Discourses: Biological & Geological Part 17

Nor can it be questioned that Uniformitarianism has even a stronger t.i.tle than Catastrophism to call itself the geological speculation of Britain, or, if you will, British popular geology. For it is eminently a British doctrine, and has even now made comparatively little progress on the continent of Europe. Nevertheless, it seems to me to be open to serious criticism upon one of its aspects.

I have shown how unjust was the insinuation that Hutton denied a beginning to the world. But it would not be unjust to say that he persistently in practice, shut his eyes to the existence of that prior and different state of things which, in theory, he admitted; and, in this aversion to look beyond the veil of stratified rocks, Lyell follows him.

Hutton and Lyell alike agree in their indisposition to carry their speculations a step beyond the period recorded in the most ancient strata now open to observation in the crust of the earth. This is, for Hutton, "the point in which we cannot see any farther"; while Lyell tells us,--

"The astronomer may find good reasons for ascribing the earth's form to the original fluidity of the ma.s.s, in times long antecedent to the first introduction of living beings into the planet; but the geologist must be content to regard the earliest monuments which it is his task to interpret, as belonging to a period when the crust had already acquired great solidity and thickness, probably as great as it now possesses, and when volcanic rocks, not essentially differing from those now produced, were formed from time to time, the intensity of volcanic heat being neither greater nor less than it is now."[8]

[Footnote 8: _Principles of Geology_, vol. ii. p. 211.]

And again, "As geologists, we learn that it is not only the present condition of the globe which has been suited to the accommodation of myriads of living creatures, but that many former states also have been adapted to the organisation and habits of prior races of beings. The disposition of the seas, continents and islands, and the climates, have varied; the species likewise have been changed; and yet they have all been so modelled, on types a.n.a.logous to those of existing plants and animals, as to indicate, throughout, a perfect harmony of design and unity of purpose. To a.s.sume that the evidence of the beginning, or end, of so vast a scheme lies within the reach of our philosophical inquiries, or even of our speculations, appears to be inconsistent with a just estimate of the relations which subsist between the finite powers of man and the attributes of an infinite and eternal Being."[9]

[Footnote 9: _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 613.]

The limitations implied in these pa.s.sages appear to me to const.i.tute the weakness and the logical defect of Uniformitarianism. No one will impute blame to Hutton that, in face of the imperfect condition, in his day, of those physical sciences which furnish the keys to the riddles of geology, he should have thought it practical wisdom to limit his theory to an attempt to account for "the present order of things"; but I am at a loss to comprehend why, for all time, the geologist must be content to regard the oldest fossiliferous rocks as the _ultima Thule_ of his science; or what there is inconsistent with the relations between the finite and the infinite mind, in the a.s.sumption, that we may discern somewhat of the beginning, or of the end, of this speck in s.p.a.ce we call our earth. The finite mind is certainly competent to trace out the development of the fowl within the egg; and I know not on what ground it should find more difficulty in unravelling the complexities Of the development of the earth. In fact, as Kant has well remarked,[10] the cosmical process is really simpler than the biological.

[Footnote 10: "Man darf es sich also nicht befremden la.s.sen, wenn ich mich unterstehe zu sagen, da.s.s eher die Bildung aller Himmelskorper, die Ursache ihrer Bewegungen, kurz der Ursprung der gantzen gegenwartigen Verfa.s.sung des Weltbaues werden konnen eingesehen werden, ehe die Erzeugung eines einzigen Krautes oder einer Raupe aus mechanischen Grunden, deutlich und vollstandig kund werden wird."--KANT'S _Sammtliche Werke_, Bd. i. p. 220.]

This attempt to limit, at a particular point, the progress of inductive and deductive reasoning from the things which are, to those which were-- this faithlessness to its own logic, seems to me to have cost Uniformitarianism the place, as the permanent form of geological speculation, which it might otherwise have held.

It remains that I should put before you what I understand to be the third phase of geological speculation--namely, EVOLUTIONISM.

I shall not make what I have to say on this head clear, unless I diverge, or seem to diverge, for a while, from the direct path of my discourse, so far as to explain what I take to be the scope of geology itself. I conceive geology to be the history of the earth, in precisely the same sense as biology is the history of living beings; and I trust you will not think that I am overpowered by the influence of a dominant pursuit if I say that I trace a close a.n.a.logy between these two histories.

If I study a living being, under what heads does the knowledge I obtain fall? I can learn its structure, or what we call its ANATOMY; and its DEVELOPMENT, or the series of changes which it pa.s.ses through to acquire its complete structure. Then I find that the living being has certain powers resulting from its own activities, and the interaction of these with the activities of other things--the knowledge of which is PHYSIOLOGY. Beyond this the living being has a position in s.p.a.ce and time, which is its DISTRIBUTION. All these form the body of ascertainable facts which const.i.tute the _status quo_ of the living creature. But these facts have their causes; and the ascertainment of these causes is the doctrine of AETIOLOGY.

If we consider what is knowable about the earth, we shall find that such earth-knowledge--if I may so translate the word geology--falls into the same categories.

What is termed stratigraphical geology is neither more nor less than the anatomy of the earth; and the history of the succession of the formations is the history of a succession of such anatomies, or corresponds with development, as distinct from generation.

The internal heat of the earth, the elevation and depression of its crust, its belchings forth of vapours, ashes, and lava, are its activities, in as strict a sense as are warmth and the movements and products of respiration the activities of an animal. The phenomena of the seasons, of the trade winds, of the Gulf-stream, are as much the results of the reaction between these inner activities and outward forces, as are the budding of the leaves in spring and their falling in autumn the effects of the interaction between the organisation of a plant and the solar light and heat. And, as the study of the activities of the living being is called its physiology, so are these phenomena the subject-matter of an a.n.a.logous telluric physiology, to which we sometimes give the name of meteorology, sometimes that of physical geography, sometimes that of geology. Again, the earth has a place in s.p.a.ce and in time, and relations to other bodies in both these respects, which const.i.tute its distribution. This subject is usually left to the astronomer; but a knowledge of its broad outlines seems to me to be an essential const.i.tuent of the stock of geological ideas.

All that can be ascertained concerning the structure, succession of conditions, actions, and position in s.p.a.ce of the earth, is the matter of fact of its natural history. But, as in biology, there remains the matter of reasoning from these facts to their causes, which is just as much science as the other, and indeed more; and this const.i.tutes geological aetiology.

Having regard to this general scheme of geological knowledge and thought, it is obvious that geological speculation may be, so to speak, anatomical and developmental speculation, so far as it relates to points of stratigraphical arrangement which are out of reach of direct observation; or, it may be physiological speculation so far as it relates to undetermined problems relative to the activities of the earth; or, it may be distributional speculation, if it deals with modifications of the earth's place in s.p.a.ce; or, finally, it will be aetiological speculation if it attempts to deduce the history of the world, as a whole, from the known properties of the matter of the earth, in the conditions in which the earth has been placed.

For the purposes of the present discourse I may take this last to be what is meant by "geological speculation."

Now Uniformitarianism, as we have seen, tends to ignore geological speculation in this sense altogether.

The one point the catastrophists and the uniformitarians agreed upon, when this Society was founded, was to ignore it. And you will find, if you look back into our records, that our revered fathers in geology plumed themselves a good deal upon the practical sense and wisdom of this proceeding. As a temporary measure, I do not presume to challenge its wisdom; but in all organised bodies temporary changes are apt to produce permanent effects; and as time has slipped by, altering all the conditions which may have made such mortification of the scientific flesh desirable, I think the effect of the stream of cold water which has steadily flowed over geological speculation within these walls has been of doubtful beneficence.

The sort of geological speculation to which I am now referring (geological aetiology, in short) was created, as a science, by that famous philosopher Immanuel Kant, when, in 1775, he wrote his "General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies; or an Attempt to account for the Const.i.tutional and the Mechanical Origin of the Universe upon Newtonian principles."[11]

[Footnote 11: Grant (_History of Physical Astronomy_, p. 574) makes but the briefest reference to Kant.]

In this very remarkable but seemingly little-known treatise,[12] Kant expounds a complete cosmogony, in the shape of a theory of the causes which have led to the development of the universe from diffused atoms of matter endowed with simple attractive and repulsive forces.

[Footnote 12: "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels; oder Versuch von der Verfa.s.sung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebaudes nach Newton'schen Grundsatzen abgehandelt."--KANT'S _Sammtliche Werke_, Bd. i. p. 207.]

"Give me matter," says Kant, "and I will build the world;" and he proceeds to deduce from the simple data from which he starts, a doctrine in all essential respects similar to the well-known "Nebular Hypothesis"

of Laplace.[13] He accounts for the relation of the ma.s.ses and the densities of the planets to their distances from the sun, for the eccentricities of their orbits, for their rotations, for their satellites, for the general agreement in the direction of rotation among the celestial bodies, for Saturn's ring, and for the zodiacal light. He finds in each system of worlds, indications that the attractive force of the central ma.s.s will eventually destroy its organisation, by concentrating upon itself the matter of the whole system; but, as the result of this concentration, he argues for the development of an amount of heat which will dissipate the ma.s.s once more into a molecular chaos such as that in which it began.

[Footnote 13: _Systeme du Monde_, tome ii. chap. 6.]

Kant pictures to himself the universe as once an infinite expansion of formless and diffused matter. At one point of this he supposes a single centre of attraction set up; and, by strict deductions from admitted dynamical principles, shows how this must result in the development of a prodigious central body, surrounded by systems of solar and planetary worlds in all stages of development. In vivid language he depicts the great world-maelstrom, widening the margins of its prodigious eddy in the slow progress of millions of ages, gradually reclaiming more and more of the molecular waste, and converting chaos into cosmos. But what is gained at the margin is lost in the centre; the attractions of the central systems bring their const.i.tuents together, which then, by the heat evolved, are converted once more into molecular chaos. Thus the worlds that are, lie between the ruins of the worlds that have been, and the chaotic materials of the worlds that shall be; and in spite of all waste and destruction, Cosmos is extending his borders at the expense of Chaos.

Kant's further application of his views to the earth itself is to be found in his "Treatise on Physical Geography"[14] (a term under which the then unknown science of geology was included), a subject which he had studied with very great care and on which he lectured for many years. The fourth section of the first part of this Treatise is called "History of the great Changes which the Earth has formerly undergone and is still undergoing," and is, in fact, a brief and pregnant essay upon the principles of geology. Kant gives an account first "of the gradual changes which are now taking place" under the heads of such as are caused by earthquakes, such as are brought about by rain and rivers, such as are effected by the sea, such as are produced by winds and frost; and, finally, such as result from the operations of man.

[Footnote 14: Kant's _Sammtliche Werke_, Bd. viii. p. 145.]

The second part is devoted to the "Memorials of the Changes which the Earth has undergone in remote Antiquity." These are enumerated as:--A.

Proofs that the sea formerly covered the whole earth. B. Proofs that the sea has often been changed into dry land and then again into sea. C. A discussion of the various theories of the earth put forward by Scheuchzer, Moro, Bonnet, Woodward, White, Leibnitz, Linnaeus, and Buffon.

The third part contains an "Attempt to give a sound explanation of the ancient history of the earth."

I suppose that it would be very easy to pick holes in the details of Kant's speculations, whether cosmological, or specially telluric, in their application. But for all that, he seems to me to have been the first person to frame a complete system of geological speculation by founding the doctrine of evolution.

With as much truth as Hutton, Kant could say, "I take things just as I find them at present, and, from these, I reason with regard to that which must have been." Like Hutton, he is never tired of pointing out that "in Nature there is wisdom, system, and consistency." And, as in these great principles, so in believing that the cosmos has a reproductive operation "by which a ruined const.i.tution may be repaired," he forestalls Hutton; while, on the other hand, Kant is true to science. He knows no bounds to geological speculation but those of the intellect. He reasons back to a beginning of the present state of things; he admits the possibility of an end.

I have said that the three schools of geological speculation which I have termed Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and Evolutionism, are commonly supposed to be antagonistic to one another; and I presume it will have become obvious that in my belief, the last is destined to swallow up the other two. But it is proper to remark that each of the latter has kept alive the tradition of precious truths.

CATASTROPHISM has insisted upon the existence of a practically unlimited bank of force, on which the theorist might draw; and it has cherished the idea of the development of the earth from a state in which its form, and the forces which it exerted, were very different from those we now know.

That such difference of form and power once existed is a necessary part of the doctrine of evolution.

UNIFORMITARIANISM, on the other hand, has with equal justice insisted upon a practically unlimited bank of time, ready to discount any quant.i.ty of hypothetical paper. It has kept before our eyes the power of the infinitely little, time being granted, and has compelled us to exhaust known causes, before flying to the unknown.

To my mind there appears to be no sort of necessary theoretical antagonism between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism. On the contrary, it is very conceivable that catastrophes may be part and parcel of uniformity. Let me ill.u.s.trate my case by a.n.a.logy. The working of a clock is a model of uniform action; good time-keeping means uniformity of action. But the striking of the clock is essentially a catastrophe; the hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water; and, by proper arrangement, the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike at all sorts of irregular periods, never twice alike, in the intervals, force, or number of its blows.

Nevertheless, all these irregular, and apparently lawless, catastrophes would be the result of an absolutely uniformitarian action; and we might have two schools of clock-theorists, one studying the hammer and the other the pendulum.

Still less is there any necessary antagonists between either of these doctrines and that of Evolution, which embraces all that is sound in both Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism, while it rejects the arbitrary a.s.sumptions of the one and the, as arbitrary, limitations of the other.

Nor is the value of the doctrine of Evolution to the philosophic thinker diminished by the fact that it applies the same method to the living and the not-living world; and embraces, in one stupendous a.n.a.logy, the growth of a solar system from molecular chaos, the shaping of the earth from the nebulous cub-hood of its youth, through innumerable changes and immeasurable ages, to its present form; and the development of a living being from the shapeless ma.s.s of protoplasm we term a germ.

I do not know whether Evolutionism can claim that amount of currency which would ent.i.tle it to be called British popular geology; but, more or less vaguely, it is a.s.suredly present in the minds of most geologists.

Such being the three phases of geological speculation, we are now in position to inquire which of these it is that Sir William Thomson calls upon us to reform in the pa.s.sages which I have cited.

It is obviously Uniformitarianism which the distinguished physicist takes to be the representative of geological speculation in general. And thus a first issue is raised, inasmuch as many persons (and those not the least thoughtful among the younger geologists) do not accept strict Uniformitarianism as the final form of geological speculation. We should say, if Hutton and Playfair declare the course of the world to have been always the same, point out the fallacy by all means; but, in so doing, do not imagine that you are proving modern geology to be in opposition to natural philosophy. I do not suppose that, at the present day, any geologist would be found to maintain absolute Uniformitarianism, to deny that the rapidity of the rotation of the earth _may_ be diminishing, that the sun _may_ be waxing dim, or that the earth itself _may_ be cooling.

Most of us, I suspect, are Gallios, "who care for none of these things,"

being of opinion that, true or fict.i.tious, they have made no practical difference to the earth, during the period of which a record is preserved in stratified deposits.

The accusation that we have been running counter to the _principles_ of natural philosophy, therefore, is devoid of foundation. The only question which can arise is whether we have, or have not, been tacitly making a.s.sumptions which are in opposition to certain conclusions which may be drawn from those principles. And this question subdivides itself into two:--the first, are we really contravening such conclusions? the second, if we are, are those conclusions so firmly based that we may not contravene them? I reply in the negative to both these questions, and I will give you my reasons for so doing. Sir William Thomson believes that he is able to prove, by physical reasonings, "that the existing state of things on the earth, life on the earth--all geological history showing continuity of life--must be limited within some such period of time as one hundred million years" (_loc. cit._ p. 25).

The first inquiry which arises plainly is, has it ever been denied that this period _may_ be enough for the purposes of geology?

The discussion of this question is greatly embarra.s.sed by the vagueness with which the a.s.sumed limit is, I will not say defined, but indicated,-- "some such period of past time as one hundred million years." Now does this mean that it may have been two, or three, or four hundred million years? Because this really makes all the difference.[15]

[Footnote 15: Sir William Thomson implies (_loc. cit_. p. 16) that the precise time is of no consequence: "the principle is the same"; but, as the principle is admitted, the whole discussion turns on its practical results.]