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Charles Lyell

94 quotes

“When we study history we obtain a more profound insight into human nature by instituting a comparison between the present and former states of society.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The form of a coast, the configuration of the interior of a country, the existence and extent of lakes, valleys, and mountains, can often be traced to the former prevalence of earthquakes and volcanoes in regions which have long been undisturbed. To these remote convulsions the present fertility of some districts the sterile character of others, the elevation of land above the sea, the climate, and various peculiarities, may be distinctly referred.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many distinguishing features of the surface may often be ascribed to the operation at a remote era of slow and tranquil causes-to the gradual deposition of sediment in a lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals therein.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We find in certain localities subterranean deposits of coal consisting of vegetable matter formerly drifted into seas and lakes. ...These seas and The commercial prosperity and numerical strength of a nation may now be mainly dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. ...But the brief duration of human life, and our limited powers, are so far from permitting us to aspire to such extensive acquisitions, that excellence even in one department is within the reach of few, and those individuals most effectually promote the general progress, who concentrate their thoughts on a limited portion of the field of inquiry.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The earliest doctrines of the Indian and Egyptian schools of philosophy agreed in ascribing the first creation of the world to an omnipotent and infinite Being. They concurred also in representing this Being, who had existed from all eternity, as having repeatedly destroyed and reproduced the world and all its inhabitants. ...We have no right to refer to mere chance the prevailing notion that the earth and its inhabitants had formerly undergone a succession of revolutions and catastrophes, interrupted by long intervals of tranquility.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We know that the Egyptian priests were aware, not only that the soil beneath the plains of the Nile, but that also the hills bounding the great valley, contained marine shells; and it could hardly have escaped the observation of Eastern philosophers, that some soils were filled with fossil remains, since so many national works were executed on a magnificent scale by oriental monarchs in very remote eras.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humboldt relates the interesting fact, that after the annihilation of a large part of the inhabitants of Cumana, by an earthquake in 1766, a season of extraordinary fertility ensued, in consequence of the great rains which accompanied the subterranean convulsions The Indians,' he says, 'celebrated, after the ideas of an antique superstition, by festivals and dancing, the destruction of the world and the approaching epoch of its regeneration.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We learn particularly from the Timaeus of Plato, that the Egyptians believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and deluges, whereby the gods arrested the career of human wickedness, and purified the earth from guilt. After each regeneration, mankind were in a state of virtue and happiness, from which they gradually degenerated again into vice and immorality. From this Egyptian doctrine, the poets derived the fable of the decline from the golden to the iron age.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a rude state of society all great calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests, of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of the inhabitants.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, when the notion had once gained ground, whether from causes before suggested or not, that the earth had been destroyed by several general catastrophes, it would next be inferred that the human race had been as often destroyed and renovated. And, since every extermination was assumed to be penal, it could only be reconciled with divine justice, by the supposition that man, at each successive creation, was regenerated in a state of purity and innocence.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One extraordinary fiction of the Egyptian mythology was the supposed intervention of a masculo-feminine principle, to which was assigned the development of the embryo world, somewhat in the way of incubation. For the doctrine was, that when the first chaotic mass had been produced, in the form of an egg, by a self-dependent and eternal Being, it required the mysterious functions of this masculo-feminine demi-urgus to reduce the component elements into organized forms.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Egyptian philosophers ventured on the perilous task of seeking out some analogy to the mode of operation employed by the Author of Nature in the first creation of organized beings, and they compared it to that which governs the birth of new individuals by generation.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not unreasonable nor derogatory to the attributes of Omnipotence, to imagine that some general laws may be observed in the creation of new worlds; and if man could witness the birth of such worlds, he might reason by induction upon the origin of his own. But in the absence of such data, an attempt has been made to fancy some analogy between the agents now employed to destroy, renovate, and perpetually vary the earth's surface, and those whereby the first chaotic mass was formed, and brought by supposed nascent energy from the embryo to the habitable state.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the Egyptian and Eastern cosmogonies, and in the Greek version of them, no very definite meaning can, in general, be attached to the term 'destruction of the world,' for sometimes it would seem almost to imply the annihilation of our planetary system, and at others a mere revolution of the surface of the earth.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the works now extant of Aristotle, and from the system of Pythagoras... we might certainly infer that these philosophers considered the agents of change now operating in Nature, as capable of bringing about in the lapse of ages a complete revolution; and the Stagyrite even considers occasional catastrophes happening at distant intervals of time as part of the regular and ordinary course of Nature.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems, then, that the Greeks had not only derived from preceding nations, but had also, in some slight degree, deduced from their own observations, the theory of great periodical revolutions in the inorganic world.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We learn from a passage in Strabo, that it was a dogma of the Gaulish Druids that the universe was immortal, but destined to survive catastrophes both of fire and water. That this doctrine was communicated to them from the East, with much of their learning, cannot be doubted.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pliny had no theoretical opinions of his own concerning changes of the earth's surface... But his enumeration of the new islands which had been formed in the Mediterranean, and of other convulsions, shows that the ancients had not been inattentive observers of the changes which had taken place on the earth within the memory of man.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We shall now conclude our remarks on the opinions entertained before the Christian era... the observation of the present course of nature presented too many proofs of alterations continually in progress on the earth to allow philosophers to believe that nature was in a state of rest or that the surface had remained and would continue to remain unaltered.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Von Hoff has suggested, with great probability, that the changes in the level of the Caspian (some of which there is reason to believe have happened within the historical era), and the geological appearances in that district, indicating the desertion by that sea of its ancient bed, had probably led Omar to his theory of a general subsidence. But whatever may have been the proofs relied on, his system was declared contradictory to certain passages in the Koran, and he was called upon publicly to recant his errors; to avoid which persecution he went into voluntary banishment from Samarkand.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was not till the earlier part of the sixteenth century that geological phenomena began to attract the attention of the Christian nations. At that period a very animated controversy sprung up in Italy, concerning the true nature and origin of marine shells, and other organized fossils, found abundantly in the strata of the peninsula.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The clear and philosophical views of Fracastoro were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: first, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could be explained by the Noachian deluge.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It had been the consistent belief of the Christian world, down to the period now under consideration, that the origin of this planet was not more remote than a few thousand years; and that since the creation the deluge was the only great catastrophe by which considerable change had been wrought on the earth's surface. On the other hand, the opinion was scarcely less general, that the final dissolution of our system was an event to be looked for at no distant period.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The era, it is true, of the expected millennium had passed away; and for five hundred years after the fatal hour, when the annihilation of the planet had been looked for, the monks remained in undisturbed enjoyment of rich grants of land bequeathed to them by pious donors, who, in the preamble of deeds beginning 'appropinquante mundi termino'-'appropinquante magno judicii die,' left lasting monuments of the popular delusion.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But there was sufficient spirit of toleration and candor amongst the Italian ecclesiastics to allow the subject to be canvassed with much freedom They entered warmly themselves into the controversy often favoring different sides of the question and however much we may deplore the loss of time and labor devoted to the defense of untenable positions it must be conceded that they displayed far less polemic bitterness than certain writers who followed them beyond the Alps two centuries and a half later”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The system of scholastic disputations encouraged in the Universities of the middle ages had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argumentation, and they often preferred absurd and extravagant propositions, because greater skill was required to maintain them; the end and object of such intellectual combats being victory and not truth.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Opponents of Fracastoro met his arguments by feigning imaginary causes, which differed from each other rather in name than in substance. Andrea Mattioli, for instance, an eminent botanist, the illustrator of Dioscorides, embraced the notion of Agricola, a German miner, that a certain 'materia pinguis' or 'fatty matter,' set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to fossil organic shapes. Yet Mattioli had come to the conclusion, from his own observations, that porous bodies, such as bones and shells, might be converted into stone, as being permeable to what he termed the 'lapidifying juice.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Falloppio of Padua conceived that petrified shells had been generated by fermentation in the spots where they were found, or that they had in some cases acquired their form from 'the tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations.' Although a celebrated professor of anatomy, he taught that certain tusks of elephants dug up in his time at Puglia were mere earthy concretions, and, consistently with these principles, he even went so far as to consider it not improbable, that the vases of Monte Testaceo at Rome were natural impressions stamped in the soil.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The title of a work of Cardano's, published in 1552, De Subtilitate (corresponding to what would now be called Transcendental Philosophy), would lead us to expect, in the chapter on minerals, many far fetched theories characteristic of that age; but when treating of petrified shells, he decided that they clearly indicated the former sojourn of the sea upon the mountains.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Palissy, a French writer on 'the Origin of Springs from Rain-water' and of other scientific works, undertook, in 1580, to combat the notions of many of his contemporaries in Italy, that petrified shells had all been deposited by the universal deluge. 'He was the first,' said Fontenelle, when, in the French Academy, he pronounced his eulogy nearly a century and a half later, 'who dared assert' in Paris, that fossil remains of testacea and fish had once belonged to marine animals.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scilla, a Sicilian painter, published in 1670, a work on the fossils of Calabria, illustrated by good engravings. This was written in Latin, with great spirit and elegance, and it proves the continued ascendency of dogmas often refuted; for we find the wit and eloquence of the author chiefly directed against the obstinate incredulity of naturalists, as to the organic nature of fossil shells.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scarcely any step had been made in approximating to sound theories since the time of Fracastoro, more than a hundred years having been lost, in writing down the dogma that organized fossils were mere sports of nature. An additional period of a century and a half was now destined to be consumed in exploding the hypothesis, that organized fossils had all been buried in the solid strata by the Noachian flood. Never did a theoretical fallacy, in any branch of scienc, interfere more seriously with accurate observation and the systematic classification of facts.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The old diluvialists were induced by their system to confound all the groups of strata together instead of discriminating,—to refer all appearances to one cause and to one brief period, not to a variety of causes acting throughout a long succession of epochs. ...Under the influence of such prejudices, three centuries were of as little avail, as a few years in our own times, when we are no longer required to propel the vessel against the force of an adverse current.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may be well to forewarn our readers that in tracing the history of geology from the close of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century they must expect to be occupied with accounts of the retardation as well as of the advance of the science. ...It will be necessary to dwell on futile reasoning and visionary hypothesis because the most extravagant systems were often invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A sketch of the progress of Geology is the history of a constant and violent struggle between new opinions and ancient doctrines sanctioned by the implicit faith of many generations and supposed to rest on scriptural authority. The inquiry, therefore, although highly interesting to one who studies the philosophy of the human mind, is singularly barren of instruction to him who searches for truths in physical science.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was objected to Hooke, that his doctrine of the extinction of species derogated from the wisdom and power of the Omnipotent Creator; but he answered, that as individuals die, there may be some termination to the duration of a species; and his opinions, he declared, were not repugnant to Holy Writ: for the Scriptures taught that our system was degenerating, and tending to its final dissolution; 'and as, when that shall happen, all the species will be lost, why not some at one time and some at another?'”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, if it would be reasonable to draw such inferences with respect to”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So long as physiologists continued to believe that man had not existed on the earth above six thousand years, they might, with good reason, withhold their assent from the doctrine of a unity of origin of so many distinct races; but the difficulty becomes less and less, exactly in proportion as we enlarge our ideas of the lapse of time during which different communities may have spread slowly, and become isolated, each exposed for ages to a peculiar set of conditions, whether of temperature, or food, or danger, or ways of living.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If, in spite of the fact that all these attributes have been faithfully handed down unaltered for hundreds of generations, we are to believe that, in the course of time, they have all diverged from one common stock, how shall we resist the arguments of the transmutationist, who contends that all closely allied species of animals and plants have in like manner sprung from a common parentage, albeit that for the last three or four thousand years they may have been persistent in character?”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So long as Geology had not lifted up a part of the veil... it was easy to treat these questions as too transcendental... But it is no longer possible to restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable worlds, as well as of the various races of mankind, with the state of the fauna and flora which immediately preceded.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What Lamarck then foretold has come to pass; the more new forms have been multiplied, the less are we able to decide what we mean by a variety, and what by a species. In fact, zoologists and botanists are not only more at a loss than ever how to define a species, but even to determine whether it has any real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the human intellect, some contending that it is constant within certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others that it is capable of indefinite and endless modification.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I pointed out in 1832, as the two great flaws in Lamarck's attempt to explain the origin of species, first that he had failed to adduce a single instance of the initiation of a new organ in any species of animal or plant; and secondly, that variation, whether taking place in the course of nature or assisted artificially by the breeder and horticulturist, had never yet gone so far as to produce two races sufficiently remote from each other in physiological constitution as to be sterile when intermarried, or, if fertile, only capable of producing sterile hybrids, &c.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my account of his [Lamarck's] theory, I did not, at the time, fully appreciate the deep conviction which it displays of the slow manner in which geological changes have taken place, and the insignificance of thirty or forty centuries in the history of a species, and that, too, at a period when very narrow views were entertained of the extent of past time by most of the ablest geologists, and when great revolutions of the earth's crust, and its inhabitants, were generally attributed to sudden and violent catastrophes.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may be thought almost paradoxical that writers who are most in favour of transmutation (Mr. C. Darwin and Dr. J. Hooker, for example) are nevertheless among those who are most cautious, and one would say timid, in their mode of espousing the doctrine of progression; while, on the other hand, the most zealous advocates of progression are oftener than not very vehement opponents of transmutation.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For many years after the promulgation of Lamarck's doctrine of progressive development, geologists were much occupied with the question whether the past changes in the animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously by causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in operation.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As breeders of domestic animals, when they choose certain varieties in preference to others to breed from, speak technically of their method as that of 'selecting,' Mr. Darwin calls the combination of natural causes, which may enable certain varieties of wild animals or plants to prevail over others of the same species, 'natural selection.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until by continued efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained an elongated neck. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a longer-necked variety, having the advantage in this respect over most of the herd, as being able to browse on foliage out of their reach, survived them, and transmitted its peculiarity of cervical conformation to its successors.”
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source