XL] GEOLOGICAL REFORM. 205 



condition, in his day, of those physical sciences which furnish the 

 keys to the riddles of geology, he should have thought it practical 

 wisdom to limit his theory to an attempt to account for &quot; the 

 present order of things ; &quot; but I am at a loss to comprehend why, 

 for all time, the geologist must be content to regard the oldest 

 fossiliferous rocks as the ultima Thule of his science ; or what 

 there is inconsistent with the relations between the finite and 

 the infinite mind, in the assumption, that we may discern some 

 what of the beginning, or of the end, of this speck in space we 

 call our earth. The finite mind is certainly competent to trace 

 out the development of the fowl within the egg ; and I know 

 not on what ground it should find more difficulty in unravelling 

 the complexities of the development of the earth. In fact, as 

 Kant has well remarked, 1 the cosmical process is really simpler 

 than the biological. 



This attempt to limit, at a particular point, the progress of 

 inductive and deductive reasoning from the things which are, to 

 those which were this faithlessness to its own logic, seems to 

 me to have cost Uniformitarianism the place, as the permanent 

 form of geological speculation, which it might otherwise 

 have held. 



It remains that I should put before you what I understand 

 to be the third phase of geological speculation namely, 

 EVOLUTIONISM. 



I shall not make what I have to say on this head clear, unless 

 I diverge, or seem to diverge, for a while, from the direct path of 

 my discourse, so far as to explain what I take to be the scope of 

 geology itself. I conceive geology to be the history of the earth, 

 in precisely the same sense as biology is the history of living 

 beings ; and I trust you will not think that I am overpowered by 



1 &quot; Man darf es sich also nicht befremden lassen, wenn ich mich unterstehe 

 zu sagen, dass eher die Bildung aller Himmelskorper, die Ursache ihrer 

 Bewegungen, kurz der Ursprung der ganzen gegenwartigen Verfassung des 

 Weltbaues werden konnen eingesehen werden, ehe die Erzeugung ernes 

 einzigen Krautes oder einer Raupe aus mechanischen Griinden, deutlich 

 und vollstandig kund werden wird.&quot; KANT S Sammtliche Werke, Bd. L 

 p. 220. 



