extensive subterranean researches that have.more
recently been made, have greatly enlarged the
range of Facts in accordance with those on
which Paley grounded this assertion.
In all the numerous examples of Design which
we have selected from the various animal and
vegetable remains, that occur in a fossil state,
there is such a never failing Identity in the
fundamental principles of their construction, and
Such uniform adoption of analogous means, to
produce various ends, with so much only of departure
from one common type of mechanism, as
was requisite to adapt each instrument to its own
especial function, and to fit each Species to its
peculiar place and office in the scale of created
Beings, that we can scarcely fail to acknowledge
in all these facts, a Demonstration of the Unity
of the Intelligence, in which such transcendant
Harmony originated; and we may almost dare
to assert that neither Atheism nor Polytheism
would ever have found acceptance in the World,
had the evidences of high Intelligence and of
Unity of Design, which are disclosed by modern
discoveries in physical science, been fully known
to the Authors, or the Abettors of Systems to
which they are so diametrically opposed. “ It
is the same hand writing that we read, the
same system and contrivance that we trace, the
same unity of object, and relation to final
causes, which we see maintained throughout,
and constantly proclaiming the Unity of the great
divine Original.”*
It has been stated in our Sixth Chapter, on
primary stratified rocks, that Geology has rendered
an important service to Natural Theology,
in demonstrating by evidences peculiar to itself,
that there was a time when none of the existing
forms of organic beings had appeared upon our
Planet, and that the doctrines of the derivation
of living species either by Development and
Transmutation | from other species, or by an
Eternal Succession from preceding individuals of
the same species, without any evidence of a Be-
* Buckland’s Inaug. Lect. 1819, p. 13.
t As a misunderstanding may arise in the minds of persons
not familiar with the language of physiology, respecting the import
of the word Development, it may be proper here to state,
that in its primary sense, it is applied to express the organic
changes which take place in the bodies of every animal and
vegetable Being, from their embryo state, until they arrive at
full maturity. In a more extended sense, the term is also applied
to those progressive changes in fossil genera and species,
which have followed one another during the deposition of the
strata of the earth, in the course of the gradual advancement
of the grand system of Creation. The same term has been
adopted by Lamarck, to express his hypothetical views of the derivation
of existing species from preceding species, by successive
Transmutations of one form of organization into another form,
independent of the influence of any creative Agent. It is important
that these distinctions should be rightly understood, lest the
frequent application of the word Development, which occurs in
the writings of modern physiologists, should lead to a false inference,
that the use of this term implies an admission of the theory
of Transmutation with which Lamarck has associated it.