32, that all the diverse forms of matter, as we know them,
were probably evolved by natural causes. So obvious, indeed, is this
inference, that to resort to any supernatural hypothesis to explain the
diverse properties of the various chemical elements appears to me a most
glaring violation of the law of parcimony--as much more glaring, for
instance, than the violation of this law by Paley, as the number and
variety of organic species are greater than the number and variety of
chemical species. And if it was illegitimate in Paley to use a mere absence
of knowledge as to how the transmutation of apparently fixed species of
animals was effected as equivalent to the possession of knowledge that such
transmutation had not been effected, how much more illegitimate must it be
to commit a similar sin against logic in the case of the chemical elements,
where our classification is confessedly beset with numberless difficulties,
and when we begin to discern that in all probability it is a classification
essentially artificial. Lastly, the mere fact that the transmutation of
chemical species and the evolution of chemical "atoms" are processes which
we do not now observe as occurring in nature, is surely a consideration of
a far more feeble kind than it is even in the case of biological species
and biological evolution; seeing that nature's laboratory must be now so
inconceivably different from what it was during the condensation of the
nebula.
Pages:
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206