10 De Vi Physica 



and others cannot, be scientifically explained, 

 on the principle of accumulated continuous 

 increment. 



III. 



That school of geological explanation, of 

 which Hutton was the originator, and Lyell 

 the most celebrated exponent, based all its 

 scientific interpretations on this principle of 

 accumulated increment, this continuous ad- 

 dition of minute operations. Inspired by 

 a horror of ' catastrophe ' and ' creation by 

 fiat 3 (the two things are not necessarily as- 

 sociated, but the school was apt to confound 

 them together, and ban all catastrophe as 

 miraculous 15 ), it aimed at accounting for all 

 the phenomena of geology by the accumu- 

 lation, in enormous periods of time, of slight, 

 successive, scarcely perceptible increments 



b See below, VIII. on this point. 



