Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, with a SequelHarper & brothers, 1860 - 303 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
advance amongst analogy animal kingdom animalcules annelids appear arrangements ascertained become beds birds body brain called carbonic acid carboniferous causes cetacea character circumstances coal coccosteus commencement crag and tail creatures crinoidea crustacea deposits dicotyledons diluvium early earth Edinburgh reviewer evil existence fact faculties favorable feet fishes formation fossils genera geological globe heat human hypothesis idea inferred insects instance kind land animals language less limestone mammalia marsupials mass matter ment mental mind mollusks nature nebular hypothesis nebulous observed Old Red Sandstone oolite operation organic creation origin particular peculiar phenomena plants present presumed produced progress quadrumana red sandstone regard remains remarkable reptiles resemblance respect rocks seen Silurian space species stars strata structure sub-kingdom substance suppose surface tion traces tribes ture various vast vegetable vertebrata whole
Popular passages
Page 110 - It has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth to another, until the second highest gave birth to man, who is the very highest: be it so, it is our part to admire and to submit.
Page 283 - Let any one watch the manner in which he himself unravels any complicated mass of evidence ; let him observe how, for instance, he elicits the true history of any occurrence from the involved statements of one or of many witnesses...
Page 283 - The process of tracing regularity in any complicated and at first sight confused set of appearances, is necessarily tentative : we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption.
Page 242 - We have visited in succession the tombs and charnelhouses of these old times, and we took with us the clew spun in the fabric of development; but we found this clew no guide through these ancient labyrinths, and, sorely against our will, we were compelled to snap its thread.
Page 109 - ... the phenomena which we have been considering; but certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose whole notion is obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies of the wise. Had the laws of organic development been known in his time, his theory might have been of a more imposing kind.
Page 70 - What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also the result of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of his will ? More than this, the fact of the cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural law is a powerful argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise, for how can we suppose that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere personally and...
Page 109 - ... been capable of producing all the existing organisms, with the simple and easily conceivable aid of a higher generative law, which we perhaps still see operating upon a limited scale. I also go beyond the French philosopher to a very important point, the original Divine conception of all the forms of being which these natural laws were only instruments in working out and realizing.
Page 97 - Some minds are so constituted, that, after passing the first hundred terms, they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms few will doubt, and after the fifty thousandth term the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one, will be almost irresistible. That term will be fifty thousand and one; and the same regular succession will continue ; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their expected...
Page 8 - We advance from law to the cause of law, and ask, What is that? Whence have come all these beautiful regulations? Here science leaves us, but only to conclude, from other grounds, that 'there is a First Cause, to which all others are secondary and ministrative, a primitive Almighty Will, of which these laws are merely the mandates.