xi.J GEOLOGICAL REFORM. 233 



may it not be also considered as an organized body ? 

 such a? lias a constitution in which the necessary decay 

 of the machine is naturally repaired, in the exertion of 

 those productive powers by which it had been formed. 



" This is the view in which we are now to examine 

 the globe ; to sec if there be, in the constitution of this 

 world, a reproductive operation, by which a ruined con- 

 stitutioii may be again repaired, and a duration or 

 stability thus procured to the machine, considered as a 

 world sustaining plants and animals." l 



Kirwan, and the other Philistines of the day, accused 

 Hutton of declaring that his theory implied that the 

 world never had a beginning, and never differed in 

 condition from its present state. Nothing could be more 

 grossly unjust, as he expressly guards himself against 

 any such conclusion in the following terms : — 



" But in thus tracing back the natural operations 

 which have succeeded each other, and mark to us the 

 course of time past, we come to a period in which we 

 cannot see any farther. This, however, is not the 

 beginning of the operations which proceed in time and 

 according to the wise economy of this world ; nor is it 

 the establishing of that which, in the course of time, 

 had no beginning ; it is only the limit of our retrospec- 

 tive view of those operations which have come to pass 

 in time, and have been conducted by supreme intel- 

 ligence." 2 



I have spoken of Uniformitarianism as the doctrine of 

 Hutton and of Lycll. If I have emoted the older writer 

 rather than the newer, it is because his w T orks are little 

 known, and his claims on our veneration too frequently 

 forgotten, not because I desire to dim the fame of his 

 eminent successor. Few of the present generation of geo- 

 logists have read Playf air's " Illustrations," fewer still the 



1 The Theory of the Earth, vol. i. pp. 16, 17. 2 Hid. p. 223. 



