Illogical Geology Part 12

[89] "Meeting-Place," pp. 28, 29.

[90] _Pop. Sc. News_, Feb. 1902.

[91] "Manual," p. 364.

[92] p. 367.

[93] (Note. In this discussion I have purposely ignored the various instances where human remains have been reported from deposits of even greater "antiquity" than the Middle Tertiaries.)

CHAPTER XIII

INDUCTIVE METHODS

In the First Part of this book I tried to examine into the facts and methods which are commonly supposed to prove that there has been a succession of life on the globe. We found that this life succession theory has not a single fact to support it; that it is not the result of scientific research, but wholly the product of an inventive imagination; that no one kind of fossil has even been proved or can be proved to be intrinsically older than another, or than Man himself; and hence that a complete reconstruction of geological theory is imperatively demanded by our modern knowledge.

In the Second Part I have brought out the following additional facts:

1. The abnormal character of much of the fossiliferous deposits.

2. A radical and world-wide change of climate.

3. The marked degeneration in pa.s.sing from the fossil world to the modern one.

4. The fact that the human race, to say nothing of a vast number of living species of plants and animals, has partic.i.p.ated in some of the greatest of the geological changes--we really know not how to limit the number or character of these changes.

Surely a true spirit of scientific investigation would now begin to inquire, =How did these changes take place?= Discarding the use of stronger language, it is at least utterly unscientific to begin somewhere at the vanishing point of a past eternity and formulate our pretty theories as to how this deposit was made, and how that was laid down, and the exact order in which they all occurred; while these "recent" deposits, in which our race and the plants and animals living about us are acknowledged to be concerned, are left over till the last, and we then find that they admit of absolutely no explanation. We ourselves, to say nothing of thousands of living species of plants and animals, have partic.i.p.ated in some of the very greatest of the geological changes--we know not how many or how great. =These things must be first explained.= Has anything happened to our world that will explain them? Are there known forces and changes now in operation which, granting time enough, will amply and sufficiently explain these facts, as simply one in kind with those of the present day?

To this last question we must admit that our historic experience, prolonged over several thousand years, utters a thundering =NO!= Volcanoes are every now and then breaking forth; but volcanoes and mountain ranges have nothing in common with one another as to structure and origin. No one claims that a single mountain flexure is now being formed or has been formed within the historic period. There are indeed "creeps" in the rocks in certain places, but these are not such as to contribute to the height of the mountains in which they occur, but rather the reverse. Sudden changes of level within small areas have occurred, but neither in extent nor in kind do they furnish any key as to past changes of level; while the so-called "secular" changes are so microscopic in extent and so doubtful in character that they are utterly unworthy of consideration in view of the stupendous problems which we are trying to explain. The well-known work of Eduard Suess is a standing protest that such geological chances are =not now in progress=; for, in speaking of how the land and ocean have exchanged places in the past, Zittel represents him as teaching that their "cause of origin until now =has not yet been discovered=."[94]

Or, to quote the expressive words of Suess himself, with which he concludes his discussion of this very subject:

"As Rama looks across the ocean of the universe, and sees its surface blend in the distant horizon with the dipping sky, and as he considers if indeed a path might be built far out into the almost immeasurable s.p.a.ce, so we gaze over the ocean of the ages, but =no sign of a sh.o.r.e shows itself to our view=." (Id. p. 294.)

As for climate, I never heard any one suggest that cosmic changes of climate are now known to be going on, much less that =sudden= changes of the kind indicated by the North Siberian "mummies" are in the habit of occurring. In fact, we must all own that the mountains, the relative position of land and water, as well as the climate of our globe, are each and all now in a state of stable equilibrium, and have been in this state since the dawn of history or of scientific observation.

Accordingly I ask, =How much time is needed= to account for the facts before us on the basis of Uniformity? In common honesty will a short eternity itself satisfy the stern problem before us? I cannot see that it holds out the slightest promise of solving it; while, on the other hand, I am sure that, in dealing with the past of Man's existence (theories of evolution and all other theories of origins whatever cast aside), we are not at liberty to make unreasonable demands of time. The evidence of history and archaeology is all against it.

From the latter sciences it can be shown that at their very dawn we have, over all the continents, a group of civilizations seldom equalled since save in very modern times, and all so undeniably related to one another and of such a character that they prove a previous state of civilization in some locality =together=, before these scattered fragments of our race were dispersed abroad. We can track these various peoples all back to some region in Southwestern Asia, though the exact locality for this source of inherited civilization has never yet been found, and it is now almost certain that it is somehow lost in the geological changes which have intervened. For when we cross the well marked boundary line between history and geology, we have still to deal with men who apparently =were not savages=, men who with tremendous disadvantages could carve and draw and paint as no savages have ever done, and who had evidently domesticated the horse and other animals.

But as to time, history gives no countenance to long time, i.e., what geologists would call long. Good authentic history extends back a few score centuries, archaeology may promise us a few more. As for =millions= of years, of even a few =hundred thousands=, the thing seems too absurd for discussion, unless we forsake inductive methods, and a.s.sume some form of evolution _a priori_.

Hence it ought to be evident that no amount of learned trifling with time will solve our problem without supposing some strange event to have happened our world and our race, long ago, and before the dawn of history. I see no possible way for scientific reasoning to avoid this conclusion. Ignoring for the present the Chaldean Deluge tablets, and what Rawlinson calls the "consentient belief" in a world-catastrophe "among members of all the great races into which ethnologists have divided mankind," which like their civilization has the earmarks of being =an inheritance= from some common source before their dispersion, we may note that most geologists now admit the certainty of some sort of catastrophe since man was upon the earth. I might mention Quatref.a.ges and Dupont, Boyd Dawkins, Howorth, Prestwich, Wright and Sir William Dawson, with many others. Even Eduard Suess teaches a somewhat similar local catastrophe, though like the others only as a reluctant concession to the insistent demands of Chaldean history and archaeological tradition. But all of these affairs are mere makeshifts in view of the tremendous demands of the purely geological evidence, and all alike (save perhaps those of Wright and Howorth) labor under the strange inconsistency of supposing that such an event could occur without leaving abundant and indelible marks upon the rocks of our globe. While in view of the evidence given through the previous pages, I insist that the purely geological evidence of a world catastrophe is immeasurably stronger than that of archaeology, that in fact the whole geological phenomena const.i.tute a c.u.mulative argument of this nature.

But if this be granted, we must then inquire, What was its nature? and what its extent? The former is quite easily answered: the latter problem is still somewhat beyond our reach.

As to its character, the evidence is very plain. It was a veritable cataclysm of some sort: it deals with great changes of land and water surface. If the geological succession is but a h.o.a.ry myth, and if we find countless modern living species of plants and animals mixed up in all the "older" rocks, we cannot ignore these in a rational and unprejudiced reconstruction of the science. But, ignoring these, we must remember that =even the Tertiary and post-Tertiary deposits are absolutely world wide, and are packed with fossils of living species=.

Not a continent and scarcely a country on the globe but contains great stretches of these deposits, laid down by the sea where now the land is high and dry. The sea and land have practically shifted places over all the globe since Man and thousands of other living species left their fossils in the rocks. It is only the stupendous magnitude of these changes which has made our scientists reluctant to admit the possibility of such a catastrophe.

With the myth of a life succession dissipated, a broad view of the fossil world cannot fail to convince the mind of the reality of some such cosmic convulsion, and convince it with all the force of a mathematical demonstration. Great groups of animals have dropped out of sight over all the continents, and their carca.s.ses have been buried by sea water where we now find high plateaus or mountain ranges. Ignoring completely the abundant fossils in the so-called "older" rocks, and fixing our attention entirely on the Tertiary and Pleistocene beds that are acknowledged to be closely connected with the human race and the modern world, we still have =a problem in race extinction alone= that appalls the mind. The mammoth, rhinoceros and mastodon, together with "not less than thirty distinct species of the horse tribe," as Marsh says, =all disappear from North America at one time=, and the most ingenious disciple of Hutton and Lyell has been puzzled to invent a plausible explanation. But when we consider that at this same "geological period" =similar events were occurring on all the other continents=--the huge ground-sloths (megatheriums) and glyptodons in South America; "wombats as large as tapirs," and "kangaroos the size of elephants" in Australia; the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros in Eurasia; together with an enormous hippopotamus, as far as England is concerned, to say nothing of those great bears, lions and hyenas, with a semi-tropical vegetation, =all disappearing together at the same time=, or shifting to the other side of the world--it becomes almost like a deliberate insult to our intellectual honesty to be approached with offers of "explanations" based on any so-called "natural" action of the forces of nature. But when, in addition to all this, we consider the fact that those human giants of the caves of Western Europe were contemporary with the animals mentioned above, =and disappeared along with them at this same time=, while mountain ma.s.ses in all parts of the world crowded with marine forms of the so-called "older" types positively =cannot be separated in time from the others=, it becomes as certain as any other ordinary scientific fact, like sunrise or sunset, that our once magnificently stocked world =met with some sudden and awful catastrophe in the long ago=; and is it in any way transgressing the bounds of true inductive science to correlate this event with the Deluge of the Hebrew Scriptures and the traditions of every race on earth?

We have already seen how Dana supposes =two= such events, one at the close of the "Palaeozoic age," and the other at the close of the "Mesozoic," merely to account for the astonishing disappearance of species at these periods when the fossils are arranged in taxonomic order; but if we once admit such an event =with Man and all the other species contemporary with one another=, where shall we limit its power to disturb the land and water and churn them all up together, leaving the present simply as the ruins of that previous world? The fact is, the current Geology is wholly built up from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene on the =dogmatic denial= that any such catastrophe has occurred to the world in which Man lived, for =one= such event happening in our modern h.o.m.ogeneous world is enough to make the whole pretty scheme found in our text-books tumble like a house of cards. Like the patient and exact observations of the Ptolemaic astronomers, which acc.u.mulated volumes of evidence contradicting their own theories, and which in the hands of Copernicus and Galileo, Kepler and Newton, sealed the doom of astronomical speculation and laid the foundations of an exact science of the heavens; so have the indefatigable labors of thousands of geologists acc.u.mulated evidence which strikes at the very foundation of the current Uniformitarianism, and casts a pall of doubt over every conclusion as to how or when any given deposit of the "older" rocks was produced.

Here we must leave the question for the present. The possibility of such a world-wide catastrophe, which might account for the major part of the geological changes, needs no apology here. The slightest disturbance of the nice equilibrium of our elements would suffice to send the waters of the ocean careering over the land; and in the abundance of astronomical causes competent for such disturbance we cease to regard such an event as necessarily contrary to "natural law." The possibility of such a thing no competent scientist now denies; it is the problem of =recovery= from such a disaster which makes the perplexity. But incredible or not as the latter may be regarded, I claim to have established a perfect chain of scientific argument proving a world-wide catastrophe of some sort since Man was upon it. But this fact, if once admitted, strikes at the very foundation of the current science, and bids us readjust our theories from this view-point. The venerable scheme of a life succession =becomes only the taxonomic or cla.s.sification series of the world that existed before this disaster=, and it becomes the business of our science to find out how many and what deposits were =due to this event=, and what were acc.u.mulated during the =unknown period= of previous existence. Those of us who wish to speculate can then let our imaginations have free play as to the uncounted ages before that event; but the "phylogenic series" as a rational scientific theory is in limbo forever. Inductive geology, therefore, deals not with the formation of a world, but =with the ruins of one=; it can teach us absolutely nothing about origins.

The latter problem lies across the boundary line in the domain of philosophy and theology, and to these systems of thought we may cheerfully leave the task of readjustment in view of the facts here presented. A few disconnected thoughts along these lines I have ventured to insert here, not strictly as a part of my purely scientific argument, but as an appendix.

FOOTNOTE:

[94] "History," p. 320.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

REFLECTIONS

In the preceding pages I have endeavored to develop a scientific argument pure and simple. Yet I do not feel called upon to apologize in any way for attempting now to show the connection between an inductive scheme of Geology as set forth in the body of this work and the religion of Christianity; though my remarks along this line must necessarily be very brief.

The most fundamental idea of religion is the fatherhood of G.o.d as our Creator. The only true basis of morality lies in our relationship to Him as His creatures. During the latter half of the nineteenth century the Biblical idea of a creation at some definite and not very remote period in the past became much modified by reason of certain theories of evolution, which explained the origin of plants and animals as the result of slow-acting causes, now in operation around us, prolonged over immense ages of time. These theories, though built up wholly on the current Geology as a foundation, were yet supposed to be firmly established in science, and after a spirited discussion among biologists for a few years, were almost universally accepted in some form or other by the religious leaders of Christendom. And though the "Theistic Evolution" of recent years may be supposed to have modified somewhat the stern heartlessness of pure Darwinism, it still leaves the Christian world quite at variance with the old Pauline doctrines regarding good and evil, creation, redemption, the atonement, etc.

And these are not the only effects of the general acceptance of these ideas as an explanation of the origin of things. We see their moral effects in the generation now coming on the stage of action--men educated in an atmosphere of Evolution, and accustomed from youth to the idea that all progress, whether in the individual or the race, is to be reached only by a ceaseless struggle for existence and survival at the expense of others. In the words of Sir William Dawson, these doctrines have "stimulated to an intense degree that popular unrest so natural to an age discontented with its lot ... and which threatens to overthrow the whole fabric of society as at present const.i.tuted."[95]

This popular and perfectly natural application of the evolution doctrine to every-day life is certainly intensifying, as never before, the innate selfishness of human nature, and, in every pursuit of life, embittering the sad struggle for place and power. Perhaps no other one cause and result serve more plainly to differentiate the present strenuous age from those that have gone before. The hitherto undreamed-of advantages and creature comforts of the present day, instead of tending toward universal peace and happiness, are apparently only giving a wider range to the discontent and depravity of the natural human heart. So much so, that any one familiar with the history of nations cannot but feel a terrible foreboding creep over him as he faces the prospect presented to-day by civilised society the world over.

The only remedy for the many and increasing evils of our world is the old-fashioned religion of Christ and His apostles. And this applied, not to the state, but to the individual. The soul-regenerating truths of Christianity have always, wherever given a proper test by the individual, resulted in moral uplift and blessing. Ecclesiastical policies and ideas have always, wherever allowed to influence civil legislation, resulted in oppression and tyranny.

What has Geology to do with all this? It has much to do with it. Correct ideas of geology will remove a great many vain notions--I had almost said superst.i.tions--regarding our origin, which now pa.s.s under the name of science. And in thus removing false ideas it =leaves the ground cleared= for more correct ideas regarding =creation=, and thus for truer concepts of =morality=, the old idea of "must" and "ought" based on our relation to G.o.d as His creatures.

Mark the words I have used. =Inductive Geology can never prove creation.= It may remove obstructions which have hitherto obscured this idea, but this is the utmost limit of any true science. Inductive Geology removes forever the succession-of-life idea, and thus may =suggest= the only seeming alternative, viz., Creation as the definite act of the Infinite G.o.d. Before this awful yet sublime fact, with all the fogs of evolution and metaphysical subtleties cleared away, the human mind stands to-day as never before within historic times.

With a fairly complete knowledge of the chemical make-up of protoplasm, with a good acquaintance with the life history and reproduction of living cells, we yet =know nothing of the origin of life=. With a good working knowledge of variation, hybridization, etc., =we know nothing of the origin of species=. While with a fairly good understanding of the present geographical distribution of species, and of where their fossils occur in the rocks, we are =profoundly ignorant of any particular order= in which these species originated on our globe, or whether they all took origin at =approximately one and the same time=. In short, having reached out along every known line of investigation, until we have apparently reached the limits of the human powers in investigation and research, twentieth century science must stand with uncovered head and bowed form in presence of that most august thought of the human mind, "=In the beginning G.o.d created=."

And yet, personally, I am firmly convinced that the origin of life and of our cosmos, was according to law, and the laws of nature. As has been said, How could the origin of nature be contrary to nature? How could the origin of present forms and conditions be in any way at variance with the laws by which these forms or conditions are maintained? And while I do not consider it a very promising field of research, we ought to have no more reluctance, _per se_, to considering the manner in which the first cell or the first species was formed, than the way in which a chicken is produced from the egg. Of course in either case we must have the materials, and some outside Cause to originate the conditions and conduct the process; they both require the immanent presence and fostering care of the great Creator.

In this connection I beg leave to quote somewhat at length from my book, "Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity."

"We are getting no nearer the real mystery in the case by saying that all the tissues of the chick are built up by the protoplasm in the egg.

The protoplasm in the toes is the same as that in the little creature's brain. Why does the one build up claws and the other brain cells? Does memory guide these little things in their wonderful division of labor?