iv] OF EVOLUTION 29 



praising his views on granite veins and "trap 

 rocks " : 



* The wildness of many of his theoretical views, however, went 

 far to counterbalance the utility of the additional facts which he 

 collected from observation. He who could perceive in geology 

 nothing but the ordinary operation of actual causes, carried 

 on in the same manner through infinite ages, without the 

 trace of a beginning or the prospect of an end, must have 

 surveyed them through the medium of a preconceived hypothesis 

 alone 24 .' 



John Playfair, the brilliant author of the Illustra- 

 tions of the Huttonian Theory, died in 1819 ; under 

 happier conditions his able work might have done for 

 Inorganic Evolution what his great master failed to 

 accomplish ; but the dead weight of prejudice and the 

 dread of anything that seemed to savour of infidelity 

 was, at the time of the great European struggle 

 against revolutionary France, too great to be removed 

 even by his lucid statements and eloquent advocacy. 

 James Hall and Leonard Horner, two faithful disciples 

 of Hutton, who had joined the infant Geological 

 Society, forsook it early, the former leaving it on 

 account of the quarrel with the Royal Society, the 

 latter retaining his fellowship and interest, but going 

 to live at Edinburgh. Greenough, 'The Objector 

 General,' as he was called, was left, fanatically 

 opposing any attempt to stem the current that had 



