438 



NA TURE 



[August 30, 1906 



problem to which he often directed attention in his 

 writings. 



Within the domain of science his chief interest, 

 however, lay in geology. Many of the questions with 

 which geology deals relate to familiar aspects of the 

 outer world, and do not require much technical know- 

 ledge for their comprehension, though in spite of their 

 apparent simplicity they may demand much know- 

 ledge of that nature for their adequate solution. 

 Amid the surroundings of the Duke's boyhood and 

 youth there were many features to attract the notice 

 of anyone with a geological bent. He does not 

 appear, however, to have seriously considered the sub- 

 ject until he was seven-and-twenty years of age. In 

 1850, when on one of his usual visits to his estates 

 in Mull, he received from a villager at Bunessan some 

 specimens of fossil leaves which had been broken off 

 from the face of a neighbouring sea-cliff. He ascer- 

 tained that these leaves, evidently of a terrestrial 

 vegetation, came from a stratum intercalated between 

 the sheets of basaltic lava which cover so much of 

 that region. His curiosity being thus thoroughly 

 roused, he sent specimens to the Jermyn Street 

 Museum for examination. Eventually he was 

 encouraged by De la Beche to give an account of 

 the discovery in a paper to the Geological Society, 

 while at the same time Edward Forbes described the 

 leaves, which proved to be of Tertiary age. These 

 papers, published in the summer of 1851, showed for 

 the first time the comparatively late date of the basalt 

 plateau in the west of Mull, and thus fixed an 

 important epoch in the volcanic chronology of this 

 country. So auspicious a beginning might have been 

 expected to become the starting-point of a successful 

 geological career. But the Duke never followed it up. 

 So far as the numerous calls on his time and thought 

 allowed, he tried to keep himself in touch with the 

 progress of research in some of the wider branches of 

 geology, and from time to time, as the result of such 

 intervals of leisure, he wrote articles or gave lectures 

 on the subject. But these efforts of his could hardly 

 be regarded as fresh and solid contributions to the 

 advance of the science. 



The Duke of Argyll's interest in facts seemed 

 always to be limited by the extent to which he per- 

 ceived, or thought he could perceive, their meaning, 

 connection, and causes. Fundamentally, he lacked 

 the patience and restraint that characterise the true 

 man of science. His lively imagination was apt to 

 see in the facts what he expected or wished to see, 

 and he was tempted to group and explain them in 

 accordance with some conception he had formed re- 

 garding them, and to leave out of sight as irrelevant 

 those other facts which did not fit in with his in- 

 terpretation. Thus, in regard to geological theory, he 

 had early in life adopted the belief of the old 

 Catastrophist school that the inequalities on the sur- 

 face of the land have been mainly determined by 

 gigantic earth-movements, and, shutting his eyes to 

 all the arguments of those who pointed to the proofs 

 of the enormous share taken by denudation in the 

 NO. 1922, VOL. 74] 



shaping of that surface, he continued to maintain the 

 same belief up to the last. Again, having in his 

 younger days adopted what was long the prevalent 

 opinion that some of the latest touches to the land- 

 scapes of this country were given by icebergs and 

 floes during a time of submergence, he stoutly adhered 

 to this doctrine, and lost no opportunity of ridiculing 

 the conclusions of those who maintained that the 

 phenomena in question could only be explained by 

 the observed action of land-ice. But ridicule was not 

 argument. Neither on this subject nor on that of the 

 origin of scenery does the Duke appear ever to have 

 studied the detailed evidence on the ground and 

 grappled with it in a careful and candid examination 

 of the facts. To use one of his own phrases, which 

 he applies to some ecclesiastical tendencies of Glad- 

 stone, there was " a fundamental indelibility in his 

 opinions " on scientific problems regarding which he 

 had once made up his mind. 



The Duke began his public career by a series of 

 pamphlets and other writings on the ecclesiastical 

 matters which at that time were agitating Scotland. 

 In these publications he showed that he possessed no 

 small share of the logical and metaphysical habit of 

 mind so common among his fellow-countrymen. In 

 his writings on scientific subjects, wherein he was 

 often rather the keen critic than the sympathetic 

 advocate, he found scope for the manifestation of the 

 same mental characteristic. His three volumes, " The 

 Reign of Law," "The Unity of Nature," and "The 

 Philosophy of Belief," may be particularly cited as 

 illustrations of his treatment of scientific questions. 

 A period of thirty years intervened between the 

 appearance of the first and that of the last of these 

 books, which, in their author's words, represented 

 his opinions on " the greatest of all subjects — the 

 philosophy of religion in its relations with the philo- 

 sophy of science." Even where scientific men differed 

 most widely from him in his dealing with the 

 problems which he discussed, they could not but 

 recognise the intense earnestness and obvious lofti- 

 ness of his purpose, the vigour with which he plied 

 his arguments, and the fearless and sometimes acute 

 criticism to which he subjected some of the generally 

 accepted opinions of the evolutional school of the day. 



Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the general 

 impression made on the minds of the Duke's 

 opponents by his declamation in these controversies 

 was that he hardly ever had a doubt about any state- 

 ment which he propounded. Scientific readers of his 

 articles and books would express their amusement at 

 what they styled his cocksureness, even in questions 

 of difficult research regarding which he had no 

 direct and first-hand knowledge. Such readers when 

 they turn to his Autobiography may well rub their 

 eyes when they meet there with the following state- 

 ment : — 



" I have never had any tendency to a dogmatic 

 temperament. On the contrary, I have always had 

 an ingrained liability to doubt." 



He affirms that it was only where he had reached 



