The Present Is The Key To The

[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.

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.

I Long Ago Suggested The Hypothesis, That In The Basin Of The Thames There Are Indications Of A Meeting In The Pleistocene Period Of A Northern And Southern Fauna.

Notwithstanding, Therefore, That We Have Not Witnessed Of A Large Continent, Yet, As We May Predict The Future Occurrence Of Such Catastrophes, We Are Authorized To Regard Them As Part Of The Present Order Of Nature.

I May Conclude This Chapter By Quoting A Saying Of Professor Agassiz, That Whenever A New And Startling Fact Is Brought To Light In Science, People First Say, 'it Is Not True,' Then That 'it Is Contrary To Religion,' And Lastly, 'that Everybody Knew It Before.'