Discourses: Biological & Geological / Essays

by Thomas Henry Huxley

Kant's further application of his views to the earth itself is to be found in his "Treatise on Physical Geography"[14] (a term under which the then unknown science of geology was included), a subject which he had studied with very great care and on which he lectured for many years. The fourth section of the first part of this Treatise is called "History of the great Changes which the Earth has formerly undergone and is still undergoing," and is, in fact, a brief and pregnant essay upon the principles of geology. Kant gives an account first "of the gradual changes which are now taking place" under the heads of such as are caused by earthquakes, such as are brought about by rain and rivers, such as are effected by the sea, such as are produced by winds and frost; and, finally, such as result from the operations of man.

[Footnote 14: Kant's Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. viii. p. 145.]

The second part is devoted to the "Memorials of the Changes which the Earth has undergone in remote Antiquity." These are enumerated as:—A. Proofs that the sea formerly covered the whole earth. B. Proofs that the sea has often been changed into dry land and then again into sea. C. A discussion of the various theories of the earth put forward by Scheuchzer, Moro, Bonnet, Woodward, White, Leibnitz, Linnaeus, and Buffon.

The third part contains an "Attempt to give a sound explanation of the ancient history of the earth."

I suppose that it would be very easy to pick holes in the details of Kant's speculations, whether cosmological, or specially telluric, in their application. But for all that, he seems to me to have been the first person to frame a complete system of geological speculation by founding the doctrine of evolution.

With as much truth as Hutton, Kant could say, "I take things just as I find them at present, and, from these, I reason with regard to that which must have been." Like Hutton, he is never tired of pointing out that "in Nature there is wisdom, system, and consistency." And, as in these great principles, so in believing that the cosmos has a reproductive operation "by which a ruined constitution may be repaired," he forestalls Hutton; while, on the other hand, Kant is true to science. He knows no bounds to geological speculation but those of the intellect. He reasons back to a beginning of the present state of things; he admits the possibility of an end.

I have said that the three schools of geological speculation which I have termed Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and Evolutionism, are commonly supposed to be antagonistic to one another; and I presume it will have become obvious that in my belief, the last is destined to swallow up the other two. But it is proper to remark that each of the latter has kept alive the tradition of precious truths.

CATASTROPHISM has insisted upon the existence of a practically unlimited bank of force, on which the theorist might draw; and it has cherished the idea of the development of the earth from a state in which its form, and the forces which it exerted, were very different from those we now know. That such difference of form and power once existed is a necessary part of the doctrine of evolution.

UNIFORMITARIANISM, on the other hand, has with equal justice insisted upon a practically unlimited bank of time, ready to discount any quantity of hypothetical paper. It has kept before our eyes the power of the infinitely little, time being granted, and has compelled us to exhaust known causes, before flying to the unknown.

To my mind there appears to be no sort of necessary theoretical antagonism between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism. On the contrary, it is very conceivable that catastrophes may be part and parcel of uniformity. Let me illustrate my case by analogy. The working of a clock is a model of uniform action; good time-keeping means uniformity of action. But the striking of the clock is essentially a catastrophe; the hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water; and, by proper arrangement, the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike at all sorts of irregular periods, never twice alike, in the intervals, force, or number of its blows. Nevertheless, all these irregular, and apparently lawless, catastrophes would be the result of an absolutely uniformitarian action; and we might have two schools of clock-theorists, one studying the hammer and the other the pendulum.