It Was A Profound Saying Of Wilhelm

When The Aggregate Amount Of Solid Matter Transported By Rivers In A Given Number Of Centuries From A Large Continent, Shall Be Reduced To Arithmetical Computation, The Result Will Appear Most Astonishing To Those...not In The Habit Of Reflecting How Many Of The Mightiest Of Operations In Nature Are Effected Insensibly, Without Noise Or Disorder.

[my Book] Will Endeavour To Establish The Principle[s] Of Reasoning In ... [geology]; And All My Geology Will Come In As Illustration Of My Views Of Those Principles, And As Evidence Strengthening The System Necessarily Arising Out Of The Admission Of Such Principles, Which... Are Neither More Nor Less Than That No Causes Whatever Have From The Earliest Time To Which We Can Look Back, To The Present, Ever Acted, But Those Now Acting; And That They Never Acted With Different Degrees Of Energy From That Which They Now Exert.

Amidst The Vicissitudes Of The Earth's Surface, Species Cannot Be Immortal, But Must Perish, One After Another, Like The Individuals Which Compose Them. There Is No Possibility Of Escaping From This Conclusion.

Such Discoveries Have Led Me, And Other Geologists, To Reconsider The Evidence Previously Derived From Caves Brought Forward In Proof Of The High Antiquity Of Man.

Never Was There A Dogma More Calculated To Foster Indolence, And To Blunt The Keen Edge Of Curiosity, Than The Assumption Of The Discordance Between The Former And The Existing Causes Of Change.