It is a fact that the planets
move. Once it was said that they were moved by spirits, then by
vortexes, now by self-evolved forces. It is hard that we should be
called upon to change our faith with every new moon. The same man
sometimes propounds theories almost as rapidly as the changes of the
kaleidoscope. The amiable Sir Charles Lyell, England's most
distinguished geologist, has published ten editions of his "Principles
of Geology," which so differ as to make it hard to believe that it is
the work of the same mind. "In all the editions up to the tenth, he
looked upon geological facts and geological phenomena as proving the
fixity of species and their special creation in time. In the tenth
edition, just published, he announces his change of opinion on this
subject and his conversion to the doctrine of development by law."[43]
"In the eighth edition of his work," says Dr. Bree, "Sir Charles Lyell,
the Nestor of geologists, to whom the present generation is more
indebted than to any other for all that is known of geology in its
advanced stage, teaches that species have a real existence in nature,
and that each was endowed at the time of its creation with the
attributes and organization by which it is now distinguished." The
change on the part of this eminent geologist, it is to be observed, is a
mere change of opinion. There was no change of the facts of geology
between the publication of the eighth and of the tenth edition of his
work, neither was there any change in his knowledge of those facts.
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