434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are " medals of creation." They are successive individuals struck 

 from the same die, until the die is worn out or broken. Then a 

 new die is made, and the process of coinage of identical individuals 

 is renewed. 



Thus the whole history of the earth was supposed to consist of 

 a succession of alternate supernatural and natural events. The 

 catastrophes were supernatural; the times of quiet were natural. 

 The creation of new dies or creation of first individuals was super- 

 natural; the coinage of individuals of successive generations was 

 natural. But on the whole the successive conditions of physical 

 geography and the successive faunas and floras were higher and 

 more complex according to a preordained plan. The great apostles 

 of catastrophism were Cuvier in France and Buckland in England. 

 According to Buckland, the last of these great catastrophes was 

 the Quaternary or drift period, and this period was, by him and by 

 many others since, associated with the Noachian Deluge. 



Lyell opposed this view with all his power. According to him 

 we can not judge of geological causes and processes except by study 

 of causes and processes now in operation and producing effects 

 under our eyes. The slow operation of .similar causes and processes 

 is sufficient — given time enough — to account for all the phenomena 

 in geological history. Thus arose the extreme opposite doctrine of 

 uniformitarianism. Things have gone on from the beginning and 

 throughout all time much as they are going on now. This view, 

 of course, required illimitable time, and was of great service in 

 enforcing this idea. But, in revulsion from the previous idea of 

 catastrophism, it undoubtedly was pushed much too far. 



Meanwhile the theory of evolution was incubating in the mind 

 of Darwin. Even Lyell, while he established the doctrine of slow 

 uniform changes so far as inorganic Nature was concerned, was still 

 compelled to admit supernatural catastrophic changes in organic 

 Nature. Species, even for Lyell, were still immutable — still there 

 were supernatural creation of first individuals, and continuance of 

 similar individuals by natural process of generation. On the pub- 

 lication of Darwin's Origin of Species by Descent \vith Modifica- 

 tion, Lyell at once embraced the new view as a completion of his 

 principle of causes now in operation and his doctrine of uniformi- 

 tarianism. In a certain superficial sense evolution is certainly con- 

 firmatory of the doctrine of uniformity of causes and processes in 

 the past and the present, but in a deeper sense it is quite contrary 

 in its spirit. Uniformitarians of the Lyell school look upon geol- 

 ogy as a clironicle of events — evolutionists as a life history of the 

 earth. The one regards the slow changes as irregular, uncertain, 

 without progress or purpose or goal; the other as an evolution to 



