GOSSE'S OMEHA LOS..
Tam avowed object of Omphalos is to reconcile Genesis and Geology by anew line of argument, or rather a new mode- of illustrating an argument already, it would seem hinted at by Granville Penn in 1822, though the then state of ]Physical science "did not enable him to press the argument to a demonstration," as Mr. Gosse has done. Another object, not so distinctly avowed, appears to be to find a mode of compactly putting a summary review of the dis- coveries of geology and many of the most remarkable phenomena connected with vegetable and animal life into a book. In a crafts- manlike sense this is not badly done, and the book may be 'pro- nounced not badly made. The argument is one of the most fal- lacious, and the logic the most imperfect, of almost anything we have met with in the reasoning way. It is put forth with a glib confidence and a popular mode of enforcement which is not often encountered in books on scientific subjects by men claiming to be scientific characters.
Omphalos in perfect consistency opens with an illustration from a romance. "You have not allowed for the wind, Hubert," said Locksley in Ivanhoe ; and then Mr. Gosse goes on to tell a story about a shipwreck that arose from not allowing for the cur- rent, and adds another remark on the aberrations of the planet Uranus from the attraction of (the then undiscovered) Neptune. "In each of these cases the conclusions were legitimately deduced from the recognized premises, except one," whose omission was fatal. So it is with geologists • they have omitted the fatal one with which Mr. Gosse now supplies them. Extraneous or subordinate reasonings being put aside, the per- fecting argument stands thus. The life of the species, whether animal or vegetable, moves in a circle. In the plant, you begin with the seed or shoot, and go through a succession of stages till you come to the seed again. In animal life, you begin with the embryo, or indeed several stages earlier, and, passing on through infancy, childhood, &c. to maturity, you come back to the start- ing-point. You may also if you like, describe a circle, and, marking the successive stages at given intervals, call with Mr. Gosse the process circular and demonstrative. This process he says, is the natural order of things as we see them and know them from history. Creation (which he assumes, as well as the noneternity of matter and the persistence of species) is an inter- ruption or break of this natural order, and would mislead any investigator taking up the first created of a species to investigate its age, or any of its antecedents." For example, a physiolo- gist examining Adam at his creation, might 'Pronounce him "from twenty-five to thirty years" old, though he had not lived for an hour. In like manner, a tree just created would appear many years or possibly some centuries old. If, going backward along the circle we suppose creation not to have begun at ma- turity, the liability to error is just the same as regards the dura- tion of time; indeed greater, for we then have the element of parentage.
* Omphalos ; an Attempt to Untie the Geological Snot. By Philip Henry Gosse, F.A.S. With fifty-six Illustrations on Wood. Published by Van Voorst. All this is obvious enough. If there were but one fossil remain of every species, and there seemed reason to suppose that this one relict were the sole specimen of the species that ever lived, there might then be some foundation for the drift of Mr. Gosse, that fossils do not establish duration of time. Everybody, however, who knows anything of geology, knows that such is not the fact. Of some few species only single specimens may have turned up; but the majority of species are comparatively numerous, and found in widely different places. On this principle of Mr. Gesso, we must conclude that creation and not generation supplied all the creatures of the geological world ; for, in legitimate logic, several of a species establish the succession which we see around us, just as much as experience or as historical evidence. A few or even many specimens of the larger animantia may not prove long duration, except from the analogy of Nature as we see her ; but many of the (technically) rock formations demonstratively require a succession of ages for their production. The author's compila- tion on the subject of the oolitic period should have induced him to pause in his demonstration. " The duration of the Oolitic period must have been considerable. The lias sea-bottom was succeeded first by a sandy, and then by a calcareous deposit, and the animals were modified accordingly.' The deposit of car- bonate of lime, which took place under circumstances that caused it to at- tract around its nodules the organic particles, whence the name °dile (egg- stone) is derived, was not continuous, but repeated at intervals. The shells of mollusks were developed in great abundance ; and accumulations of those formed thick bands, which consolidated into layers of shell-lime- stone. Three hundred feet of strata, largely composed of organic remains, were formed before the clay was depcsited which made the Stonesfield and contemporaneous slates.
"Once more the dry land sank, probably by slow successive subsidences, and the sea flowed many fathoms deep above the great European Archi- pelago. And upon its quiet bottom settled down, first a few sandy and clayey- beds, and then the great layer of the chalk. "Creatures of very minute size and low grades of organization were now playing a very important part. A large portion of the lime that was de- posited, in the form of a pure carbonate, was doubtless supplied by the coral structures, which were exceedingly numerous ; the polypidoms being gnawed down by strong-jawed fishes that fed upon the zoophytes. Foraminifera also were abundant, and contributed to the supply.
"Nodules of flint exist in the chalk, sometimes scattered, sometimes arranged in bands. Two sources are indicated for this substance. One is sponge, the most common kinds of which are composed of skeletons of sili- ceous spicule -, and these can be discerned with the microscope in the interior of the chalk-flints. But millions upon millions of infusona swam through the waters ; and many of these were encased in siliceous lorine, while the rocks and sea-weeds were fringed with as incalculably numerous examples of siliceous diatemacere, ...whose elegant forms are recognizable without diffi- culty throughout the chalk. The inconceivable abundance of these forms may be illustrated by the often-cited fact, that whole strata of solid rock appear to be so exclusively composed of their solid remains that a cube of one-tenth of an inch is computed by Ehrenberg to contain five hundred millions of individuals.
"The increase of these organisms is very rapid, and their duration pro- portionately short ; but, allowing for this, what period would elapse before the successive generations of entities, of which forty-one thousand millions are required to make a cubic inch, would have accumulated into solid strata fourteen feet in thickness ?"
A secondary argument takes the bull by the horns. It seems difficult for any one to avoid feeling the obvious fallacy- of the cir- cular and creative theory. Mr. Gosse therefore takes final refuge in a theory which we know not how to describe without seeming irreverence, it is so absurd. According to this compendious scheme, the Almighty formed what the Germans call an "idea" of the entire world (ontologically speaking) "in ease," but de- layed to carry it out "in posse." Let God begin when he would, however, the entire world as originally conceived would be em- bodied in creation; and being examined e'
by geologists, it would appear to have existed for thousands or millions of years, though only created yesterday. The world at creation's birth would exist as required by its age in idea, or, as Mr. Gosse terms it, "pro- chronically ' - the fossils would be as they would have been had they gone through the successive epochs asserted by the geolo- gists. "Non meus hic sermo ": here is the exposition in its au- thor's words.
"Admit for a moment, as a hypothesis, that the Creator had before his mind a. projection of the whole life-history of the globe commencing with any point which the geologist may imagine to have been a fit commencing point, and ending with some unimaginable acme in the indefinitely distant future. He determines to call this idea into actual existence, not at the supposed commencing point, but at some stage or other of its course. It is clear, then' that at the selected stage it appears exactly as it would have appeared at that moment of its history if all the preceding eras of its history had been real. Just as the new-created man was, at the first moment of his existence, a man of twenty, or five-and-twenty, or thirty years old ; physi- cally, palpably, visibly, so old, though not really-, not diachronically. He appeared precisely what he would have appeared had he lived so many years. "Let us suppose that this present year 1857 had been the particular epoch in the projected life-history of the world, which the Creator selected as the era of its actual beginning. At his fiat it appears; but in what condition ? Its actual condition at this moment : whatever is now existent would ap- pear precisely as it does appear. There would be cities filled with swarms of men ; there would be houses half-built; castles fallen into ruins ; pic- tures on artists' easels just sketched in ; wardrobes filled with half-worn garments; ships sailing over the sea ; marks of birds' footsteps on the mud ; skeletons whitening the desert sands ; human bodies in every stage of de- cay in the burial-grounds. These and millions of other traces of the past would be found, because they are found in the world now they belong to the present age of the world ; and if it had pleased God to Call into existence this globe at this epoch of its life-history, the whole of which lay like a map before his infinite mind, it would certainly have presented all these phenomena." It is difficult to see how this " idea " can supportrevelation. There are some Omissions in the enumeration. Authors him as ranch right to appear in the lists as artists. Why. include un- finished sketches on easels and leave out the Prinopia and Om- phalos, or lighter works such as that which commemorated " Shakspere, taste, and the musical glasses " ? But the thing pas- ses a joke. What can be said of a naturalist, making claim to science and philosophy, who thus confounds the natural and the ar- tificial, the creations of the Almighty with the works of men's hands ? Paley in his celebrated stumble on the watch attributed the watch to the watchmaker, not to the Divinity. Who but Mr. Gosse ever thought of charging upon God the imperfect produc- tions of man, or ascribing to him the caricatures of his works that are drawn upon canvass' or by implication the nonsense that is written on paper and put into type ? In a literary sense Omphalos is a very clever specimen of book- making, marred in sense, later stages by the pervading sense of the argument. The first part contains a summary review of the most prominent facts of geology and the conclusions they are held to contain. There is in it a good deal of scissors and paste work, Professor .Ansted and Pye Smith being particularly drawn upon; and the spirit is there of stating your adversaly's case fully in order to put him down triumphantly, which especially prevails among Barnhill and platform authors. But the first hundred pages are very well done and contain a good popular account of geology. The " circUlar " argument and its consequences come next; and this is followed by illustrative proofs drawn from the most remarkable plants and animals. This is as cleverly done as the geological survey, but wants its wholeness, each illus- tration being separate. For the purpose of establishing that a newly-created and mature plant or animal can prove nothing as regards the length of time it has existed unless we have some evidence of its life, a few instances are as good as a thousand. Their number in Omphalos overlays "the case," and perpetually suggests the notion of bookmaking.
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