If a writer must needs
use his own favorite dogma as a weapon with which to give _coup de
grace_ to a pernicious theory, he should be careful to seize it by the
handle, and not by the blade.
We can barely glance at a subsidiary philosophical objection of the
"North American" reviewer, which the "Examiner" also raises, though
less explicitly. Like all geologists, Mr. Darwin draws upon time in
the most unlimited manner. He is not peculiar in this regard. Mr.
Agassiz tells us that the conviction is "now universal among
well-informed naturalists, that this globe has been in existence for
innumerable ages, and that the length of time elapsed since it first
became inhabited cannot be counted in years." Pictet, that the
imagination refuses to calculate the immense number of years and of
ages during which the faunas of thirty or more epochs have succeeded
one another, and developed their long succession of generations. Now
the reviewer declares that such indefinite succession of ages is
"virtually infinite," "lacks no characteristic of eternity except its
name,"--at least, that "the difference between such a conception and
that of the strictly infinite, if any, is not appreciable." But
infinity belongs to metaphysics. Therefore, he concludes, Darwin
supports his theory, not by scientific, but by metaphysical evidence;
his theory is "essentially and completely metaphysical in character,
resting altogether upon that idea of 'the infinite' which the human
mind can neither put aside nor comprehend.
Pages:
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98