IN MODERN SCIENCE 



119 



because it has reached only a little way back 

 toward the beginning of the earth as a whole, 

 and can see in its present state no indication 

 of the time or manner of the end. But its 

 revelation of the fact that nearly all the ani- 

 mals and plants of the present day had a very 

 recent beginning in geological time, and its 

 disclosure of the disappearance of one form 

 of life after another as we go back in time, 

 till we reach the comparatively few forms of 

 life of the Lower Cambrian, and finally have 

 to rest over the solitary grandeur of Eozoon^ 

 oblige it to say that nothing known to it is 

 self-existent and eternal. 



2. The geological record \ forms us that the 

 general laws of nature have continued un- 

 changed from the earliest periods to which it 

 relates until the present day. This is the true 

 " uniformitarianism " of geology which holds to 

 the dominion of existing causes from the first 

 But it does not refuse to admit variations in the 

 intensity of these causes from time to time, and 

 cycles of activity and repose, like those that 

 we see on a small scale in the seasons, the 

 occurrence of storms, or the paroxysms of 

 volcanoes. When we find that the eyes of 

 the old trilobites have had lenses and tubes 



