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LETTER IX.

AUTHOR'S THEORY OF CREATION.

SIR,-If the author of the Vestiges had finished his book at the close of his history of the earth, as told by geology,' the world would have been indebted to him for having compressed so large an amount of interesting information into so brief a space, and presented it in so pleasing a form. Unfortunately this was not his design. He evidently expected to take the learned world by surprise, by presenting a theory, which, as he thought, was, for simplicity, universality, novelty, and boldness, unsurpassed and unsurpassable. His great object was therefore to bring forward and establish his hypothesis. While his history is contained in 148 pages, the theoretical part, including his explanations, occupy about four times that amount. Of the 570 pages of argument and explanation, I think it may be safely affirmed, that a greater mixture of wisdom and folly, of sense and nonsense, was never before presented to the public eye. It were unnecessary to direct attention

to his wild and most dangerous speculations, if it were not that the book has already attained a wide circulation, and has reached its sixth edition. It therefore becomes necessary to endeavour to counteract its effects upon those who are panting after novelties, and are unable or unwilling to detect its sophistries. Some years ago, it was mentioned in the public prints, that an ingenious individual had expended a considerable part of his life in constructing a parachute of a novel form, and which would enable him to drop from a balloon with safety. To show the confidence he placed in his machine, and to startle the world with the boldness of the undertaking, he allowed himself to be carried up by a balloon, till it had reached the terrific height of nearly one mile from the earth. The signal for descent being given, by some strange miscalculation it came to the earth with the rapidity and violence of a cannon shot, and dashed him to pieces. He had succeeded in attracting attention, and surprising the world, but it was with his own folly and rashness. Such has been the imaginative flight of the author of the Vestiges. He too has spent no inconsiderable time in constructing his theory; and has succeeded in arousing the philosophic world from its

apathetic slumbers; but it has only been, or will only be, to amuse them with the monstrous aberrations of a singularly-constructed brain, or to weep over his folly and downfall.

In p. 248, we are told in the Vestiges, that 'M. Lamarck, one of the most distinguished of modern naturalists, suggested that the gradation of animals depended upon some general law, which it was important for us to discover.' 'His illustrations were chiefly of the following nature. The bird, which is attracted to the water by necessity of seeking for its food, wishes to move about on the surface of the flood, and for this purpose strikes out its toes. Through consequent repeated separations of the toes, the skin uniting them at the roots is extended, and at length becomes webbed. In like manner, the shore bird, which has no desire to swim, but has to approach the water for food, is constantly subject to sink in the mud. The bird, disliking this, exerts all its efforts to lengthen its legs; and the result therefore is, that, by continual habit for many generations, the legs of this order do at length become long and bare, as we see them.' 'This principle, with time, he deemed sufficient to have produced the advance from the monad to the mammal.'

Our author candidly acknowledges, that the germ of his natural view of the history of the world, is presented in the work of Lamarck.' He himself furnishes us with some happy illustrations of his own theory. P. 346: 'He may not yet be held as a very fanciful naturalist, who would regard the megatherium as eager to climb a tree which he could only shake, and thus producing a progeny fitted to do that which was the object of his wishes; or the rock-nose whale, which loves to rest its head on rocks beside the beach, as wishful of that mode of life which was at length vouchsafed to a more highly-developed descendant.' The principle may be better understood and remembered by putting a good old proverb into the form of a declaration, 'Wishes become horses, and beggars then ride.' This is a maxim which is to account for the structure of plants, trees, reptiles, beasts, birds, and, though last, not least, man himself, with all his moral and intellectual powers. According to the hypothesis, there was but one act of creation; or rather, the creative power is by the Almighty mysteriously lodged in the atoms of which the universe is composed. The fundamental form of organic being is a cell, having new cells forming within itself' (which

cells, it is humbly presumed, have no existence but in the author's brain). These cells, thus mysteriously endowed, set to work, and, with a little assistance from electricity, form themselves into sea plants; these plants, by wishing and strenuously labouring to become shell fish, at length succeed; they again, becoming tired of such a form, after long generations of wishing, become reptiles; these reptiles, tiring of a crawling life, wish to become fish, and, by striving to swim, the fins begin to grow, the tail to enlarge, the lungs to be fitted for their new mode of life, and, lo! by wishing and striving for a few centuries, at length become perfect fishes. These again, tiring of a sea life, begin to look with longing eyes to the land, and, by a long and strong effort, they come out in the shape of frogs. The frogs again, greatly dissatisfied with their littleness, begin to blow themselves up into as large a size as possible, and, after ages of hard blowing, at length reach the size of an ox. Still the ox is not satisfied with his bulk, and, by strong wishing, hard effort, and severe blowing, he expands into the form of the megatherium. The megatherium coming at first to scratch his ponderous limbs on the tree, can only shake it, but cannot