[10] The first continental period was that of the earlier Pliocene.
[11] The precise date in years assignable to this event geology cannot determine; but I have elsewhere shown that the actual antiquity of the palæocosmic or antediluvian man has been greatly exaggerated.
The subjects already discussed should have prepared us to regard nature as not a merely fortuitous congeries of matter and forces, but as embodying plan, design, and contrivance; and we may now inquire as to the character of these, considered as possible manifestations of mind in nature. The idea that nature is a manifestation of mind, is ancient, and probably universal. It proceeds naturally from the analogy between the operations of nature and those which originate in our own will and contrivance. When men begin to think more accurately, this idea acquires a deeper foundation in the conclusion that nature, in all its varied manifestations, is one vast machine too great and complex for us to comprehend, and implying a primary energy infinitely beyond that of man; and thus the unity of nature points to one Creative Mind.
Even to savage peoples, in whose minds the idea of unity has not germinated, or from whose traditions it has been lost, a spiritual essence appears to underlie all natural phenomena, though they may regard this as consisting of a separate spirit or manitou for every material thing. In all the more cultivated races the ideas of natural religion have taken more definite forms in their theology and philosophy. Dugald Stewart has well expressed the more scientific form of this idea in two short statements:
"2. Every combination of means to an end implies intelligence."
The theistic aspect of the doctrine had, as we have seen in a previous lecture, been already admirably expressed by Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. Writing of what every heathen must know of mind in nature, he says: "The invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his eternal power and divinity." The two things which, according to him, every intelligent man must perceive in nature are, first, power above and beyond that of man, and, secondly, superhuman intelligence. Even Agnostic Evolution cannot wholly divest itself of the idea of mind in nature. Its advocates continually use terms implying contrivance and plan when speaking of nature; and Spencer appears explicitly to admit that we cannot divest ourselves of the notion of a First Cause. Even those writers who seek to shelter themselves under such vague and unmeaning statements as that human intelligence must be potentially present in atoms or in the solar energy, are merely attributing superhuman power and divinity to atoms and forces.