316 GEOLOGICAL REFORM x 



has well remarked, 1 the cosmical process is really 

 simpler than the biological. 



This attempt to limit, at a particular point, the 

 progress of inductive and deductive reasoning 

 from the things which are, to those which were 

 this faithlessness to its own logic, seems to me to 

 have cost Uniformitarianism the place, as the 

 permanent form of geological speculation, which 

 it might otherwise have held. 



It remains that I should put before you what 

 I understand to be the third phase of geological 

 speculation namely, EVOLUTIONISM. 



I shall not make what I have to say on this 

 head clear, unless I diverge, or seem to diverge, for a 

 while, from the direct path of my discourse, so far 

 as to explain what I take to be the scope of geology 

 itself. I conceive geology to be the history of the 

 earth, in precisely the same sense as biology is 

 the history of living beings ; and I trust you will 

 not think that I am overpowered by the influence 

 of a dominant pursuit if I say that I trace a close 

 analogy between these two histories. 



If I study a living being, under what heads 

 does the knowledge I obtain fall ? I can learn its 

 structure, or what we call its ANATOMY ; and its 



1 "Man darf es sich also nicht befremden lassen, wenn ich 

 mich unterstehe zu sagen, dass eher die Bildung aller Himmels- 

 korper, die Ursache ihrer Bewegungen, knrz der Ursprung der 

 ganzen gegcnwartigen Verfassung des Weltbaiies werden konnen 

 eingesehen werden, ehe die Erzeugung eiiies einzigen Krantes oder 

 einer Rnupeausmechamschen Gninden, deutlichundvollstandig 

 kund werden wird." KANT'S Sammtliche Werke, Bd. i. p. 220. 



