268 A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY. 



and unchangeable as long* as they continued to live or until another 

 universal exterminating catastrophe. Species are "medals of crea- 

 tion.'' 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 catastro- 

 phes were supernatural; the times of quiet were natural. The crea- 

 tion of new dies or creation of lirst individuals was supernatural; the 

 coinage of individuals of successive generations was natural. But on 

 the whole the successive conditions of physical geography" and the suc- 

 cessive faunas and floras were higher and more complex according to 

 a preordained plan. The great apostles of catastrophism were Cuviei" 

 in France and Buckland in England. According to Buckland, the last 

 of these great catastrophes was the Quaternary or drift period, and 

 this p(»riod 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 ett'ects under our 

 eyes. The slow operation of similar causes and processes is suflicient — 

 given time enough — to account for all the phenomena in geological 

 history. Thus arose the extreme opposite doctrine of uniformitarian- 

 ism. 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 undoubt- 

 edly Avas pushed miu-h too far. 



Meanwhile the theory of evolution was incubating in the mind of 

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

 form changes so far as inorganic nature was concerned, was still com- 

 pelled to admit supernatural catastrophic changes in organic nature. 

 Species, even for Lyell, were still innuutable — still there were super- 

 natural creation of first individuals, and continuance of similar individ- 

 uals by natural process of generation. On the publication of Darwin's 

 Origin of Species b}" Descent Avith Moditication, Lyell at once embraced 

 the new ahcav as a completion of his principle of causes now in opera- 

 tion and his doctrine of uniformitarianism. In a certain superticial 

 sense eA^olution is certainly contirmator}^ 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 geology as a chronicle of events — e\'olutionists as a 

 life history of the earth. The one regards the sIoav changes as irreg- 

 ular, uncertain, without progress or purpose or goal: the other as an 

 evolution to higher and higher conditions, as a gradual movement 



