MUTTON'S POSITION 201 



that will be disputed; but after allowing all the parts, 

 the whole will be denied ; and for what ? only 

 because we are not disposed to allow that quantity 

 of time which the ablution of so much wasted moun- 

 tain might require.' 1 



Far as Hutton could follow the succession of events 

 registered in the rocky crust of the globe, he found 

 himself baffled by the closing in around him of that 

 dark abysm of time into which neither eye nor 

 imagination seemed able to penetrate. He well knew 

 that, behind and beyond the ages recorded in the 

 oldest of the primitive rocks, there must have stretched 

 a vast earlier time, of which no record met his view. 

 He did not attempt to speculate beyond the limits of 

 his evidence. * I do not pretend/ he said, c to describe 

 the beginning of things ; I take things such as I find 

 them at present, and from these I reason with regard 

 to that which must have been/ 2 In vain did he look, 

 even among the oldest formations, for any sign of the 

 infancy of the planet. He could only detect a 

 repeated series of similar revolutions, the oldest of 

 which was assuredly not the first in the terrestrial 

 history, and he concluded, as ' the result of this 

 physical inquiry, that we find no vestige of a beginning, 

 no prospect of an end.' 3 



This conclusion from strictly geological evidence has 

 been impugned from the side of physics, and, as further 

 developed by Playfair, has been declared to be contra- 

 dicted by the principles of natural philosophy. But if 

 it be considered on the basis of the evidence on which 



1 Op. cit., vol. i. p. 173, note. 2 Op. cit., vol. ii. p. 329. 



3 Op. cit., vol. i. p. 200. 



