law. This is no rash or unauthorised
affirmation. It is what we deduce from the calculation of a Newton and a
Laplace on the one hand, and from the industrious observation of facts
by a Murchison and a Lyell on the other. It is a point of stupendous
importance in human knowledge; here at once is the whole region of the
inorganic taken out of the dominion of marvel, and placed under an idea
of Divine regulation.

_III.--The History of the Earth's Life_

Mixed up, however, with the geological changes, and apparently as final
object connected with the formation of the globe itself, there is
another set of phenomena presented in the course of our history--the
coming into existence, namely, of a long suite of living things,
vegetable and animal, terminating in the families which we still see
occupying the surface. The question arises: In what manner has this set
of phenomena originated? Can we touch at and rest for a moment on the
possibility of plants and animals having likewise been produced in a
natural way, thus assigning immediate causes of but one character for
everything revealed to our sensual observation; or are we at once to
reject this idea, and remain content, either to suppose that creative
power here acted in a different way, or to believe unexaminingly that
the inquiry is one beyond our powers? Taking the last question first, I
would reply that I am extremely loth to imagine that there is anything
in Nature which we should, for any reason, refrain from examining. If we
can infer aught from the past history of science, it is that the whole
of Nature is a legitimate field for the exercise of our intellectual
faculties; that there is a connection between this knowledge and our
well-being; and that, if we may judge from things once despaired of by
our inquiring reason, but now made clear and simple, there is none of
Nature's mysteries which we may not hopefully attempt to penetrate. To
remain idly content to presume a various class of immediate causes for
organic Nature seems to me, on this ground, equally objectionable.

With respect to the other question the idea has several times arisen
that some natural course was observed in the production of organic
things, and this even before we were permitted to attain clear
conclusions regarding inorganic nature. It was always set quickly aside
as unworthy of serious consideration. The case is different now, when we
have admitted law in the whole domain of the inorg