A Geological Retrospect of the Year 1^02. 149 



interest among his contemporaries. His crude speculations in 

 physics and chemistry were not unnaturally regarded as the 

 aberrations of a genius of which no serious notice need be taken, 

 and his geological observations, some of which were at least as 

 original and singular, seem to have been thought worthy of nO 

 better treatment. He inveighed against the methods and conclusions 

 of the physicists and chemists of his day, though he does not appear 

 to have himself studied these sciences experimentally, but to have 

 evolved his ideas regarding them out of his own fertile brain. He 

 went so far in his opposition to the current beliefs as to declare 

 that even although the whole world should accept them he would 

 be content to remain the solitary disbeliever.' He would seem to 

 'have been as good as his word, and to have scouted modern physics 

 ^nd chemistry as long as he lived. 



Yet in neglecting his little volume, his contemporaries and their 

 successors failed to perceive that amidst all its strange conceptions it 

 made some really valuable contributions to a sound theory of the 

 earth. In judging it we must bear in mind the general ignorance 

 then prevalent as to what are now seen to be most obvious and 

 elemental facts about the history of our globe ; likewise the baneful 

 influence of the orthodox theological creed that only some 6,000 

 years had passed away since the creation of the universe. We 

 should remember, too, that the internecine dispute between the 

 Neptunists and the Plutonists had brought discredit on the study of 

 geology, which was taunted as a mere field of strife and visionary 

 speculation, wherein men were too often guided rather by their 

 desire to uphold their own theories or damage those of their 

 opponents than by the wish patiently to collect the facts that would 

 nltimately establish the truth. 



Lamavck belonged to neither of the hostile schools, and he makes 

 310 allusion to them in his treatise. It is refreshing to turn from the 

 angry debates and trifling observations of the time to his calm 

 philosophical pages, and to come into touch there with a great 

 mind which contemplated Nature as a whole and sought after the true 

 interpretation of her working. He was essentially a biologist, and 

 he was led to enter the geological domain, not as a partizan of any 

 of the theories of the day, but as an ardent enquirer into the history 

 of life upon the earth. He appeared as a bold pioneer into the vast 

 and still little known field of the geological past, and though, as was 

 only natural and at the time hardly avoidable, he wandered from the 

 track, he yet succeeded in opening up some pathways where no 

 previous explorer had appeared, and in clearing and widening others 

 that had already been partially trodden. 



One fundamental truth was vividly realised and eloquently 

 proclaimed by Lamarck. At a time when the orthodox six 

 thousand years were still generally believed to limit the age of 

 the earth, he had acquired a profound conviction of the high 

 antiquity both of the globe itself as a planet, and of the plant and 

 animal life that has flourished on its surface. Again and again in' 



^ " Hydrogeologie," p. 167. 



