Charles Lyell and Modern Geology

by T. G. Bonney

Lyell's views on religious questions accorded, as might be expected, with the general bent of his mind. He was a member of the Church of England,[171] appreciated its services, the charm of music, and the beauty of architecture, but he failed to understand why nonconformity should entail penalties, whether legal or social. His mind was essentially undogmatic; feeling that certainty was impossible in questions where the ordinary means of verification could not be employed, he abstained from speculation and shrank from formulating his ideas, even when he was convinced of their general truth.

He was content, however, to believe where he could not prove, and to trust, not faintly, the larger hope. So he worked on in calm confidence that the honest searcher after truth would never go far astray, and that the God of Nature and of Revelation was one. He sought in this life to follow the way of righteousness, justice, and goodness, and he died in the hope of immortality.

As he disapproved of any approach to persecution on the ground of religion, so he objected strongly to the exclusive privileges which in his day were enjoyed by the Church of England, especially to its virtual monopoly of education. On this point he several times expresses himself in forcible terms; as, for instance, in these words: "The Church of England ascendency is really the power which is oppressive here, and not the monarchy, nor the aristocracy. Perhaps I feel it too sensitively as a scientific man, since our Puseyites have excluded physical science from Oxford. They are wise in their generation. The abject deference to authority advocated conscientiously by them can never survive a sound philosophical education."[172] To this party—or to the "Catholic movement," as it is now often called—in the Church of England, Lyell had a strong dislike; he deemed their claims to authority unwarrantable, their practices in many respects either childish or superstitious.

As we have endeavoured to bring out in the course of this volume the guiding principles of Lyell's work, a brief recapitulation only is needed as a conclusion. That work was regulated by two maxims: the one, "Go and see"; the other, "Prefer reason to authority." To the first maxim he gave expression more than once, while he was always inculcating it by example. Imitating the well-known saying of Demosthenes in regard to oratory, he emphatically declares that in order to form comprehensive views of the globe, the first, the second, and the third requisite is "travel."[173] What he preached, he practised; about a quarter of the last fifty years of his life must have so been spent. Of the second maxim also he was a living example. It was his practice not only to see for himself, but also to judge for himself, in all questions other than those necessarily reserved for specialists; his rule, that thought should be free from the fear of man, but subject to the laws of reasoning. As a young man he had advocated, almost single-handed, scientific views which were unpopular alike with the older authorities in geology and with the supposed friends of religion; he had protested against the invocation of catastrophic destruction and cataclysmal flood in order to clear away difficulties in the past history of the earth; in other words, against an appeal to miracle, when a cause could be found in the existing order of Nature; and he had disputed the right of any priesthood, whether Romanist or Protestant, to hold the keys of knowledge. He vindicated, against all corners, his claim—nay, his birthright—to sit, as an earnest student, at the feet of Nature to listen and to learn, as she chose to teach, whether by the acted drama of the living world or by the silent record of the rocks. He was, in short, more observer than theorist, more philosopher than poet, more a servant of reason than a dreamer of dreams.

His example is one well worthy of remembrance at the present epoch. The "whirligig of time" has brought its revenges, and has introduced into geology a class of students almost unknown in the days when Lyell was in his vigour. The developments of mineralogy and palæontology, helpful and valuable as they have been by making geology more of an exact science and, in some cases, substituting order for confusion, have tended to produce students very familiar with the apparatus of a laboratory or the collections of a museum, but not with the face of the earth. This, in itself, would not be necessarily hurtful, because the field of geology is so wide that there is room for all; but it leads sometimes to an undue exaltation of trifles, to an over-estimation of the "mint, anise, and cummin" of science, to a waste of time upon what is called the literature of the subject. This last often means either searching much chaff for a few grains of wheat, or spending much labour with the hope of discovering whether A or B was the first to confer a name upon a species; the priority perhaps being only of a few months, and that name neither particularly appropriate nor euphonious. Partly from this, partly from other causes, the importance, nay, the absolute necessity of travel, for the education of a geologist is now too often forgotten. In this science there are many questions—some of them almost fundamental—for which no perquisitions in a library, no research in a laboratory, no studies in a museum, however conscientiously patient and painstaking they may be, can be accepted as an adequate preparation; questions in which Nature is at once the best book, the best laboratory, and the best museum, and experience is the only safe teacher. What would Lyell have said to men—and such might now be named—who undertook to discuss wide geological problems with the most limited experience who, for example, posed as authorities upon what ice can or cannot do, without having even seen a glacier or speculated on the most intricate questions in petrology without having studied more than some corner of this island, or, indeed, without any precise knowledge of that? Would not he—averse as he was to speaking severely—have censured them for talking about things which they could not possibly understand, and for darkening counsel by words without knowledge?

Lyell, no doubt, had exceptionally favourable opportunities. The eldest son of a wealthy man—who contentedly acquiesced in his seeking fame rather than fortune, and supplied him with the necessary funds—his time was his own, as he had not only enough for his ordinary wants, but also could afford to travel as much as he desired. His social position was sufficiently good to facilitate his access to those who had already attained to eminence. He was blessed with a sympathetic and helpful wife, and they had no children. Thus they were perfectly free, both in the disposal of their time at home and in their peregrinations abroad. Besides these things they both enjoyed good health. Lyell's constitution was not, indeed, so robust that he could take liberties; he had to be careful about "cakes and ale," and to lead a fairly regular life,[174] but by so doing he was able to be always in good condition for his work. His eyes, in fact, were his only trouble and who is there who has not got his own "thorn in the flesh"? Lyell also was happy in all his domestic relations. His letters indicate that all the family—on both sides—were on affectionate terms, and contain few references to anxieties and troubles, such as the sickness and death of those dear to him, until his life approached the period when such trials become inevitable.

Thus free from the impediments which have beset many other men of marked ability, such as weak health and physical suffering, the wearing anxiety of an invalid wife or a sickly family, the harassing cares of pecuniary losses or of an insufficient income, Lyell had an exceptional chance. But other men have the same and do not use it; they are crippled by this burden or diverted by that allurement, and "might have been" too often becomes their epitaph. Lyell never faltered in the course which, comparatively early in life, he had marked out for himself. With that steady persistency and quiet energy which are characteristic of the Lowland Scot, he put aside all temptations and everything which threatened to interfere with his work. While neither recluse nor hermit, neither churlish nor unsociable, nay, while thoroughly enjoying witty and intellectual society, he allowed nothing to distract him from his main purpose. Convinced that there was a work which he could do, and a name which he could win, he was willing, for sake of this, to run risks and to make sacrifices. He did not indeed despise fame, but he never condescended to unworthy arts to obtain it; he held that the labourer was worthy of his hire, but with him it was always "the work first, and the wage second," whether that were coined gold or laurel wreath. He was singularly free from all petty jealousies, and ready to learn from all who could teach him anything, but he was no weakling, swayed by every breath of wind, for he reached his conclusions slowly and cautiously, and never stopped to ask whether they would be popular. "Forward, for truth's sake," that was the motto of his life.

In yet another way was Lyell felix opportunitate vitæ. In his days, geology might be compared to a country which had been for some time discovered but was not yet explored. Settlements had been established here and there; in their neighbourhood some ground had been cleared, and a firm base of operations had been secured, but around and beyond was the virgin forest, the untrodden land. At almost every step the traveller met with some fresh accession to his knowledge or a new problem to solve. He could feel the allurement of expectation or the joy of discovery even in countries otherwise well known; where now he can hope only to pick up some tiny detail or to plunge into some interminable controversy. If he now desires "fresh fields and pastures new," he must wander beyond the limits of civilised lands; for within these every crag is hammer-marked, and the official geologist is at work making maps. But not only this, Lyell lived in the days when the literature of his science was of very modest dimensions. This had its obvious drawbacks, but it had also its advantages, which, perhaps, were more than compensations. At the present day the conscientious student is in danger of being overwhelmed by the mass of papers, pamphlets and books, from all lands and in all languages—which he is expected, if not to read, at least to scramble through before venturing to write on any subject. Fifty years ago it required a very limited amount of study—often only a few hours' research—to put the geologist in possession of all that was known, so that he approached his theme very much as a mathematician attacks a problem. This burden of scientific literature, seeing that life is short and human strength is limited, threatens to stifle the progress of science itself, and we can hardly venture to expect that any more great generalisations will be made in geology or palæontology, unless a man arise who is daring enough to subordinate reading to thinking, and so strong in his grasp of principles that he can make light of details.

It has been sometimes said that Lyell was not an original thinker. Possibly not; vixere fortes ante Agamemnona is true in science no less than in national history; there were mathematicians before Newton, philosophic naturalists before Darwin, geologists before Lyell. He did not claim to have discovered the principle of uniformity. He tells us himself what had been done by his predecessors in Italy and in Scotland: but he scattered the mists of error and illusion, he placed the idea upon a firm and logical basis; in a word, he found uniformitarianism an hypothesis, and he left it a theory. That surely is a more solid gift to science, a better claim to greatness, than any number of brilliant guesses and fancies, which, after coruscating for a brief season to the amazement of a gaping crowd, explode into darkness, and are no more seen. But to a certain extent Lyell has thrown his own work into the shade. The fame of his books causes his numerous scientific papers[175] to be overlooked; particularly his contributions to the history of coalfields and to the classification of the Tertiary deposits. Moreover, into these books he was constantly incorporating new and original matter. We may be fairly familiar with the "Principles" and the "Elements," but we fail to realise until we have read his "Life" and the accounts of his two tours in America how much those books are made up from the results of actual experience and personal study in the field.

It has been also said that Lyell carried the principle of "uniformity" a little too far. But, suppose we concede this, does it amount to more than the admission that he was human? It is almost inevitable that the discoverer or prophet of a great truth, who has to encounter the storm and stress of controversy, should state his case a little too strongly, or should overlook some minor limitation. Suppose we grant that Lyell was a little too lavish in his estimate of the time at the disposal of geologists. The physicist had not then intervened, with arguments drawn from his own science, to insist that neither earth nor sun can reckon their years by myriads of myriads, and even now this controversy cannot be regarded as closed. Suppose we grant that in accepting Hutton's dictum, "I find in the earth no signs of a beginning," Lyell was misled by appearances,[176] which have since proved to be delusive, and that facts, so far as they go, point rather in the contrary direction. Well, this point also is not yet to be regarded as settled; and of one thing, at any rate, we may be sure, that if Lyell were now living he would frankly recognise new facts, as soon as they were established, and would not shrink from any modification of his theory which these might demand. Great as were his services to geology, this, perhaps, is even greater—for the lesson applies to all sciences and to all seekers after knowledge—that his career, from first to last, was the manifestation of a judicial mind, of a noble spirit, raised far above all party passions and petty considerations, of an intellect great in itself, but greater still in its grand humility; that he was a man to whom truth was as the 'pearl of price,' worthy of the devotion and, if need be, the sacrifice of a life.