g from those now produced,
were formed from time to time, the intensity of volcanic heat being
neither greater nor less than it is now."[46]

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 organization 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 analogous to those of existing plants and
animals, as to indicate, throughout, a perfect harmony of design and
unity of purpose. To assume 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."[47]

The limitations implied in these passages appear to me to constitute 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 assumption, that we may discern
somewhat of the beginning, or of the end, of this speck in space 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,[48] the
cosmical process is really simpler than the biological.

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 ot