1882.1 
Pleading for a Geological Idea. 
147 
I show, and shall show, that this development with its 
catastrophes throws lights on the probabilities of the origin 
and evolution of organisms brighter and truer than those of 
natural selection, howsoever dim Will-o’-the-wisps they may 
also be, and remain to guide us in our knowledge of the 
eternal infinite. 
I refer to certain globes and maps, and point out the 
visible, about which there can be no spirit-knocking im- 
posture, sometimes attracting the learned. It has all the 
authority of experiments performed by untutored Nature in 
its boundless laboratory; it presents all the diffractions and 
interferences of manifold laws, sprung from an universal law. 
Should anyone say of this or that regularity or coincidence 
“ I had seen it, I knew it,” I ask where and when did you 
say so ? And if there should be a sufficient reply, I shall 
gainsay you said so after my time, and never traced the 
origin and connections of such faCt, the “ encheiresin nature?.” 
I did not pick up these faCts, suggestive of greatest proba- 
bilities, as the schoolboy does the capitals on the map. I 
got at them by reasoning more intricate than that which led 
the grandly adventurous spirit of Columbus to search for 
the ancient East by sailing West; and when a definite point 
had been gained and was confirmed by the visible I went on. 
I maintain that there is law and order on earth and in 
heaven more than sought for and expected, and to all who 
might venture to pronounce that password of ignorance, 
Accident, I tell — Pythagorean ideas and the teachings of 
Aristarchus of Samos were rejected, suppressed, and silently 
made away with by orthodox Science. Ptolemean muddle, 
not without meritorious art, dominated in the progress of 
doctors and the creeds of the faithful multitudes. Copernicus 
finished his “ De Orbium Coelestium Revolutionibus ” in 
1530, but the instinCt of self-preservation made the high 
ecclesiastic delay its publication to the hour of his death, in 
1573. Galileo Galilei had to repent for his “ Dialogo,” of 
1632, to the end of his days, in 1642. Kepler led the life of 
a vagabond after his “ Astronomia Nova” appeared in 1609, 
and he starved in 1630. Tycho Brahe, the contemporary, 
the great observer, saw that the orthodox system was wrong, 
but jealousy urged him to oppose the progress of truth by 
own errors. Statues they now all have. 
