_But for over
seventy five years geology has not made a single advance movement in its
theoretical aspects_; indeed, in all its important general principles it
has scarcely changed in a hundred years. I shall leave it to the reader
to judge whether this is a case of almost miraculous perfection from the
beginning, or of arrested development.
III
Of the _three_ general postulates or _a priori_ assumptions of this
curiously out-of-date mediaeval science, namely, (1) Uniformity, (2) the
Cooling globe theory, and (3) the theory of the Successive Ages, the
first two have already been examined and found wanting by other
investigators, and have been allowed to lapse into a sort of honored
disuse, though their memory is still reverently cherished in all the
text-books of the science. The "Challenger" Expedition dissipated most
of the myths that had long been taught regarding the deep waters of the
ocean; and Professor Suess has disposed of the closely related myth
about the coasts of the continents being constantly on the seesaw up and
down. These two discoveries, with others that might be mentioned,
dispose of Lyell's theory of uniformity. Lord Kelvin and the other
physicists dissipated the idea of a molten interior of the earth.
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