[20] _Nineteenth Century_, March, 1887.
[21] The Duke of Argyll speaks of the recent date of the
demonstration of the fallacy of the doctrine in
question. "Recent" is a relative term, but I may
mention that the question is fully discussed in my book
on _Hume_; which, if I may believe my publishers, has
been read by a good many people since it appeared in
1879. Moreover, I observe, from a note at page 89 of
_The Reign of Law_, a work to which I shall have
occasion to advert by and by, that the Duke of Argyll
draws attention to the circumstance that, so long ago
as 1866, the views which I hold on this subject were
well known. The Duke, in fact, writing about this time,
says, after quoting a phrase of mine: "The question of
miracles seems now to be admitted on all hands to be
simply a question of evidence." In science, we think
that a teacher who ignores views which have been
discussed _coram populo_ for twenty years, is hardly up
to the mark.
[22] See also vol. i. p. 460. In the ninth edition (1853),
published twenty-three years after the first. Lyell
deprives even the most careless reader of any excuse
for misunderstanding him: "So in regard to subterranean
movements, the theory of the perpetual uniformity of
the force which they exert on the earth-crust is quite
consistent with the admission of their alternate
development and suspension for indefinite periods
within limited geographical areas" (p. 187).
[23] A great many years ago (Presidential Address to the
Geological Society, 1869) I ventured to indicate that
which seemed to me to be the weak point, not in the
fundamental principles of uniformitarianism, but in
uniformitarianism as taught by Lyell. It lay, to my
mind, in the refusal by Hutton, and in a less degree by
Lyell, to look beyond the limits of the time recorded
by the stratified rocks. I said: "This attempt to
limit, at a particular point, the progress of inductive
and deductive reasoning from the things which are to
the things which were--this faithlessness to its own
logic, seems to me to have cost uniformitarianism the
place as the permanent form of geological speculation
which it might otherwise have held" (_Lay Sermons_, p.
260). The context shows that "uniformitarianism" here
means that doctrine, as limited in application by
Hutton and Lyell, and that what I mean by
"evolutionism" is consistent and thorough-going
uniformitarianism.
[24] _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, vol. i. p. 670.
New edition, 1847.
[25] At Glasgow in 1856.
[26] _Optics_, query 31.
[27] The author recognises this in his _Explanations_.