Geology was at the opening of the period practically a new science. What had previously been done in it was trifling compared with what has been accomplished since, and its bearing upon questions of universal interest was not even suspected by the multitude. Darwin in his brief autobiography relates an anecdote illustrative of the primitive state of the science in his youth. ‘I,’ says he, ‘though now only sixty-seven years old, heard the Professor [of Geology in Edinburgh], in a field lecture at Salisbury Crags, discoursing on a trap-dyke, with amygdaloidal margins and the strata indurated on each side, with volcanic rocks all around us, say that it was a fissure filled with sediment from above, adding with a sneer that there were men who maintained that it had been injected from beneath in a molten condition.’ Even more striking than any aberration of an individual is the general fact that the prevailing theory at that time in geology was the ‘catastrophic,’ and a science with an unlimited command of catastrophes is no more scientific in spirit than a theology with an unlimited command of miracles.
Sir Charles Lyell
(1797-1875).
The first need of a science in this state is the accumulation of facts, and most of the older geologists of the time, like Sedgwick, Murchison and Buckland, bent themselves to this task. But the man who dealt the death-blow to the old uncritical view of geology was Sir Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology (1830-1833) marks an epoch in the science. Lyell’s central doctrine is that the past history of the earth must be inferred by ordinary processes of observation and reasoning from the present, and that it is possible to interpret ‘the testimony of the rocks’ by means of principles which we still see at work. In other words, he was a ‘uniformitarian.’ The victory of his view established ‘the reign of law’ over the field of geology, and went far towards convincing men of its universality. Assuming no causes except such as he could point to in experience, Lyell showed how the geological formations of the earth arose. According to Darwin, the effect of Lyell’s work could formerly be seen in the much more rapid progress of geology in England than in France; and the Principles of Geology was most helpful to Darwin himself.
In his Antiquity of Man (1863) Lyell touched the verge of the problem of organic life. He did so in a spirit of open-minded conservatism. He had now to guide him the great light of the Origin of Species, and even before its publication he had had glimmerings of evolution. He saw that Darwin only extended to the animal and vegetable world his own central principle. But he felt a deep objection to tracing the descent of man through some ape-like creature, and hence, while The Antiquity of Man recognises the long history of the race upon earth, it contains no avowal of belief in his descent from inferior forms of life.
Hugh Miller
(1802-1856).
Another geologist, who was rather a popular expositor than a profound man of science, was Hugh Miller. Miller was bred as a mason, and it was in the quarries where he pursued his trade (quarrying being in his time and district associated with stone-cutting) that he laid the foundation of his geological knowledge. But Miller was more than a geologist. He threw himself energetically into the contest which culminated in the Scottish Disruption of 1843; and for the last sixteen years of his life he was editor of the bi-weekly paper, The Witness, which had been established by the leaders of the Free Church movement as the organ of their opinions. The sad close of Miller’s life by suicide is well known. His health had been undermined by early hardships and by subsequent overwork, and an examination after death proved that the brain was diseased.
A great deal of Miller’s work was done for The Witness. He was a most conscientious as well as a most able journalist, and he brought to his occupation a rare literary power. There was an imaginative and poetic strain in his nature which sometimes showed itself in the weaker form of fine writing, but often gave eloquence to his descriptions and fervour to his argument. This is the living part of him; for it is certainly not their scientific value that causes Hugh Miller’s books to be still read.
Miller’s most important works are The Old Red Sandstone (1841), Footprints of the Creator (1847), My Schools and Schoolmasters (1854), and The Testimony of the Rocks (1857). In their geological aspect they merely supply the raw material of science. Miller had not the previous training requisite to give his work the highest value. He knew little or nothing about comparative anatomy, and therefore could not himself deal with the fossils he discovered. In the view of modern experts his scientific value lies in his strong common sense and his keen powers of observation amounting almost to genius. His function is to stimulate others rather than to sway thought by great discoveries. A liberal in politics, he was something of a conservative in science. The Footprints of the Creator was written in answer to the Vestiges of Creation, and its author figures as one of the numerous reconcilers of the text of Genesis with the discoveries of geology. His value in literature is higher than in science, for he wrote a style always pleasant, and sometimes eloquent. My Schools and Schoolmasters, a volume of autobiography, is one of the best of its class in the language, and is the work by which Miller will be longest remembered.
Related to geology, and even more influential upon modern thought, has been the theory of biological evolution, represented within the present period by Robert Chambers, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Thomas Huxley too, though so much of his work is of a later date, demands mention for his long polemic on behalf of evolution, begun immediately after the publication of The Origin of Species and continued till his death. The work of Sir Richard Owen the great anatomist had an important bearing upon this theory, but he was neither a Darwinian nor are his scientific writings literature.
Robert Chambers
(1802-1871).