TWO ANTAGONIST DOCTRINES OF GEOLOGY. 595 



may assume some resemblance or connexion between the principles 

 which determined the progress of government, or of society, or of 

 literature, in the earliest ages, and those which now operate ; but who 

 has speculated successfully, assuming an identity of such causes ? 

 Where do we now find a language in the process of formation, 

 unfolding itself in inflexions, terminations, changes of vowels by gram- 

 matical relations, such as characterize the oldest known languages ? 

 Where do we see a nation, by its natural faculties, inventing writing, 

 or the arts of life, as we find them in the most ancient civilized 

 nations ? We may assume hypothetically, that man's faculties 

 develop themselves in these ways ; but we see no such effects pro- 

 duced by these faculties, in our own time, and now in progress, with- 

 out the influence of foreigners. 



Is it not clear, in all these cases, that history does not exhibit a 

 series of cycles, the aggregate of which may be represented as a uni- 

 form state, without indication of origin or termination ? Does it not 

 rather seem evident that, in reality, the whole course of the world, from 

 the earliest to the present times, is but one cycle, yet unfinished ; 

 offering, indeed, no clear evidence of the mode of its beginning ; but 

 still less entitling us to consider it as a repetition or series of repetition? 

 of what had gone before ? 



Thus we find, in the analogy of the sciences, no confirmation of the 

 doctrine of uniformity, as it has been maintained in Geology. Yet we 

 discern, in this analogy, no ground for resigning our hope, that future 

 researches, both in Geology and in other palsetiological sciences, may 

 throw much additional light on the question of the uniform or cata- 

 strophic progress of things, and on the earliest history of the earth and 

 of man. But when we see how wide and complex is the range of 

 speculation to which our analogy has referred us, we may well be dis- 

 posed to pause in our review of science ; to survey from our present 

 position the ground that we have passed over ; and thus to collect, 

 so far as we may, guidance and encouragement to enable us to advance 

 in the track which lies before us. 



Before we quit the subject now under* consideration, we may, how- 

 ever, observe, that what the analogy of science really teaches us, as 

 the most promising means of promoting this science, is the strenuous 

 cultivation of the two subordinate sciences, Geological Knowledge of 

 Facts, and Geological Dynamics. These are the two provinces of 

 knowledge corresponding to Phenomenal Astronomy, and Mathema- 

 tical Mechanics which may lead on to the epoch of the Newton of 



