Vii "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES" 231 



peared now, it would meet with a very different 

 reception from that which greeted it in 1859. 



One-and-twenty years ago, in spite of the work 

 commenced by Hutton and continued with rare 

 skill and patience by Lyell, the dominant view of 

 the past history of the earth was catastrophic. 

 Great and sudden physical revolutions, wholesale 

 creations and extinctions of living beings, were the 

 ordinary machinery of the geological epic brought 

 into fashion by the misapplied genius of Cuvier. 

 It was gravely maintained and taught that the 

 end of every geological epoch was signalised by a 

 cataclysm, by which every living being on the 

 globe was swept away, to be replaced by a brand- 

 new creation when the world returned to quies- 

 cence. A scheme of nature which appeared to be 

 modelled on the likeness of a succession of rubbers 

 of whist, at the end of each of which the players 

 upset the table and called for a new pack, did not 

 seem to shock anybody. 



I may be wrong, but I doubt if, at the present 

 time, there is a single responsible representative 

 of these opinions left. The progress of scientific 

 geology has elevated the fundamental principle of 

 uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past 

 is to be sought in the study of the present, into 

 the position of an axiom ; and the wild specula- 

 tions of the catastrophists, to which we all listened 

 with respect a quarter of a century ago, would 

 hardly find a single patient hearer at the present 



44 



