astray. The final cause of the existence of the world is, for Hutton, the production of life and intelligence.
" We have now considered the globe of this earth as a machine, constructed upon chemical as well as mechanical principles, by which its different parts are all adapted, in form, in quality, and in quantity, to a certain end ; an end attained with certainty or success ; and an end from which we may perceive wisdom, in contemplating the means employed.
" But is this world to be considered thus merely as a machine, to last no longer than its parts retain their present position, their proper forms and qualities ? Or may it not be also considered as an organized body ? such as has a constitution in which the necessary decay of the machine is naturally repaired, in the exertion of those productive powers by which it had been formed.
" This is the view in which we are now to examine the globe ; to see if there be, in the constitution of this world, a reproductive operation, by which a ruined constitution may be again repaired, and a duration or stability thus procured to the machine, considered as a world sustaining plants and animals"*.
Kirwan and the other Philistines of the day accused Hutton of declaring that his theory implied that the world never had a beginning, and never differed in condition from its present state. Nothing could be more grossly unjust, as he expressly guards himself against any such conclusion in the following terms : —
" But in thus tracing back the natural operations which have succeeded each other, and mark to us the course of time past, we come to a period in which we cannot see any farther. This, however, is not the beginning of the operations which proceed in time and according to the wise economy of this world ; nor is it the establishing of that which, in the course of time, had no beginning ; it is only the limit of our retrospective view of those operations which have come to pass in time, and have been conducted by supreme intelligence "†.
I have spoken of Uniformitarianism as the doctrine of Hutton and of Lyell. If I have quoted the older writer rather than the newer, it is because his works are little known, and his claims on our veneration too frequently forgotten, not because I desire to dim the fame of his eminent successor. Few of the present generation of geologists have read Playfair's ' Illustrations,' fewer still the original 'Theory of the Earth ; ' the more is the pity ; but which of us has not thumbed every page of the ' Principles of Geology ' ? I think that he who writes fairly the history of his own progress in geological thought will not be able to separate his debt to Hutton from his obligations to Lyell ; and the history of the progress of individual geologists is the history of geology.
No one can doubt that the influence of uniformitarian views has been enormous, and, in the main, most beneficial and favourable to the progress of sound geology.
Nor can it be questioned that uniformitarianism has even a stronger
- Ib. pp. 16, 17.
† Ih p. 223.
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