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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature

THE COMING OF EVOLUTION







Cambridge University Press
London: Fetter Lane, E.C.
C. F. Clay, Manager

[Illustration]

Edinburgh: 100, Princes Street
London: H. K. Lewis, 136, Gower Street, W.C.
Berlin: A. Asher and Co.
Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Bombay and Calcutta: Macmillan and Co., Ltd.

All rights reserved



[Illustration: Charles Darwin]


THE COMING OF EVOLUTION

The Story of a Great Revolution in Science

by

JOHN W. JUDD
C.B., LL.D., F.R.S.

Formerly Professor of Geology and
Dean of the Royal College of Science







Cambridge:
at the University Press
1910

Cambridge:
Printed by John Clay, M.A.
At the University Press


    _With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design
    on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest
    known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_




CONTENTS


CHAP.                                                             PAGE

   I.  Introductory                                                  1

  II.  Origin of the Idea of Evolution                               5

 III.  The Development of the Idea of Evolution to the
       Inorganic World                                              14

  IV.  The Triumph of Catastrophism over Evolution                  20

   V.  The Revolt of Scrope and Lyell against Catastrophism         33

  VI.  _The Principles of Geology_                                  55

 VII.  The Influence of Lyell's Works                               68

VIII.  Early Attempts to establish the Doctrine of Evolution
       for the Organic World                                        82

  IX.  Darwin and Wallace: The Theory of Natural Selection          95

   X.  _The Origin of Species_                                     115

  XI.  The Influence of Darwin's Works                             136

 XII.  The Place of Lyell and Darwin in History                    149

       Notes                                                       160

       Index                                                       165


PLATES

Charles Darwin                                           _Frontispiece_

G. Poulett Scrope                                       _to face p. 35_

Charles Lyell                                               "   "   41

Alfred R. Wallace                                           "   "  110




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


When the history of the Nineteenth Century--'the Wonderful Century,' as
it has, not inaptly, been called--comes to be written, a foremost place
must be assigned to that great movement by which evolution has become
the dominant factor in scientific progress, while its influence has been
felt in every sphere of human speculation and effort. At the beginning
of the Century, the few who ventured to entertain evolutionary ideas
were regarded by their scientific contemporaries, as wild visionaries or
harmless 'cranks'--by the world at large, as ignorant 'quacks' or
'designing atheists.' At the end of the Century, evolution had not only
become the guiding principle of naturalists, but had profoundly
influenced every branch of physical science; at the same time,
suggesting new trains of thought and permeating the language of
philologists, historians, sociologists, politicians--and even of
theologians.

How has this revolution in thought--the greatest which has occurred in
modern times--been brought about? What manner of men were they who were
the leaders in this great movement? What the influences that led them to
discard the old views and adopt new ones? And, under what circumstances
were they able to produce the works which so profoundly affected the
opinions of the day? These are the questions with which I propose to
deal in the following pages.

It has been my own rare good fortune to have enjoyed the friendship of
all the great leaders in this important movement--of Huxley, Hooker,
Scrope, Wallace, Lyell and Darwin--and, with some of them, I was long on
terms of affectionate intimacy. From their own lips I have learned of
incidents, and listened to anecdotes, bearing on the events of a
memorable past. Would that I could hope to bring before my readers, in
all their nobility, a vivid picture of the characteristics of the men to
whom science and the world owe so much!

For it is not only by their intellectual greatness that we are
impressed. Every man of science is proud, and justly proud, of the
grandeur of character, the unexampled generosity, the modesty and
simplicity which distinguished these pioneers in a great cause. It is
unfortunately true, that the votaries of science--like the cultivators
of art and literature--have sometimes so far forgotten their high
vocation, as to have been more careful about the priority of their
personal claims than of the purity of their own motives--they have
sometimes, it must be sadly admitted, allowed self-interest to obscure
the interests of science. But in the story we have to relate there are
no'regrettable incidents' to be deplored; never has there occurred any
event that marred the harmony in this band of fellow-workers, striving
towards a great ideal. So noble, indeed, was the great central
figure--Charles Darwin--that his senior Lyell and all his juniors were
bound to him by the strongest ties of admiration, respect and affection;
while he, in his graceful modesty, thought more of them than of himself,
of the results of their labours rather than of his own great
achievement.

It is not, as sometimes suggested, the striking out of new ideas which
is of the greatest importance in the history of science, but rather the
accumulation of observations and experiments, the reasonings based upon
these, and the writings in which facts and reasonings are presented to
the world--by which a merely suggestive hypothesis becomes a vivifying
theory--that really count in making history.

Talking with Matthew Arnold in 1871, he laughingly remarked to me 'I
cannot understand why you scientific people make such a fuss about
Darwin. Why it's all in Lucretius!' On my replying, 'Yes! Lucretius
guessed what Darwin proved,' he mischievously rejoined 'Ah! that only
shows how much greater Lucretius really was,--for he divined a truth,
which Darwin spent a life of labour in groping for.'

Mr Alfred Russel Wallace has so well and clearly set forth the essential
difference between the points of view of the cultivators of literature
and science in this matter, that I cannot do better than to quote his
words. They are as follows:--

    'I have long since come to see that no one deserves either
    praise or blame for the _ideas_ that come to him, but only for
    the _actions_ resulting therefrom. Ideas and beliefs are
    certainly not voluntary acts. They come to us--we hardly know
    _how_ or _whence_, and once they have got possession of us we
    cannot reject them or change them at will. It is for the common
    good that the promulgation of ideas should be free--uninfluenced
    by either praise or blame, reward or punishment.'

    'But the _actions_ which result from our ideas may properly be
    so treated, because it is only by patient thought and work that
    new ideas, if good and true, become adopted and utilized; while,
    if untrue or if not adequately presented to the world, they are
    rejected or forgotten[1].'[A]

_Ideas_ of Evolution, both in the Organic and the Inorganic world,
existed but remained barren for thousands of years. Yet by the labours
of a band of workers in last century, these ideas, which were but the
dreams of poets and the guesses of philosophers, came to be the accepted
creed of working naturalists, while they have profoundly affected
thought and language in every branch of human enterprise.

[A] For References see the end of the volume.




CHAPTER II

ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF EVOLUTION


In all ages, and in all parts of the world, we find that primitive man
has delighted in speculating on the birth of the world in which he
lives, on the origin of the living things that surround him, and
especially on the beginnings of the race of beings to which he himself
belongs. In a recent very interesting essay[2], the author of _The
Golden Bough_ has collected, from the records of tradition, history and
travel, a valuable mass of evidence concerning the legends which have
grown out of these speculations. Myths of this kind would appear to fall
into two categories, each of which may not improbably be associated with
the different pursuits followed by the uncivilised races of mankind.

Tillers of the soil, impressed as they must have been by the great
annual miracle of the outburst of vegetable life as spring returns,
naturally adopted one of these lines of speculation. From the dead,
bare ground they witnessed the upspringing of all the wondrous beauty of
the plant-world, and, in their ignorance of the chemistry of vegetable
life, they imagined that the herbs, shrubs and trees are all alike built
up out of the materials contained in the soil from which they grow. The
recognition of the fact that animals feed on plants, or on one another,
led to the obvious conclusion that the _ultimate_ materials of animal,
as well as of vegetable, structures were to be sought for in the soil.
And this view was confirmed by the fact that, when life ceases in plants
or animals, all alike are reduced to 'dust' and again become a part of
the soil--returning 'earth to earth.' In groping therefore for an
explanation of the origin of living things, what could be more natural
than the supposition that the first plants and animals--like those now
surrounding us--were made and fashioned from the soil, dust or
earth--all had been 'clay in the hands of a potter.' The widely diffused
notion that man himself must have been moulded out of _red_ clay is
probably accounted for by the colour of our internal organs.

Thus originated a large class of legendary stories, many of them of a
very grotesque character. Even in many mediaeval sculptures, in this
country and on the continent, the Deity is represented as moulding with
his hands the semblance of a human figure out of a shapeless lump of
clay.

But among the primitive hunters and herdsmen a very different line of
speculation appears to have originated, for by their occupations they
were continually brought into contact with an entirely different class
of phenomena. They could not but notice that the creatures which they
hunted or tended, and slew, presented marked resemblances to
themselves--in their structures, their functions, their diseases, their
dispositions, and their habits. When dogs and horses became the servants
and companions of men, and when various beasts and birds came to be kept
as pets, the mental and even the moral processes characterising the
intelligence of these animals must have been seen by their masters to be
identical in kind with those of their own minds. Do we not even at the
present day compare human characteristics with those of animals, the
courage of the lion, the cunning of the fox, the fidelity of the dog,
and the parental affection of the bird? And the men, who depended for
their very existence on studying the ways of various animals, could not
have been less impressed by these qualities than are we.

Mr Frazer has shown how, from such considerations, the legends
concerning the relations of certain tribes of men with particular
species of animals have arisen, and thus the cults of'sacred animals'
and of 'totemism' have been gradually developed. From comparisons of
human courage, sagacity, swiftness, strength or perseverance, with
similar qualities displayed by certain animals, it was an easy
transition to the idea that such characteristics were derived by
inheritance.

In the absence of any exact knowledge of anatomy and physiology, the
resemblances of animals to themselves would quite outbulk the
differences in the eyes of primitive men, and the idea of close
relationship in blood does not appear to have been regarded with
distaste. In their origin and in their destiny, no distinction was drawn
between man and what we now designate as the 'lower' animals. Primitive
man not only feels no repugnance to such kinship:--

    'But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
    His faithful dog shall hear him company[3].'

It should perhaps be remembered, too, that, in the breeding of domestic
animals, the great facts of heredity and variation could not fail to
have been noticed, and must have given rise to reflection and
speculation. The selection of the best animals for breeding purposes,
and the consequent improvement of their stock, may well have suggested
the transmutation of one kind of animal into a different kind, just as
the crossing of different kinds of animals seems to have suggested the
possible existence of centaurs, griffins and other monstrous forms.

How early the principles of variation and heredity, and even the
possibility of improving breeds by selection, must have been appreciated
by early men is illustrated by the old story of the way in which the
wily Jacob made an attempt--however futile were the means he adopted--to
cheat his employer Laban[4].

Yet, in spite of observed tendencies to variation among animals and
plants, early man must have been convinced of the existence of distinct
kinds ('species') in both the vegetable and animal worlds; he recognised
that plants of definite kinds yielded particular fruits, and that
different kinds of animals did not breed promiscuously with one another,
but that, pairing each with its own kind, all gave rise to like
offspring, and thus arose the idea of distinct'species' of plants and
animals.

It must be remembered, however, that for a long time 'the world' was
believed to be limited to a few districts surrounding the Eastern
Mediterranean, and the kinds or'species' of animals and plants were
supposed to number a few scores or at most hundreds. This being the
case, the sudden stocking of 'the world' with its complement of animals
and plants would be thought a comparatively simple operation, and the
violent destruction of the whole a scarcely serious result. Even the
possibility of the preservation of pairs of all the different species,
in a ship of moderate dimensions, was one that was easily entertained
and was not calculated to awaken either surprise or incredulity.

But how different is the problem as it now presents itself to us! In the
year 1900 Professor S. H. Vines of Oxford estimated that the number of
'species' of plants that have been described could be little short of
200,000, and that future studies, especially of the lower microscopic
forms, would probably bring that number up to 300,000[5]. Last year, Mr
A. E. Shipley of Cambridge, basing his estimate on the earlier one of Dr
Guenther, came to the conclusion that the number of described animals
must also exceed 300,000[6]. On the lowest estimate then we must place
the number of known species of plants and animals, living on the globe,
as 600,000! And if we consider the numbers of new forms of plants and
animals that every year are being described by naturalists--about 1500
plants and 1200 animals--if we take into account the inaccessible or as
yet unvisited portions of the earth's surface, the very imperfectly
known depths of the sea, and, in addition to these, the almost infinite
varieties of minute and microscopic forms, I think every competent judge
would consider _a million_ as being probably an estimate below, rather
than above, the number of'species' now existing on the earth!

While some of these species are very widely distributed over the earth's
surface, or in the waters of the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers, there
are others which are as strikingly limited in their range. Many of the
myriad forms of insect-life pass their whole existence, and are
dependent for food, on a particular species of plant. Not a few animals
and plants are parasitical, and can only live in the interior or on the
outside of other plants and animals.

It will be seen from these considerations that in attempting to decide
between the two hypotheses of the _origin_ of species--the only ones
ever suggested--namely the fashioning of them out of dead matter, or
their descent with modification from pre-existing forms, we are dealing
with a problem of much greater complexity than could possibly have been
imagined by the early speculators on the subject.

The two strongly contrasted hypotheses to which we have referred are
often spoken of as 'creation' and 'evolution.' But this is an altogether
illegitimate use of these terms. By _whatever method_ species of plants
or animals come into existence, they may be rightly said to be
'created.' We speak of the existing plants and animals as having been
created, although we well know them to have been 'evolved' from seeds,
eggs and other 'germs'--and indeed from those excessively minute and
simple structures known as 'cells.' Lyell and Darwin, as we shall
presently see, though they were firmly convinced that species of plants
and animals were slowly developed and not suddenly manufactured, wrote
constantly and correctly of the 'creation' of new forms of life.

The idea of 'descent with modification,' derived from the early
speculations of hunters and herdsmen, is really a much nobler and more
beautiful conception of 'creation' than that of the 'fashioning out of
clay,' which commended itself to the primitive agriculturalists.

Lyell writing to his friend John Herschel, who like himself believed in
the derivation of new species from pre-existing ones by the action of
secondary causes, wrote in 1836:--

    When I first came to the notion,... of a succession of
    extinction of species, and creation of new ones, going on
    perpetually now, and through an indefinite period of the past,
    and to continue for ages to come, all in accommodation to the
    changes which must continue in the inanimate and habitable
    earth, the idea struck me as the grandest which I had ever
    conceived, so far as regards the attributes of the Presiding
    Mind[7].'

And Darwin concludes his presentment of the doctrine of evolution in the
_Origin of Species_ in 1859 with the following sentence:--

    'There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several
    powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a
    few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone
    cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple
    a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
    been, and are being, evolved[8].'

Compare with these suggestions the ideas embodied in the following
lines--ideas of which the crudeness cannot be concealed by all the
witchery of Milton's immortal verse:--

            'The Earth obey'd, and straight,
    Op'ning her fertile womb, teem'd at a birth
    Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
    Limb'd and full grown. Out of the ground up rose
    As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons
    In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
    Among the trees they rose, they walk'd;
    The cattle in the fields and meadows green:
    Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
    Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
    The grassy clods now calv'd; now half appear'd
    The tawny lion, pawing to get free
    His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds,
    And rampant shakes his brinded mane[9].'

Can anyone doubt for a moment which is the grander view of
'Creation'--that embodied in Darwin's prose, or the one so strikingly
pictured in Milton's poetry?

We see then that the two ideas of the method of creation, dimly
perceived by early man, have at last found clear and definite expression
from these two authors--Milton and Darwin. It is a singular coincidence
that these two great exponents of the rival hypotheses were both
students in the same University of Cambridge and indeed resided in the
same foundation--and that not one of the largest of that
University--namely Christ's College.




CHAPTER III

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA OF EVOLUTION TO THE INORGANIC WORLD


We have seen in the preceding chapter that, with respect to the origin
of plants and animals--including man himself--two very distinct lines of
speculation have arisen; these two lines of thought may be expressed by
the terms'manufacture'--literally making by hand, and 'development' or
'evolution,'--a gradual unfolding from simpler to more complex forms.
Now with respect to the _inorganic_ world two parallel hypotheses of
'creation' have arisen, like those relating to _organic_ nature; but in
the former case the determining factor in the choice of ideas has been,
not the avocations of the primitive peoples, but the nature of their
surroundings.

The dwellers in the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris could not but be
impressed by the great and destructive floods to which those regions
were subject; and the inhabitants of the shores and islands of the
Aegean Sea, and of the Italian peninsula, were equally conversant with
the devastations wrought by volcanic outbursts and earthquake shocks. As
great districts were seen to be depopulated by these catastrophies,
might not some even more violent cataclysm of the same kind actually
destroy all mankind, with the animals and plants, in the comparatively
small area then known as 'the world'? The great flood, of which all
these nations appear to have retained traditions, was regarded as only
the last of such destructive cataclysms; and, in this way, there
originated the myth of successive destructions of the face of the earth,
each followed by the creation of new stocks of plants and animals. This
is the doctrine now known as 'Catastrophism,' which we find prevalent in
the earliest traditions and writings of India, Babylonia, Syria and
Greece.

But in ancient Egypt quite another class of phenomena was conspicuously
presented to the early philosophers of the country. Instead of sudden
floods and terrible displays of volcanic and earthquake violence, they
witnessed the annual gentle rise and overflowings of their grand river,
with its beneficent heritage of new soil; and they soon learned to
recognise that Egypt itself--so far as the delta was concerned--was 'the
gift of the Nile.'

From the contemplation of these phenomena, the Egyptian sages were
gradually led to entertain the idea that all the features of the
earth--as they knew it--might have been similarly produced through the
slow and constant action of the causes now seen in operation around
them. This idea was incorporated in a myth, which was suggested by the
slow and gradual transformation of an egg into a perfect, growing
organism. The birth of the world was pictured as an act of incubation,
and male and female deities were invented to play the part of parents to
the infant world. By Pythagoras, who resided for more than twenty years
in Egypt, these ideas were introduced to the Greek philosophers, and
from that time 'Catastrophism' found a rival in the new doctrine which
we shall see has been designated under the names of 'Continuity,'
'Uniformitarianism' or 'Evolution.' How, from the first crude notions of
evolution, successive thinkers developed more just and noble conceptions
on the subject, has been admirably shown by Professor Osborn in his
_From the Greeks to Darwin_ and by Mr Clodd in his _Pioneers of
Evolution_.

Poets, from Empedocles and Lucretius to Goethe and Tennyson, have sought
in their verses to illustrate the beauty of evolutionary ideas; and
philosophers, from Aristotle and Strabo to Kant and Herbert Spencer,
have recognised the principle of evolution as harmonising with, and
growing out of, the highest conceptions of science. Yet it was not till
the Nineteenth Century that any serious attempts were made to establish
the hypothesis of evolution as a definite theory, based on sound
reasoning from careful observation.

It is true that there were men, in advance of their age, who in some
cases anticipated to a certain extent this work of establishing the
doctrine of evolution on a firm foundation. Thus in Italy, the earliest
home of so many sciences, a Carmelite friar, Generelli, reasoning on
observations made by his compatriots Fracastoro and Leonardo da Vinci in
the Sixteenth Century, Steno and Scilla in the Seventeenth, and Lazzaro
Moro and Marsilli in the Eighteenth Century, laid the foundations of a
rational system of geology in a work published in 1749 which was
characterised alike by courage and eloquence. In France, the illustrious
Nicolas Desmarest, from his study of the classical region of the
Auvergne, was able to show, in 1777, how the river valleys of that
district had been carved out by the rivers that flow in them. Nor were
there wanting geologists with similar previsions in Germany and
Switzerland.

But none of these early exponents of geological theory came so near to
anticipating the work of the Nineteenth Century as did the illustrious
James Hutton, whose 'Theory of the Earth,' a first sketch of which was
published in 1785, was a splendid exposition of evolution as applied to
the inorganic world. Unfortunately, Hutton's theory was linked to the
extravagancies of what was known at that day as 'Vulcanism' or
'Plutonism,' in contradistinction to the 'Neptunism' of Werner. Hutton,
while rejecting the Wernerian notion of "the aqueous precipitation of
basalt," maintained the equally fanciful idea that the consolidation of
all strata--clays, sandstones, conglomerates, limestones and even
rock-salt--must be ascribed to the action of heat, and that even the
formation of chalk-flints and the silicification of fossil wood were due
to the injection of molten silica!

What was still more unfortunate in Hutton's case was that, in his
enthusiasm, he used expressions which led to his being charged with
heresy and even with being an enemy of religion. His writings were
further so obscure in style as often to lead to misconception as to
their true meaning, while his great work--so far as the fragment which
was published goes--contained few records of original observations on
which his theory was based.

Dr Fitton has pointed out very striking coincidences between the
writings of Generelli and those of Hutton, and has suggested that the
latter may have derived his views from the eloquent Italian friar[10].
But for this suggestion, I think that there is no real foundation.
Darwin and Wallace, as we shall see later, were quite unconscious of
their having been forestalled in the theory of Natural Selection by Dr
Wells and Patrick Matthew; and Hutton, like his successor Lyell, in all
probability arrived, quite independently, and by different lines of
reasoning, at conclusions identical with those of Generelli and
Desmarest.

Although, as we shall see, Hutton failed to greatly influence the
scientific thought of his day, yet all will now agree with Lyell that
'Hutton laboured to give fixed principles to geology, as Newton had
succeeded in doing to astronomy[11]'; and with Zittel that '_Hutton's
Theory of the Earth_ is one of the masterpieces in the history of
geology[12].'




CHAPTER IV

THE TRIUMPH OF CATASTROPHISM OVER EVOLUTION


There is no fact in the history of science which is more certain than
that those great pioneers of Evolution in the Inorganic
world--Generelli, Desmarest and Hutton--utterly failed to recommend
their doctrines to general acceptance; and that, at the beginning of
last century, everything in the nature of evolutionary ideas was almost
universally discredited--alike by men of science and the world at large.

The causes of the neglect and opprobrium which befel all evolutionary
teachings are not difficult to discover. The old Greek philosophers saw
no more reason to doubt the possibility of creation by evolution, than
by direct mechanical means. But, on the revival of learning in Europe,
evolution was at once confronted by the cosmogonies of Jewish and
Arabian writers, which were incorporated in sacred books; and not only
were the ideas of the sudden making and destruction of the world and all
things in it regarded as revealed truth, but the periods of time
necessary for evolution could not be admitted by those who believed the
beginning of the world to have been recent, and its end to be imminent.
Thus 'Catastrophic' ideas came to be regarded as _orthodox_, and
evolutionary ones as utterly irreligious and damnable.

There are few more curious facts in the history of science than the
contrast between the reception of the teaching of the Saxon professor
Werner, and those of Hutton, the Scotch philosopher, his great rival.
While the enthusiastic disciples of the former carried their master's
ideas everywhere, acting with missionary zeal and fervour, and teaching
his doctrines almost as though they were a divine revelation, the
latter, surrounded by a few devoted friends, saw his teachings
everywhere received with persistent misrepresentation, theological
vituperation or contemptuous neglect. Even in Edinburgh itself, one of
Werner's pupils dominated the teaching of the University for half a
century, and established a society for the propagation of the views
which Hutton so strongly opposed.

When it is remembered that Hutton wrote at a time when 'heresy-hunting'
in this country had been excited to such a dangerous extent, through the
excesses of the French Revolution, that his contemporary, Priestley, had
been hounded from his home and country for proclaiming views which at
that time were regarded as unscriptural, it becomes less difficult to
understand the prejudice that was excited against the gentle and modest
philosopher of Edinburgh.

We have employed the term 'Catastrophism' to indicate the views which
were prevalent at the beginning of last century concerning the origin of
the rock-masses of the globe and their fossil contents. These views were
that at a number of successive epochs--of which the age of Noah was the
latest--great revolutions had taken place on the earth's surface; that
during each of these cataclysms all living things were destroyed; and
that, after an interval, the world was restocked with fresh assemblages
of plants and animals, to be destroyed in turn and entombed in the
strata at the next revolution.

Whewell, in 1830, contrasted this teaching with that of Hutton and Lyell
in the following passage:--'These two opinions will probably for some
time divide the geological world into two sects, which may perhaps be
designated the "Uniformitarians" and the "Catastrophists." The latter
has undoubtedly been of late the prevalent doctrine.' It is interesting
to note, as showing the confidence felt in their tenets by the
'Catastrophists' of that day, that Whewell adds 'We conceive that Mr
Lyell will find it a harder task than he imagines to overturn the
established belief[13]!'

Some authors have suggested that the doctrine taught by Generelli,
Desmarest and Hutton, and later by Scrope and Lyell, for which Whewell
proposed the somewhat cumbrous term 'Uniformitarianism,' but which was
perhaps better designated by Grove in 1866 as 'Continuity[14],' was
distinct from, and subsidiary to, Evolution--and this view could claim
for a time the support of a very great authority.

In 1869, Huxley delivered an address to the Geological Society, in which
he postulated the existence of 'three more or less contradictory systems
of geological thought,' under the names of 'Catastrophism,'
'Uniformitarianism' and 'Evolution.' In this essay, distinguished by all
his wonderful lucidity and forceful logic, Huxley sought to establish
the position that evolution is a doctrine, distinct from and _in advance
of_ that of uniformitarianism, and that Hutton and Playfair--'and to a
less extent Lyell'--had acted unwisely in deprecating the extension of
Geology into enquiries concerning 'the beginning of things[15].'

But there is no doubt that Huxley at a later period was led to qualify,
and indeed to largely modify, the views maintained in that address. In a
footnote to an essay written in April 1887, he asserts 'What I mean by
"evolutionism" is consistent and thoroughgoing uniformitarianism'; and
in the same year he wrote in his _Reception of the Origin of
Species_[16]: 'Consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution, as
much in the organic as in the inorganic world[17].'

It is not difficult to trace the causes of this change in the attitude
of mind with which Huxley regarded the