cts. There is
no agreement upon any of its theories. The history of its theories, like
that of their framers, begins with their birth, and ends with their
burial. Each new theory placed the tombstone upon the preceding, and
inscribed it with the brief record of the antediluvian, "and he died." A
busy time they must have had with their Wernerian, Huttonian, and
Diluvian hypotheses; not to mention the Hutchinsonian theory, the animal
spirits flowing from the sun, the vegetative power of stories, and other
sage and serious facts and theories, theological and philosophical,
invented to account for the world's creation. "No theory," says Lyell,
"could be so far-fetched or fantastical as not to attract some
followers, provided it fell in with the popular notion." "Some of the
most extravagant systems were invented or controverted by men of
acknowledged talent." A more amusing exhibition of philosophical
absurdity can not be found than those chapters which he devotes to "The
Historical Progress of Geology,"[372] unless perhaps the scientific
discussions of the erudite acquaintances of Lemuel Gulliver.

Let it not be supposed that the progress of inductive science, and the
prevalence of the Baconian philosophy have banished absurdities and
contradictions from the sphere of geology. It would require a man of
considerable learning to find three geologists agreed, either in their
facts, or in their theories. In a general way, indeed, we have the
Catastrophists, with Hugh Miller, overwhelming the earth with dire
convulsions in the geological eras, and upheaving the more conservative
Lyell and the Progressionists; who affirm that all things continue as
they were from the beginning of the world. And there is perhaps a
general agreement now that the underlying _primitive_ rocks, so called,
are not primitive at all, as geologists thought twenty years ago; but,
like the foundations of a Chicago house, have been put in long after the
building was finished and occupied. But then comes the question how they
were inserted--whether as Elie de Beaumont thinks, the mountains were
upheaved by starts, lever fashion, or, as Lyell affirms, very gradually,
and imperceptibly, like the elevation of a brick house by screws.[373]
Nor is there the least likelihood of any future agreement among them;
inasmuch as they can not agree either as to the thickness of the earth's
solid crust which is to be lifted, or the force by which it is to be
done? Hopkins