iv] OF EVOLUTION 25 



of the rival doctrines met in frequent combat and 

 long maintained the struggle for supremacy. 



Fitton has very truly said that ' the views proposed 

 by Button failed to produce general conviction at 

 the time ; and several years elapsed before any one 

 showed himself publicly concerned about them, either 

 as an enemy or a friend 20 / Sad is it to relate that, 

 when notice was at last taken of the memoir on the 

 'Theory of the Earth,' it was by bitter opponents 

 such 'Philistines' (as Huxley calls them) as 

 Kirwan, De Luc and Williams, who declared the 

 author to be an enemy of religion. Not only did 

 Button, unlike the writers of other theories of the 

 earth, omit any statement that his views were based 

 on the Scriptures, but, carried away by the beauty of 

 the system of continuity which he advocated, he wrote 

 enthusiastically ' the result of this physical enquiry is 

 that we find no vestige of a beginning no prospect 

 of an end 21 .' This was unjustly asserted to be 

 equivalent to a declaration that the world had neither 

 beginning nor end ; and thus it came about that 

 Wernerism, Neptunism and Catastrophism were long 

 regarded as synonymous with Orthodoxy, while 

 Plutonism and ' Uniformitarianism ' were looked 

 upon with aversion and horror as subversive of 

 religion and morality. 



Almost simultaneously with the foundation of the 

 Wernerian Society of Edinburgh (in 1807) was the 



