Illustrations of Universal Progress Part 16

"EMOTION is the name here used to comprehend all that is understood by feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, pa.s.sions, sentiments, affections. Consciousness, and conscious states also for the most part denote modes of emotion, although there is such a thing as the Intellectual consciousness.

"VOLITION, on the other hand, indicates the great fact that our Pleasures and Pains, which are not the whole of our emotions, prompt us to action, or stimulate the active machinery of the living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate the last. To withdraw from a scalding heat and cling to a gentle warmth, are exercises of volition."

The last of these definitions, which we may most conveniently take first, seems to us very faulty. We cannot but feel astonished that Mr. Bain, familiar as he is with the phenomena of reflex action, should have so expressed himself as to include a great part of them along with the phenomena of volition. He seems to be ignoring the discriminations of modern science, and returning to the vague conceptions of the past--nay more, he is comprehending under volition what even the popular speech would hardly bring under it. If you were to blame any one for s.n.a.t.c.hing his foot from the scalding water into which he had inadvertently put it, he would tell you that he could not help it; and his reply would be indorsed by the general experience, that the withdrawal of a limb from contact with something extremely hot, is quite involuntary--that it takes place not only without volition, but in defiance of an effort of will to maintain the contact. How, then, can that be instanced as an example of volition, which occurs even when volition is antagonistic? We are quite aware that it is impossible to draw any absolute line of demarcation between automatic actions and actions which are not automatic. Doubtless we may pa.s.s gradually from the purely reflex, through the consensual, to the voluntary.

Taking the case Mr. Bain cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such moderate degree that the withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may advance by infinitesimal steps to a heat which compels involuntary withdrawal; and that there is a stage at which the voluntary and involuntary actions are mixed. But the difficulty of absolute discrimination is no reason for neglecting the broad general contrast; any more than it is for confounding light with darkness. If we are to include as examples of volition, all cases in which pleasures and pains "stimulate the active machinery of the living framework to perform such operations as procure the first and abate the last," then we must consider sneezing and coughing, as examples of volition; and Mr. Bain surely cannot mean this.

Indeed, we must confess ourselves at a loss. On the one hand if he does not mean it, his expression is lax to a degree that surprises us in so careful a writer. On the other hand, if he does mean it, we cannot understand his point of view.

A parallel criticism applies to his definition of Emotion. Here, too, he has departed from the ordinary acceptation of the word; and, as we think, in the wrong direction. Whatever may be the interpretation that is justified by its derivation, the word Emotion has come generally to mean that kind of feeling which is not a direct result of any action on the organism; but is either an indirect result of such action, or arises quite apart from such action. It is used to indicate those sentient states which are independently generated in consciousness; as distinguished from those generated in our corporeal framework, and known as sensations. Now this distinction, tacitly made in common speech, is one which Psychology cannot well reject; but one which it must adopt, and to which it must give scientific precision. Mr. Bain, however, appears to ignore any such distinction. Under the term "emotion," he includes not only pa.s.sions, sentiments, affections, but all "feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains,"--that is, all sensations. This does not appear to be a mere lapse of expression; for when, in the opening sentence, he a.s.serts that "mind is comprised under the three heads--Emotion, Volition, and Intellect," he of necessity implies that sensation is included under one of these heads; and as it cannot be included under Volition or Intellect, it must be cla.s.sed with Emotion: as it clearly is in the next sentence.

We cannot but think this is a retrograde step. Though distinctions which have been established in popular thought and language, are not unfrequently merged in the higher generalizations of science (as, for instance, when crabs and worms are grouped together in the sub-kingdom _Annulosa_;) yet science very generally recognizes the validity of these distinctions, as real though not fundamental. And so in the present case. Such community as a.n.a.lysis discloses between sensation and emotion, must not shut out the broad contrast that exists between them. If there needs a wider word, as there does, to signify any sentient state whatever; then we may fitly adopt for this purpose the word currently so used, namely, "Feeling." And considering as Feelings all that great division of mental states which we do not cla.s.s as Cognitions, may then separate this great division into the two orders, Sensations and Emotions.

And here we may, before concluding, briefly indicate the leading outlines of a cla.s.sification which reduces this distinction to a scientific form, and developes it somewhat further--a cla.s.sification which, while suggested by certain fundamental traits reached without a very lengthened inquiry, is yet, we believe, in harmony with that disclosed by detailed a.n.a.lysis.

Leaving out of view the Will, which is a simple h.o.m.ogeneous mental state, forming the link between feeling and action, and not admitting of subdivisions; our states of consciousness fall into two great cla.s.ses--COGNITIONS and FEELINGS.

COGNITIONS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied with the _relations_ that subsist among our feelings, are divisible into four great sub-cla.s.ses.

_Presentative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied in localizing a sensation impressed on the organism--occupied, that is, with the relation between this presented mental state and those other presented mental states which make up our consciousness of the part affected: as when we cut ourselves.

_Presentative-representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied with the relation between a sensation or group of sensations and the representations of those various other sensations that accompany it in experience. This is what we commonly call perception--an act in which, along with certain impressions presented to consciousness, there arise in consciousness the ideas of certain other impressions ordinarily connected with the presented ones: as when its visible form and colour, lead us to mentally endow an orange with all its other attributes.

_Representative cognitions_; or those in which consciousness is occupied with the relations among ideas or represented sensations: as in all acts of recollection.

_Re-representative cognitions_; or those in which the occupation of consciousness is not by representation of special relations, that have before been presented to consciousness; but those in which such represented special relations are thought of merely as comprehended in a general relation--those in which the concrete relations once experienced, in so far as they become objects of consciousness at all, are incidentally represented, along with the abstract relation which formulates them. The ideas resulting from this abstraction, do not themselves represent actual experiences; but are symbols which stand for groups of such actual experiences--represent aggregates of representations. And thus they may be called re-representative cognitions. It is clear that the process of re-representation is carried to higher stages, as the thought becomes more abstract.

FEELINGS, or those modes of mind in which we are occupied, not with the relations subsisting between our sentient states, but with the sentient states themselves, are divisible into four parallel sub-cla.s.ses.

_Presentative feelings_, ordinarily called sensations, are those mental states in which, instead of regarding a corporeal impression as of this or that kind, or as located here or there, we contemplate it in itself as pleasure or pain: as when eating.

_Presentative-representative feelings_, embracing a great part of what we commonly call emotions, are those in which a sensation, or group of sensations or group of sensations and ideas, arouses a vast aggregation of represented sensations; partly of individual experience, but chiefly deeper than individual experience, and, consequently, indefinite. The emotion of terror may serve as an example. Along with certain impressions made on the eyes or ears, or both, are recalled in consciousness many of the pains to which such impressions have before been the antecedents; and when the relation between such impressions and such pains has been habitual in the race, the definite ideas of such pains which individual experience has given, are accompanied by the indefinite pains that result from inherited experience--vague feelings which we may call organic representations. In an infant, crying at a strange sight or sound while yet in the nurse's arms, we see these organic representations called into existence in the shape of dim discomfort, to which individual experience has yet given no specific outlines.

_Representative feelings_, comprehending the ideas of the feelings above cla.s.sed, when they are called up apart from the appropriate external excitements. As instances of these may be named the feelings with which the descriptive poet writes, and which are aroused in the minds of his readers.

_Re-representative feelings_, under which head are included those more complex sentient states that are less the direct results of external excitements than the indirect or reflex results of them. The love of property is a feeling of this kind. It is awakened not by the presence of any special object, but by ownable objects at large; and it is not from the mere presence of such object, but from a certain ideal relation to them, that it arises. As before shown (p. 311) it consists, not of the represented advantages of possessing this or that, but of the represented advantages of possession in general--is not made up of certain concrete representations, but of the abstracts of many concrete representations; and so is re-representative. The higher sentiments, as that of justice, are still more completely of this nature. Here the sentient state is compounded out of sentient states that are themselves wholly, or almost wholly, re-representative: it involves representations of those lower emotions which are produced by the possession of property, by freedom of action, etc.; and thus is re-representative in a higher degree.

This cla.s.sification, here roughly indicated and capable of further expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed a.n.a.lysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind, or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the presentative to the more and more remotely representative. It is undeniable that intelligence ascends from those simple perceptions in which consciousness is occupied in localizing and cla.s.sifying sensations, to perceptions more and more compound, to simple reasoning, to reasoning more and more complex and abstract--more and more remote from sensation. And in the evolution of feelings, there is a parallel series of steps. Simple sensations; sensations combined together; sensations combined with represented sensations; represented sensations organized into groups, in which their separate characters are very much merged; representations of these representative groups, in which the original components have become still more vague. In both cases, the progress has necessarily been from the simple and concrete to the complex and abstract: and as with the cognitions, so with the feelings, this must be the basis of cla.s.sification.

The s.p.a.ce here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might have filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more important.

Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its defects, let it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We repeat that, as a natural history of the mind, we believe it to be the best yet produced. It is a most valuable collection of carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we cannot better express our sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those who hereafter give to this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific organization, Mr. Bain's book will be indispensable.

VIII. ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY.

That proclivity to generalization which is possessed in greater or less degree by all minds, and without which, indeed, intelligence cannot exist, has unavoidable inconveniences. Through it alone can truth be reached; and yet it almost inevitably betrays into error. But for the tendency to predicate of every other case, that which has been found in the observed cases, there could be no rational thinking; and yet by this indispensable tendency, men are perpetually led to found, on limited experience, propositions which they wrongly a.s.sume to be universal or absolute. In one sense, however, this can scarcely be regarded as an evil; for without premature generalizations the true generalization would never be arrived at. If we waited till all the facts were acc.u.mulated before trying to formulate them, the vast unorganized ma.s.s would be unmanageable. Only by provisional grouping can they be brought into such order as to be dealt with; and this provisional grouping is but another name for premature generalization.

How uniformly men follow this course, and how needful the errors are as steps to truth, is well ill.u.s.trated in the history of Astronomy. The heavenly bodies move round the Earth in circles, said the earliest observers: led partly by the appearances, and partly by their experiences of central motions in terrestrial objects, with which, as all circular, they cla.s.sed the celestial motions from lack of any alternative conception.

Without this provisional belief, wrong as it was, there could not have been that comparison of positions which showed that the motions are not representable by circles; and which led to the hypothesis of epicycles and eccentrics. Only by the aid of this hypothesis, equally untrue, but capable of accounting more nearly for the appearances, and so of inducing more accurate observations--only thus did it become possible for Copernicus to show that the heliocentric theory is more feasible than the geocentric theory; or for Kepler to show that the planets move round the sun in ellipses. Yet again, without the aid of this approximate truth discovered by Kepler, Newton could not have established that general law from which it follows, that the motion of a heavenly body round its centre of gravity is not necessarily in an ellipse, but may be in any conic section. And lastly, it was only after the law of gravitation had been verified, that it became possible to determine the actual courses of planets, satellites, and comets; and to prove that, in consequence of perturbations, their orbits always deviate, more or less, from regular curves. Thus, there followed one another five provisional theories of the Solar System, before the sixth and absolutely true theory was reached. In which five provisional theories, each for a time held as final, we may trace both the tendency men have to leap from scanty data to wide generalizations, that are either untrue or but partially true; and the necessity there is for these transitional generalizations as steps to the final one.

In the progress of geological speculation the same laws of thought are clearly displayed. We have dogmas that were more than half false, pa.s.sing current for a time as universal truths. We have evidence collected in proof of these dogmas; by and by a colligation of facts in antagonism with them; and eventually a consequent modification. In conformity with this somewhat improved hypothesis, we have a better cla.s.sification of facts; a greater power of arranging and interpreting the new facts now rapidly gathered together; and further resulting corrections of hypothesis. Being, as we are at present, in the midst of this process, it is not possible to give an adequate account of the development of geological science as thus regarded: the earlier stages are alone known to us. Not only, however, is it interesting to observe how the more advanced views now received respecting the Earth's history, have been evolved out of the crude views which preceded them; but we shall find it extremely instructive to observe this.

We shall see how greatly the old ideas still sway, both the general mind, and the minds of geologists themselves. We shall see how the kind of evidence that has in part abolished these old ideas, is still daily acc.u.mulating, and threatens to make other like revolutions. In brief, we shall see whereabouts we are in the elaboration of a true theory of the Earth; and, seeing our whereabouts, shall be the better able to judge, among various conflicting opinions, which best conform to the ascertained direction of geological discovery.

It is alike needless and impracticable here to enumerate the many speculations which were in earlier ages propounded by acute men--speculations some of which contained portions of truth. Falling in unfit times, these speculations did not germinate; and hence do not concern us. We have nothing to do with ideas, however good, out of which no science grew; but only with those which gave origin to the system of Geology that now exists. We therefore begin with Werner.

Taking for data the appearances of the Earth's crust in a narrow district of Germany; observing the constant order of superposition of strata, and their respective physical characters; Werner drew the inference that strata of like characters succeeded each other in like order over the entire surface of the Earth. And seeing, from the laminated structure of many formations and the organic remains contained in others, that they were sedimentary; he further inferred that these universal strata had been in succession precipitated from a chaotic menstruum which once covered our planet. Thus, on a very incomplete acquaintance with a thousandth part of the Earth's crust, he based a sweeping generalization applying to the whole of it. This Neptunist hypothesis, mark, borne out though it seemed to be by the most conspicuous surrounding facts, was quite untenable if a.n.a.lyzed.

That a universal chaotic menstruum should deposit, one after another, numerous sharply-defined strata, differing from each other in composition, is incomprehensible. That the strata so deposited should contain the remains of plants and animals, which could not have lived under the supposed conditions, is still more incomprehensible. Physically absurd, however, as was this hypothesis, it recognized, though under a distorted form, one of the great agencies of geological change--that of water. It served also to express the fact that the formations of the Earth's crust stand in some kind of order. Further, it did a little towards supplying a nomenclature, without which much progress was impossible. Lastly, it furnished a standard with which successions of strata in various regions could be compared, the differences noted, and the actual sections tabulated. It was the first provisional generalization; and was useful, if not indispensable, as a step to truer ones.

Following this rude conception, which ascribed geological phenomena to one agency, acting during one primeval epoch, there came a greatly-improved conception, which ascribed them to two agencies, acting alternately during successive epochs. Hutton, perceiving that sedimentary deposits were still being formed at the bottom of the sea from the detritus carried down by rivers; perceiving, further, that the strata of which the visible surface chiefly consists, bore marks of having been similarly formed out of pre-existing land; and inferring that these strata could have become land only by upheaval after their deposit; concluded that throughout an indefinite past, there had been periodic convulsions, by which continents were raised, with intervening eras of repose, during which such continents were worn down and transformed into new marine strata, fated to be in their turns elevated above the surface of the ocean. And finding that igneous action, to which sundry earlier geologists had ascribed basaltic rocks, was in countless places a source of disturbance, he taught that from it resulted these periodic convulsions. In this theory we see:--first, that the previously-recognized agency of water was conceived to act, not as by Werner, after a manner of which we have no experience, but after a manner daily displayed to us; and second, that the igneous agency, before considered only as a cause of special formations, was recognized as a universal agency, but a.s.sumed to act in an unproved way. Werner's sole process, Hutton developed from the catastrophic and inexplicable into the uniform and explicable; while that antagonistic second process, of which he first adequately estimated the importance, was regarded by him as a catastrophic one, and was not a.s.similated to known processes--not explained. We have here to note, however, that the facts collected and provisionally arranged in conformity with Werner's theory, served, after a time, to establish Hutton's more rational theory--in so far, at least, as aqueous formations are concerned; while the doctrine of periodic subterranean convulsions, crudely as it was conceived by Hutton, was a temporary generalization needful as a step towards the theory of igneous action.

Since Hutton's time, the development of geological thought has gone still further in the same direction. These early sweeping doctrines have received additional qualifications. It has been discovered that more numerous and more heterogeneous agencies have been at work, than was at first believed.

The igneous hypothesis has been rationalized, as the aqueous one had previously been: the gratuitous a.s.sumption of vast elevations suddenly occurring after long intervals of quiescence, has grown into the consistent theory, that islands and continents are the acc.u.mulated results of successive small upheavals, like those experienced in ordinary earthquakes.

To speak more specifically, we find, in the first place, that instead of a.s.suming the denudation produced by rain and rivers to be the sole means of wearing down lands and producing their irregularities of surface, geologists now see that denudation is only a part-cause of such irregularities; and further, that the new strata deposited at the bottom of the sea, are not the products of river-sediment solely, but are in part due to the action of waves and tidal currents on the coasts. In the second place, we find that Hutton's conception of upheaval by subterranean forces, has not only been modified by a.s.similating these subterranean forces to ordinary earthquake-forces; but modern inquiries have shown that, besides elevations of surface, subsidences are thus produced; that local upheavals, as well as the general upheavals, which raise continents, come within the same category; and that all these changes are probably consequent on the progressive collapse of the Earth's crust upon its cooling and contracting nucleus--the only adequate cause. In the third place, we find that beyond these two great antagonist agencies, modern Geology recognises sundry minor ones: as those of glaciers and icebergs; those of coral-polypes; those of _Protozoa_ having siliceous or calcareous sh.e.l.ls--each of which agencies, insignificant as it seems, is found capable of slowly working terrestrial changes of considerable magnitude. Thus, then, the recent progress of Geology has been a still further departure from primitive conceptions.

Instead of one catastrophic cause, once in universal action, as supposed by Werner--instead of one general continuous cause, antagonized at long intervals by a catastrophic cause, as taught by Hutton; we now recognize several causes, all more or less general and continuous. We no longer resort to hypothetical agencies to explain the phenomena displayed by the Earth's crust; but we are day by day more clearly perceiving that these phenomena have arisen from forces like those now at work, which have acted in all varieties of combination, through immeasurable periods of time.

Having thus briefly traced the evolution of geologic science, and noted its present form, let us go on to observe the way in which it is still swayed by the crude hypotheses it set out with; so that even now, old doctrines that are abandoned as untenable in theory, continue in practice to mould the ideas of geologists, and to foster sundry beliefs that are logically indefensible. We shall see, both how those simple sweeping conceptions with which the science commenced, are those which every student is apt at first to seize hold of, and how several influences conspire to maintain the twist thus resulting--how the original nomenclature of periods and formations necessarily keeps alive the original implications; and how the need for arranging new data in some order, naturally results in their being thrust into the old cla.s.sification, unless their incongruity with it is very glaring. A few facts will best prepare the way for criticism.

Up to 1839 it was inferred, from their crystalline character, that the metamorphic rocks of Anglesea are more ancient than any rocks of the adjacent main land; but it has since been shown that they are of the same age with the slates and grits of Carnarvon and Merioneth. Again, slaty cleavage having been first found only in the lowest rocks, was taken as an indication of the highest antiquity: whence resulted serious mistakes; for this mineral characteristic is now known to occur in the Carboniferous system. Once more, certain red conglomerates and grits on the north-west coast of Scotland, long supposed from their lithological aspect to belong to the Old Red Sandstone, are now identified with the Lower Silurians.

These are a few instances of the small trust to be placed in mineral qualities, as evidence of the ages or relative positions of strata. From the recently-published third edition of _Siluria_, may be culled numerous facts of like implication. Sir R. Murchison considers it ascertained, that the siliceous Stiper stones of Shropshire are the equivalents of the Tremadock slates of North Wales. Judged by their fossils, Bala slate and limestone are of the same age as the Caradoc sandstone, lying forty miles off. In Radnorshire, the formation cla.s.sed as upper Llandovery rock, is described at different spots, as "sandstone or conglomerate," "impure limestone," "hard coa.r.s.e grits," "siliceous grit"--a considerable variation for so small an area as that of a county. Certain sandy beds on the left bank of the Towy, which Sir R. Murchison had, in his _Silurian System_, cla.s.sed as Caradoc sandstone (evidently from their mineral characters), he now finds, from their fossils, belong to the Llandeilo formation.

Nevertheless, inferences from mineral characters are still habitually drawn and received. Though _Siluria_, in common with other geological works, supplies numerous proofs that rocks of the same age are often of widely-different composition a few miles off, while rocks of widely different ages are often of similar composition; and though Sir. R.

Murchison shows us, as in the case just cited, that he has himself in past times been misled by trusting to lithological evidence; yet his reasoning, all through _Siluria_, shows that he still thinks it natural to expect formations of the same age to be chemically similar, even in remote regions. For example, in treating of the Silurian rocks of South Scotland, he says:--"When traversing the tract between Dumfries and Moffat in 1850, it occurred to me that the dull reddish or purple sandstone and schist to the north of the former town, which so resembled the bottom rocks of the Longmynd, Llanberis, and St. David's, would prove to be of the same age;"

and further on he again insists upon the fact that these strata "are absolutely of the same composition as the bottom rocks of the Silurian region."

On this unity of mineral character it is, that this Scottish formation is concluded to be contemporaneous with the lowest formations in Wales; for the scanty palaeontological evidence suffices neither for proof nor disproof. Now, had there been a continuity of like strata in like order between Wales and Scotland, there might have been little to criticise in this conclusion. But since Sir R. Murchison himself admits, that in Westmoreland and c.u.mberland, some members of the system "a.s.sume a lithological aspect different from what they maintain in the Silurian and Welsh region," there seems no reason to expect mineralogical continuity in Scotland. Obviously therefore, the a.s.sumption that these Scottish formations are of the same age with the Longmynd of Shropshire, implies the latent belief that certain mineral characters indicate certain eras.

Far more striking instances, however, of the influence of this latent belief remain to be given. Not in such comparatively near districts as the Scottish lowlands only, does Sir R. Murchison expect a repet.i.tion of the Longmynd strata; but in the Rhenish provinces, certain "quartzose flagstones and grits, like those of the Longmynd," are seemingly concluded to be of contemporaneous origin, because of their likeness. "Quartzites in roofing-slates with a greenish tinge that reminded us of the lower slates of c.u.mberland and Westmoreland," are evidently suspected to be of the same age. In Russia, he remarks that the carboniferous limestones "are overlaid along the western edge of the Ural chain by sandstones and grits, which occupy much the same place in the general series as the millstone grit of England;" and in calling this group, as he does, the "representative of the millstone grit," Sir R. Murchison clearly shows that he thinks likeness of mineral composition some evidence of equivalence in time, even at that great distance. Nay, on the flanks of the Andes and in the United States, such similarities are looked for, and considered as significant of certain ages. Not that Sir R. Murchison contends theoretically for this relation between lithological character and date. For on the page from which we have just quoted (_Siluria_, p. 387), he says, that "whilst the soft Lower Silurian clays and sands of St. Petersburg have their equivalents in the hard schists and quartz rocks with gold veins in the heart of the Ural mountains, the equally soft red and green Devonian marls of the Valdai Hills are represented on the western flank of that chain, by hard, contorted, and fractured limestones." But these, and other such admissions, seem to go for little. Whilst himself a.s.serting that the Potsdam-sandstone of North America, the Lingula-flags of England, and the alum-slates of Scandinavia are of the same period--while fully aware that among the Silurian formations of Wales, there are oolitic strata like those of secondary age; yet is his reasoning more or less coloured by the a.s.sumption, that formations of like qualities probably belong to the same era. Is it not manifest, then, that the exploded hypothesis of Werner continues to influence geological speculation?

"But," it will perhaps be said, "though individual strata are not continuous over large areas, yet systems of strata are. Though within a few miles the same bed gradually pa.s.ses from clay into sand, or thins out and disappears, yet the group of strata to which it belongs does not do so; but maintains in remote regions the same relations to other groups."

This is the generally-current belief. On this a.s.sumption the received geological cla.s.sifications appear to be framed. The Silurian system, the Devonian system, the Carboniferous system, etc., are set down in our books as groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other in a given order; and are severally everywhere of the same age. Though it may not be a.s.serted that these successive systems are universal; yet it seems to be tacitly a.s.sumed that they are so. In North and South America, in Asia, in Australia, sets of strata are a.s.similated to one or other of these groups; and their possession of certain mineral characters and a certain order of superposition are among the reasons a.s.signed for so a.s.similating them.

Though, probably, no competent geologist would contend that the European cla.s.sification of strata is applicable to the globe as a whole; yet most, if not all geologists, write as though it were so. Among readers of works on Geology, nine out of ten carry away the impression that the divisions, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, are of absolute and uniform application; that these great divisions are separable into subdivisions, each of which is definitely distinguishable from the rest, and is everywhere recognizable by its characters as such or such; and that in all parts of the Earth, these minor systems severally began and ended at the same time. When they meet with the term "carboniferous era," they take for granted that it was an era universally carboniferous--that it was, what Hugh Miller indeed actually describes it, an era when the Earth bore a vegetation far more luxuriant than it has since done; and were they in any of our colonies to meet with a coal-bed, they would conclude that, as a matter of course, it was of the same age as the English coal-beds.

Now this belief that geologic "systems" are universal, is quite as untenable as the other. It is just as absurd when considered _a priori_; and it is equally inconsistent with the facts. Though some series of strata cla.s.sed together as Oolite, may range over a wider district than any one stratum of the series; yet we have but to ask what were the circ.u.mstances of its deposit, to see that the Oolitic series, like one of its individual strata, must be of local origin; and that there is not likely to be anywhere else, a series that exactly corresponds, either in its characters or in its commencement and termination. For the formation of such a series implies an area of subsidence, in which its component beds were thrown down. Every area of subsidence is necessarily limited; and to suppose that there exist elsewhere groups of beds completely answering to those known as Oolite, is to suppose that, in contemporaneous areas of subsidence, like processes were going on. There is no reason to suppose this; but every reason to suppose the reverse. That in contemporaneous areas of subsidence throughout the globe, the conditions would cause the formation of Oolite, or anything like it, is an a.s.sumption which no modern geologist would openly make: he would say that the equivalent series of beds found elsewhere, would very likely be of dissimilar mineral character.

Moreover, in these contemporaneous areas of subsidence, the phenomena going on would not only be more or less different in kind; but in no two cases would they be likely to agree in their commencements and terminations. The probabilities are greatly against separate portions of the Earth's surface beginning to subside at the same time, and ceasing to subside at the same time--a coincidence which alone could produce equivalent groups of strata.

Subsidences in different places begin and end with utter irregularity; and hence the groups of strata thrown down in them can but rarely correspond.

Measured against each other in time, their limits will disagree. They will refuse to fit into any scheme of definite divisions. On turning to the evidence, we find that it daily tends more and more to justify these _a priori_ positions. Take, as an example, the Old Red Sandstone system. In the north of England this is represented by a single stratum of conglomerate. In Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Shropshire, it expands into a series of strata from eight to ten thousand feet thick, made up of conglomerates, red, green, and white sandstones, red, green, and spotted marls, and concretionary limestones. To the south-west, as between Caermarthen and Pembroke, these Old Red Sandstone strata exhibit considerable lithological changes; and there is an absence of fossil fishes. On the other side of the Bristol Channel, they display further changes in mineral characters and remains. While in South Devon and Cornwall, the equivalent strata, consisting chiefly of slates, schists, and limestones, are so wholly different, that they were for a long time cla.s.sed as Silurian. When we thus see that in certain directions the whole group of deposits thins out, and that its mineral characters as well as its fossils change within moderate distances; does it not become clear that the whole group of deposits was a local one? And when we find, in other regions, formations a.n.a.logous to these Old Red Sandstone or Devonian formations; is it certain--is it even probable--that they severally began and ended at the same time with them? Should it not require overwhelming evidence to make us believe as much?

Yet so strongly is geological speculation swayed by the tendency to regard the phenomena as general instead of local, that even those most on their guard against it seem unable to escape its influence. At page 158 of his _Principles of Geology_, Sir Charles Lyell says:--

"A group of red marl and red sandstone, containing salt and gypsum, being interposed in England between the Lias and the Coal, all other red marls and sandstones, a.s.sociated some of them with salt, and others with gypsum, and occurring not only in different parts of Europe, but in North America, Peru, India, the salt deserts of Asia, those of Africa--in a word, in every quarter of the globe, were referred to one and the same period.... It was in vain to urge as an objection the improbability of the hypothesis which implies that all the moving waters on the globe were once simultaneously charged with sediment of a red colour. But the rashness of pretending to identify, in age, all the red sandstones and marls in question, has at length been sufficiently exposed, by the discovery that, even in Europe, they belong decidedly to many different epochs."