ANNIVEBSAEY ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT. xlvii 



antagonism between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism. On the 

 contrary, it is very conceivable that catastrophes may be part and 

 parcel of uniformity. Let me illustrate my case by analogy. The 

 working of a clock is a model of uniform action ; good time-keeping 

 means uniformity of action. But the striking of the clock is essenti- 

 ally a catastrophe ; the hammer might be made to blow up a barrel 

 of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water ; and, by proper arrange- 

 ment, the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike at all 

 sorts of irregular intervals, never twice alike in the intervals, force, 

 or number of its blows. Nevertheless all these irregular and appa- 

 rently lawless catastrophes would be the result of an absolutely uni- 

 formitarian action ; and we might have two schools of clock- theo- 

 rists, one studying the hammer and the other the pendulum. 



Still less is there any necessary antagonism between either of these 

 doctrines and that of Evolution, which embraces all that is sound in 

 both Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism, while it rejects the arbi- 

 trary assumptions of the one and the, as arbitrary, limitations of the 

 other. Nor is the value of the doctrine of Evolution to the philo- 

 sophic thinker diminished by the fact that it applies the same me- 

 thod to the living and the not-living world, and embraces in one 

 stupendous analogy the growth of a solar system from molecular 

 chaos, the shaping of the earth from the nebulous cubhood of its 

 youth, through innumerable changes and immeasurable ages, to 

 its present form, and the development of a living being from the 

 shapeless mass of protoplasm we term a germ. 



I do not know whether Evolutionism can claim that amount of 

 currency which would entitle it to be called British popular geology ; 

 but, more or less vaguely, it is assuredly present in the minds of 

 most geologists. 



Such being the three phases of geological speculation, we are now 

 in a position to inquire which of these it is that Sir William Thomson 

 calls upon us to reform in the passages which I have cited. 



It is obviously Uniformitarianism which the distinguished phy- 

 sicist takes to be the representative of geological speculation in gene- 

 ral. And thus a first issue is raised, inasmuch as many persons (and 

 those not the least thoughtful among the younger geologists) do not 

 accept strict Uniformitarianism as the final form of geological specu- 

 lation. We should say, if Hutton and Playfair declare the course of 

 the world to have been always the same, point out the fallacy by aU 

 means, but in so doing do not imagine that you are proving modern 

 geology to be in opposition to natural philosophy. I do not suppose 

 that, at the present day, any geologist would be found to maintain 

 absolute Uniformitarianism, to deny that the rapidity of the rotation 

 of the earth may be diminishing, that the sun may be waxing dim, 

 or that the earth itself onay be cooling. Most of us, I suspect, are 

 Gallios, " who care for none of these things," being of opinion that, 

 true or fictitious, they have made no practical difference to the 

 earth, during the period of which a record is preserved in stratified 

 deposits. 



