et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. \ I 



and decrements, 'without violence and with- 

 out miracles' It scouted the resort to causes 

 different in kind or degree from those now 

 to be observed in operation around us : it 

 invoked ' causes now in action.' For any 

 great, abrupt, sudden, or 'catastrophic' agen- 

 cies seemed to it not only touched with the 

 miraculous, but superfluous and unnecessary 

 (on Ockam's principle, non est ponenda plura- 

 litas), since it credited its minute agents and 

 forces with the necessary power, by accumu- 

 lation, to do the work, granting them only 

 sufficient time : and time, in the eyes of this 

 school, was practically unlimited c . Thus, in 

 its hands, Geology was practically identified 

 with Physical Geography, because it held, 

 that in studying the present operations of 

 Nature we are in fact studying also theflast: 

 the two being only temporally different, but 



6 See below, IX. 



