Charles Lyell

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 …

But exactly in proportion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting.

No one can believe in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all we know in paleontology is as nothing compared to what we have yet to learn

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 …

Mammals were added next, until Nature became what she now is, by the addition of Man. ...the generalisation, as laid down by the Woodwardian Professor, still holds good in all essential particulars.

far above any forms of the reptile class now living

Fishes next took the lead, then Reptiles

there was a time when Cephalopoda were the highest types of animal life

not made by transmutation, but by creative additions

'of the forms and functions of organic life during successive epochs

The doctrine of progression... was thus given twelve years ago by Professor Sedgwick

I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws which govern the extinction of species, with a view of showing that the slow, but ceaseless variations, now in progress in …

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

had never yet gone so far as to produce two races sufficiently remote

and secondly, that variation

failed to adduce a single instance of the initiation of a new organ

Lamarck's attempt to explain the origin of species

that there also had been a progressive advance of the organic world from the earliest to the latest times, from beings of the simplest to those of more and more complex structure and from the lowest instincts up to the highest, and, …

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

foretold has come to pass

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 …

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

Now, if it would be reasonable to draw such inferences with respect to

his whole theory of earthquakes met with undeserved neglect.