56 PEOCEEDINGS or THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



will need years of careful mapping in the field, supplemented by 

 minute study of tlie rocks by practised and qualified microscopists 

 (for in this matter a very special training is needed), before the whole 

 secret of the Highlands is discovered. I am, indeed, more hopeful 

 of the possibility of distinguishing between the results of metamor- 

 phic action in Palaeozoic and in Archaean times than I believe some 

 workers in this field to be; but to this subject I hope to return if 

 honoured with another opportunity of addressing you from this chair. 

 However, whatever may be the results of future work, whether 

 official or non-official, I do not hesitate to say that this abandonment 

 on the part of the Geological Survey of the Murchisonian hypothesis 

 is an event of primary importance in the history of geological 

 progress ; and we should render a just tribute of admiration to the 

 Director General and to Messrs. Peach and Home, the chief mem- 

 bers of the field-party, for their candour in investigating the 

 question and in announcing their abandonment of opinions which 

 only a few years since it would have seemed presumptuous to 

 question. When Dr. Geikie declares that an hypothesis, main- 

 tained by one whose memory is justly dear to him, in the support 

 of which he himself in his younger days played an important part, 

 must be abandoned, he shows himself superior to that too common 

 weakness which fears to admit a mistake, and he gives us the best 

 hope for the future of the Geological Survey of Great Britain. 



Indeed, the importance of this step can hardly be over-estimated 

 in regard to its future results. As a worker in petrology, I can 

 testify how the Murchisonian hypothesis has lain like an incubus on 

 the investigator, impeding his progress in what seemed legitimate 

 inductions from observed facts, and being invoked by his opponents 

 as a kind of fetish. Its abandonment, therefore, will be of moral 

 as well as of intellectual value. I have noticed, sometimes with 

 regret, among geologists an over-tendency to hero-worship. To 

 question the conclusions of one of the great men now departed from 

 among us has been regarded as savouring of presumption. We are 

 right, in the interest of science, to scout criticism which is founded 

 on ignorance, and to show little mercy to rash hypothesis ; for these, 

 by cumbering the ground, retard instead of helping progress ; but a 

 spirit of blind adoration for the past should have no place among 

 those who are seekers after truth. So long as the facts are un- 

 altei'ed we are right in hesitating much before we differ from 

 conclusions which one of our departed worthies in science has 

 formed upon the data which were submitted to him as fully as to 

 us ; but when new facts have been discovered, when novel and more 

 perfect methods of investigation have been devised, we are bound, 

 as honest men, to make full use of these and not to shrink from 

 announcing our conclusions. I yield to no one in reverence for 

 our great men of old ; I marvel humbly at what they accomplished 

 with the means at their disposal ; but I should think it a wrong to 

 the memory of searchers after truth did I invoke their names to 

 arrest its progress, and use the '^ dead hand " of the departed hero 

 to paralyze the living worker. There is no revelation in science ; 



