'THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY'
We have seen that as early as the year 1817, when he visited East Anglia, Lyell began to experience vague doubts concerning the soundness of the 'Catastrophist' doctrines, which had been so strongly impressed upon him by Buckland. And these doubts in the mind of the undergraduate of twenty years of age gradually acquired strength and definiteness during his frequent geological excursions, at home and abroad, during the next ten years. At what particular date the design was formed of writing a book and attacking the predominant beliefs of his fellow-geologists, we have no means of ascertaining exactly; but from a letter written to his friend Dr Mantell, we find that at one time Lyell contemplated publishing a book in the form of 'Conversations in Geology[42],' without putting his name to it. This was probably suggested by the manner in which Copernicus and Galileo sought to circumvent theological opposition in the case of Astronomical Theory.
But this plan appears to have been soon abandoned; and by the end of the year 1827, when he had reached the age of thirty, Lyell had sent to the printer the first manuscript of the Principles of Geology, proposing that it should appear in the course of the following year in two octavo volumes[43].
A great and sudden interruption to this plan occurred however, for just at this time Lyell was engaged in writing his review for the Quarterly of Scrope's work on The Geology of Central France, and while doing this his interest was so strongly aroused by the accounts of the phenomena exhibited in the Auvergne, that he was led for a time to abandon the task of seeing his own book through the press; and, having induced Murchison and his wife to accompany him, set off on a visit to that wonderful district. He also felt that, before completing the second part of his book, he needed more information concerning the Tertiary formations, especially in Italy.
Lyell had been very early convinced of the supreme importance of travel to the geologist. In a letter to his friend Murchison he said:—'We must preach up travelling, as Demosthenes did "delivery" as the first, second and third requisites for a modern geologist, in the present adolescent state of the science[44].'
And Professor Bonney has estimated that so far did he himself practise what he preached, that no less than one fourth of the period of his active life was spent in travel[45].
The joint excursion of Lyell and Murchison to the Auvergne was destined to have great influence on the minds of these pioneers in geological research; both became satisfied from their studies that, with respect to the excavation of the valleys of the country, Scrope's conclusions were irresistible; and in a joint memoir this position was stoutly maintained by them.
It is interesting to notice the impression made by these two great geologists on one another during this joint expedition.
Murchison wrote that he had seen in Lyell 'the most scrupulous and minute fidelity of observation combined with close application in the closet and ceaseless exertion in the field[46].'
But I recollect that Lyell once told me how difficult Murchison found it to restrain himself from impatience, when his companion's attention was drawn aside by his entomological ardour. In an early letter, indeed, we find that Murchison often expressed a wish that Lyell's sisters had been with them to attend to the insect-collecting and thus leave Lyell free for geological work[47].
On the other hand, Lyell informed me that Murchison had rendered him a great service in showing how much a geologist could accomplish by taking advantage of riding on horseback, and he declared in his letters that he 'never had a better man to work with than Murchison'; nevertheless he ridiculed his 'keep-moving-go-it-if-it-kills-you' system as—quoting from the elder Matthews—he called it[48].
On parting from Murchison and his wife, after the Auvergne tour, Lyell proceeded to Italy and for more than a year he was busy studying the Tertiary deposits of Lombardy, the Roman states, Naples and Sicily, and conferring with the Italian geologists and conchologists. Thus it came about that he was not free to resume the task of seeing the Principles through the press till February 1829.
Immediately after his return to England Lyell was compelled, with the assistance of his companion Murchison, to defend their conclusions concerning the excavations of valleys by rivers from a determined attack of Conybeare, who was backed up by Buckland and Greenough; the old geologists endeavoured to prove that the river Thames had never had any part in the work of forming its valley[49]. It is interesting to find that, on this occasion, Sedgwick, who was in the chair, was so far influenced by the arguments brought forward by the young men, as to lend some aid to those who had come to be called the 'Fluvialists,' in contradistinction to the 'Diluvialists'; he went so far as to suggest that, with regard to the floods which the Catastrophist invoked, it would be wiser at present to 'doubt and not dogmatise[50].'
To what extent the MS. of the Principles, sent to the publisher in 1827, was added to and altered two years later, we have no means of knowing; but that the work was to a great extent rewritten would appear from a letter sent to Murchison by Lyell, just before his return to England. In it, he says:—
'My work is in part written, and all planned. It will not pretend to give even an abstract of all that is known in geology, but it will endeavour to establish the principle of reasoning in the science; and all my geology will come in as illustration of my views of those principles, and as evidence strengthening the system necessarily arising out of the admission of such principles, which, as you know, are neither more nor less than that no causes whatever have from the earliest time to which we can look back to the present, ever acted, but those that are now acting, and that they never acted with different degrees of energy from that which they now exert'; but in 1833, in dedicating his third volume to Murchison, he refers to the MS., completed in 1827, as a 'first sketch only of my Principles of Geology[51].'
At one period, Lyell contemplated again delaying publication till he had visited Iceland. In the end, however, after declining to act as professor of geology in the new 'University of London' (University College), he set himself down steadily to the task of seeing the book through the press. It was at this time that Lyell experienced a singular piece of good fortune, comparable with that which befel Darwin thirty years afterwards, by his book falling into the hands of a very sympathetic reviewer. John Murray, who had undertaken the publication of the Principles, was also the publisher of the Quarterly Review, and Lockhart, the editor of that publication, undertook that an early notice of the book should appear, if the proof-sheets were sent to the reviewer. Buckland and Sedgwick were successively approached on the subject of reviewing Lyell's book, but both declined on the ground of 'want of time'; though I strongly suspect that their real motive in refusing the task was a disinclination to attack—as they would doubtless have felt themselves compelled to do—a valued personal friend. Conybeare was, fortunately, thought to be out of the question, as Lockhart said he 'promises and does not perform in the reviewing line.'
Very fortunately at this juncture, Lockhart, who was in the habit of attending the Geological Society and listening to the debates (for as he used to say to his friends whom he took with him from the Athenaeum, 'though I don't care for geology, yet I do like to see the fellows fight') thought of Scrope. Although he had practically retired from the active work of the Geological Society at this time, Scrope was known as an effective writer, and, happily for the progress of science, he undertook the review of Lyell's book.
Although, of course, Lyell had no voice in the choice of a reviewer for the Principles, yet he could not fail to rejoice in the fact that it had fallen to his friend, who so strongly sympathised with his views, to introduce it to the public. While the book was being printed and the review of it was in preparation, a number of letters passed between Lyell and Scrope, and the latter, before his death, gave me the carefully treasured epistles of his friend, with the drafts of some of his replies. These letters, some of which have been published, throw much light on the difficulties with which Lyell had to contend, and the manner in which he strove to meet them.
As we have already seen, many of the leaders in the Geological Society at that day besides being strongly inclined to Wernerian and Cataclysmal views, had an honest, however mistaken, dread lest geological research should lead to results, apparently not in harmony with the accounts given in Genesis of the Creation and the Flood. Lyell, as this correspondence shows, was most anxious to avoid exciting either scientific or theological prejudice. He wrote, 'I conceived the idea five or six years ago' (that is in 1824 or 5) that 'if ever the Mosaic geology could be set down without giving offence, it would be in an historical sketch[52],' and 'I was afraid to point the moral ... about Moses. Perhaps I should have been tenderer about the Koran[53].' He further says 'full half of my history and comments was cut out, and even many facts, because either I, or Stokes, or Broderip, felt that it was anticipating twenty or thirty years of the march of honest feeling to declare it undisguisedly[54].'
Under these circumstances the publication by Scrope of his two long notices of the Principles in the Review which was regarded as the champion of orthodoxy, was most opportune. A very clear sketch was given in these reviews of the leading facts and the general line of argument; and at the same time the allowing of prejudice or prepossession to influence the judgment on such questions was very gently deprecated[55].
But Scrope's reviews did not by any means consist of an indiscriminate advocacy of Lyell's views. In one respect—that of the great importance of subaerial action as contrasted with marine action—Scrope's views were at this time in advance of those of Lyell, and he called especial attention to the direct effects produced by rain in the earth-pillars of Botzen. These Lyell had not at the time seen, but took an early opportunity of visiting. Scrope, too, was naturally much more speculative in his modes of thought than Lyell, and argued for the probably greater intensity in past times of the agencies causing geological change, and for the legitimacy of discussing the mode of origin of the earth. Lyell, like Hutton, argued that he saw 'no signs of a beginning,' but his characteristic candour is shown when he wrote:—
'All I ask is, that at any given period of the past, don't stop enquiry, when puzzled, by a reference to a "beginning," which is all one with "another state of nature," as it appears to me. But there is no harm in your attacking me, provided you point out that it is the proof I deny, not the probability of a beginning[56].'
Lyell clearly foresaw the opposition with which his book would be met and wisely resolved not to be drawn into controversy. He wrote:—
'I daresay I shall not keep my resolution, but I will try to do it firmly, that when my book is attacked ... I will not go to the expense of time in pamphleteering. I shall work steadily on Vol. II, and afterwards, if the work succeeds, at edition 2, and I have sworn to myself that I will not go to the expense of giving time to combat in controversy. It is interminable work[57].'
In order to maintain this resolve, Lyell, the moment the last sheet of the volume was corrected, set off for a four months' tour in France and Spain. While absent from England, he heard little of what was going on in the scientific world; but, on his return, Lyell was told by Murray that in the three months before the Quarterly Review article appeared, 650 copies of the volume, out of the 1500 printed, had been sold, and he anticipated the disposal of many more, when the review came out. This expectation was realised and led to the issue of a second edition of the first volume, of larger size and in better type.
Lyell, from the first, had seen that it would be impossible to avoid the conclusion that the principles which he was advancing with respect to the inorganic world must be equally applicable to the organic world. At first he only designed to touch lightly on this subject, in the concluding chapters of his first volume, and to devote the second volume to the application of his principles to the interpretation of the geological record. He, however, found it impossible to include the chapters on changes in the organic world in the first volume and then decided to make them the opening portion of the second volume.
It is evident, however, that as the work progressed, the interest of the various questions bearing on the origin of species grew in his mind. While Lyell found it impossible to accept the explanation of origin suggested by Lamarck, he was greatly influenced by the arguments in favour of evolution advanced by that naturalist; and as he wrote chapter after chapter on the questions of the modification and variability of species, on hybridity, on the modes of distribution of plants and animals, and their consequent geographical relations, and discussed the struggle of existence going on everywhere in the organic world, in its bearings on the question of 'centres of creation,' he found the second volume growing altogether beyond reasonable limits. His intense interest in this part of his work is shown by his remark, 'If I have succeeded so well with inanimate matter, surely I shall make a lively thing when I have chiefly to talk of living beings[58]?'
By December 1831, Lyell had come to the resolution to publish the chapters of his work which dealt with the changes going on in the organic world as a volume by itself. This second volume of the Principles he gracefully dedicated to his friend Broderip, who had rendered him such valuable assistance in all questions connected with Natural History.
This volume appeared in January 1832, at the same time that a second edition of the first volume was also issued. The reception of the second volume by the public appears to have been not less favourable than that of the first.
In March 1831, Lyell had accepted the Professorship of Geology in King's College, London. In addition to his desire to aid in the work of scientific education, in which he had always taken so great an interest, Lyell seems to have felt that the task of presenting his views in a popular form would be aided by his having to expound them to a miscellaneous audience. For two years, these lectures were delivered, and attracted much attention; the favourable impressions produced by them on a man of the world have been recorded by Abraham Hayward, and on more scientific thinkers by Harriet Martineau.
The third volume of the Principles was not completed till a second edition of the second volume had been issued. This third volume, appearing in May 1833, dealt with the classification of the Tertiary strata, to which Lyell had devoted so much labour, studying conchology under Deshayes, and visiting all the chief Tertiary deposits of Europe for the collection of materials. The application of the principles enunciated in the two earlier volumes to the unravelling of the past history of the globe, constituted the chief task undertaken in this part of the great work. But not a few controversial questions were dealt with, and the famous 'metamorphic theory' was advanced in opposition to the Wernerian hypothesis of 'primitive formations.' The volume was appropriately dedicated to Murchison, who had been Lyell's companion in the famous Auvergne excursion, which had produced such an effect on his mind.
Within a twelvemonth, a third edition of the whole work in four small volumes was issued, and in the end no less than twelve editions of the Principles of Geology were issued, in addition to portions separately published under the titles of Manual, Elements, and Student's Elements of Geology, of all of which a number of editions have appeared. Lyell was always the most painstaking and conscientious of authors. He declared 'I must write what will be read[59],' and he spared no labour in securing accuracy of statement combined with elegance of diction. His father, a good classical and Italian scholar, had done much towards assisting him to attain literary excellence, and at Oxford, where he took a good degree in classics, he was greatly impressed by the style of Gibbon's writings, and practised both prose and poetic compositions with great diligence.
Both Darwin and Huxley always maintained that the real charm and power of Lyell's work are only to be found in the first edition[60]. As new discoveries were made or more effective illustrations of his views presented themselves to his mind, passage after passage in the work was modified by the author or replaced by others; and the effects of these constant changes—however necessary and desirable in themselves—could not fail to be detrimental to the book as a work of art. He who would form a just idea of the greatness of Lyell's masterpiece, must read the first edition, of course bearing in mind, all the while, the state of science at the time it was written.