We see, in the case of
bread, the processes of the transformation going on: but in the case
of coal we do not see the wood and leaves being actually transformed
into coal, or anything like it."
Now suppose we laid out the wheat on a table in a regular series,
such as you may see in many exhibitions of manufactures; beginning
with the wheat plant at one end, and ending with the loaf at the
other; and called in to look at them a savage who knew nothing of
agriculture and nothing of cookery--called in, as an extreme case,
the man in the moon, who certainly can know nothing of either; for as
there is neither air nor water round the moon, there can be nothing
to grow there, and therefore nothing to cook--and suppose we asked
him to study the series from end to end. Do you not think that the
man in the moon, if he were half as shrewd as Crofton Croker makes
him in his conversation with Daniel O'Rourke, would answer after due
meditation, "How the wheat plant got changed into the loaf I cannot
see from my experience in the moon: but that it has been changed,
and that the two are the same thing I do see, for I see all the
different stages of the change." And so I think you may say of the
wood and the coal.
The man in the moon would be quite reasonable in his conclusion; for
it is a law, a rule, and one which you will have to apply again and
again in the study of natural objects, that however different two
objects may look in some respects, yet if you can find a regular
series of gradations between them, with all shades of likeness, first
to one of them and then to the other, then you have a fair right to
suppose them to be only varieties of the same species, the same kind
of thing, and that, therefore, they have a common origin.
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