HUTTON. 231 



the merits of such a theory ; they were sunken in 

 prejudices, and resisted any change of opinion. 

 He was aware that a great outcry would be made 

 by men whose reHgious opinions were his own, and 

 whom he respected greatly. In fact, the world, just 

 before the appearance of Hutton's " Theory of the 

 Earth," was less prepared for it than ordinary 

 opinion was for the doctrines of Charles Darwin 

 one hundred years afterwards. The appearance 

 of the work of this last great naturalist made, and 

 is still making, a great stir, but that of Hutton's 

 work was received, as he anticipated, with incredible 

 opposition, by the teachers of the day; and its 

 slow acceptation by the scientific world was remark- 

 able. No abuse could efface its effects ; it was 

 true, and the true alone lasts ; it was reasonable, 

 and it was to the glory of God. 



In this book, geology was, for the first time, 

 declared to be in no way concerned about the 

 origin of things. It was the first in which an 

 attempt was made to dispense entirely with all 

 hypothetical causes, and to explain the former 

 changes of the earth's crust by reference exclusively 

 to such natural agents as still exist. Hutton 

 laboured to give fixed principles to geology, as 

 Newton had succeeded in doing to astronomy. 

 He wrote : " The ruins of an older world are visible 

 in the present structure of our planet, and the 

 strata which now compose our continents, have 

 been once beneath the sea, and were formed out of 

 the waste of pre-existing continents. The same 



