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."[6]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, vol. i. pp. 16, 17.]

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."[7]

[Footnote 7: _Ibid._, vol. i. p. 223.]

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 title
than Catastrophism to call itse