78 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
is rid of those visionary speculations which some of her votaries have 
worked into her fabric, and which, like the rotten materials of the dis- 
honest contractor, or the incoherent walls put together by incapable 
workmen, endanger the whole edifice in case of attack. When Geology 
and Scripture are brought into opposition, outsiders would do well to ask, 
What is Geology, and what is Scripture ? When we have both replies, we 
might judge, probably very rightly, that as in the case of all quarrels, both 
sides were wrong, or at least not right, — which is pretty nearly, although 
not quite the same thing. If the Scripturists will d priori state what the 
Bible declares in respect to creation, or if they will give us a correct 
reading only of what the Bible does say ; and if the geologists will 
give us — if they can agree amongst themselves — a correct version of 
the ancient history of our earth, then the public can judge well enough 
whether the two versions do agree or whether they do not. Until this is 
done, we do not think arguments will be much more conclusive than they 
have been. " Everybody knows," Mr. Young says, " that physical 
hypotheses are by no means necessarily physical truths ; " but in geology , 
some of these hypotheses, " originally invented to group together natural 
phenomena under some assumed general principle, from Avhich those phe- 
nomena may be logically deduced," have been commingled with theories or 
stated as facts. 
It is but a few years since that we heard an eminent Fellow of the Geo- 
logical Society say that the main work of geology was done, and geologists 
had only to arrange their materials and keep their collections in order. 
Since then we have had Sorby and others working at granites and meta- 
morphosed rocks, and Darwin coming in with some stirring notions about 
the transmutation of species and the imperfection of the geological record. 
Latterly, too, the researches and speculations of Professors Thompson, 
Tyndall, and Haughton ; the discoveries of Kirchhof and Buusen ; the ex- 
periments of Airy and Hawkins ; and the progress made in chemistry, 
astronomy, physics, and all the other sciences, have made us feel, what is 
doubtless felt by every deep-thinking or observant mind, that the fabric of 
geology is not as solid as it ought to be, and the deductions from hypotheses 
or facts not always as satisfactory or as logical as one could wish them. 
It is only too true that there are matters of geology far more rickety 
than is quite pleasant to its defenders. " So long as geology lets the 
Bible alone it may go on constructing its theories as it pleases," says Mr. 
Young ; but if these theories are paraded, in opposition to Scripture, as 
" geological truths, the grounds upon which they lay claim to this dignity i 
must be examined." Whether this be correct, that geologists parade their 
doctrines in opposition to Scripture, or whether the outcry was not really 
raised by the opposite party against geologists, does not matter here. In 
both cases it is equally right that the doctrines of geologists should 
be submitted to as rigid tests as the words of the Bible. And so Mr. 
Young, as well as he is able, and sometimes ably, attacks the dogmas of 
geology. For example, giving in full the geologists' hypothetical assumption 
that the primary condition of the globe was a fluid molten mass, and the 
necessary corollaries of that assumption, that it has successively cooled 
down until a crust of aqueous deposits containing remains of their life- > 
creations could be deposited from successive oceans, Mr. Young requests i 
the reader to examine them, " and then, if he know anything of science 
in general, to ask himself if the fanciful scheme here depicted deserves to 
be called a strictly scientific theory. What is the primarj^ assumption ? 
Why, that the earth originally was a globe of fluid molten mass. Being 
a globe, all the parts of it equidistant from the centre must have been in 
i 
