TWO ANTAGONIST DOCTRINES OF GEOLOGY. 673 



of which may be represented as a uniform state, 

 without indication of origin or termination ? Does 

 it not rather seem evident that, in reality, the whole 

 course of the world, from the earliest to the present 

 times, is but one cycle, yet unfinished ; offering, 

 indeed, no clear evidence of the mode of its begin- 

 ning; but still less entitling us to consider it as a 

 repetition or series of repetitions of what had gone 

 before ? 



Thus we find, in the analogy of the sciences, no 

 confirmation of the doctrine of uniformity, as it has 

 been maintained in geology. Yet we discern, in 

 this analogy, no ground for resigning our hope, that 

 future researches, both in geology and in other 

 palsetiological sciences, may throw much additional 

 light on the question of the uniform or catastrophic 

 progress of things, and on the earliest history of the 

 earth and of man. But when we see how wide and 

 complex is the range of speculation to which our 

 analogy has referred us. we may well be disposed 

 to pause in our review of science ; to survey from 

 our present position the ground that we have passed 

 over ; and thus to collect, so far as we may, guid- 

 ance and encouragement to enable us to advance in 

 the track which lies before us. 



Before we quit the subject now under considera- 

 tion, we may, however, observe, that what the 

 analogy of science really teaches us, as the most 

 promising means of promoting this science, is the 

 strenuous cultivation of the two subordinate sciences, 

 VOL. in. X x 



