14 De Vi Physica 



fication, into the power of ice, water, waves, 

 &c. : still less did it inquire, to what extent 

 it was possible to add up and accumulate 

 forces. Had it actually looked carefully to 

 see, what, in point of fact, its little agents 

 and forces could do, it would have found, 

 that on the one hand, they are in many cases 

 altogether impotent to produce the effects 

 attributed to them : while on the other, many 

 natural geological phenomena (as can be 

 irrefutably demonstrated) could not possibly 

 have come about save by the application of 

 colossal force, instantaneously applied. But 

 the school of Lyell, preoccupied by its dog- 

 ma, was not careful to verify the power of 

 its little agents. In this, it violated the car- 

 dinal principle of that Baconian philosophy, 

 to which it was always loudly appealing ; 

 and failed to follow in the steps of Newton. 

 It explained Nature by the cumulative effect 

 of little agents, of whose power it was not 



