With respect to such inundations as are the consequences of earthquakes, and other slight movements of the crust of the earth, I have never heard of anything to show that they were more frequent and severer in the quaternary or tertiary epochs than they are now. In the discussion of these, as of all other geological problems, the appeal to needless catastrophes is born of that impatience of the slow and painful search after sufficient causes, in the ordinary course of nature, which is a temptation to all, though only energetic ignorance nowadays completely succumbs to it.
POSTSCRIPT.
My best thanks are due to Mr. Gladstone for his courteous withdrawal of one of the statements to which I have thought it needful to take exception. The familiarity with controversy, to which Mr. Gladstone alludes, will have accustomed him to the misadventures which arise when, as sometimes will happen in the heat of fence, the buttons come off the foils. I trust that any scratch which he may have received will heal as quickly as my own flesh wounds have done.
A contribution to the last number of this Review (<i>The Nineteenth Century</i>) of a different order would be left unnoticed, were it not that my silence would convert me into an accessory to misrepresentations of a very grave character.
However, I shall restrict myself to the barest possible statement of facts, leaving my readers to draw their own conclusions.
In an article entitled "A Great Lesson," published in this Review for September, 1887:
The Duke of Argyll says the "overthrow of Darwin's speculations" (p. 301) concerning the origin of coral reefs, which he fancied had taken place, had been received by men of science "with a grudging silence as far as public discussion is concerned" (p. 301).
The truth is that, as every one acquainted with the literature of the subject was well aware, the views supposed to have effected this overthrow had been fully and publicly discussed by Dana in the United States; by Geikie, Green, and Prestwich in this country; by Lapparent in France; and by Credner in Germany.
The Duke of Argyll says "that no serious reply has ever been attempted" (p. 305).
The truth is that the highest living authority on the subject, Professor Dana, published a most weighty reply, two years before the Duke of Argyll committed himself to this statement.
The Duke of Argyll uses the preceding products of defective knowledge, multiplied by excessive imagination, to illustrate the manner in which "certain accepted opinions" established "a sort of Reign of Terror in their own behalf" (p. 307).
The truth is that no plea, except that of total ignorance of the literature of the subject, can excuse the errors cited, and that the "Reign of Terror" is a purely subjective phenomenon.
The letter in "Nature" for the 17th of November, 1887, to which I am referred, contains neither substantiation, nor retractation, of statements 1 and 2. Nevertheless, it repeats number 3. The Duke of Argyll says of his article that it "has done what I intended it to do. It has called wide attention to the influence of mere authority in establishing erroneous theories and in retarding the progress of scientific truth."The Duke of Argyll illustrates the influence of his fictitious "Reign of Terror" by the statement that Mr. John Murray "was strongly advised against the publication of his views in derogation of Darwin's long-accepted theory of the coral islands, and was actually induced to delay it for two years" (p.307). And in "Nature" for the l7th November, 1887, the Duke of Argyll states that he has seen a letter from Sir Wyville Thomson in which he "urged and almost insisted that Mr. Murray should withdraw the reading of his papers on the subject from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This was in February, 1877."The next paragraph, however, contains the confession:
"No special reason was assigned." The Duke of Argyll proceeds to give a speculative opinion that "Sir Wyville dreaded some injury to the scientific reputation of the body of which he was the chief." Truly, a very probable supposition; but as Sir Wyville Thomson's tendencies were notoriously anti-Darwinian, it does not appear to me to lend the slightest justification to the Duke of Argyll's insinuation that the Darwinian "terror" influenced him. However, the question was finally set at rest by a letter which appeared in "Nature" (29th of December, 1887), in which the writer says that:
"talking with Sir Wyville about 'Murray's new theory,' I asked what objection he had to its being brought before the public?