In science, as in
morals and politics, there is absolutely no periodicity. One thing we
may prophesy of the future for certain--it will be unlike the past.
Everything is in a state of evolution and progress. The science of dead
matter, which has been the principal subject of my thoughts during my
life, is, I may say, strenuous on this point, that THE AGE OF THE EARTH
IS DEFINITE. We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more,
or less, but me say it is NOT INDEFINITE. And we can say very
definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of
years. Here, then, we are brought face to face with the most wonderful
of all miracles, the commencement of life on this earth. This earth,
certainly a moderate number of millions of years ago, was a red-hot
globe; all scientific men of the present day agree that life came upon
this earth somehow. If some form or some part of the life at present
existing came to this earth, carried on some moss-grown stone perhaps
broken away from mountains in other worlds; even if some part of the
life had come in that way--for there is nothing too far-fetched in the
idea, and probably some such action as that did take place, since
meteors do come every day to the earth from other parts of the
universe;--still, that does not in the slightest degree diminish the
wonder, the tremendous miracle, we have in the commencement of life in
this world.
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