Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/58

 54 different natures and properties may be imagined to be within the range of possible existences, not one of all the living or fossil species of animals or vegetables, could ever have endured the temperature. of an incandescent planet. All these species must therefore have had a beginning, posterior to the state of universal fusion which Geology points out.

I know not how I can better sum up the conclusion of this argument, than in the words of my Inaugural Lecture, (Oxford, 1819, p. 20).

"The consideration of the evidences afforded by geological phenomena may enable us to lay more securely the very foundations of natural theology, inasmuch as they clearly point out to us a period antecedent to the habitable state of the earth, and consequently antecedent to the existence of its inhabitants. When our minds become thus familiarized with the idea of a beginning and first creation of the beings we see around us, the proofs of design, which the structure of those beings affords, carry with them a more forcible conviction of an intelligent Creator, and the hypothesis of an eternal succession of causes, is thus at once removed. We argue thus: it is demonstrable from Geology that there was a period when no organic beings had existence; these organic beings must therefore have had a beginning subsequently to this period; and where is that beginning to be found but in the will and fiat of an intelligent and all-wise Creator?"

The same conclusion is stated by Cuvier, to be the result of his observations on geological phenomena: “Mais ce qui étonne davantage encore, et ce qui n'est pas moins certain, c'est que la vie n'a pas toujours existé sur le globe, et qu'il est facile à l'observateur de reconnôitre le point où elle a commencé à déposer ses produits."—Cuvier, Ossemens Fossiles, Disc. Prelim. 1821, vol. i. p. ix.