556 Reports and Proceedings—Duke of Argyll’s Address, 
altogether from the main drift of the argument, and from the general 
theory as a whole, it contains in numerous individual passages the 
germs of much subsequent thought, and almost prescient anticipations 
of many subsequent discoveries. But, above all, I would call your 
attention to the connection in which it stands to one of those higher 
questions of philosophy which rise above all the special sciences, and 
by their contribution to the solution of which all sciences must take 
their rank in the scale of intellectual interest and importance. You 
know, gentlemen, the leading idea of the Huttonian theory—it was the 
uniformity, or the almost mechanical regularity of geological causation. 
You recollect how it was shown that in looking into the nature and 
history of the physical changes affecting the structure of the rocks, 
we can see only an everlasting series of the same kinds of operation, 
in endless repetition, till they are lost in the obscurity which lies 
beyond the range of human observation. This theory was embodied 
in the famous formula that in geology there is no trace of a beginning, 
no symptom of an end. This theory was charged with an atheistic 
tendency, absurdly enough, since Dr. Playfair explained that Hutton 
did not maintain either that there had been no beginning, or that there 
would be no end. All he maintained was that for either of these 
things we must go beyond the boundaries of geological phenomena, 
which were strictly limited to a certain series of physical facts, and 
could have no concern with things which may have been before, or 
with things which may yet come to be. But although this theory of 
eternal and mechanical repetition—of the mere grinding down of 
rocks, and of their reconsolidation in the sea, and of re-elevation into 
land—although this view of that which constituted the whole of 
geology was no more atheistic than any other theory on the mechanics 
of creation, it was nevertheless not a theory which could really satisfy 
the mind. Holding, as I do, above all things in science, to the funda- 
mental doctrine of the intelligibility of nature—that is to say, to the 
deep-seated harmony between all the operations and workings of 
nature, and the operations and workings of the human mind—it was 
not possible in my opinion, to be really satisfied with the Huttonian 
theory as a full and final account even of geological facts. Some other 
key, some other clue, was sorely needed to the order of these facts than 
that of mere mechanical repetition. Nothing in our own nature, 
nothing in nature round us, corresponds to any conception so dreary 
and so monotonous. Everywhere, and in all things, there is a con- 
tinual passage from one set of conditions to another, and generally, in 
proportion as our knowledge is complete, we can see that this passage 
is one from a lower to a higher level. And accordingly so it has been 
in the progress of geology since the days of Hutton and of Playfair. 
The last fifty years have revealed what during the previous half century 
had remained unknown. Those traces of a beginning, the existence 
of which Playfair did not deny, but which only he resigned as not 
belonging to geology, have now appeared in fact and in objective form 
more clearly than they had ever appeared before in the imagination of 
cosmogonists. And this appearance has arisen not outside the boun- 
daries of our science, but strictly within them, so that the successive 
formations by deposit and by consolidation, by depression and elevation, 
