342 Darwin and Geology 



of the Huttonian teaching, would be assertions that chalk-flints were 

 intrusions of molten silica, that fossil wood and other petrifactions 

 had been impregnated with fused materials, that heat — but never 

 water — was always the agent by which the induration and crystallisa- 

 tion of rock-materials (even siliceous conglomerate, limestone and 

 rock-salt) had been effected ! These extravagant " anti-Wernerian " 

 views the young student might well regard as not one whit less 

 absurd and repellant than the doctrine of the "aqueous precipitation" 

 of basalt. There is no evidence that Darwin, even if he ever heard 

 of them, was in any way impressed, in his early career, by the 

 suggestive passages in Hutton and Playfair, to which Lyell afterwards 

 called attention, and which foreshadowed the main principles of 

 Uniformitarianism. 



As a matter of fact, I believe that the influence of Hutton and 

 Playfair in the development of a philosophical theory of geology has 

 been very greatly exaggerated by later writers on the subject. Just 

 as Wells and Matthew anticipated the views of Darwin on Natural 

 Selection, but without producing any real influence on the course of 

 biological thought, so Hutton and Playfair adumbrated doctrines 

 which only became the basis of vivifying theory in the hands of 

 Lyell. Alfred Russel Wallace has very justly remarked that when 

 Lyell wrote the Principles of Geology, " the doctrines of Hutton and 

 Playfair, so much in advance of their age, seemed to be utterly 

 forgotten 1 ." In proof of this it is only necessary to point to the 

 works of the great masters of English geology, who preceded Lyell, 

 in which the works of Hutton and his followers are scarcely ever 

 mentioned. This is true even of the Researches in Theoretical 

 Geology and the other works of the sagacious De la Beche 2 . Darwin 

 himself possessed a copy of Playfair's Illustrations of the Huttonian 

 Theory, and occasionally quotes it ; but I have met with only one 

 reference to Hutton, and that a somewhat enigmatical one, in all 

 Darwin's writings. In a letter to Lyell in 1841, when his mind was 

 much exercised concerning glacial questions, he says " What a grand 

 new feature all this ice work is in Geology ! How old Hutton would 

 have stared 3 ." 



As a consequence of the influences brought to bear on his mind 



1 Quarterly Review, Vol. cxxvi. (1869), p. 363. 



3 Of the strength and persistence of the prejudice felt against Lyell's views by his 

 contemporaries, I had a striking illustration some little time after Lyell's death. One 

 of the old geologists who in the early years of the century had done really good work 

 in connection with the Geological Society expressed a hope that I was not "one of those 

 who had been carried away by poor Lyell's fads." My surprise was indeed great when 

 further conversation showed me that the whole of the Principles were included in the 

 "fads"! 



3 M. L. n. p. 149. 



