305 



" the undeviating uniformity of secondary causes,"— the " uniform 

 order of physical events," — " the invariable constancy in the order 

 of nature," and other phrases of like kind, are to me, as far as regards 

 the phenomena of geology, words almost without meaning. Thev 

 may serve to enunciate the propositions of an hypothesis ; but they 

 do not describe the true order of nature*. 



Each formation of geology may have required a very long period 

 for its complete development ; and of such an element as past time, 

 we grudge no man the appropriation. But after all, the successive 

 formations, about which we speculate, however complex in their sub- 

 divisions, are small in number: and after deciphering a series of 

 monuments, we reach the dark ages of our history, when, having no 

 longer any characters to guide us, we may indulge at will in the crea- 

 tions of our fancy. We may imagine indefinite cycles, and an indefi- 

 nite succession of phenomena ; and in the physical world, as well as 

 in the moral, we may have our long periods of fabulous history. But 

 these things belong not to inductive geology ; and all I now contend 

 for is — that in the well established facts brought to light by our in- 

 vestigations, there is no such thing as an indefinite succession of 

 phaenomena. 



I will not, even in imagination, travel with you over the succes- 

 sive formations of the earth, or point out their mineralogical di- 

 stinctions ; but I may remind you, that in the very first step of our 

 progress we are surrounded by animal and vegetable forms, of 

 which there are now no living types. And I ask, have we not 

 in these things some indication of change and of an adjusting 

 power altogether different from what we commonly understand by 

 the laws of nature? Shall we say with the naturalists of a former 

 century, that they are but the sports of nature ? Or shall we adopt 

 the doctrines of spontaneous generation and transmutation of spe- 

 cies, with all their train of monstrous consequences ? These sub- 

 jects, indeed, are not yet touched upon by Mr. Lyell ; and I throw 

 out these remarks only to show by what difficulties the Huttonian 

 hypothesis is encountered — of a kind, too, never present to the mind 

 of its inventor. 



There is however one chapter in the "Principles of Geology" where 

 the author combats the doctrine of the progressive development of 

 organic life, and briefly considers the distribution of fossil bodies in 

 the successive strata of the earth. I admit the general truth of his facts 

 and the strength of his argument, and I allow that he has succeeded 

 in exposing some of the errors and misstatements of his opponents. 

 A doctrine may however be abused, and yet contain many of the 

 elements of truth. With reference to the functions of the individual 

 being, one organic structure is as perfect as another. But I think 

 that in the repeated and almost entire changes of organic types in 

 the successive formations of the earth — in the absence of mammalia 

 in the older, and their very rare appearance (and then in forms en- 

 tirely unknown to us) in the newer secondary groups — in the diffu- 



* Principles of Geology, p. 15, 76, 86, &c. &c. 

 D 



