XI.
GEOLOGICAL REFORM.
"A great reform in geological speculation seems now to have become necessary."
"It is quite certain that a great mistake has been made,—that British popular geology at the present time is in direct opposition to the principles of Natural Philosophy."[39]
In reviewing the course of geological thought during the past year, for the purpose of discovering those matters to which I might most fitly direct your attention in the Address which it now becomes my duty to deliver from the Presidential Chair, the two somewhat alarming sentences which I have just read, and which occur in an able and interesting essay by an eminent natural philosopher, rose into such prominence before my mind that they eclipsed everything else.
It surely is a matter of paramount importance for the British geologists (some of them very popular geologists too) here in solemn annual session assembled, to inquire whether the severe judgment thus passed upon them, by so high an authority as Sir William Thomson is one to which they must plead guilty sans phrase, or whether they are prepared to say "not guilty," and appeal for a reversal of the sentence to that higher court of educated scientific opinion to which we are all amenable.
As your attorney-general for the time being, I thought I could not do better than get up the case with a view of advising you. It is true that the charges brought forward by the other side involve the consideration of matters quite foreign to the pursuits with which I am ordinarily occupied; but, in that respect, I am only in the position which is, nine times out of ten, occupied by counsel, who nevertheless contrive to gain their causes, mainly by force of mother-wit and common sense, aided by some training in other intellectual exercises.
Nerved by such precedents, I proceed to put my pleading before you.
And the first question with which I propose to deal is, What is it to which Sir W. Thomson refers when he speaks of "geological speculation" and "British popular geology"?
I find three, more or less contradictory, systems of geological thought, each of which might fairly enough claim these appellations, standing side by side in Britain. I shall call one of them Catastrophism, another Uniformitarianism, the third Evolutionism; and I shall try briefly to sketch the characters of each, that you may say whether the classification is, or is not, exhaustive.