614 SIR CHARLES LYELL. 



ended. The physical sciences had just made a wonderful advance 

 from the impulse first given about two centuries before by the genius 

 of Galileo. The fierce disputes of the eighteenth century about 

 geological hypotheses had nearly died out. These hypotheses had, at 

 least, ceased to be regarded by the best minds as dogmas to be opposed 

 or defended, and. had come to be considered in the light of questions 

 put to nature ; to be decided only by that patient thoughtfully directed 

 labor of research in which an army of explorers became engaged and 

 which they still pursue. Genius, in such circumstances and with such 

 co-operation, does not stand forth in history with so conspicuous an 

 eminence as when appearing alone or in conflict with the prejudices of 

 its times. That feature of genius, energy of will and character, which 

 strikes us most in its most conspicuous examples, is thus made to 

 appear to be its leading characteristic. The subtlety of perception, 

 the sagacity or wisdom, which guides the energies of genius, and is 

 their determining motive, appears thus in an illusively disproportionate 

 degree. Though less conspicuously, therefore, than many other names 

 in science, yet not any less inseparably connected with its advance, is 

 the name of Sir Charles Lyell associated with the progress of a great 

 revolution in geology. 



The separation of geological questions from scholastic disputes, and 

 the establishment of the science as a strictly inductive one, are in a 

 great measure to be credited to the early, clear, and steady conception 

 of true method, which Sir Charles Lyell's works expounded, and were 

 admirably designed to promulgate. For more than forty years they 

 have been the text-books of the progressive school of geology ; keep- 

 ing pace in their successive editions with the progress of the science, 

 and being thus, as it were, compends of its history. The " Elements 

 of Geology," of which seven editions were published, the last in 1871, 

 was a strictly descriptive treatise in accordance with the principles of 

 Baconian induction. But not so his masterpiece, the " Principles of 

 Geology." So far from being of a Baconian type, this work takes its 

 form and spirit from the genius of Galileo. Of modern students of 

 nature whose preparatory training has not included an adequate disci- 

 pline in mathematical and experimental research, many have committed 

 the error of extending their dislike of the a ■priori and deductive 

 methods of scholastic philosophy, and of more ancient explanations of 

 nature, to all use of deduction in natural science. But the axiomata 

 media of Bacon, the middle principles, which constitute in any science 

 its characteristic value, are vainly sought, except in the most abstract 

 sciences, by the direct Baconian methods of induction. They are 



