Sect. 1.—Of the Doctrine of Geological Catastrophes.
THAT great changes, of a kind and intensity quite different from the common course of events, and which may therefore properly be called catastrophes, have taken place upon the earth’s surface, was an opinion which appeared to be forced upon men by obvious facts. Rejecting, as a mere play of fancy, the notions of the destruction of the earth by cataclysms or conflagrations, of which we have already spoken, we find that the first really scientific examination of the materials of the earth, that of the Sub-Apennine hills, led men to draw this inference. Leonardo da Vinci, whom we have already noticed for his early and strenuous assertion of the real marine origin of fossil impressions of shells, also maintained that the bottom of the sea had become the top of the mountain; yet his mode of explaining this may perhaps be claimed by the modern advocates of uniform causes as more allied to their [587] opinion, than to the doctrine of catastrophes.[101] But Steno, in 1669, approached nearer to this doctrine; for he asserted that Tuscany must have changed its face at intervals, so as to acquire six different configurations, by the successive breaking down of the older strata into inclined positions, and the horizontal deposit of new ones upon them. Strabo, indeed, at an earlier period had recourse to earthquakes, to explain the occurrence of shells in mountains; and Hooke published the same opinion later. But the Italian geologists prosecuted their researches under the advantage of having, close at hand, large collections of conspicuous and consistent phenomena. Lazzaro Moro, in 1740, attempted to apply the theory of earthquakes to the Italian strata; but both he and his expositor, Cirillo Generelli, inclined rather to reduce the violence of these operations within the ordinary course of nature,[102] and thus leant to the doctrine of uniformity, of which we have afterwards to speak. Moro was encouraged in this line of speculation by the extraordinary occurrence, as it was deemed by most persons, of the rise of a new volcanic island from a deep part of the Mediterranean, near Santorino, in 1707.[103] But in other countries, as the geological facts were studied, the doctrine of catastrophes appeared to gain ground. Thus in England, where, through a large part of the country, the coal-measures are extremely inclined and contorted, and covered over by more horizontal fragmentary beds, the opinion that some violent catastrophe had occurred to dislocate them, before the superincumbent strata were deposited, was strongly held. It was conceived that a period of violent and destructive action must have succeeded to one of repose; and that, for a time, some unusual and paroxysmal forces must have been employed in elevating and breaking the pre-existing strata, and wearing their fragments into smooth pebbles, before nature subsided into a new age of tranquillity and vitality. In like manner Cuvier, from the alternations of fresh-water and salt-water species in the strata of Paris, collected the opinion of a series of great revolutions, in which “the thread of induction was broken.” Deluc and others, to whom we owe the first steps in geological dynamics, attempted carefully to distinguish between causes now in action, and those which have ceased to act; in which latter class they reckoned the causes which have [588] elevated the existing continents. This distinction was assented to by many succeeding geologists. The forces which have raised into the clouds the vast chains of the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Andes, must have been, it was deemed, something very different from any agencies now operating.
[101] “Here is a part of the earth which has become more light, and which rises, while the opposite part approaches nearer to the centre, and what was the bottom of the sea is become the top of the mountain.”—Venturi’s Léonardo da Vinci.
[102] Lyell, i. 3. p. 64. (4th ed.)
[103] Ib. p. 60.
This opinion was further confirmed by the appearance of a complete change in the forms of animal and vegetable life, in passing from one formation to another. The species of which the remains occurred, were entirely different, it was said, in two successive epochs: a new creation appears to have intervened; and it was readily believed that a transition, so entirely out of the common course of the world, might be accompanied by paroxysms of mechanical energy. Such views prevail extensively among geologists up to the present time: for instance, in the comprehensive theoretical generalizations of Elie de Beaumont and others, respecting mountain-chains, it is supposed that, at certain vast intervals, systems of mountains, which may be recognized by the parallelism of course of their inclined beds, have been disturbed and elevated, lifting up with them the aqueous strata which had been deposited among them in the intervening periods of tranquillity, and which are recognized and identified by means of their organic remains: and according to the adherents of this hypothesis, these sudden elevations of mountain-chains have been followed, again and again, by mighty waves, desolating whole regions of the earth.
The peculiar bearing of such opinions upon the progress of physical geology will be better understood by attending to the doctrine of uniformity, which is opposed to them, and with the consideration of which we shall close our survey of this science, the last branch of our present task.
Sect. 2.—Of the Doctrine of Geological Uniformity.
The opinion that the history of the earth had involved a serious of catastrophes, confirmed by the two great classes of facts, the symptoms of mechanical violence on a very large scale, and of complete changes in the living things by which the earth had been tenanted, took strong hold of the geologists of England, France, and Germany. Hutton, though he denied that there was evidence of a beginning of the present state of things, and referred many processes in the formation of strata to existing causes, did not assert that the elevatory forces which raise continents from the bottom of the ocean, were of the same order, [589] as well as of the same kind, with the volcanoes and earthquakes which now shake the surface. His doctrine of uniformity was founded rather on the supposed analogy of other lines of speculation, than on the examination of the amount of changes now going on. “The Author of nature,” it was said, “has not permitted in His works any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration:” and the example of the planetary system was referred to in illustration of this.[104] And a general persuasion that the champions of this theory were not disposed to accept the usual opinions on the subject of creation, was allowed, perhaps very unjustly, to weigh strongly against them in the public opinion.
[104] Lyell, i. 4, p. 94.