210 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [xi. 



into dry land and then again into sea. C. A discussion of the 

 various theories of the earth put forward by Scheuchzer, Moro, 

 Bonnet, Woodward, White, Leibnitz, Linnaeus, and Buffon. 



The third part contains an &quot;Attempt to give a sound ex 

 planation of the ancient history of the earth.&quot; 



I suppose that it would be very easy to pick holes in the 

 details of Kant s speculations, whether cosmological, or specially 

 telluric, in their application. But, for all that, he seems to me 

 to have been the first person to frame a complete, system of 

 geological speculation by founding the doctrine of evolution. 



With as much truth as Hutton, Kant could say, &quot;I take 

 things just as I find them at present, and, from these, I reason 

 with regard to that which must have been.&quot; Like Hutton, he 

 is never tired of pointing out that &quot; in Nature there is wisdom, 

 system, and consistency.&quot; And, as in these great principles, so 

 in believing that the cosmos has a reproductive operation &quot; by 

 which a ruined constitution may be repaired,&quot; he forestalls 

 Hutton ; while, on the other hand, Kant is true to science. He 

 knows no bounds to geological speculation but those of the 

 intellect. He reasons back to a beginning of the present state 

 of things ; he admits the possibility of an end. 



I have said that the three schools of geological speculation 

 which I have termed Catastrophism, TJniformitarianism, and 

 Evolutionism, are commonly supposed to be antagonistic to one 

 another ; and I presume it will have become obvious that, in my 

 belief, the last is destined to swallow up the other two. But it is 

 proper to remark that each of the latter has kept alive the 

 tradition of precious truths. 



CATASTROPHISM has insisted upon the existence of a practi 

 cally unlimited bank of force, on which the theorist might draw : 

 and it has cherished the idea of the development of the earth 

 from a state in which its form, and the forces which it exerted, 

 were very different from those we now know. That such dif 

 ference of form and power once existed is a necessary part of 

 the doctrine of evolution. 



TJNIFORMITARIANISM, on the other hand, has with equal 



