The Present Is The Key To The

It Was A Profound Saying Of Wilhelm Humboldt, That 'man Is Man Only By Means Of Speech, But In Order To Invent Speech He Must Be Already Man.'

It Must Have Appeared Almost As Improbable To The Earlier Geologists, That The Laws Of Earthquakes Should One Day Throw Light On The Origin Of Mountains, As It Must To The First Astronomers, That The Fall Of An Apple Should Assist In Explaining The Motions Of The Moon.

So Far From Having A Materialistic Tendency, The Supposed Introduction Into The Earth At Successive Geological Periods Of Life,-sensation,-instinct,-the Intelligence Of The Higher Mammalia Bordering On Reason,-and Lastly The Improvable Reason Of Man Himself, Presents Us With A Picture Of The Ever-increasing Dominion Of Mind Over Matter.

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.

[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.