Part 2

7. The destitution of horns on the calf and of teeth in the suckling. All other parts are perfect at the very first; but were calves and sucklings to have teeth and horns, what sore annoyances would these appendages prove to their dams and dames. How is it that all the necessary parts of the young are thus perfect at the first, and their annoying parts unformed till circumstances render them no annoyance—unformed at the time they are not needed, and produced when they are, for defense and mastication? Who can fail to see intelligence here?

8. The teats of animals. These bear a general proportion to the number of young which they are wont to have at a time. Those that are wont to have few young have few teats; those that have many young have many teats. Were these animals to make preparations themselves in this respect, how could things be more appropriate?

9. The pea and the bean. The pea-vine, unable to stand erect of itself, has tendrils with which to cling to a supporter; but the bean-stalk, self-sustained, has nothing of the kind.

10. The pumpkin. This does not grow on the oak; to fall on the tender head of the wiseacre reposing in its shade, _reasoning_ that it should grow there rather than where it does, because, forsooth, the oak would be able to sustain it. And were he to undertake to set the other works of Providence to rights which he now considers wrong, ’tis a chance if he would not get many a thump upon his pate ere he should get the universe arranged to his mind. And if, before completing his undertaking, he should not find it the easier of the two to arrange his mind to the universe, it would be because _what __ little_ brains he _has_ would get thumped out of his cranium altogether!

11. The great energies of nature. To suppose the existence of _powers_ as the cause of the operations of nature—powers destitute of life, and, at the same time, self-moving, and acting upon matter without the intervention of extrinsic agency, is just as irrational as to suppose such a power in a machine, and is a gross absurdity and a self-contradiction. But to suppose that these lifeless energies, even if possessed of such qualities, could, void of intelligence, produce _such_ effects as _are_ produced in the universe, requires credulity capable of believing anything.

12. The whole universe, whether considered in its elementary or its organized state. From the simple grass to the tender plant, and onward to the sturdy oak; from the least insect up to man, there is skill the most consummate, design the most clear. What substance, useless as it may be when uncompounded with other substances, does not manifest design in its affinity to those substances, by a union with which it is rendered useful? What plant, what shrub, what tree has not organization and arrangement the most perfect imaginable? What insect so minute that contains not, within its almost invisible exterior, adjustment of part to part in the most exact order throughout all its complicated system, infinitely transcending the most ingenious productions of art, and the most appropriate adaptation of all those parts to its peculiar mode of existence? Rising in the scale of sensitive being, let us consider the beast of the forest, in whose case, without microscopic aid, we have the subject more accessible. Is he a beast of prey? Has the God of nature given him an instinctive thirst for blood? Behold, then, his sharp-sighted organs of vision for descrying his victim afar, his agile limbs for pursuit, his curved and pointed claws for seizing and tearing his prey, his sharp-edged teeth for cutting through its flesh, his firm jaws for gripping, crushing, and devouring it, and his intestines for digesting raw flesh. But is he a graminivorous animal? Does he subsist on grass and herb? Behold, then, his clumsy limbs and his clawless hoofs, his blunt teeth and his herb-digesting stomach. So perfect is the correspondence between one part and another; so exactly adapted are all the parts to the same general objects; so wonderful is the harmony and so definite and invariable the purpose obtaining throughout the whole, that it is necessary to see but a footstep, or even a bone, to be able to decide the nature and construction of the animal that imprinted that footstep or that possessed that bone. Ascending still higher in the scale, we come at last to man—man, the highest, noblest workmanship of God on earth—the lord of this sphere terrene—for whose behoof all earthly things exist. In common with all animals, he has that perfect adaptation of part to part, and of all the parts to general objects, which demonstrate consummate wisdom in the Cause which thus adapted them. His eyes are so placed as to look the same way in which his feet are placed to walk, and his hands to toil. His feet correspond with each other, being both placed to walk in the direction, and with their corresponding sides towards one another, without which he would hobble, even if he could walk at all. His mouth is placed in the forepart of the head, by which it can receive food and drink from the hands.

But the hands themselves—who can but admire their wonderful utility? To what purpose are they not adapted? Man, who has many ends to accomplish, in common with the beast of the field; who has hunger to alleviate, thirst to slake, and has likewise other and higher ends, for the attainment of which he is peculiarly qualified by means of _hands_. Adapted by his constitution to inhabit all climes, he has hands to adapt his clothing to the same, whether torrid, temperate or frigid. Possessed of the knowledge of the utility of the soil, he has hands to cultivate it. Located far distant oftentimes from the running stream, these hands enable him to disembowel the earth and there find an abundant supply of the all-necessary fluid. Endowed with rational ideas, pen in _hand_ he can transmit them to his fellows far away, or to generations unborn. Heir and lord of earth and ocean, his hands enable him to possess and control the same, without which, notwithstanding all his reason, he could do neither, but would have to crouch beneath the superior strength of the brute, and fly for shelter to crags inaccessible to his beastly sovereign.

The only creature that has the reason to manage the world, has the physical organization to do it. No _beast_ with man’s reason could do this, and no _man_ with the mere instinct of a brute could do it. How marvellous, then this adaptation! How wondrous the adaptation of everything, and how astonishing that any man, with all these things in view, can for one moment forbear to admit a God. Let him try _a chance experiment_. Let him take the letters of the alphabet and throw them about promiscuously and then see how long ere they would move of their own accord and arrange themselves into words and sentences. He may avail himself of the whole benefit of his scheme; he may have the advantage of an energy or power as a momentum to set them in motion; he may put these letters into a box sufficiently large for the purpose, and then shake them as long as may seem him good, and when, in this way, they shall have become intelligible language, I will admit that he will have some reasons for doubting a God. If this should seem too much like _artificial_ mind, he may take some little animal, all constructed at his hands, and dismember its limbs and dissect its body, and then within some vessel let him throw its various parts at random, and seizing that vessel shake it most lustily till bone shall come to bone, joint to joint, and the little creature be restored to its original form. But if this could not be accomplished by mere power, without wisdom to direct, how could the original adjustment occur by chance? How could those very parts themselves be _formed for_ adjustment one to another?

Mathematicians tell us wondrous things in relation to these hap-hazard concerns. And they demonstrate their statements by what will not lie—figures. Their rule is this: that, as one thing admits of but one position, as, for example, _a_, so two things, _a_ and _b_, are capable of two positions, as _ab_, _ba_. But if a third be added, instead of their being susceptible of only one additional position, or three in all, they are capable of six. For example, _abc_, _acb_, _bac_, _bca_, _cab_, _cba_. Add another letter, _d_, and the four are capable of twenty-four positions or variations. Thus we might go on. Merely adding another letter, _e_, and so making _five_ instead of four, would increase the the number of variations _five_-fold. They would then amount to one hundred and twenty. A single additional letter, _f_, making _six_ in all, would increase this last sum of one hundred and twenty _six_-fold, making seven hundred and twenty. Add a _seventh_ letter, _g_, and the last-named sum would be increased _seven_-fold, making the sum of five thousand and forty. If we go on thus to the end of the alphabet, we have the astonishing sum of six hundred and twenty thousand four hundred and forty-eight trillions, four hundred and one thousand seven hundred and thirty-three billions, two hundred and thirty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty-nine millions and three hundred and sixty thousand!!! Hence it follows that, were the letters of the alphabet to be thrown promiscuously into a vessel, to be afterwards shaken into order by mere hap, their chance of being arranged, not to say into words and sentences, but into their alphabetical order, would be only as _one_ to the above number. All this, too, in the case of only twenty-six letters! Take now the human frame, with its bones, tendons, nerves, muscles, veins, arteries, ducts, glands, cartilages, etc.; and having dissected the same, throw those parts into one promiscuous mass; and how long, I ask, would it be ere Chance would put them all into their appropriate places and form a perfect man? In this calculation we are likewise to take into the account the chances of their being placed bottom upwards, or side-ways, or wrong side out, notwithstanding they might merely find their appropriate places. This would increase the chances against a well-formed system to an amount beyond all calculation or conception. In the case of the alphabet, the chances for the letters to fall bottom up or aslant are not included. And when we reflect that the blind goddess, or “unintelligent forces,” would have to contend against such fearful odds in the case of a single individual, how long are we to suppose it would be, ere from old Chaos she could shake this mighty universe, with all its myriads upon myriads of existences, into the glorious order and beauty in which it now exists.

AN ATHEIST IS A FOOL.

He can’t believe that two letters can be adjusted to each other without design, and yet he can believe all the foregoing incredibilities.

I might swell the list to a vast extent. I might bring into view the verdure of the earth as being the most agreeable of all colors to the eye; the general diffusion of the indispensibles and necessaries of life, such as air, light, water, food, clothing, fuel, while less necessary things, such as spices, gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc, are less diffused; also, the infinite variety in things—in men, for instance—by which we can distinguish one from another. But I forbear. Is it reasonable to conclude that, where there are possible appearances of design, still no design is there? or even that it is probable there is none?

I have said that there is as much evidence of purpose in the works of nature as in those of art. I now say that there is more, _infinitely_ more. Should the wheels of nature stop their revolutions, and her energies be palsied, and life and motion cease, even then would she exhibit incomparably greater evidence of design, in her mere construction and adaptation, than do the works of art. Shall we then be told that when she is in full operation, and daily producing millions upon millions of useful, of intelligent, of marvelous effects, she still manifests no marks of intelligence! In nature we not only see all the works of art infinitely exceeded, but we see, as it were, those works self-moved and performing their operations without external agency. To use a faint comparison, we see a factory in motion without water, wind or steam, its cotton placing itself within the reach of the picker, the cards, the spinning-frame and the loom, and turning out in rolls or cloth. Such virtually, nay, far more wonderful, is the universe. Not a thousandth part so unreasonable would it be to believe a real factory of this description, were one to exist, to be a chance existence, as to believe this universe so. Sooner could I suppose nature herself possessed of intelligence than admit the idea that there is _no_ intelligence concerned in her organization and operations. There must be a mind within or without her, or else we have no data by which to distinguish mind. There must be a mind, or all the results of mind are produced without any. There must be a mind, or chaos produces order, blind power perfects effects, and non-intelligence the most admirable correspondence and harmony imaginable. Skeptics pride themselves much on their reason. They can’t believe, they say, because it is unreasonable. _What_ is unreasonable? To believe in a mind where there is every appearance thereof that can be? Is it more reasonable to believe, then, that every appearance of mind is produced without any mind at all? Skeptics are the last men in all this wide world to pretend reason. They doubt against infinite odds; they believe without evidence against evidence, against demonstration, and then talk of reason!—_Origin Bachelor’s Correspondence with R. D. Owen._

BLUNDER ON AND BLUNDER ON—IT IS HUMAN TO BLUNDER.

Are all the mammoths one or two hundred thousand years old, as Sir Charles Lyell conjectured? It was stated, in the bygone, that the “diluvium” was very old, on account of the absence of human remains, but since man’s remains have been found there, it is inferred that man is very ancient; whereas, the truth is, the mammoth is _very recent_. In many instances their bones are so fresh that they contain twenty-seven per cent. of animal substance; in some instances the flesh is still upon their bones, with their last meal in their stomachs.

Mr. Boyd Dawkins has furnished us with a thrilling narrative of the discovery of a mammoth in 1846, by Mr. Benkendorf, close to the mouth of the Indigirka. This mammoth was disentombed during the great thaw of the summer. The description is given in the following language: “In 1846 there was unusually warm weather in the north of Siberia. Already in May unusual rains poured over the moors and bogs; storms shook the earth, and the streams carried not only ice to the sea, but also large tracts of land. We steamed on the first day up the Indigirka, but there were no thoughts of land; we saw around us only a sea of dirty brown water, and knew the river only by the rushing and roaring of the stream. The river rolled against us trees, moss, and large masses of peat, so that it was only with great trouble and danger that we could proceed. At the end of the second day we were only a short distance up the stream; some one had to stand with the sounding-rod in hand continually, and the boat received so many shocks that it shuddered to the keel. A wooden vessel would have been smashed. Around us we saw nothing but the flooded land.... The Indigirka, here, had torn up the land and worn itself a fresh channel, and when the waters sank we saw, to our astonishment, that the old river-bed had become merely that of an insignificant stream.... The stream rolled over and tore up the soft, wet ground like chaff, so that it was dangerous to go near the brink. While we were all quiet, we heard under our feet a sudden gurgling and stirring, which betrayed the working of the disturbed water. Suddenly our jagger, ever on the look-out, called loudly, and pointed to a singular and unshapely object, which rose and sank.... Now we all hastened to the spot on shore, had the boat drawn near, and waited until the mysterious thing should again show itself. Our patience was tried, but at last a black, horrible giant-like mass was thrust out of the water, and we beheld a colossal elephant’s head, armed with mighty tusks, with its long trunk moving in the water in an unearthly manner, as though seeking for something lost therein.... I beheld the monster hardly twelve feet from me, with his half-open eyes yet showing the whites. It was still in good preservation....

“Picture to yourself an elephant with a body covered with thick fur, about thirteen feet in height and fifteen in length, with tusks eight feet long, thick, and curving outward at their ends, a stout trunk of six feet in length, colossal limbs of one and a half feet in thickness, and a tail naked up to the end, which was covered with thick tufty hair. The animal was fat and well grown; death had overtaken him in the fulness of his powers. His parchment-like, large, naked ears lay turned up over the head; about the shoulders and on the back he had stiff hair, about a foot in length, like a mane. The long outer hair was deep brown and coarsely rooted. The top of the head looked so wild and so penetrated with pitch that it resembled the rind of an old oak tree. On the sides it was cleaner, and under the outer hair there appeared everywhere a wool, very soft, warm and thick, and of a fallow-brown color. The giant was well protected against the cold. The whole appearance of the animal was fearfully strange and wild. It had not the shape of our present elephants. As compared with our Indian elephants, its head was rough, the brain-case low and narrow, but the trunk and mouth were much larger. The teeth were very powerful. Our elephant is an awkward animal, but compared with this mammoth, it is an Arabian steed to a coarse, ugly dray horse. I had the stomach separated and brought on one side. It was well filled, and the contents instructive and well preserved. The principal were young shoots of the fir and pine; a quantity of young fir cones, also in a chewed state, were mixed with the moss.”

Mammoth bones are found in great abundance in the islands off the northern coast of Siberia. The remains of the rhinoceros are also found. Pallas, in 1772, obtained from Wiljuiskoi, in latitude 64°, a rhinoceros taken from the sand in which it had been frozen. This carcass emitted an odor like putrid flesh, part of the skin being covered with short, crisp wool and with black and gray hairs. Professor Brandt, in 1846, extracted from the cavities in the molar teeth of this skeleton a small quantity of half-chewed pine leaves and coniferous wood. And the blood-vessels in the interior of the head appeared filled, even to the capillary vessels, with coagulated blood, which in many places still retained its original red color.

We find that Mr. Boyd Dawkins and Mr. Sanford assert that the cave-lion is only a large variety of the existing lion—identical in species. Herodotus says: “The camels in the army of Xerxes, near the mountains of Thessaly, _were attacked by lions_.”

Sir John Lubbock, in his Prehistoric Times, page 293, says the cave-hyena “is now regarded as scarcely distinguishable specifically from the _Hyæna crocuta_, or spotted hyena of Southern Africa,” while Mr. Busk and M. Gervais identify the _cave-bear_ with the _Ursus ferox_, or grizzly bear of North America. What is the bearing of these facts on the question of the antiquity of the remains found in the bone caverns?

Do these facts justify men in carrying human remains, found along with the remains of these animals in the caves, back to the remote period of one or two hundred thousand years?—a long time, this, for flesh upon the bones and food in the stomach to remain in a state of preservation.

“So fresh is the ivory throughout Northern Russia,” says Lyell, _Principles, vol. 1, p. 183_, “that, according to Tilesius, thousands of fossil tusks have been collected and used in turning.”

Mr. Dawkins says: “We are compelled to hold that the cave-lion which preyed upon the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and musk-sheep in Great Britain, is a mere geographical variety of the great carnivore that is found alike in the tropical parts of Asia and throughout the whole of Africa.” Popular Science Review for 1869, p. 153. It has been customary to speak of all these animals as “_the great extinct_ mammalia,” and to regard them all as much larger than existing animals of the same kind, but three of the most important still exist, and the cave-lions, at least some of the specimens, were smaller than the lion of the present. According to Sir John Lubbock the “Irish elk, the elephants and the three species of rhinoceros are, perhaps, the only ones which are absolutely extinct.” Prehistoric Times, p. 290. “Out of seventeen principal ‘palæolithic’ mammalia, ten, until recently, were regarded ‘extinct;’ but it is now believed that the above-mentioned elk, elephants and rhinoceros are the only extinct mammalia. Dr. Wilson affirms that skeletons of the Irish elk have been found at Curragh, Ireland, in marshes, some of the bones of which were in such fresh condition that the marrow is described as having the appearance of fresh suet, and burning with a clear flame.”

Professor Agassiz admits the continuance of the Irish elk to the fourteenth century to be “probable.” It is certain that this elk continued in Ireland down to what is claimed as the age of iron, and possibly in Germany down to the twelfth century. It is also certain that it was a companion of the mammoth and of the woolly rhinoceros. The aurochs, or European bison, whose remains are found in the river gravel and the older bone caves, is mentioned by Pliny and Seneca. They speak of it as existing in their time; it is also named in the Niebelungen Lied. It existed in Prussia as late as 1775, and is still found wild in the Caucasus. The present Emperor of Russia has twelve herds, which are protected in the forests of Lithuania. During the session of the International Archæological Congress at Stockholm, in 1874, the members of the body made an excursion to the isle of Bjorko, in Lake Malar, near Stockholm, where there is an ancient cemetery of two thousand tumuli. Within a few hundred yards from this is the site of the ancient town. Several trenches were run through this locality, and many relics obtained by the members of the congress. On the occasion Dr. Stolpe, who was familiar with the previous discoveries at this point, delivered a lecture on the island and its remains. They all, he stated, belong to the second age of iron in Sweden, and consisted of implements of iron, ornaments of bronze, and animal bones; Kufic coins have been found, along with cowrie-shells, and silver bracelets. The number of animal bones met with is immense, more than fifty species being represented, and what is especially noteworthy, _the marrow bones were all crushed or split_, just as in the palæeolithic times. The principal wild beasts were the lynx, the wolf, the fox, the beaver, the elk, the _reindeer_, etc. Dr. Stolpe refers the formation of this “pre-historic” city to “about the middle of the eighth century after Christ,” and says it was probably destroyed “about the middle of the eleventh century.”

“During this period the reindeer existed in this part of Sweden.”

Recent scientific discovery demands that we should almost modernize the animals we used to regard as belonging to a period of a hundred thousand years ago.