Quote#Politics & Power
One of the principal claims of Mr. Darwin's theory to acceptance is,…
Quote byCharles Lyell · 1797–1875
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 412.
English (original)
One of the principal claims of Mr. Darwin's theory to acceptance is, that it enables us to dispense with a law of progression as a necessary accompaniment of variation. It will account equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrograde movement towards a simpler structure
— Charles Lyell
More from Charles Lyell
the extension of the sea had been greater at some former periods
Pallas, in more recent times, has drawn the same inference.
The first who endeavored to draw a clear line of demarcation between these distinct departments, was Hutton, who declared that geology was in no ways concerned with 'questions as to the origin of things.
in the form of the coasts of Asia, and
important changes had taken place
This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil shells in the interior of continents, and to that geographer, and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently …