“The careful observations and the acute reasonings of the Italian geologists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the speculations of Leibnitz in the 'Protogaea' and of Buffon in his 'Théorie de la Terre;' the sober and profound reasonings of Hutton, in the latter part of the eighteenth century; all these tended to show that the fabric of the earth itself implied the continuance of processes of natural causation for a period of time as great, in relation to human history, as the distances of the heavenly bodies from us are, in relation to terrestrial standards of measurement. The abyss of time began to loom as large as the abyss of space. And this revelation to sight and touch, of a link here and a link there of a practically infinite chain of natural causes and effects, prepared the way, as perhaps nothing else has done, for the modern form of the ancient theory of evolution.”
Quote by Thomas Henry Huxley
Work
Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The
Browse quotes and source details for this work. more
Author
You May Also Like
Source: They Loved in 2075!
Source: Biographical Account of James Hutton, M.D. F.R.S. Ed.
“London on a gloomy and rainy day is still better than San Francisco on a bright and sunny day.”
Source: Destiny of Liberty
Source: Catawampusland
“Can we put a "fish-only" sign in a forest!”
Source: Quote: +/-
Source: The Forgotten Garden
Source: Airman's Odyssey