NATURE 



325 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1875 



SCIENTIFIC 



WORTHIES 

 1797 



VI.— Sir Charles Lyell, born Nov. 14, 

 Feb. 22, 1875. 



SINCE its last meeting the British Association has 

 lost one of its oldest members and most illustrious 

 presidents. There are some men the story of whose 

 mental development and progress in scientific research 

 may be taken as almost embracing the history, during 

 their lives, of the science to which they devoted them- 

 selves. Of such men we have not many brighter examples 

 than that of Sir Charles Lyell. For somewhere about 

 half a centui-y he continued in the van of English geolo- 

 gists, and so identified himself with them and their pur- 

 suits as to be justly taken as the leader of geological 

 speculation in this country. The time has probably not 

 yet come when his true position in the roll of scientific 

 worthies can be definitely fixed The revolutions of 

 thought which have taken place within the last fifteen 

 years, and in which, let it never be forgotten, Lyell him- 

 self bore a conspicuous and indeed heroic part, have so 

 shaken old beliefs which once seemed securely based on 

 the most cautious induction from "well-ascertained facts, 

 that even they who have most closely watched the march 

 of events will probably shrink most from the attempt to 

 estimate the full and true value of the work of his long 

 and honoured life. It is not, then, with any aim at such 

 an estimate, but rather to recall some of the leading cha- 

 racters of his work, that this brief in meinoriam is now 

 written. 



Perhaps the best idea of the solid services rendered by 

 Lyell to Geology is obtained by looking back at the con- 

 dition of the science when he first began to study it, and 

 by contrasting that state with the same subject as treated 

 by him in the early editions of his " Principles." To men 

 who had been compelled to gain their general view of 

 geology from such works as Daubuisson's " Traits," the 

 appearance of Lyell's volumes must have been of the 

 nature of a new revelation. From vague statements 

 about early convulsions and a former higher intensity of 

 all terrestrial cnergy,''they were led back with rare sagacity 

 and eloquence to the living, moving world around them, 

 and taught to find there in actual progress now the 

 analogues of all that they could discover to have been 

 effected in the geological past. The key-note which Lyell 

 struck at the very outset and which sounded through all 

 the work of his career was, that in geology we must 

 explain the past by the present ; — that the forces now in 

 operation arc quite powerful enough to produce changes 

 as stupendous as any which have taken place in former 

 times, provided only that they get time enough for their 

 task. 



These views were not promulgated for the first time by 

 the author of the " Principles of Geology." In cruder form 

 they had been earnestly urged by Hutton, and eloquently 

 illustrated and extended by Playfair. But after much 

 turmoil and conflict of opinion, they had very generally 

 been allowed to sink out of sight. On the Continent, indeed, 

 they had never excited much attention, and were for the 

 Vol. XII.— No. 304 



most part ignored as mere vague speculation. Even in 

 this country they had only been partially adopted even 

 by those who professed to belong to the Huttonian 

 school. So that it was in one sense as a new doctrine 

 that they were taken up by Lyell and enforced with a 

 wealth of illustration and cogency of argument which 

 rapidly gained acceptance for them in Britain, and even- 

 tually led to their development in' every country where 

 the science is cultivated. 



In one important respect/ however,' the doctrines taught 

 by Sir Charles Lyell differed from those of his prede- 

 cessors. Hutton and Playfair knew almost nothing of fossil 

 organic remains. They were necessarily ignorant of the 

 light which these can cast upon the past history of the 

 globe. They had but a dim perception of the long and 

 varied succession of the stratified formations embraced 

 by their own terms Primary and Secondary. After 

 their days, however, the labours of William Smith 

 among the Secondary rocks of England showed that 

 the strata of the earth's crust could be identified and 

 classified in their order of age by means of the fossil 

 animal remains contained in them. Then came the 

 brilliant discoveries of Cuvier in the Tertiary basin of 

 Paris and the rise of the science of Palaeontology. It 

 was now seen that the discussion of theoretical questions 

 in cosmogony and the collection and description of 

 minerals and rocks did not comprise by any means the 

 whole of geology. Year by year it became more evident 

 that, besides all its records of physical revolutions, the 

 crust of the earth contained materials for a history of 

 organic nature from early geological times down to the 

 present day. In this transition state of the science there 

 was manifestly needed some leisured thinker who could 

 devote a calm judgment and a facile pen to the task of 

 codifying the scattered observations which had accumu- 

 lated to so vast an extent, and of evolving from them the 

 general principles which they seemed to establish, and 

 which, when clearly announced, could not fail greatly to 

 assist and stimulate the future progress of geology. Such 

 was the task which Lyell set before himself, somewhere 

 about half a century ago, and in fulfilment of which his 

 " Principles " appeared. 



In that great work the twofold aspect of geology — its 

 inorganic or physical side and its organic or biological 

 side — was recognised and admirably illustrated. It was 

 in the treatment of the first of these that the earlier 

 editions of the " Principles " stood specially distinguished 

 from previous writings. The leading idea of their author 

 was, as already remarked, not original on his part. Be- 

 sides the writings of Hutton, Playfair, and their followers, 

 the appeal to history and to everyday experience as to the 

 true nature and results of the present working of the 

 various terrestrial agents had already been made in con- 

 siderable detail by Von Hoff in Germany. Nevertheless, 

 until the advent of Lyell's work the views he adopted had 

 got no real hold of men's minds. It was his enforce- 

 ment of them which secured for them first a careful exami- 

 nation, and ultimately a very general acceptance. In 

 explaining former revolutions of the globe, geologists 

 had usually proceeded on the tacit assumption that no 

 serious argument was required to prove these revolutions 

 to have been far more violent in their progress and stu- 

 pendous in their results than could possibly have been 



