or it
necessitates the belief in innumerable acts of creation repeated
innumerable times. The other hypothesis is, that the successive species
of animals and plants have arisen, the later by the gradual modification
of the earlier. This is the hypothesis of evolution; and the
palaeontological discoveries of the last decade are so completely in
accordance with the requirements of this hypothesis that, if it had not
existed, the palaeontologist would have had to invent it.

I have always had a certain horror of presuming to set a limit upon the
possibilities of things. Therefore I will not venture to say that it is
impossible that the multitudinous species of animals and plants may have
been produced, one separately from the other, by spontaneous generation;
nor that it is impossible that they should have been independently
originated by an endless succession of miraculous creative acts. But
I must confess that both these hypotheses strike me as so astoundingly
improbable, so devoid of a shred of either scientific or traditional
support, that even if there were no other evidence than that of
palaeontology in its favour, I should feel compelled to adopt the
hypothesis of evolution. Happily, the future of palaeontology is
independent of all hypothetical considerations. Fifty years hence,
whoever undertakes to record the progress of palaeontology will note the
present time as the epoch in which the law of succession of the forms of
the higher animals was determined by the observation of palaeontological
facts. He will point out that, just as Steno and as Cuvier were enabled
from their knowledge of the empirical laws of co-existence of the parts
of animals to conclude from a part to the whole, so the knowledge of the
law of succession of forms empowered their successors to conclude, from
one or two terms of such a succession, to the whole series; and thus
to divine the existence of forms of life, of which, perhaps, no trace
remains, at epochs of inconceivable remoteness in the past.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _De Solidoiintra Solidum,_ p.5--"Dato corpore certa figura
praedito et juxta leges naturae producto, in ipso corpore argumenta
invenire locum et modum productionis detegentia."]

[Footnote 2: "Corpora sibi invicem omnino similia simili etiam modo
producta sunt."]

[Footnote 3: Sir J. D. Hooker.]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology, by
Thomas Henry Huxley