adds 'We conceive that Mr
Lyell will find it a harder task than he imagines to overturn the
established belief[13]!'

Some authors have suggested that the doctrine taught by Generelli,
Desmarest and Hutton, and later by Scrope and Lyell, for which Whewell
proposed the somewhat cumbrous term 'Uniformitarianism,' but which was
perhaps better designated by Grove in 1866 as 'Continuity[14],' was
distinct from, and subsidiary to, Evolution--and this view could claim
for a time the support of a very great authority.

In 1869, Huxley delivered an address to the Geological Society, in which
he postulated the existence of 'three more or less contradictory systems
of geological thought,' under the names of 'Catastrophism,'
'Uniformitarianism' and 'Evolution.' In this essay, distinguished by all
his wonderful lucidity and forceful logic, Huxley sought to establish
the position that evolution is a doctrine, distinct from and _in advance
of_ that of uniformitarianism, and that Hutton and Playfair--'and to a
less extent Lyell'--had acted unwisely in deprecating the extension of
Geology into enquiries concerning 'the beginning of things[15].'

But there is no doubt that Huxley at a later period was led to qualify,
and indeed to largely modify, the views maintained in that address. In a
footnote to an essay written in April 1887, he asserts 'What I mean by
"evolutionism" is consistent and thoroughgoing uniformitarianism'; and
in the same year he wrote in his _Reception of the Origin of
Species_[16]: 'Consistent uniformitarianism postulates evolution, as
much in the organic as in the inorganic world[17].'

It is not difficult to trace the causes of this change in the attitude
of mind with which Huxley regarded the doctrine of 'uniformitarianism.'
He assures us 'I owe more than I can tell to the careful study of the
_Principles of Geology_[18],' and again 'Lyell was for others as for me
the chief agent in smoothing the road for Darwin[19].' From the perusal
of the letters of Lyell, published in 1881, Huxley learned that the
author of the _Principles of Geology_ had, at a very early date, been
convinced that evolution was true of the organic as well as of the
inorganic world--though he had been unable to accept Lamarckism, or any
other hypothesis on the subject that had, up to that time, been
suggested. There can be little doubt, however, that a chief influence in
bringing about the change in Huxley's views was his intercourse with
D