1877.] Catastrophism and Evolution. 463 
are ample to account for the past, are flatly and emphatically 
contradicted by American facts. With our present light, geo- 
logical history seems to be a dovetailing together of the two 
ideas. The ages have had their periods of geological serenity, 
when change progressed in the still, unnoticeable way, and life 
through vast lapses of time followed the stately flow of years, 
drifting on by insensible gradations through higher and higher 
forms, and then all at once a part of the earth suffered short, 
sharp, destructive revolution, as unheralded as an earthquake. or 
volcanic eruptions. The sciences are as independent as bodily 
organs; they are the vitals of human knowledge. A fallacy 
lodged in one produces functional disturbance of the others. It 
was the error of universal and extreme catastrophes which so 
violated the conceptions of Lamarck, Goethe, and St. Hilaire as 
to draw out their earnest protest, and as usual they urged the 
pendulum past the golden mean of truth over to the counter 
error of extreme uniformitarianism. This later error has been 
confidently built. in as one of the corner-stones of the imposing 
structure of evolution. I believe the crumbling, valueless nature 
of this foundation will yet make itself felt in the ruin of just so 
much as the builders have rested upon it. 
If the vicissitudes of our planet have been as marked by catas- 
trophes as I believe, how does that law affect our conceptions 
of the development of life and the hypothesis of evolution? 
Man, whatever the drift of life or philosophy, returns with rest- 
less eagerness, with pathetic anxiety, to the enigma of his own 
origin, his own nature, his own destiny. With reverence, with 
levity, with faith, with doubt, with courage, with cowardice, by 
every avenue of approach, in every age, the same old problem 
is confronted. We pour out our passionate questionings, and 
hearken lest mute nature may this time answer. But nature 
yields only one syllable of reply at a time. 
Darwin, who in his day has caught the one syllable from nature’s 
lips, advances always with caution, and although he practically 
rejects does not positively deny the existence of sudden great 
changes in the earth’s history. Huxley, permeated in every 
fibre by belief in evolution, feels that even to-day catastrophism 
is not yet wholly out of the possibilities. It is only lesser men 
who bang all the doors, shut out all doubts, and flaunt their little 
sign, “ Omniscience on draught here.” It must be said, how- 
ever, that biology, as a whole, denies catastrophism in order to 
Save evolution. It is the common mistake of biologists to as- 
