forming coral deposits, in some places chalk, and in others beds of Molluscs; while in still other places entirely different forms of life are existing. In fact, each zone or depth of the ocean has its particular type of life, just as successive altitudes do on the sides of a mountain; and it is a dogmatic and arbitrary assumption to say that such conditions have not existed in the past.

"On our own coasts, the marine remains found a few miles from shore, in banks where fish congregate, are different from those found close to the shore, where only littoral species flourish. A large proportion of aquatic creatures have structures that do not admit of fossilization; while of the rest, the great majority are destroyed, when dead, by the various kinds of scavengers that creep among the rocks and weeds. So that no one deposit near our shores can contain anything like a true representation of the fauna of the surrounding sea; much less of the co-existing faunas of other seas in the same latitude; and still less of the faunas of seas in distant latitudes. Were it not that the assertion seems needful, it would be almost absurd to say that the organic remains now being buried in the Dogger Bank can tell us next to nothing about the fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and corals that are now being buried in the Bay of Bengal."

This author evidently found it difficult to keep within the bounds of parliamentary language when speaking of the absurd and vicious reasoning at the very basis of the whole current geological theory; for, unlike the other physical sciences, the great leading ideas of geology are not generalisations framed from the whole series or group of observed facts, but are really abstract statements supposed to be reasonable in themselves, or at the most very hasty conclusions based on wholly insufficient data, like that of Werner in his "narrow district of Germany." Sir Henry Howorth[2] has well expressed the urgent need that there is of a complete reconstruction of geological theory:

"It is a singular and a notable fact, that while most other branches of science have emancipated themselves from the trammels of metaphysical reasoning, the science of geology still remains imprisoned in a priori theories."

But Huxley[3] also has left us some remarks along the same line which are almost equally helpful in showing the essential absurdity of the assumption that when one type of life was living and being buried in one locality another and very diverse type could not have been doing the same things in other distant localities.

This is how he expresses it:

"All competent authorities will probably assent to the proposition that physical geology does not enable us in any way to reply to this question—Were the British Cretaceous rocks deposited at the same time as those of India, or were they a million of years younger, or a million of years older?"

This phase of the idea, however, is not so bad, for the human mind refuses to believe that distant and disconnected groups of similar forms were not connected in time and genetic relationship. It is really the reverse of this proposition that contains the most essential absurdity, and this is the very phase that is most essential to the whole succession of life idea. Huxley, indeed, seems to have caught a glimpse of this truth, for he says:

"A Devonian fauna and flora in the British Islands may have been contemporaneous with Silurian life in North America, and with a Carboniferous fauna and flora in Africa. Geographical provinces and zones may have been as distinctly marked in the Palaeozoic epoch as at present."

Certainly; but if this be true, it is equally certain that the Carboniferous flora of Pennsylvania may have been contemporaneous alike with the Cretaceous flora of British Columbia and the Tertiary flora of Germany and Australia. But in that case what becomes of this succession of life which for nearly a century has been the pole star of all the other biological sciences—I might almost say of the historical and theological as well?

Must it not be admitted that in any system of clear thinking this whole idea of there having really been a succession of life on the globe is not only not proved by scientific methods, but that it is essentially unprovable and absurd?

Huxley, in point of fact, admits this, though he goes right on with his scheme of evolution, just as if he never thought of the logical consequences involved. His words are:

"In the present condition of our knowledge and of our methods (sic) one verdict—'not proven and not provable'—must be recorded against all grand hypotheses of the palaeontologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe."

In view of these startling facts, is it not amazing to see the supernatural knowledge of the past continually and quietly assumed in every geological vision of the earth's history?

CHAPTER II
HISTORY OF THE IDEA

Among the few stray principles that the future will probably be able to save from the wreck of Spencer's philosophy, is the advisability of looking into the genealogy of an idea. What has been its surroundings? What is its family history? Does it come of good stock, or is its family low and not very respectable?

This is especially true in the case of a scientific idea, which above all others needs to have a clean bill of health and a good family record. But, unfortunately, the idea we are here considering has a bad record, very bad in fact; for the whole family of Cosmogonies, of which this notion is the only surviving representative, were supposed to have been banished from the land of science long ago, and were all reported dead. Some of them had to be executed by popular ridicule, but most of them died natural deaths, the result of inherited taint, in the latter part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is perfectly astonishing how any of the family could have survived over into the twentieth century, in the face of such an antecedent record.

For one of the chief traits of the family as a whole is that of mental disorder of various stages and degrees. Some of them were raving crazy; others were mild and comparatively harmless, except that their drivel had such a disturbing effect on scientific investigations that they had to be put out of the way. It seems such a pity that when this last fellow, early in life, was up before Doctors Huxley and Spencer for examination, he was not locked up or put in limbo forthwith. This is especially unfortunate, because this survivor of an otherwise extinct race has since then produced a large family, some of which it is true have already expired, while the eldest son, Darwinism, was reported in 1901 to be "at its last gasp,"[4] and was even said last year to have had its "tombstone inscription" written by von Hartmann of Germany. But the succession of life idea itself, the father of all this brood, is still certified by those in authority to be healthy and compos mentis.

The Cosmogony Family is a very ancient one, running back to the time of