Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/92

 saw in it a position where he might have opportunity to study one of the sciences comprehended in his scheme of inductive philosophy. He held the appointment for several years, delivered lectures, founded a museum and wrote an essay on mineralogical classification. In 1830 he published a book on the architecture of Gothic churches, in which he gave a theory explaining how the Gothic style had been derived from Grecian and Roman architecture.

It suited the philosophic plans of the professor of mineralogy to study the new and allied science of geology. In 1830 the first volume of Lyell's Principles of Geology appeared in which was adopted and extended the doctrine of uniformity first published by Hutton. Whewell believed in the older doctrine of successive catastrophes; in a review of the book he said:

"Hutton, for the purpose of getting his continents above water, or of manufacturing a chain of Alps and Andes, did not disdain to call in something more than the common volcanic eruptions which he read of in newspapers from time to time. He was content to have a period of paroxysmal action, an epoch of gradual distraction and violence, to usher in one of restoration and life. Mr Lyell throws away all such crutches; he walks alone in the path of his speculations; he requires no paroxysms, no extraordinary periods; he is content to take burning mountains as he finds them; and with the assistance of the stock of volcanoes and earthquakes now on hand, he undertakes to transform the earth from any one of its geological conditions to any others. He requires time, no doubt; he must not be hurried in his proceedings. But if we will allow him a free stage in the wide circuit of eternity, he will then ask no other favor."

Whewell here seems to adopt that view of geological time which has since been advocated by Kelvin. This same year there appeared Herschel's work Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Herschel's object was to extend and correct the inductive philosophy of Bacon in the light of later achievements. Whewell was, from his own plans deeply interested in this work and he wrote a review in which he remarked that Herschel had said nothing of Bacon's condem-