The Plurality of Worlds

CHAPTER V

1. Man, as I trust has been made apparent to the consciousness and conviction of the reader, is an intelligent, moral, religious, and spiritual creature; and we have to discuss the difficulty, or perplexity, or objection, which arises in our minds, when we consider such a creature as occupying an habitation, which is but one among many globes apparently equally fitted to be the dwelling-places of living things—a mere speck in the immensity of creation—an atom among such a vast array of material structures—a world, as we needs must deem it, among millions of other objects which appear to have an equal claim to be regarded as worlds.

2. The difficulty appears to be great, either way. Can the earth alone be the theatre of such intelligent, moral, religious, and spiritual action? On the other hand, can we conceive such action to go on in the other bodies of the universe? If we take the latter alternative, we must people other planets and other systems with men such as we are, even as to their history. For the intellectual and moral condition of man implies a history of the species; and the view of man's condition which religion presents, not only involves a scheme of which the history of the human race is a part, but also asserts a peculiar reference had, in the provisions of God, to the nature of man; and even a peculiar relation and connection between the human and the divine nature. To extend such suppositions to other worlds would be a proceeding so arbitrary and fanciful, that we are led to consider whether the alternative supposition may not be more admissible. The alternative supposition is, that man is, in an especial and eminent manner, the object of God's care; that his place in the creation is, not that he merely occupies one among millions of similar domiciles provided in boundless profusion by the Creator of the Universe, but that he is the servant, subject, and child of God, in a way unique and peculiar; that his being a spiritual creature, (including his other attributes in the highest for the sake of brevity,) makes him belong to a spiritual world, which is not to be judged of merely by analogies belonging to the material universe.

3. Between these two difficulties the choice is embarrassing, and the decision must be unsatisfactory, except we can find some further ground of judgment. But perhaps this is not hopeless. We have hitherto referred to the evidence and analogies supplied by one science, namely, astronomy. But there are other sciences which give us information concerning the nature and history of the earth. From some of these, perhaps, we may obtain some knowledge of the place of the earth in the scheme of creation—how far it is, in its present condition, a thing unique, or only one thing among many like it. Any science which supplies us with evidence or information on this head, will give us aid in forming a judgment upon the question under our consideration. To such sciences, then, we will turn our attention.

One science has employed itself in investigating the nature and history of the earth by an examination of the materials of which it is composed; namely, Geology. Let us call to mind some of the results at which this science has arrived.

4. A very little attention to what is going on among the materials of which the earth's surface is composed, suffices to show us that there are causes of change constantly and effectually at work. The earth's surface is composed of land and water, hills and valleys, rocks and rivers. But these features undergo change, and produce change in each other. The mountain-rivers cut deeper and deeper into the ravines in which they run; they break up the rocks over which they rush, use the fragments as implements of further destruction, pile them up in sloping mounds where the streams issue from the mountains, spread them over the plains, fill up lakes with sediment, push into the sea great deltas. The sea batters the cliffs and eats away the land, and again, forms banks and islands where there had been deep water. Volcanoes pour out streams of lava, which destroy the vegetation over which they flow, and which again, after a series of years, are themselves clothed with vegetation. Earthquakes throw down tracts of land beneath the sea, and elevate other tracts from the bottom of the ocean. These agencies are everywhere manifest; and though at a given moment, at a given spot, their effect may seem to us almost imperceptible, too insignificant to be taken account of, yet in a long course of years almost every place has undergone considerable changes. Rivers have altered their courses, lakes have become plains, coasts have been swept away or have become inland districts, rich valleys have been ravaged by watery or fiery deluges, the country has in some way or other assumed a new face. The present aspect of the earth is in some degree different from what it was a few thousand years ago.

5. But yet, in truth, the changes of which we thus speak have not been very considerable. The forms of countries, the lines of coasts, the ranges of mountains, the groups of valleys, the courses of rivers, are much the same now as they were in ancient times. The face of the earth, since man has had any knowledge of it, may have undergone some change, but the changeable has borne a small proportion to the permanent. Changes have taken place, and are taking place, but they do not take place rapidly. The ancient earth and the modern earth are, in all their main physical features, identical; and we must go backwards through a considerably larger interval than that which carries us back to what we usually term antiquity, before we are led, by the operation of causes now at work, to an aspect of the earth's surface very different from that which it now presents.

6. For instance, rivers do, no doubt, more or less alter, in the course of years, by natural causes. The Rhine, the Rhone, the Po, the Danube, have, certainly, during the last four thousand years, silted up their beds in level places, expanded the deltas at their mouths, changed the channels by which they enter the sea; and very probably, in their upper parts, altered the forms of their waterfalls and of their shingle beds. Yet even if we were thus to go backwards ten thousand, or twenty, or thirty thousand years, (setting aside great and violent causes of change, as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the like,) the general form and course of these rivers, and of the ranges of mountains in which they flow, would not be different from what it is now. And the same may be said of coasts and islands, seas and bays. The present geography of the earth may be, and from all the evidence which we have, must be, very ancient, according to any measures of antiquity which can apply to human affairs.

7. But yet the further examination of the materials of the earth carries us to a view beyond this. Though the general forms of the land and the waters of continents and seas, were, several thousand years ago, much the same as they now are; yet it was not always so. We have clear evidence that large tracts which are now dry ground, were formerly the bed of the ocean; and these, not tracts of the shore, where the varying warfare of sea and land is still going on, but the very central parts of great continents; the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas. For not only are the rocks of which these great mountain-chains consist, of such structure that they appear to have been formed as layers of sediment at the bottom of water; but also, these layers contain vast accumulations of shells, or impressions of shells, and other remains of marine animals. And these appearances are not few, limited, or partial. The existence of such marine remains, in the solid substance of continents and mountains, is a general, predominant, and almost universal fact, in every part of the earth. Nor is any other way of accounting for this fact admissible, than that those materials really have, at some time, formed bottoms of seas. The various other conjectures and hypotheses, which were put forward on this subject, when the amount, extent, multiplicity, and coherence of the phenomena were not yet ascertained, and when their natural history was not yet studied, cannot now be considered as worthy of the smallest regard. That many of our highest hills are formed of materials raised from the depths of ocean, is a proposition which cannot be doubted, by any one, who fairly examines the evidence which nature offers.

8. If we take this proposition only, we cannot immediately connect it with our knowledge respecting the surface of the earth in its present form. We learn that what is now land, has been sea; and we may suppose (since it is natural to assume that the bulk of the sea has not much changed) that what is now sea was formerly land. But, except we can learn something of the manner in which this change took place, we cannot make any use of our knowledge. Was the change sudden, or gradual; abrupt, or successive; brief, or long-continuing?

9. To these questions, the further study of the facts enables us to return answers with great confidence. The change or changes which produced the effects of which we have spoken—the conversion of the bottom of the ocean into the centre of our greatest continents and highest mountains,—were undoubtedly gradual, successive, and long continued. We must state very briefly the grounds on which we make this assertion.

10. The masses which form our mountain-chains, offer evidence, as I have said, that they were deposited as sediment at the bottom of a sea, and then hardened. They consist of successive layers of such sediment, making up the whole mass of the mountain. These layers are, of course, to a certain extent, a measure of the time during which the deposition of sediment took place. The thicker the mass of sediment, the more numerous and varied its beds, and the longer period must we suppose to have been requisite for its formation. Without making any attempt at accurate or definite estimation, which would be to no purpose, it is plain that a mass of sedimentary strata five thousand or ten thousand feet thick, must have required, for its deposit, a long course of years, or rather, a long course of ages.

11. But again: on further examination it is found, that we have not merely one series of sedimentary deposits, thus forming our mountains. There are a number of different series of such layers or strata, to be found in different ranges of hills, and in the same range, one series resting upon another. These different series of strata are distinguishable from one another by their general structure and appearance, besides more intimate characters, of which we shall shortly have to speak. Each such series appears to have a certain consistency of structure within itself; the layers of which it is composed being more or less parallel, but the successive series are not thus always parallel, the lower ones being often highly inclined and irregular, while the upper ones are more level and continuous: as if the lower strata had been broken up and thrown into disorder, and then a new series of strata had been deposited horizontally on their fragments. But in whatever way these different sedimentary series succeeded each other, each series must have required, as we have seen, a long period for its formation; and to estimate the length of the interval between the two series, we have, at the present stage of our exposition, no evidence.

12. But the mechanical structure of the strata, the result, as it seems, of aqueous sedimentary deposit, is not the only, nor the most important evidence, with regard to the length of time occupied by the formation of the rocky layers which now compose our mountains. As we have said, they contain shells, and other remains of creatures which live in the sea. These they contain, not in small numbers, scattered and detached, but in vast abundance, as they are found in those parts of the ocean which is most alive with them. There are the remains of oysters and other shell-fish in layers, as they live at present in the seas near our shores; of corals, in vast patches and beds, as they now occur in the waters of the Pacific; of shoals of fishes, of many different kinds, in immense abundance. Each of these beds of shells, of corals, and of fishes, must have required many years, perhaps many centuries, for the growth of the successive individuals and successive generations of which it consists: as long a time, perhaps, as the present inhabitants of the sea have lived therein: or many times longer, if there have been many such successive changes. And thus, while the present condition of the earth extends backwards to a period of vast but unknown antiquity; we have, offered to our notice, the evidence of a series of other periods, each of which, so far as we can judge, may have been as long or longer than that during which the dry land has had its present form.

13. But the most remarkable feature in the evidence is yet to come. We have spoken in general of the oysters, and corals, and fishes, which occur in the strata of our hills; as if they were creatures of the same kinds which we now designate by those names. But a more exact examination of these remains of organized beings, shows that this is not so. The tribes of animals which are found petrified in our rocks are almost all different, so far as our best natural historians can determine, from those which now live in our existing seas. They are different species; different genera. The creatures which we find thus embedded in our mountains, are not only dead as individuals, but extinct as species. They belonged, not only to a terrestrial period, but to an animal creation, which is now past away. The earth is, it seems, a domicile which has outlasted more than one race of tenants.

14. It may seem rash and presumptuous in the natural historian to pronounce thus peremptorily that certain forms of life are nowhere to be found at present, even in the unfathomable and inaccessible depths of the ocean. But even if this were so, the proposition that the earth has changed its inhabitants, since the rocks were formed, of which our hills consist, does not depend for its proof on this assumption. For in the organic bodies which our strata contain, we find remains, not only of marine animals, but of animals which inhabit the fresh waters, and the land, and of plants. And the examination of such remains having been pursued with great zeal, and with all the aids which natural history can supply, the result has been, the proofs of a vast series of different tribes of animals and plants, which have successively occupied the earth and the seas; and of which the number, variety, multiplicity, and strangeness, exceed, by far, everything which could have been previously imagined. Thus Cuvier found, in the limestone strata on which Paris stands, animals of the most curious forms, combining in the most wonderful manner the qualities of different species of existing quadrupeds. In another series of strata, the Lias, which runs as a band across England from N. E. to S. W., we have the remains of lizards, or lacertine animals, different from those which now exist, of immense size and of extraordinary structure, some approaching to the form of fishes (ichthyosaurus); others, with the neck of a serpent; others with wings, like the fabled forms of dragons. Then beyond these, that is, anterior to them in the series of time, we have the immense collection of fossil plants, which occur in the Coal Strata; the shells and corals of the Mountain Limestone; the peculiar fishes, different altogether from existing fishes, of the Old Red Sandstone; and though, as we descend lower and lower, the traces of organic life appear to be more rare and more limited in kind, yet still we have, beneath these, in slates and in beds of limestone, many fossil remains, still differing from those which occur in the higher, and therefore, newer strata.

15. We have no intention of instituting any definite calculation with regard to the periods of time which this succession of forms of organic life may have occupied. This, indeed, the boldest geological speculators have not ventured to do. But the scientific discoveries thus made, have a bearing upon the analogies of creation, quite as important as the discoveries of astronomy. And therefore we may state briefly some of the divisions of the series of terrestrial strata which have suggested themselves to geological inquirers. At the outset of such speculations, it was conceived that the lower rocks, composed of granite, slate, and the like, had existed before the earth was peopled with living things; and that these, being broken up into inclined positions, there were deposited upon them, as the sediment of superincumbent waters, strata more horizontal, containing organic remains. The former were then called Primitive or Primary, the latter, Secondary rocks. But it was soon found that this was too sweeping and peremptory a division. Rocks which had been classed as Primary, were found to contain traces of life; and hence, an intermediate class of Transition strata was spoken of. But this too was soon seen to be too narrow a scheme of arrangement, to take in the rapidly-accumulating mass of facts, organic and others, which the geological record of the earth's history disclosed. It appeared that among the fossil-bearing strata there might be discerned a long series of Formations: the term Formation being used to imply a collection of successive strata, which, taking into account all the evidence, of materials, position, relations, and organic remains, appears to have been deposited during some one epoch or period; so as to form a natural group, chronologically and physiologically distinct from the others. In this way it appeared that, taking as the highest part of the Secondary series, the beds of chalk, which, marked by characteristic fossils, run through great tracts of Europe, with other beds, of sand and clay, which generally accompany these; there was, below this Cretaceous Formation, an Oolitic Formation, still more largely diffused, and still more abundant in its peculiar organic remains. Below this, we have, in England, the New Red Sandstone Formation, which, in other countries, is accompanied by beds abundant in fossils, as the Muschelkalk of Germany. Below this again we have the Coal Formation, and the Mountain Limestone, with their peculiar fossils. Below these, we have the Old Red Sandstone or Devonian System, with its peculiar fishes and other fossils. Beneath these, occur still numerous series of distinguishable strata; which have been arranged by Sir Roderick Murchison as the members of the Silurian formation; the researches by which it was established having been carried on, in the first place, in South Wales, the ancient country of the Silures. Including the lower part of this formation, and descending still lower in order, is the Cambrian formation of Professor Sedgwick. And since the races of organic beings, as we thus descend through successive strata, seem to be fewer and fewer in their general types, till at last they disappear; these lower members of the geological series have been termed, according to their succession, Palæozoic, Protozoic, and Hypozoic or Azoic. The general impression on the minds of geologists has been, that, as we descend in this long staircase of natural steps, we are brought in view of a state of the earth in which life was scantily manifested, so as to appear to be near its earliest stages.