Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

It may be objected, that, to assume the world to have been created with fossil skeletons in its crust, – skeletons of animals that never really existed, – is to charge the Creator with forming objects whose sole purpose was to deceive us. The reply is obvious. Were the concentric timber-rings of a created tree formed merely to deceive? Were the growth lines of a created shell intended to deceive? Was the navel of the created Man intended to deceive him into the persuasion that he had had a parent?¹⁰²

These peculiarities of structure were inseparable from the adult stage of these creatures respectively, without which they would not have been what they were. The Locust-tree could not have been an adult Hymenæa, without concentric rings; – nay, it could not have been an exogenous tree at all. The Dione could not have been a Dione without those foliations and spines that form its generic character. The Man would not have been a Man without a navel.

To the physiologist this is obvious; but some unscientific reader may say, Could not God have created plants and animals without these retrospective marks? I distinctly reply, No! not so as to preserve their specific identity with those with which we are familiar. A Tree-fern without scars on the trunk! A Palm without leaf-bases! A Bean without a hilum! A Tortoise without laminæ on its plates! A Carp without concentric lines on its scales! A Bird without feathers! A Mammal without hairs, or claws, or teeth, or bones, or blood! A Fœtus without a placenta! I have indeed written the preceding pages in vain, if I have not demonstrated, in a multitude of examples, the absolute necessity of retrospective phenomena in newly-created organisms. But if it can be undeniably shown in one single example, our failure to perceive it in ninety-nine other instances would in nowise invalidate the deduction from that one. Granted that you can triumphantly convict me of a non-sequitur, in ninety-nine out of every hundred of the cases in which I have attempted to show this connexion; still, if I have conclusively proved that in one solitary instance an animal or a plant was created with but one solitary evidence of pre-development, the principle for which I contend is established.

I trust, however, it does not rest on one example, nor on twenty, nor on a hundred. It may be thought that I have multiplied my illustrations needlessly: ten times as many might have been given. I wished to show that the proof is of a cumulative character: a single good example would, indeed, have established the principle; but I wished to show how widely applicable it is; that it is, indeed, of universal application in the organic kingdoms.

If, then, the existence of retrospective marks, visible and tangible proofs of processes which were prochronic, was so necessary to organic essences, that they could not have been created without them, – is it absurd to suggest the possibility (I do no more) that the world itself was created under the influence of the same law, with visible tangible proofs of developments and processes, which yet were only prochronic?

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.¹⁰³ 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; physically, 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 appear, precisely as it does appear. There would be cities filled with swarms of men; there would be houses half-built; castles fallen into ruins; pictures 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 decay 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; not to puzzle the philosopher, but because they are inseparable from the condition of the world at the selected moment of irruption into its history; because they constitute its condition; they make it what it is.

Hence the minuteness and undeniableness of the proofs of life which geologists rely on so confidently, and present with such justifiable triumph, do not in the least militate against my principle. The marks of Hyænas' teeth on the bones of Kirkdale cave; the infant skeletons associated with adult skeletons of the same species; the abundance of coprolites; the foot-tracks of Birds and Reptiles; the glacier-scratches on rocks; and hundreds of other beautiful and most irresistible evidences of pre-existence, I do not wish to undervalue, nor to explain away. On the hypothesis that the actual commencing point of the world's history was subsequent to the occurrence of such things in the perfect ideal whole, these phenomena would appear precisely as if the facts themselves had been diachronic, instead of prochronic, as was really the case.¹⁰⁴

Perhaps some one will say, "All this might be tenable, supposing the world were an organism. Your argument goes to show that organic essences in every stage of their existence present proofs of pre-existence; but what analogy is there between the lifeless inorganic globe (in which evidences of past processes are apparent, independent of the fossil organisms), and a living organic being, – plant or animal?"

I answer, The point in the economy of the organic creatures, on which their prochronism rests, is not the organic, but the circular condition of their being. The problem, then, to be solved, before we can certainly determine the question of analogy between the globe and the organism, is this: – Is the life-history of the globe a cycle? If it is (and there are many reasons why this is probable), then I am sure prochronism must have been evident at its creation, since there is no point in a circle which does not imply previous points. At all events, geologists cannot prove that it is not.

Wherever we can discern a cyclical condition, there the law of which I am treating must hold good; and it certainly obtains in other things beside organisms. When the inorganic crust of the globe was first cleft to contain rivers, whence came the water that flowed through the fissures? A river is the produce of rivulets, which issue from mountain springs; these originate in the water that percolates through the soil; and this is derived from the rains, and snows, and dews, that are deposited from the atmosphere. But there would be no deposition from the atmosphere if the water had not first been carried up by evaporation; and the vaporable fluid is obtained from the moistened soil; from the lakes and rivers; and from the seas and oceans, whose loss is perpetually recruited from the flowing rivers. Here, then, we get a circle closely analogous to that of organic being. Was a given drop of water created as a component particle of a running stream? Its position and condition looked back to the mountain spring whence it must naturally have issued. Was it called into being in the spring? It looked up to the surface, whence it must have oozed. Was it formed on the surface? It looked to the clouds, whence it must have dropped. Was it created in the cloud? It looked down to the surface of the lake or sea, whence it must have been raised. Was it created in the lake? It looked to the river, whence it must have flowed.

The chief pelagic currents, which have hitherto so often been the destruction of the navigator, but which may yet become his able and subject servants, flow in circular systems. There is such an one in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, known as the Hurricane Region; another immense one ever running round and round the North Pacific; and, above all, that wondrous river of hot water – a river whose well-marked banks are not solid earth, but cold water – the Gulf Stream.

"The fruit of trees belonging to the torrid zone of America is annually cast ashore on the western coasts of Ireland and Norway. Pennant observes that the seeds of plants which grow in Jamaica, Cuba, and the adjacent countries, are collected on the shores of the Hebrides. Thither also barrels of French wine, the remains of vessels wrecked in the West Indian seas, have been carried. In 1809 His Majesty's ship Little Belt was dismasted at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and her bowsprit was found, eighteen months after, in the Basque Roads. The mainmast of the Tilbury, buried off Hispaniola in the Seven Years' war, was brought to our shores."¹⁰⁵

These facts are dependent on the eastward set of this majestic current; and so is another great physical fact of immeasurable importance to us; – the superiority in temperature of the western shores of Europe over the eastern shores of North America. The harbour of St. John's, Newfoundland, is frequently fast closed by ice in the month of June; yet the latitude of St. John's is considerably south of that of the port of Brest, in France.

Impelled by the rotatory motion of the earth, and by the trade-wind,¹⁰⁶ the equatorial waters of the Atlantic are ever urged, a broad and rapid river, into the Caribbean sea, and the Gulf of Mexico, the narrowing shores of which compress the stream as in a funnel. The Andes here present a slender but impregnable barrier to its further progress westward; and the trend of the Isthmus turns it to the northward. Still finding no outlet, the impatient current, like a wild-beast pacing round its cage, courses the Gulf of Mexico, doubles the peninsula of Florida, and pursues its way first to the north-east, and then to the east, crossing the Atlantic in a retrograde direction, until it laves with its warm billows the coasts of Europe. Here it turns to the southward, and after embracing the "Fortunate" isles that lie off the African shores, – the Azores, the Madeiras, and the Canaries, – it joins the great equatorial set beneath the trade-wind, and returns on its westward course.

This mighty circulation of water must have been going on from the instant that the earth commenced rotating on its axis, or (granting this to have been chronologically subsequent) from the instant the Atlantic occupied its present bed. Whether sooner or later, it commenced at some instant; but at that instant all the previous elements of the circle were presupposed, and a boundless succession of former circles. An intelligent stranger, looking on the movement immediately after its commencement, but ignorant of its origin, would not be able to assign any limit to its past duration. From his observation of the velocity of the current in different parts of the circle, he would say with confidence, – "These identical particles of water, which I see now urged on their ceaseless course towards the middle of the North Atlantic, were, yesterday morning at this hour, in the latitude of the mouth of the Chesapeake; on the morning before, off Cape Hatteras, on the morning before that, off Cape Lookout;" and so backwards interminably.

Whether the economy of the globe is circular, or not, I am not in a position to show. But its movements certainly are; and so are the movements of all the myriad worlds with which astronomy is conversant. Asteroids, planets, satellites, comets, suns, – nay, even the stellar universe itself – obey in their motions, the grand universal law of circularity. Take any one of these; – our Moon. When its orbital motion commenced, it commenced at some point or other of the circle which it describes in its course around the earth. The pre-existence, or at least the co-existence, of the Earth, and also that of the Sun, are necessary to its motion. Supposing it possible for a spectator, furnished with modern astronomical knowledge, to have looked at that instant on the newly-spun orb, would he not confidently have inferred, from its position at that moment, its position a week before? Would he not have felt able to indicate with unhesitating certainty the solar and lunar eclipses of a century or a chiliad before, just as he now calculates the time of the eclipse that marked the death of Herod the Great? Undoubtedly he would; for he would assume the constancy of those movements which modern science has deduced from the observations of many centuries; and, granting him the fact of their constancy, we could not invalidate his conclusions. Yet what would he have shown? The conditions and phenomena of bodies before they had begun to exist. The conditions are legitimately deducible; but they are prochronic conditions.

The mention of the celestial orbs suggests to remembrance the famous argument for the vast antiquity of the material universe, founded on the time which is required for the propulsion of light. I believe it owes its origin to Sir William Herschel.

Speaking of the known velocity of light in connexion with the immense distance of certain nebulæ, that eminent astronomer made these remarks: —

"Hence it follows, that, when we… see an object of the calculated distance at which one of these very remote nebulæ may still be perceived… the rays of light which convey its image to the eye must have been more than nineteen hundred and ten thousand, that is, almost two millions, of years on their way; and that, consequently, so many years ago, this object must already have had an existence in the sidereal heavens, in order to send out those rays by which we now perceive it."¹⁰⁷

The notion has been amplified, with some interesting details, by a writer in the Scottish Congregational Magazine for January 1847; who thus throws the statements into a tabular form, and comments on them.

"Now, as we see objects by the rays of light passing from those objects to our eye, it follows that we do not perceive the heavenly bodies, as they are at the moment of our seeing them, but as they were at the time the rays of light by which we see them left those bodies. Thus when we look at the moon, we see her, not as she is at the moment of our beholding her disc, but as she was a second and a quarter before; for instance, we see her not at the moment of her rising above the horizon, but 1-1/4 second after she has risen. The sun also when he appears to us to have just passed the meridian, has already passed it by 8 minutes. So, in like manner, of the planets and the fixed stars. We see Jupiter, not as he is at the moment of our catching a sight of him, but as he was 52 minutes before. Uranus appears to us, not as he is at the moment of our discovering him, but as he was 2 hours previously. And a star of the 12th magnitude presents itself to our eye as it was 4,000 years ago: so that, suppose such a star to have been annihilated 3,000 years back, it would still be visible on the earth's surface for 1,000 years to come: or, suppose a star of the same magnitude had been created at the time the Israelites left Egypt, it will not be perceptible on the earth for nearly 700 years from this date."

Beautiful, and at first sight unanswerable as this argument is, it falls to the ground before the spear-touch of our Ithuriel, the doctrine of prochronism. There is nothing more improbable in the notion that the sensible undulation was created at the observer's eye, with all the pre-requisite undulations prochronic, than in the notion that blood was created in the capillaries of the first human body. The latter we have seen to be a fact: is the former an impossibility?

It may perhaps be said: – "The traces of prochronism you have adduced in created organisms may be granted, because they are inseparable from the presumed condition of those organisms respectively. The blood in the vessels, the hair, the teeth, the nails, may afford evidences of past processes; but then those are only past stages of what yet exists. The case, however, is not parallel with the fossil skeletons, many of which have no connexion with anything now existing. The concentric rings of a timber-tree are essential to its adult state; but how is the existence of the Pterodactyle or the Megatherium essential to that of the recent Draco volans, or the South American Sloth? Can you show in the new-formed creature any trace of some organ which does not come into its present condition of being, – of something which has quite passed away?"

Perhaps I can. The very concentric rings of the tree are considered by botanists as, in some sense, dead. The paradoxical dictum of Schleiden, – "No tree has leaves,"¹⁰⁸– is grounded on this circumstance, that the woody portion of the mass is the inert result of former generations, and that the present race of leaves is growing, not out of the woody portion of the tree, but out of its herbaceous extremities, "which grow upon the woody stem as upon a ground, formed by the process of vegetation. This common ground, namely, the woody stem, which is almost lifeless in comparison with the herbaceous parts engaged in active growth, is annually covered with a vigorous sheath under the protecting bark; and this sheath is the ground of the nourishment of all the vegetating herbaceous extremities."¹⁰⁹

The polygonal plates into which the bark of the Testudinaria divides, not only show many superposed laminæ, at any given moment of its adult condition, but also bear witness, in the broad existent surface of each one, to former laminæ, yet older than the oldest now present, which have disintegrated and dropped off.

The Palm and the Tree-fern show, in their trunk-scars, evidences of organs which have completely died away and disappeared; while, between these scars and the generation of living fronds, there is, at any given moment of the tree's history, a series of fronds which are quite dead and dry, but which have not yet disappeared.

The Nerita, a genus of beautiful shells from the tropical seas, dissolves away and removes, in the progress of growth, the spiral column, which originally formed the axis of development; so that, in adult age, the spiral direction of the whole testifies to the past existence of a column which has quite disappeared.

In that species of Murex,¹¹⁰ which, on account of the long and slender rostellum, and the spines with which it is covered, is known to collectors as the Thorny Woodcock (M. tenuispina), the shelly spines of the earlier whorls would interfere with such as came, in process of development, to be superposed on them; for they cross the area which is to be the cavity enclosed by the advancing lip. They are, however, removed by absorption; but not so completely but that traces may still be discovered where they formerly existed: evidences of the quondam existence of what exists no longer.

Towards one side of the upper surface of the pretty Star-fish, Cribella rosea, (as in many other species of Star-fishes,) there is a curious little mark, known as the madreporic plate, the use of which has greatly puzzled naturalists. Sars, the Norwegian zoologist, has unveiled the mystery.¹¹¹ The young larva, before it assumes the stellar form, is furnished with a sort of thick column, divided into four diverging clubbed arms, which are adhering organs, ancillary to locomotion. In the process of development, however, new locomotive organs are formed; and this four-fold column, being no longer needed, sloughs away; and that so completely, that not a trace of its existence remains, except this scar, or "madreporic plate;" which is therefore a permanent record of something that has quite passed away.

But the closest parallel to the relation borne by the skeleton of an extinct species to an extant one, is presented by that of the hilum to a seed, or of the umbilicus to a mammal. Each of these is a legible and undeniable, record of a being, whose individuality was totally distinct from that of the being by which it is presented, and of which all vestiges have disappeared, save this record. Nor is the parallel founded on obscure or rare examples; both the umbilicus and the hilum are generally conspicuous; and both are extensively found in their respective kingdoms, the former pervading the viviparous Vertebrata, the latter characterising the whole of the cotyledonous types of vegetation.

Once more. An objection may arise to the reception of the prochronic principle, on the ground that the examples I have adduced are not to be compared, in point of grandeur, with the mighty revolutions, which are presumed to have written their records in the crust of the globe; and that hence no analogy can be fairly drawn from one to the other. To the philosopher, however, there is no great or small, as there is none in the works of God. We have every reason to believe that He has wrought by the same laws in all portions of his universe: the principle on which an apple falls from the branch to the ground, is the same as that which keeps the planet Neptune in the solar system. I have shown that the principle of prochronic development obtains wherever we are able to test it; that is, wherever another principle, that of cyclicism, exists; whether the cycle be that of a gnat's metamorphosis, or of a planet's orbit. The distinction of great or small, grand or mean, does not apply to it. If it cannot be proved to be universal, it is only because we are not sufficiently acquainted with some of the economies of nature to be able to pronounce with certainty whether they are cyclical or not. I am not aware of any natural process, in which its existence can be absolutely denied.

And this makes all the difference in the world between my position and that of the old simple-minded observers, with which a superficial reader might think it to possess a good deal in common. A century ago, people used to talk of lusus naturæ; of a certain plastic power in nature; of abortive or initiative attempts at making things which were never perfected; of imitations, in one kingdom, of the proper subjects of another, (as plants were supposed to be imitated by the frost on a window-pane, and by the dendritic forms of metals). Still later, many persons have been inclined to take refuge from the conclusions of geology in the absolute sovereignty of God, asking, – "Could not the Omnipotent Creator make the fossils in the strata, just as they now appear?"

It has always been felt to be a sufficient answer to such a demand, that no reason could be adduced for such an exercise of mere power; and that it would be unworthy of the Allwise God.

But this is a totally different thing from that for which I am contending. I am endeavouring to show that a grand law exists, by which, in two great departments of nature at least, the analogues of the fossil skeletons were formed without pre-existence. An arbitrary acting, and an acting on fixed and general laws, have nothing in common with each other.

Finally, the acceptance of the principles presented in this volume, even in their fullest extent, would not, in the least degree, affect the study of scientific geology. The character and order of the strata; their disruptions and displacements and injections; the successive floras and faunas; and all the other phenomena, would be facts still. They would still be, as now, legitimate subjects of examination and inquiry. I do not know that a single conclusion, now accepted, would need to be given up, except that of actual chronology. And even in respect of this, it would be rather a modification than a relinquishment of what is at present held; we might still speak of the inconceivably long duration of the processes in question, provided we understand ideal instead of actual time; – that the duration was projected in the mind of God, and not really existent.

The zoologist would still use the fossil forms of non-existing animals, to illustrate the mutual analogies of species and groups. His recognition of their prochronism would in nowise interfere with his endeavours to assign to each its position in the scale of organic being. He would still legitimately treat it as an entity; an essential constituent of the great Plan of Nature; because he would recognise the Plan itself as an entity, though only an ideal entity, existing only in the Divine Conception. He would still use the stony skeletons for the inculcation of lessons on the skill and power of God in creation; and would find them a rich mine of instruction, affording some examples of the adaptation of structure to function, which are not yielded by any extant species. Such are the elongation of the little finger in Pterodactylus, for the extension of the alar membrane; and the deflexion of the inferior incisors in Dinotherium, for the purposes of digging or anchorage. And still would he find, in the fossil forms, evidences of that complacency in beauty, which has prompted the Adorable Workmaster to paint the rose in blushing hues, and to weave the fine lace of the dragonfly's wing. The whorls of the Gyroceras, the foliaceous or zigzag sutures of the Ammonites, and the radiating pattern of Smithia, are not less elegant than anything of the kind in existing creation, in which, however, they have no parallels. In short, the readings of the "stone book" will be found not less worthy of God who wrote them, not less worthy of man who deciphers them, if we consider them as prochronically, than if we judge them diachronically, produced.

Here I close my labours. How far I have succeeded in accomplishing the task to which I bent myself, it is not for me to judge. Others will determine that; and I am quite sure it will be determined fairly, on the whole. To prevent misapprehension, however, it may be as well to enunciate what the task was, which I prescribed, especially because other (collateral, hypothetical) points have been mooted in these pages.

All, then, that I consider myself responsible for is summed up in these sentences: —

I. The conclusions hitherto received have been but inferences deduced from certain premises: the witness who reveals the premises does not testify to the inferences.

II. The process of deducing the inferences has been liable to a vast incoming of error, arising from the operation of a Law, proved to exist, but hitherto unrecognised.

III. The amount of the error thus produced we have no means of knowing; much less of eliminating it.

IV. The whole of the facts deposed to by this witness are irrelevant to the question; and the witness is, therefore, out of court.

V. The field is left clear and undisputed for the one Witness on the opposite side, whose testimony is as follows: —

"IN SIX DAYS JEHOVAH MADE HEAVEN AND EARTH, THE SEA, AND ALL THAT IN THEM IS."