DOCTRINE OF UNIFORMITY 3 



organic beings such as are known to us in the living or 

 fossil world. . . . A geologist in search of some renovating 

 power by which the amount of heat may be made to 

 continue unimpaired for millions of years, past and future, 

 in the solid parts of the earth. . . has been compared by 

 an eminent physicist to one who dreams he can discover 

 a source of perpetual motion and invent a clock with a 

 self-winding apparatus. But why should we despair of 

 detecting proofs of such regenerating and self-sustaining 

 power in the works of a Divine Artificer ? " Here we 

 catch the true spirit of uniformity ; it admittedly regards 

 the universe as a self-winding clock, and barely conceals 

 a conviction that the clock was warranted to keep true 

 Greenwich time. The law of the dissipation of energy 

 is not a dogma, but a doctrine drawn from observation, 

 while the uniformity of Lyell is in no sense an induction : 

 it is a dogma in the narrowest sense of the word, un- 

 proved, incapable of proof; hence, perhaps, its power upon 

 the human mind ; hence also the transitoriness of that 

 power. Again, it is only by restricting its inquiries to the 

 stratified rocks of our planet that the dogma of uniformity 

 can be maintained with any pretence of argument. 

 Directly we begin to search the heavens the possibility, 

 nay, even the likelihood, of the nebular origin of our 

 system, with all that it involves, is borne in upon us. 

 Lyell, therefore, consistently refused to extend his gaze 

 beyond the rocks beneath his feet, and was thus led to do 

 a serious injury to our science : he severed it from cosmo- 

 gony, for which he entertained and expressed the most 

 profound contempt, and from the multilation thus 

 inflicted geology is only at length making a slow and 

 painful recovery. Why Jo I dwell on these facts ? To 

 depreciate Lyell ? By no means. No one is more con- 

 scious than I of the noble service which Lyell rendered to 

 our cause : his reputation is of too robust a kind to suffer 



