THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS
the succession of forms was so orderly and so connected that he even went so far as to speak of their “genealogy” as something that, though not yet worked out, would eventually be discovered. So many of the philosophical ideas of Louis Agassiz are those of the modern evolutionist that it must always seem strange to us that he never accepted the theory in any practical form.
This is a strange contrast—that of Huxley and Agassiz—Huxley, hard, logical, walking on the strait and narrow path, adhering strictly to fact, ended as a champion of evolution; Agassiz, with marvellous intuition, with broad views and wide-ranging imagination, remained its opponent. Huxley, who demanded proof for every hypothesis, was driven to his conclusion by the cumulation of evidence. Agassiz, quite ready to accept an unprovable, transcendental explanation, remained as he was, and the tide of science passed hist heories by.
No doubt Huxley in 1881 had a far larger body of evidence to his hand than Agassiz had in 1857; and it may be that Agassiz, had he lived till then, would have found in evolution (though not necessarily in Darwin's explanation) the groundwork of his own metaphysical laws and hypotheses. We today, with half-a-century of additional and indescribably more accurate and detailed knowledge of fossils, can not merely endorse Huxley’s statement but can extend and elucidate it.
Notwithstanding, there are people who, having enough knowledge of geology to speak its language, can still deny the evidence. They assert that palaeontologists are arguing in a circle, and their own argument is somewhat as follows: William Smith the land-surveyor, who is known as the Father of English Geology, observed (so they say) a few strata or layers of rock in part of that little island of Britain
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