Some Salient Points in the Science of the EarthDawson, John William, Sir
Science
Some Salient Points in the Science of the Earth
Dawson, John William, Sir
Geology; Paleontology
phosphate of lime in our bones, or indeed, just as the will of the
architect does in building a palace. The profound significance which
this has, reaches beyond the domain of the physical and vital, even
to the spiritual. It clings to all our conceptions of living things:
"quite as much, for example, to the evolution of an animal with all its
parts from a one-celled germ, as to the connection of brain cells with
the manifestations of intelligence." Viewed in this way, we may share
with the author of the sentence I have quoted his feeling of veneration
in the presence of this great wonder of animal life, "burning, and not
consumed," nay, building up, and that in many and beautiful forms. We
may realize it most of all in the presence of the organism which was
perhaps the first to manifest on our planet these marvellous powers.
We must, however, here also, beware of that credulity which makes too
many thinkers limit their conceptions altogether to physical force in
matters of this kind The merely materialistic physiologist is really in
no better position than the savage who quails before the thunderstorm,
or rejoices in the solar warmth, and seeing no force or power beyond,
fancies himself in the immediate presence of his God. In Eozoon we
must discern not only a mass of jelly but a being endowed with that
higher vital force which surpasses vegetable life, and also physical
and chemical forces; and in this animal energy we must see an emanation
from a Will higher than our own, ruling vitality itself; and this not
merely to the end of constructing the skeleton of a Protozoon, but
of elaborating all the wonderful developments of life that were to
follow in succeeding ages, and with reference to which the production
and growth of this creature were initial steps. It is this mystery of
design which really constitutes the "profound significance" of the
foraminiferal skeleton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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