact of our time, could be no conclusive argu- 
 ment against a natural creation at a time the earth was 
 vacant of all organic tenantry, if for such a creation any 
 positive arguments can be adduced" {V. p. 181). This sen- 
 tence is conditional ; but how are we to find a positive 
 argument bearing on the first creation of organic life ? The 
 condition involves a perfect impossibility, and therefore the 
 remark is worthless. Again he contends, in the page pre- 
 ceding, " that the work (of creation) being to all appearance 
 finished, we are not necessarily to expect that the origination 
 of life and of species should be conspicuously exemplified 
 in the present day." Let us admit this, and suppose (for 
 argument's sake) that Nature has almost exhausted her 
 powers of producing new animal combinations. Where then 
 should we expect to find her powers not yet quite ex- 
 hausted ? Surely, it must be among the Mammal tribes ; 
 for Nature has been working on them but a comparatively 
 short time ; and indeed {speaking geologically) she began 
 this part of her task of creation or transmutation but yester- 
 day. But we find, as a matter of fact, no Mammal creations 
 or transmutations going on now ; and the only places where 
 any one pretends to look for transmutations, are the dark 
 and obscure corners of the earth, and among phenomena 
 so minute as to escape the unassisted senses. 
 
 (7) The last and most plausible argument a priori for 
 the creation of the organic kingdoms by natural law, may 
 be stated in a few words as follows. Material laws are 
 constant, and all combinations of matter, not organic, have 
 arisen, through the undeviating operation of these laws, out 
 of the anterior combinations of matter. This we generally 
 admit as true, whatever may be our views as to the primeval 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 295 
 
 condition of the matter which now forms the Earth: and, 
 figuratively speaking, we may say, that within this condition 
 lurked the germ of every material combination, or mecha- 
 nical arrangement, which took place afterwards. I have 
 discussed this conception in the preceding Discourse (p. 28), 
 and contended that it does not by any means invalidate the 
 doctrine of a Final Cause. Now organic nature is inter- 
 woven with the inorganic, and cannot exist without it. 
 May we not then believe that all organic bodies (from a 
 Monad to a Man) have arisen naturally, and necessarily out 
 of constant material laws, co-ordinate with, and truly form- 
 ing a part of, the laws of dead and inorganic matter ? I have 
 put this question in my own words : but I have endeavoured 
 to put it fairly. On this question I offer the following 
 comment. 
 
 One who has adopted a scheme of rank Materialism 
 will probably give a positive reply to this question. But one 
 who believes that sensation, volition, invention, thought, 
 are things entirely different from dead matter ; — who knows, 
 from personal consciousness, that there is a connecting prin- 
 ciple, through which all his sensations are bound together 
 in personal self; — who knows, by the same consciousness, 
 (which makes himself to himself), that there are indwelling 
 principles and abstract intellectual powers, making up that 
 unity of individual mind or soul he calls self, and of which 
 conception (the substratum of all his faculties) he cannot 
 divest himself: — who knows, moreover, that without these 
 concatenated in-dwelling powers (call them by what name 
 we will) there could neither be personal sensation, nor know- 
 ledge of any single property of dead matter, or of any mate- 
 rial law organic or inorganic : — such a one will never hesi- 
 tate in his reply, and will answer the question by a negative. 
 And, perhaps, he would add, that of his living soul he has 
 direct knowledge from consciousness ; but of the outer world 
 he has only a knowledge of inference ; and that he cannot 
 make his material inferences, respecting the outer world, 
 
296 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 the substratum of that soul which he knows by a con- 
 sciousness that was within him before he knew the outer 
 world. 
 
 I believe that in this very question lurks the true history 
 of the Vestiges of Creation. The tinkling bells of phreno- 
 logy had jarred among our Author's finer senses, and spite of 
 his right conception of a great First Cause ordaining law and 
 sustaining nature (and if he confounds cause and effect, de- 
 prives God of his personality, and resolves our conception 
 of Him into a mere conception of His material manifesta- 
 tions, our Author is then a rank material Pantheist, which 
 he denies), he became, as we have seen, an uncompromising 
 Materialist. The historical facts of Geology gave him, he 
 thought, a key-note in a harmonious scheme of develop- 
 ment. He therefore began his history of organic nature, 
 with very meagre knowledge, but with an unwavering belief 
 that he could cull from it something that would give consist- 
 ency to the creature of his first affections — his adopted phreno- 
 logical Materialism. His mind was not made up from a study 
 of the old remains of organic life; but it was made up from 
 some form of a priori evidence (no matter whether good or 
 bad) before he began this study. His material scheme was 
 not, therefore, deduced from the facts of Geology ; but the 
 facts of Geology were fitted to his material scheme. No 
 wonder, then, that he should grievously blunder both in the 
 description and the interpretation of facts which were new 
 to him : and no wonder that, afterwards, when put right on 
 questions of fact, he should affirm such facts to be of little 
 consequence, and persist in an interpretation of Nature 
 which, from the very first, was not built upon them. But 
 the glaring fault of his work, and what makes it false to 
 Nature and intensely mischievous, is his continuing to mis- 
 represent the facts of Geology, and to tell his readers that it 
 is an illustration and a proof of his Materialism. We tell 
 him, on the widest evidence of facts, that, whatever may be 
 the merits or demerits of his Materialism, Geology lends it 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 297 
 
 no support, but throws a series of very formidable, and we 
 believe impassable, barriers across its path. 
 
 But to return to the previous question. It may be 
 contended, that we have no right (while discussing Mate- 
 rialism) to go at once to the extreme organic case of Man — 
 that we should take into our view all organic nature, from 
 the lowest to the highest forms of animal life. But if the 
 material scheme be true, it must include the highest earthly 
 being, Man ; and extreme cases are often the very expert- 
 menta crucis of an hypothesis. Leaving this case, however, 
 we contend that there is an essential difference between 
 organic and inorganic Nature, that they are governed by 
 different laws, and that the same material reasoning can- 
 not be applied to both. Material laws appear to have 
 been ordained long before the organic, and never to have 
 changed since. The crystalline combinations in the oldest 
 rocks are the results of definite chemical combinations 
 exactly as in the newest: and many of the combinations 
 we can imitate in a laboratory. They do not emanate from 
 geographical centers, but are the obvious results of material 
 laws affecting the whole earth. The igneous minerals of 
 New Holland are essentially the same with the igneous 
 minerals of Iceland. In like manner the mechanical dis- 
 turbing forces of all periods appear to have been the same 
 in kind, however differing in intensity ; as, indeed, they 
 differ now within the narrow periods of actual observation. 
 
 On the contrary, when we come to organic nature, the 
 obvious laws appear to be widely different. They have 
 reference to individual life — they have a defined purpose — 
 they are carried on in cycles involving that purpose. Each 
 Species is a microcosm governed by its own laws; and the 
 commencement of a new Species is the commencement of a 
 new system of law. The Species emanate from geogra- 
 phical centers, and are continued, and distributed over 
 wide spaces, by organic contrivances and laws which have 
 not the remotest similitude to the successive combinations 
 
298 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 of dead matter, or its mechanical transit over the surface of 
 the earth. Indigenous species (e.g.) in Iceland all differ 
 from indigenous species in New Holland : and not only have 
 organic laws a reference to life and volition and the func- 
 tions of an individual ; but, lastly, they are bound up with 
 moral and intellectual phenomena; for in speaking of 
 organic laws Man cannot be separated from the other parts 
 of organic nature. We have therefore, in limine, very good 
 reasons for not confounding the simple laws of dead matter 
 with the multitudinous cycles of organic law. The former 
 can go on without the latter : the latter cannot go on without 
 the former ; but they are not (so far as we know anything 
 of law, or have any knowledge of the actual surface of the 
 earth) the natural and necessary consequence of the former. 
 Laws, whether organic or inorganic, have an ordaining 
 cause, and they work together in harmony, because they 
 have a common origin in the will of the great First Cause. 
 In this belief a Theist rests content. A Pantheist has 
 another creed; and let the reader look at its abominable 
 reflexion in the extracts from Oken. 
 
 A Theist cannot be a consistent Materialist without 
 damaging his principles, and ending in conclusions that 
 verge on Pantheism. Thus when our Author tells us "that 
 he cannot separate nature from God himself," (E. p. 171), 
 whatever be his meaning, he uses the language of a Pan- 
 theist. We do not separate nature from God as its Creator 
 and providential Governor: but our conception of a per- 
 sonal God is separate from what we call nature. We 
 believe that He existed before all worlds, and that the 
 world of sense makes no part of His personality ; though it 
 be through the world of sense that He has deigned, in part, 
 to make himself known to us ; and we might call it, figura- 
 tively, the voice or expression of His will addressed to our 
 natural senses. 
 
 Again, our Author admits with us "the whole doctrine 
 of the divine authorship of organic nature" (V. p. 157)- 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 299 
 
 Yet when we, on questions above the reach of inductive 
 experience, look up to that authorship and tell of the 
 creative power of God ; he, on these questions, pretends to 
 see beyond Nature — tells us of laws out of the known course 
 of Nature — and evolves all the phenomena of creation, dead 
 or living, out of a long series of hypothetical causes of his 
 mere invention. This is not, we think, to honour, but to 
 insult the God of nature ; and so far as physical truth is 
 concerned, this hypothetical extravagance is not the way of 
 advancing truth j because it turns the thoughts away from 
 that humble experimental search after the highest accessible 
 secrets of Nature which, since Galileo's days, has been so 
 fruitful in good discoveries. We admit causation in its 
 widest sense ; and when we speak of creation, we, in the first 
 place, speak of a fact of Nature, and then we infer a cause ; 
 and as the mode of creative causation, whereby new laws 
 of phenomena first began, is removed from the bounds of 
 our experience, we refer, as stated above, to the great First 
 Cause, whenever we speak of such phenomena. Our 
 Author, on the contrary, admits the existence of a First 
 Cause ; but allows us neither a physical nor a moral use of 
 such a conception. The First Cause is not allowed either 
 to exercise a providential government, or to communicate 
 with His intellectual and moral creatures by any other than 
 the material laws of dead nature. I see no meaning in 
 such a limitation. It strikes at the root of moral and 
 religious truth, and, to be consistent, merges into material 
 Pantheism. 
 
 While arguing against any admission of a creative energy 
 in the historical progress of organic life, he has told us that 
 we anthropomorphize God — that we describe him as a being 
 who travels, it may be, from one planet to another-^-" and 
 deals with the world as a human being deals with his own 
 affairs." Who ever but a Pantheist could thus misrepresent 
 our conceptions of the Godhead, and invent such language? 
 It is the kind of argument we should perhaps expect from 
 
300 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 Oken: it is the language of a man who cannot separate 
 material nature from a personal God — who makes Nature 
 into God, and God into Nature. 
 
 Again, when he tells us (E. p. 185) that in his material 
 scheme "the Deity Himself becomes a denned, instead of 
 a capricious being," he writes in the language of Pantheism. 
 Because we hold that God is a providential governor of the 
 world, we hold Him not, on that account, as a capricious 
 being. And if there be, to our uninstructed sense, any 
 apparent jar in Nature's movements, or any apparent conflict 
 among her laws, we lessen not this jar and conflict by daring 
 to remove the Godhead from His works, and to "invest Him 
 with a character of tranquillity altogether new:" neither 
 dare we to define or pretend to comprehend the whole attri- 
 butes of His Divinity. 
 
 "Nature is God, and God is Nature... Man is God 
 wholly manifested. . .We no longer pursue the ignes fatui of 
 the mind... Man expresses the ultimate goal and purpose 
 of Nature's design" (Oken). Here we have plain, honest, 
 unmasked Pantheism. God is strictly defined and bounded. 
 He is nothing but Nature — Nature as grasped by the powers 
 of man. We, on the contrary, believe not in a defined 
 Divinity. Our knowledge of the Godhead is indeed defined 
 by the limits of our comprehension ; but not so our belief. 
 We believe in an infinity beyond the ken of sense and the 
 grasp of thought; and over that infinity we believe that 
 there presides a present, personal, creative, and providential 
 God. But our Author is not a Pantheist. He has listened to a 
 better teaching, and he has the moral benefit of inconsistency, 
 and of discarding from his soul's faith that very limitation 
 and definition of the First Cause to which his Materialism 
 points, and which a Pantheist accepts without reserve. 
 
 But he accuses us of " intellectual timidity" — of a " bar- 
 ren philosophy" — of a "deficiency in the life and soul ot 
 Nature-seeking" (E. p. 177). H it be timidity to listen to 
 the voice of Nature, and to regulate our scientific faith by 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 301 
 
 her teaching — to found our knowledge upon observation 
 and experiment, and by their test to try and guide our 
 efforts in exploring the laws, and enlarging the bounds, of 
 physical truth; — then we plead guilty to the charge of 
 cowardice : and we are far too humble and cowardly to lay 
 down the law for God in provinces within which we have 
 not trodden, and wherein He has not unfolded to our senses 
 or our reason by what laws he has thought fit to govern the 
 creatures of His hand. Neither are we so proud and self- 
 satisfied as to shut our eyes against any other and higher 
 illumination, should the God of Nature condescend to give 
 it us. We do allow that, by itself, material philosophy is 
 barren: and "when the awakened and craving soul asks 
 what science can do for us in explaining the great ends of 
 the Author of our Nature, and our relations to Him, to good 
 and evil, to life and to eternity" (E. p. 178); we reply, that 
 science does, at least, tell us one thing — that there is a God 
 of Nature — that moralists admit this truth — that its accept- 
 ance is the foundation of social happiness and order — and 
 that all Nature, material as well as moral, is utterly sterile 
 and unmeaning without it. But this is not all ; and were 
 no more knowledge given us, small would be our strength 
 in our hours of need, and small our hopes of future good. 
 A higher illumination is in store for us, to enlighten the 
 most dismal paths in the way of life — a light emanating from 
 the Fountain of all light, irradiating and sanctifying the soul 
 of man — satisfying his cravings here — silencing the dissonant 
 jars of an impotent philosophy, and bringing all Nature into 
 harmony. Here we may light our lamps, and see the way 
 in which we must walk while we do our Maker's will ; and 
 by this light we can even pierce through the darkness 
 of futurity, and see, in faith and hope, the blessings that are 
 laid up for those who live a life of purity and mutual love. 
 But our Author tells us (what we emphatically deny) that 
 when the craving soul asks what science can do for us, we 
 stop short among shells, and skeletons, and machines, and 
 
302 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 chemical retorts. It is he, and Materialists like himself, that 
 stop short among dead material things, and can reach no 
 higher aim than such dead things can teach them. 
 
 As, however, he has rejected Pantheism — the rightful 
 progeny of Materialism — let us do him justice, by marking 
 the moral elevation to which he can soar, with the dead 
 weight of Materialism pressing on his wings. Some of his 
 fundamental propositions are as follows : — " Grades of mind, 
 like the forms of being, are mere stages of development." . . . 
 "The few gleams of reason, which we see in the lower 
 animals, are precisely analogous to such a development of 
 the fore-arm as we see in a whale" (V. p. 433.). . .Causa- 
 lity, veneration, reason, conscientiousness, are all organic. 
 ..." Freewill is but a supremacy of one organ over an- 
 other." ..." The person emphatically called a wicked Man 
 is one whose higher moral feelings are (organically) rudi- 
 mental.". . ."Cuvier and Newton are but the expansions of 
 a clown.". . ." There are clever dogs and clever horses," &c. 
 {V. p. 437). I merely pause to remark on the perfect Ma- 
 terialism of all these statements. No distinction is drawn 
 between the organs, as the instruments through which the 
 mind perceives or manifests its reflective powers, and the 
 mind itself. In what then (if this be all) does Phrenology 
 differ from Pantheism? The Pantheist makes not the 
 world (organic and inorganic) the manifestation of the 
 power and will of God, but God himself. So also the Ma- 
 terialist, though he speaks of causality, virtually extinguishes 
 its power and meaning, by confounding the organic func- 
 tions of Man with his personal self. I am not arguing now 
 against the system of Phrenology, but speaking of its obvi- 
 ous consequences in our Author's representation of it. It 
 professes to be inductive ; and even admitting that there is 
 a show of truth in some of its first principles, it is, both in 
 its organic details and their application, the very flimsiest 
 system of induction that ever became current in society. It 
 
-II'I'LEMKNT TO THE APPENDIX. '> ( >:i 
 
 has sometimes damaged taste by dressing up moral or de- 
 scriptive writing in an abominable jargon. It has damaged 
 art : for some of our artists are phrenologists ; and they 
 learn so to represent the human countenance that their 
 portraits are the distorted reflexions of an hypothesis ; and 
 not, what they ought to be, a true but idealized copy of 
 something which came from God and was stamped in His 
 image. Worse still, it has been the school of material Pan- 
 theism, and has thereby done deadly mischief to the moral 
 sentiments and hopes of thousands. And how can it be 
 otherwise, if men are to be instructed — that there is no dif- 
 ference between material and moral — that we are the pro- 
 geny of brutes — and that the mind of man (or his "psycho- 
 logical constitution," for a materialist denies that he has a 
 soul — making it nothing but a bundle of material organs) 
 "is developed from inherent qualities, and has a mode of 
 action depending solely on its own organization?" ( V. p. 445). 
 Our Author draws no distinction whatsoever between the 
 individual soul (or self), and the implements whereby it 
 manifests its powers and capacities. Whatever be his faith, 
 his teaching is therefore Pantheistical. Life, says Oken, 
 is vital function — God is nature. Thought, says our 
 Author, is organic. In what these two Authors differ 
 fundamentally, I cannot discover. One rejects what most 
 men will think the legitimate progeny of Materialism ; for 
 he speaks of a First Cause as something different from His 
 manifestations of Himself. Oken blinks at nothing, and 
 follows out his Materialism without flinching. In his scheme 
 we do see the true moral reflexion of Materialism. But our 
 Author tells us "that the face of God is reflected in the 
 organization of man, as a little pool reflects the glorious 
 sun" (V. p. 435). We tell him that the soul of man is 
 the reflecting surface, and that the material organs do not 
 reflect at all. The Edinburgh Reviewer told him, most 
 truly, " that many a shallow pool will reflect the images of 
 the sky, but if we stoop down to drink it we only fill our 
 
304 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 mouths with nastiness." Oken is sublimely transcendental: 
 and our Author sometimes, also, makes his transcendental 
 flights ; for he appears to see, in a kind of prophetic antici- 
 pation, everything inorganic resolved into Gravitation, 
 and everything else into Development ( V. p. 445). There 
 is nothing beyond this in the transcendentalism of Oken : 
 and are we to call it a new and higher flight in the way of 
 moral and material knowledge than men had made before ? 
 It is the veriest chaff, without one grain of food within it. 
 
 But we must follow him a little farther, that we may see 
 how he professes to draw new hopes and consolations out of 
 his Materialism. But are they new ? Do they rest on a 
 better sanction than they did before ? Has he made any ad- 
 vance in our moral knowledge ? He tells us, what we knew 
 well before, that God works by general and fixed laws, — 
 "an arrangement (he adds) which admits only of the main 
 and primary results being good, but disregards exceptions." 
 If we affirm that God's laws only admit of this or that, we 
 affirm something far above our knowledge : and if we affirm 
 that God disregards exceptions, we are very rash and irre- 
 verent. That laws are fixed, and that God is prescient, we 
 believe true. Yet we also know that we have that moral 
 freedom which makes us responsible, and that we can so 
 work upon the material laws of God as to turn them to our 
 purpose. Herein consists our responsibility. We believe 
 then that the moral acts of men are bound up with, and 
 form a part of, the second causes whereby a prescient God 
 works out the purposes of His will. Practically our know- 
 ledge is sufficient for our guidance. Speculatively it solves 
 not, and I think never will, the knotty question of God's 
 fore-knowledge and man's responsibility, and how His attri- 
 butes co-exist with that degree of freedom without which 
 responsibility would have no meaning. Has our Author's 
 Materialism solved this long-agitated question ? It has cut 
 the Gordian knot by a scheme of material fatalism (not far 
 different indeed in result from one adopted by some good 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 305 
 
 and religious men) which has no logical consistency with 
 our conceptions of the moral acts of human choice, and 
 moral responsibility. 
 
 The existence of evil is the gravest and most difficult of 
 moral questions, and is not to be treated rashly or irreve- 
 rently. On this subject there are some good remarks in the 
 Vestiges (p. 447 — 470), where our Author discusses, in a 
 good moral spirit, some of the evils that are woven into the 
 constitution of society : but so far as his remarks are good, 
 they are not new ; and they are, here and there, tinged 
 with a suffusion of his Materialism. When he tells us that 
 physical laws produce undeviating results upon dead mat- 
 ter, we all agree with him : but when he adds that moral 
 laws (allowing for their wider range of action) are equally 
 undeviating in their results ; and " that the two sets of laws 
 are independent of each other " ( V. p. 463), he expresses 
 two conclusions ; the former of which very few would admit 
 without some further limitation ; and the latter (whether 
 true or false) is in palpable contradiction to some other 
 expressions of his published works. 
 
 That evil exists we know full well : and the great prac- 
 tical question is this : — How are we to conduct ourselves, so 
 as to palliate these evils in a way that is compatible with the 
 laws of God ? Our Author tells us, by way of reply to this 
 question, that we must " study with all care the constitution 
 of nature and accommodate ourselves to that constitution, 
 so as to gain all possible advantages from it, and avoid all 
 evils likely to arise from it" ( V. p. 471). This is common 
 prudence, and nothing else. The same advice, in different 
 words, has been given a thousand times before, both by 
 Heathen and Christian moralists. So far as it goes it is good: 
 but what higher sanction has it, in our Author's scheme, than 
 it had before ? Again he tells us ( V. p. 1 74), that there is 
 a higher moral law, u which has long been announced, but 
 never acted on to a considerable extent, that our greatest 
 happiness is not to be realized by each having a regard to 
 s.d. U 
 
306 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 himself, but by each seeking primarily to benefit his fellow- 
 creatures." This is a glorious law, which finds its response 
 in the reason and social affections of our inner nature, and 
 its sanction in the commands of God. To say that it has 
 "never been acted on to a considerable extent" is the re- 
 verse of what is true. To say that it has never been acted 
 on as it ought to be, is, alas ! but too true. It had its divine 
 illustration in the person of the Son of God. It had its 
 human illustration in the labours of love whereby Chris- 
 tianity was planted in the world; and it has its illustration 
 stih, in the self-denying love of tens of thousands of Chris- 
 tians, and in the laws and social institutions of Christendom. 
 So that however base and selfish men and nations may be 
 in fact and deed ; in word and outward show, at least, they 
 do profess obedience to this law ; and recognize its sanction, 
 both in the moral constitution of man, and in the rule of life 
 given them by the Word of God. Our Author has indeed 
 soared at length, on his material wings, to the sight of a 
 heavenly rule, that was engraven on the tablets of his 
 heart — that was proclaimed in the sky by the messengers 
 of God — that may be read in the Book of Life, the en- 
 during record of our Father's love. 
 
 Religion gives a sanction for the Author's "higher law:" 
 but what sanction and what hopes of practical obedience to 
 this law does Materialism offer us? He must tell us in 
 his own words : " When man comes to have confidence in 
 his own nature, he will act on this principle (viz. of seeking 
 primarily to benefit his fellow-creatures), and the result will 
 be a degree of happiness such as we only see at present 
 faintly shadowed forth in the purest and sweetest charities 
 of family life !" And is this all that our Author's cold phi- 
 losophy can teach us ? Is it for this that we are to cast away 
 our belief in God, as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier ? 
 Is this all that either Materialism or Pantheism has in store 
 for us? Man is to have confidence in his own nature ! He 
 wants not confidence in his nature : he has more than 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 307 
 
 enough of this element already. What he wants above all 
 is humility and brotherly love. A brutal pedigree will 
 not instruct him in the sweet charities of life. A material 
 fatalism will not guide him towards them — a pantheistic 
 deification of his person will not make him kind and humble. 
 But our Author has not yet stayed his flight. There is 
 another hope for us in reserve. Knowledge is advancing, 
 and the arts of life are improving. " The advance of 
 knowledge favours the progress of moral conditions, and in 
 improved moral conditions knowledge becomes more sound" 
 {V. p. 475). True ! and all men have hopes of some moral 
 progress and improvement in the human family. But 
 how to bring this about is the great social problem. 
 Let us but hear our Author. u The improvements partly 
 wrought out by the present race, I conceive at once pre- 
 parations for, and causes of, the possible development of 
 
 higher types of humanity beings more fitted for the 
 
 delights of social life, because society will then present less 
 to dread and more to love" (p. 476). I have heard it said, in 
 jest, that man's capacity of belief is like an inflated bladder. 
 If compressed on one side, it swells and stretches on another. 
 Truth may be told in jest: for our Author's capacity of 
 belief on some sides has undergone a most horrible con- 
 striction ; but on others it swells till it bursts the filaments 
 of common sense, and rises almost above the stretch of 
 fancy. Poor hopes have we, in such dreaming, of future 
 good for the human race! Organic perfectibility was 
 talked of as a law of nature about sixty years since by some 
 French Philosophers : but they were not content with talk- 
 ing ; and we know (and Europe still feels in every corner 
 of her social system) what followed the practical promulga- 
 tion of this and other kindred laws developed among the 
 dreams of infidel Materialism. So we are, it seems, to 
 throw aside our hopes in the promises of God — we are to 
 call men dreamers and Boeotian blockheads who trust in 
 any teaching that springs not from material development : 
 
 u2 
 
308 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 and as for the future, we are to look for higher types of 
 humanity ! This is our Author's darling absurdity. It is 
 the precious fruit of Diana's tree that has showered abun- 
 dantly on his head. Oken has nothing more rampantly 
 absurd than this. It is rank Materialism run raving mad ; 
 and even if accepted as prophetic (like the mad ravings on 
 some old heathen tripod), it would offer no personal comfort 
 to us; nor could it be operative in making a single man 
 wiser, or humbler, or more charitable. 
 
 But is there nothing better in reserve, and no higher 
 flight of Materialism ? Are worldly prudence and confidence 
 in ourselves to be our only great guiding principles in 
 this life of trial and temptation ? Are we to be kind to the 
 brute creation for no better reason than because we have 
 a bestial pedigree? Are we to be kind to our fellow- 
 creatures, and to seek their good while we seek our own, 
 on no higher rule than one we derive from "a careful 
 study of the (physical) constitution of matter," and a well- 
 considered attempt " to accommodate ourselves to that 
 constitution ?" Yes ! there is something else behind, f We 
 may (says our Author) still feel that God is the immediate 
 breather of our life, and the Ruler of our spirits ; that we 
 may, by a rightly directed thought, come into communion 
 with Him, and feel that, even when His penal ordinances 
 are enforced upon us, His hand and arm are closely about 
 us" (V. p. 478). Nor is this all. It may be "that there is 
 a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screen of nature"... 
 " that the present system is but a stage in a Great Progress, 
 and that Redress is in reserve." ..." Our system (he adds), 
 though it may at first appear at issue with other doctrines 
 in esteem among mankind, tends to come into harmony 
 with them, and even to give them support." ... Lastly (he 
 tells us), that if arguments such as these fail of their effect, 
 there still may be a faith derived from his material scheme 
 of nature " sufficient to sustain us under all sense of the 
 imperfect happiness, the calamities, the woes, and pains of 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 309 
 
 this sphere of being: and that in such a faith we may well 
 rest at ease." (Conclusion of The Vestiges.) 
 
 If hopes such as these are to be drawn only from the 
 study of our place in material nature, they resolve themselves 
 partly into mere heathen stoicism, and they rise not one jot 
 above it ; or they may lean on the less elevated maxims of 
 worldly prudence. But they savour of another teaching, 
 and they are dressed in words not found among the maxims 
 of worldly prudence or stoical indifference: and if our 
 Author believed them genuine, or had seen even the feeblest 
 glimmering of their truth, was he right in taking up, and 
 publishing, a baseless and preposterous material hypothesis? 
 — an hypothesis which, avowedly, banishes God from any 
 providential government of the world — repudiates, and scoffs 
 at, any teaching, except such as springs by physical necessity 
 out of a universal scheme of Materialism — a scheme which 
 makes religion but a fable, religious teachers but a band of 
 cheats, and a petition sent up to God in prayer but a blind 
 and ignorant effort to reverse or tamper with the unchange- 
 able laws of matter. Of this, at least, I am certain, that the 
 circulation of The Vestiges has done much moral mischief; 
 and has taught, even some well-educated professional men 
 to think, that they now know their place in nature better 
 than they did before — that they have no need to pray to 
 God in famine, plague, or sickness, or by any effort of re- 
 ligious exercise to ask for a diminution of a physical evil. 
 
 We also believe in the constancy of material laws : yet 
 we know that the living, intellectual, and moral part of our 
 nature can act on the material, so as to modify it to a social 
 and useful purpose. We believe also in the ubiquity and 
 providence of God; and believing this, we cannot doubt 
 that in His prescient mind the voluntary acts of men are as 
 the second causes whereby He works out the purposes of 
 His omnipotent will. Why then should we doubt or hesitate 
 to do that which religion teaches and nature prompts — to 
 
310 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 offer petitions to God in prayer ? — hoping thereby to abate, 
 it may be, a physical evil, or to amend our moral condition ? 
 
 Our Author has published a work which, in principle, 
 is opposed both to the inductive logic of material philosophy, 
 and to the faith and moral hopes of his countrymen : and 
 he has striven to circulate his poison, not merely among men 
 of science, by whom his scheme has been righteously judged 
 and condemned ; but among men who, from their informa- 
 tion and previous habits of thought on physical questions, 
 had no ready antidote against his delusive teaching. 
 
 We have now watched every material flight that he has 
 made toward a conception of the higher moral truths of 
 nature — his impotent efforts to mount to the hidden secrets 
 of the Deity on waxen wings of sense which cannot bear 
 the sun of truth to shine upon them. He tells us not of 
 light, but of •* darkness that may be felt." He comes down 
 again to the earth, and has brought with him no rule of 
 guidance or heavenly sanction from the sky: but he still 
 flounders in the mire of his Materialism, where the reason- 
 able hopes of future good can neither dwell, nor find, for one 
 moment, any solid ground whereon to rest. 
 
 Nor does the moral mischief end here. Infidelity was at 
 one time metaphysical, and led either to Scepticism or Deism: 
 now it is gross and material, and ends in material Pantheism 
 or Atheism. If we can believe that the whole system of 
 nature we see before us — organic, inorganic, physical and 
 moral — is the mere product of nature's material mechanism ; 
 it follows that our conceptions of cause, time and eternity, and 
 moral right or wrong, are also the mere product of material 
 mechanism. Why then (may say the Pantheist) any need to 
 suppose a causation different from Nature, seeing that Nature 
 herself works out causation ? I am not going to discuss a 
 logical question between a deistical Materialist and a ma- 
 terial Pantheist. I merely point to consequences which, 
 notoriously, some great physiologists have accepted as 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 311 
 
 physical truths. So far as our Author is concerned, I have 
 argued honestly against his System of Nature, only by an 
 inductive appeal to Nature. But I had also a moral right 
 to point to its moral consequences : for he himself, from the 
 very first, drew moral consequences from it. The moral 
 objections, taken by themselves, are no disproof of our 
 Author's physical system : but to state them, may be very 
 right and useful, as a caution; lest some person, not well 
 informed, should be ready to swallow our Author's universal 
 nostrum, without knowing that there is a deadly poison 
 lurking in it. 
 
 I think, as I have said before, that the University of 
 Cambridge has little to fear from material Pantheism, and 
 nothing from a clever and plausible, but very shallow 
 work like The Vestiges, which I will now dismiss from 
 my thoughts. But we have something to fear from ideal 
 Pantheism, and we have something also to fear from a 
 want of Catholicity in the studies of our Sons. To gain 
 any of the higher Academic prizes, we have to concen- 
 trate our strength on some one leading object. This is 
 certain, and it is by no means a necessary evil ; for nothing 
 is worse for the growing mind than a superficial diffusion 
 over too wide, a base of study. But our concentration 
 should be on something that is great and good, and should 
 never be exclusive. A mathematician may be sterile in the 
 general knowledge that should adorn every English gentle- 
 man ; and a great classical scholar may be shamefully igno- 
 rant of the laws of Nature, and the first elements of Physics. 
 These cases are, I believe, far less common than they were 
 in former times. On looking back upon the earlier parts of 
 this Volume, I have met with an expression which requires 
 explanation and, perhaps, apology. I have stated that ' ' evil 
 would be the day to the University, were she to decorate 
 with her best honours men who continue but accomplished 
 schoolboys" (supra, p. cccxlii). When I wrote these words, 
 
312 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 I had in my mind the ideal (and now, I trust, the very rare) 
 case of a man who entered College after an admirable classical 
 training under some good master — who went on in the same 
 track without any deviation, till he was skilled, above his 
 fellows, ill the analysis of the dead languages, and perhaps 
 capable of writing them with critical purity ; and who finally 
 carried off the higher honours of the University by these 
 accomplishments, to the absolute exclusion of any other sub- 
 ject of academic teaching. Such persons there have been, 
 and excellent men they were of their kind ; but they have 
 very seldom been productive labourers in extending the 
 bounds of human learning; and our present Academic 
 scheme has a larger grasp, and will, we trust, be hereafter 
 more productive of good labourers in the wide and philoso- 
 phical applications of classical learning. 
 
 Again, a man may be great in academic learning with 
 very little knowledge of the history and literature of his 
 religion, and with no knowledge whatsoever of its exalting 
 influence on the heart. He may be a learned Theologian 
 while he is in heart a Sceptic. He may be lax in his notions 
 of church-government ; or he may be the very slave of au- 
 thority, and an idolater of forms and non-essentials. And he 
 may be all this, while he is himself a doubter and a waverer ; 
 and at the same time a dogmatist and a persecutor. The 
 great point at which we ought to labour, should be to give 
 a Catholicity to our system of instruction, so far as this may 
 be compatible with some great dominant objects of study to 
 which the youthful mind should be directed and encouraged, 
 by liberal academic teaching and by public rewards. 
 
 If a student have contracted habits of inveterate sensual- 
 ity, even rank Materialism may have some seductions for 
 him in his weary hours of diseased speculation; but we 
 dread not this, and I am not dealing with exceptional cases. 
 But the religion he professes may hang very lightly upon 
 him ; and he may be, in heart, nothing better than a doubter 
 or a Deist. In such a state, if he be a man of speculation, 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 313 
 
 he may, while he is seeking to satiate his imagination and 
 his soul's longings, easily pass into a dreaming ideal Pan- 
 theist. Or, if his mind be not of a metaphysical cast, he 
 may, perhaps, accept a kind of mental Epicureanism — an 
 ideal scheme which ends in teaching him to look for the 
 supreme good in that worldly happiness he can draw from 
 a free, unbridled exercise of his intellect and imagination. 
 Of such a scheme, he has not to look far for Professors 
 among some of the great writers of this day. 
 
 I must now bring this Note to a conclusion ; for I have 
 examined our Author's claims as an interpreter of Nature ; 
 an asserter of facts ; a critic ; a quoter of authorities ; an 
 a priori reasoner; a moralist; and a natural theologian; and 
 on all these points he has been found wanting — partly from 
 imperfect knowledge, partly from a deluding hypothesis, 
 and most of all from a want of comprehending (as one of 
 the best effects of a good training) what I have ventured to 
 call the sanctity and severity of physical truth. As a book 
 of science his Work is shallow, false in principle, and 
 worthless; as a book of moral speculation it is intensely 
 mischievous ; and it is avowedly addressed, not to men of 
 science, but to persons who have little power of analysing 
 its sophistry, and little knowledge to instruct them how 
 false the work is to the true teaching of Nature. As to its 
 moral application, it not merely puts aside any belief in 
 revealed truth : but it verges on material Pantheism. Such 
 is my deliberate opinion of this popular work. 
 
 My sentiments on many grave questions, discussed in 
 this Volume, appear, unfortunately, in a very disjointed and 
 controversial form. There was no help for this; but I wish 
 it had been otherwise. A writer who is opposed to us in 
 principle naturally entrenches himself in the strongest posi- 
 tions he can find ; and we are, on that account, exposed to 
 some disadvantage while attacking him. Our arguments 
 neither appear in their strongest array, nor in what we 
 might think their natural order. It would, indeed, have 
 
314 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 been a far pleasanter and more fruitful task to have been 
 sowing, and watering, and reaping, than to have been set 
 down to the more servile work of plucking out weeds and 
 rooting up thorns : but, unhappily, the pleasanter task has 
 not fallen to my lot. I have, however, no misgivings as to 
 the truth of my general argument ; and it was my intention 
 to offer, in this place, a summary, or skeleton, of the methods 
 and principles by which the great leading truths of nature 
 should be drawn out — not controversially, but dogmatically 
 and positively: and then to point out, analogically, how 
 they became connected with both moral and religious truth. 
 A want both of time and space compels me to abandon this 
 attempt ; and here to end this long Note. 
 
 Note X. 
 
 Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. — 
 " The Prelude" of' W. Worsdworth, fyc. 
 
 I intended in this Note to have given an analysis of 
 some of the papers in the Transactions of the Cambridge 
 Philosophical Society, and a synopsis of the contents of the 
 several Volumes. In papers that were above my reach the 
 Authors would have assisted me, and I am confident that 
 the synopsis would have been of great value : but I found, 
 after a short trial, that, even in the most condensed form, 
 an abstract and analysis of many ponderous Volumes could 
 not be drawn out in less than two or three hundred pages. 
 This part of my task is therefore reluctantly abandoned. 
 But the publisher and the reader may, perhaps, rejoice at 
 this. For the Volume is now swelled out of all common 
 measure: and the Discourse, though none of the smallest, 
 is so crushed between a monstrous Preface, and a ponder- , 
 ous, double-headed Appendix, that it begins to look like a 
 grain of wheat between two mill-stones. 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 315 
 
 Trinity College, July 29, 1850. 
 
 P. S. I am tempted to make one digression more, in 
 consequence of the publication of a great work not uncon- 
 nected with the history of Cambridge, during the passage 
 of these concluding sheets through the Press (The Prelude, 
 by W. Wordsworth). 
 
 Some of the best poets of the last century exhibited in 
 perfection the felicitous good sense of Horace — the poetry 
 of society, taste, and manners ; seasoned by tart satire, and 
 (too often) tainted by sensuality. The followers in this 
 school had a language that was polished and glittering, but 
 conventional; and not stamped from the mint of nature. 
 The soul of Wordsworth could not endure it, and from 
 childhood he longed for something better. He was the 
 child of Nature, and he grew up the poet of Nature: and he 
 soon learnt to shew what inexhaustible stores of strength he 
 could draw out of the old Teutonic elements of our tongue ; 
 and how it was possible to be great, eloquent, and imagina- 
 tive, without borrowing a spangle from the fashionable con- 
 ventionalisms of his day. But no man ever worked out a 
 revolution without sometimes running into extremes : and 
 while he cast away, in intellectual scorn, all meretricious 
 decorations, he sometimes clothed his noble meaning in a 
 bare, uncouth, prosaic garb, which most men thought but 
 ill fitted for the adornment of his sentiments. But who, on 
 the other hand, has spread before the wondering senses 
 more glorious imagery, more true touches of Nature's paint- 
 ing, or loftier strains of poetical inspiration ? He taught us 
 a holier faith in Nature, and how to seek a better communion 
 with her. He worked out, and not without many a hard- 
 fought battle, and a long struggle against an adverse stream, 
 a great revolution in the taste and poetical feeling of his 
 countrymen ; and he has opened a vast storehouse of endur- 
 ing happiness to those who will take him for their guide, 
 and will listen to his song. 
 
 But a man may dream away his life, while he pillows his 
 
SI 6 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 soul in this kind of luxurious intellectual communion with 
 the gorgeous forms of outer Nature, and be wanting even in 
 catholicity of taste. For Wordsworth's poetry is not catho- 
 lic, like that of Shakspeare. Nay, a student may feed on it 
 and revel in it till he becomes an idolater of nature, to the 
 verge of Pantheism ; so as to forget his fellow-men and his 
 communion with them ; and duties higher still, and aspira- 
 tions more lofty than can rise in the human breast by mere 
 imaginative intercourse with the world of Nature; whatever 
 soul may be breathed into it by the heavings of a poet's 
 heart, or whatever warmth may be given to it by the genial 
 glow of his inspired love. Rousseau could sometimes call 
 out the living soul of nature with all the power of Words- 
 worth ; but he was sensual and impure : and he could cover 
 his impurity by words as glowing and as stirring, as those 
 whereby he decorated the sentiments he had felt during 
 his honest intercourse with Nature, and made other men 
 feel with him. But Wordsworth was one of the purest of 
 mankind. 
 
 We now know the growth of his early mind — told by 
 himself poetically, but honestly, no one can doubt. He 
 speaks not well of Cambridge ; but it is Cambridge as she 
 was more than sixty years since ; and as she appeared to 
 his youthful fancy and his ill-instructed reason. She was 
 not then, nor is she now, any place of ideal perfection. 
 I have myself felt some of the evils of which he sings : but 
 this is no place for the discussion of them. He knew nothing 
 then of human nature but what he had learnt in boyish 
 solitude, while communing with himself among his native 
 mountains. He was a raw youth with ample genius and a 
 burning fancy ; and with schemes of perfectibility floating 
 in his mind, which he learnt afterwards to look back upon 
 as idle dreams, and sometimes would gently laugh at during 
 his maturer life. In principle he was almost a Jacobin (a 
 word not then invented) ; and, though moral from habit and 
 temper, he was impatient both of political and intellectual 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 317 
 
 control ; and neither in those days (nor ever afterwards in 
 advancing life) did he even attempt to drink freely at those 
 fountains of material learning, which never ran dry after 
 Bacon's days, and have gushed out with a continued living 
 stream ever since Newton spent his philosophic life within 
 our walls. 
 
 " I, bred up 'raid Nature's luxuries, 
 Was a spoilt child, and rambling like the wind, 
 As I had done in daily intercourse 
 With those crystalline rivers, solemn heights, 
 And mountains, ranging like a fowl of the air, 
 I was ill-tutored for captivity." 
 
 {The Prelude, Book in.) 
 
 Such is his account of himself: and how could such a 
 Youth be a wise judge of any great academic institution? 
 And how could he tell us, except out of the visions of an 
 untutored fancy, what it ought to be? It is arrant folly 
 to quote his words as damnatory of the Cambridge system 
 then; and still more to quote them as damnatory of the 
 system now. That gross evils existed, I doubt not; for 
 gross evils ran through all society. Young Wordsworth felt 
 them, and described them well. But, within the last thirty 
 years, he has many times lived among us as one of our 
 household: and no man ever poured out more heartfelt 
 wishes for the stability of our ancient Colleges, or a firmer 
 belief that in the form of discipline with which they have 
 come down to us, they are working well for the character 
 of Englishmen, and for the common good. 
 
 The reader will, I trust, pardon this (perhaps not ill- 
 timed) digression : but one word more before I leave it. 
 Wordsworth was not only pure from habit and self-control ; 
 but he was also pure from a principle above what he drew 
 from his communion with Nature. He was a religious 
 man : and many a time, when it has been my great hap- 
 piness to roam with him over his native mountains, have I 
 heard him pour out his thanks, that while he had been 
 permitted to slake his innermost thirst at Nature's spring, 
 
318 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 he had been led to think of the God of Nature, and not to 
 forget His redeeming love. Let, then, no academic student, 
 while he honors the great Poet who is now gone, forget 
 the Poet's faith; or dare to draw from his noble lessons 
 the materials of an idolatrous or pantheistic dream, and then 
 tell us that he is of the school of Wordsworth. 
 
 The last time I saw him, he was in deep domestic sorrow, 
 and beginning to bend under the infirmities of old age. 
 Whatever (he said) the world may think of me or of my 
 poetry, is now of little consequence: but one thing is a 
 comfort of my old age — that none of my works, written 
 since the days of my early youth, contains a line I should 
 wish to blot out, because it panders to the baser passions of 
 our nature. This, said he, is a comfort to me. I can do no 
 mischief by my works when I am gone: and sensuality is 
 the great bane of all that is good and hopeful in our nature. 
 Such were the Poet's words, in his old age and days of 
 domestic sorrow ; and I recommend them to the solemn 
 thoughts of every Undergraduate who may read this page. 
 
 A friend has taken an objection to one or two expressions 
 of the Preface, because (he tells me) they appear to lean 
 towards a theory of development. It may be so, and I may 
 have written incorrectly and incautiously ; but I request 
 any reader, who may be offended by my words, to remember 
 in what sense I use the word "development," especially as 
 it is explained above (supra, note to p. xlvi). It is pos- 
 sible that, from misunderstanding my words, some person 
 might object to the last paragraph of p. cccvii. I do not 
 there contend for a natural development of any higher 
 types of manhood; nor did I mean to insinuate that man 
 had sprung by natural means out of the lower animals. 
 What I asserted was what I believed true — that Nature had 
 been progressive : and this I urged as an analogical argu- 
 ment in favour of a belief that our future condition might 
 be progressive : in other words, that, on analogical grounds, 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 319 
 
 we might hope for a higher condition of existence, such as 
 is revealed to us in the Word of God. 
 
 When the first part of the Preface was written (in 1847), 
 I had the sixth edition of The Vestiges before me ; and when 
 the part was printed from the original MS. during the last 
 autumn, I never thought of any later edition than the sixth. 
 To bring my references into a perfect and literal accordance 
 with the last edition, might perhaps make it necessary for 
 me to cancel several pages. This volume is not my property, 
 and the proprietors of it would have great reason to com- 
 plain of me, if, after so very long a delay, I were to put 
 them to any additional cost. My real dispute with the 
 Author of The Vestiges, is not so much on minute facts, as 
 on great principles : and it is impossible that he can so 
 arrange the facts of Geology, by either modification or sup- 
 pression, as thereby to make his principles either true or 
 plausible. 
 
 I have been told that I have not done full justice to 
 M. Plateau's very beautiful experiments in illustration of the 
 Nebular hypothesis. It may be so ; for though I read his 
 Memoir soon after it came out, I never reperused it; and 
 I never have had the pleasure of seeing his experiments 
 repeated. What I contend for, is — that they merely illustrate 
 La Place's dynamical reasoning. They add no new evidence 
 in favour of the hypothesis; and they explain none of the 
 difficulties, in the way of its reception, pointed out in the 
 Appendix (No. I.). 
 
 It would have been better for me to have made no allu- 
 sion to Mr. Kirkwood's analogy till I had seen his Memoir ; 
 and I have not yet been able to procure a copy of it : for 
 I am now told that the analogy is not described correctly in 
 a previous Note (No. VII. supra, p. 220), and that it ought 
 to have been expressed as follows : viz. The square of the 
 number representing the times any Planet revolves round its 
 axis during its period round the Sun varies as the cube of the 
 diameter of the circle thus inclosing it. If this be the asserted 
 
320 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 law, it is even more complicated and improbable than the 
 law as stated above (p. 220) ; and all the other objections 
 stand good against it. Even if it were true, we can only 
 prove it in two cases out of seven. But we cannot prove it, 
 except approximately, in any case; and it seems, instead of 
 a planetary law, to be merely an accidental and approximate 
 coincidence between two numbers. Let us again consider 
 that the diameters of the several circles (as they are de- 
 scribed above, p. 220), are constant; but, on the Nebular 
 hypothesis, the time of a Planet's rotation about its axis is 
 a constantly changing quantity during its consolidation. The 
 Planets neither began their process of consolidation at the 
 same moment of time, nor do we know the rate or law of 
 their consolidation ; and we are sure that they have not now 
 the same density. We have, therefore, no reason to expect 
 any fixed numerical law between elements that are invari- 
 able, and others that, apparently, are variable. 
 
 Another subject I may shortly allude to before I close 
 this volume. A Royal Commission is soon to be sent down 
 to Cambridge, and our Alma Mater is to be put upon her 
 trial. She has, we believe, nothing to fear from any investi- 
 gation, however searching, provided it be carried on in a 
 wise, patriotic, and Christian spirit. Our institutions are 
 historical, and by uniting and blending the present with the 
 past, have had a very powerful, and we believe a very 
 salutary, influence on the manners and tempers and prin- 
 ciples of Englishmen. May Providence forbid that any rude 
 hand should break these historical links, and, within our 
 ancient walls, disconnect the present and the past ! I would 
 deprecate any great organic change, or any radical change 
 in our principles of teaching, as pregnant with revolution, 
 irreligion, and a decay of sound learning ; and therefore a 
 grievous loss to the manners and state of England : and I 
 rejoice that my honest views were on record, while the 
 University was doing her best to amend her Statutes, to 
 improve her institutions, and to bring them into a better 
 
SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 321 
 
 accordance with the wants of modern learning and science ; 
 and while she was little dreaming of any external power 
 being brought to bear upon her, either to urge her on, or to 
 constrain her, during her efforts to ensure the public good. 
 
 Time is a great innovator, and may have introduced the 
 elements of decay amongst us. Some things may require 
 renovation. Some restraints, not o^ our own imposing, may 
 be taken from us, so as to give us a greater freedom, and a 
 larger power of usefulness. Our economical and domestic 
 administration have been, I believe, conducted on principles 
 of honour and impartiality that cannot be assailed : but they 
 may perhaps in some rare instances admit of modification 
 and improvement. To discuss such questions here would 
 be ill-timed and out of place. 
 
 I have no fear of an enlightened and patriotic Com- 
 mission, composed of men who know our institutions well, 
 who love them for what is good in them, and would not be 
 willing to palliate or tolerate any lurking evil — of men who 
 have the sentiments of Englishmen and the feelings of 
 Christian gentlemen. But a Commission might be formed 
 of men who would be harbingers of destruction, and would 
 mercilessly scatter to the winds every thing that is good 
 and great and salutary amongst us. 
 
 Ignorant and shallow men, who know nothing of us, and 
 have no sympathy with our labours and no knowledge of 
 our studies, have long been doing their very utmost to poison 
 the public mind by crude, vulgar, and ignorant slanders 
 directed against the old academic institutions of England. 
 A Commission, acting temperately, fearlessly, and on a high 
 principle, may perhaps do great good to us by putting a stop 
 to such slanders — by telling the world that our University is 
 governed on principles of honour and impartiality — that it 
 has striven to do much good — and, within its principles and 
 capacity, is willing to do more, if any better way can be 
 pointed out to her. I repeat then, that as loyal subjects of 
 our Queen, and affectionate sons of the University, we fear 
 
 S.D. X 
 
322 SUPPLEMENT TO THE APPENDIX. 
 
 not any Commission such as the advisers of the Crown will 
 recommend our Sovereign to send down to us. 
 
 When I wrote the words which begin this Supplement 
 (supra, p. 177); I hoped that this Volume would be out of 
 the Press before the expiration of the Term. But I began 
 my task before I had strength for it ; and I was soon com- 
 pelled to suspend it for another month. Like many other 
 tasks delayed beyond all reason, it is now completed in a 
 hurry. The several sheets (and sometimes the separate 
 pages) of this Supplement were sent one by one to Press as 
 they were written ; and I leave the University, for a time, 
 committing the revision of my last sheets to the kind offices 
 of a friend. I now conclude this Volume, recommending 
 it with heartfelt good-will to the Undergraduates of Cam- 
 bridge ; and not without a hope that it may be the humble 
 means of helping their studies, and contributing to their 
 moral and intellectual health. 
 
 THE END, 
 
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