et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. 93 



theories, he is unrivalled. As a discoverer, 

 he discovered absolutely nothing that was 

 not well known and publicly proclaimed 

 before him : as a scientific thinker, he saw 

 no harm in explaining Nature by purely 

 gratuitous hypotheses, imaginary figments, 

 and impossibility, simply paying no at- 

 tention at all to facts that stood in the 

 way : as a geologist, he totally misunderstood 

 the nature of the geological process, dog- 

 matically postulating permanence and un- 

 changing uniformity where reason and ob- 

 servation combine to demonstrate progressive 

 alteration and perpetual change, and de- 

 manding, in the interest of his theory, that 

 the geological record shall be twisted into 

 proving the exact reverse of what it actually 

 does prove : as an interpreter of Nature, 

 he misinterpreted her so monstrously, in 

 defiance of all his own accumulated facts, 

 as strenuously to endeavour, all his life long, 



