The Antiquity of Man

Charles Lyell

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• Publié par: thaeb
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 24
• Langue: English

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Title: The Antiquity of ManAuthor: Charles Lyell
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THE ANTIQUITY OFMAN BY CHARLES
LYELL.
EVERYMAN
I WILL GO WITH THEE
& BE THY GUIDE
IN THY MOST NEED
TO GO BY THY SIDE.
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS.
SCIENCE.
LYELL'S ANTIQUITY OF MAN
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY R.H.
RASTALL, M.A., F.G.S.
HOC SOLUM SCIO QUOD NIHIL SCIO.
THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE
ANTIQUITY OF MAN
BYSIR CHARLES LYELL, BT., F.R.S., ETC. ETC.
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY J.M. DENT & SONS
LTD.
AND IN NEW YORK BY E.P. DUTTON & CO.
INTRODUCTION.
The "Antiquity of Man" was published in 1863, and
ran into a third edition in the course of that year.
The cause of this is not far to seek. Darwin's
"Origin of Species" appeared in 1859, only four
years earlier, and rapidly had its effect in drawing
attention to the great problem of the origin of living
beings. The theories of Darwin and Wallace
brought to a head and presented in a concrete
shape the somewhat vague speculations as to
development and evolution which had long been
floating in the minds of naturalists. In the actual
working out of Darwin's great theory it is impossible
to overestimate the influence of Lyell. This is made
abundantly clear in Darwin's letters, and it must
never be forgotten that Darwin himself was a
geologist. His training in this science enabled him
to grasp the import of the facts so ably marshalled
by Lyell in the "Principles of Geology," a work
which, as Professor Judd has clearly shown,*
contributed greatly to the advancement of
evolutionary theory in general. (* Judd "The
Coming of Evolution" ("Cambridge Manuals of
Science and Literature") Cambridge 1910 chapters
6 and 7.)From a study of the evolution of plants and of the
lower animals it was an easy and obvious transition
to man, and this step was soon taken. Since in his
physical structure man shows so close a
resemblance to the higher animals it was a natural
conclusion that the laws governing the
development of the one should apply also to the
other, in spite of preconceived opinions derived
from authority. Unfortunately the times were then
hardly ripe for a calm and logical treatment of this
question: prejudice in many cases took the place of
argument, and the result was too often an
undignified squabble instead of a scientific
discussion. However, the dogmatism was not by
any means all on one side. The disciples as usual
went farther than the master, and their teaching
when pushed to extremities resulted in a peculiarly
dreary kind of materialism, a mental attitude which
still survives to a certain extent among scientific
and pseudo-scientific men of the old school. In
more Recent times this dogmatic agnosticism of
the middle Victorian period has been gradually
replaced by speculations of a more positive type,
such as those of the Mendelian school in biology
and the doctrines of Bergson on the philosophical
side. With these later developments we are not
here concerned.
In dealing with the evolution and history of man as
with that of any other animal, the first step is
undoubtedly to collect the facts, and this is
precisely what Lyell set out to do in the "Antiquity
of Man." The first nineteen chapters of the book
are purely an empirical statement of the evidencethen available as to the existence of man in pre-
historic times: the rest of the book is devoted to a
consideration of the connection between the facts
previously stated and Darwin's theory of the origin
of species by variation and natural selection. The
keynote of Lyell's work, throughout his life, was
observation. Lyell was no cabinet geologist; he
went to nature and studied phenomena at first
hand. Possessed of abundant leisure and ample
means he travelled far and wide, patiently
collecting material and building up the modern
science of physical geology, whose foundations
had been laid by Hutton and Playfair. From the
facts thus collected he drew his inferences, and if
later researches showed these inferences to be
wrong, unlike some of his contemporaries, he
never hesitated to say so. Thus and thus only is
true progress in science attained.
Lyell is universally recognised as the leader of the
Uniformitarian school of geologists, and it will be
well to consider briefly what is implied in this term.
The principles of Uniformitarianism may be
summed up thus: THE PRESENT IS THE KEY TO
THE PAST. That is to say, the processes which
have gone on in the past were the same in general
character as those now seen in operation, though
probably differing in degree. This theory is in direct
opposition to the ideas of the CATASTROPHIC
school, which were dominant at the beginning of
the nineteenth century. The catastrophists
attributed all past changes to sudden and violent
convulsions of nature, by which all living beings
were destroyed, to be replaced by a fresh creation.At least such were the tenets of the extremists. In
opposition to these views the school of Hutton and
Lyell introduced the principle of continuity and
development. There is no discrepancy between
Uniformitarianism and evolution. The idea of
Uniformitarianism does not imply that things have
always been the same; only that they were similar,
and between these two terms there is a wide
distinction. Evolution of any kind whatever naturally
implies continuity, and this is the fundamental idea
of Lyellian geology.
In spite, however, of this clear and definite
conception of natural and organic evolution, in all
those parts of his works dealing with earth-history,
with the stratified rocks and with the organisms
entombed in them, Lyell adopted a plan which has
now been universally abandoned. He began with
the most Recent formations and worked
backwards from the known to the unknown. To
modern readers this is perhaps the greatest
drawback to his work, since it renders difficult the
study of events in their actual sequence. However,
it must be admitted that, taking into account the
state of geological knowledge before his time, this
course was almost inevitable. The succession of
the later rocks was fairly well known, thanks to the
labours of William Smith and others, but in the
lower part of the sequence of stratified rocks there
were many gaps, and more important still, there
was no definite base. Although this want of a
starting point has been largely supplied by the
labours of Sedgwick, Murchison, De la Beche,
Ramsay, and a host of followers, still considerabledoubt prevails as to which constitutes the oldest
truly stratified series, and the difficulty has only
been partially circumvented by the adoption of an
arbitrary base-line, from which the succession is
worked out both upwards and downwards. So the
problem is only removed a stage further back. In
the study of human origins a similar difficulty is felt
with special acuteness; the beginnings must of
necessity be vague and uncertain, and the farther
back we go the fainter will naturally be the traces of
human handiwork and the more primitive and
doubtful those traces when discovered.
The reprinting of the "Antiquity of Man" is
particularly appropriate at the present time, owing
to the increased attention drawn to the subject by
recent discoveries. Ever since the publication of
the "Origin of Species" and the discussions that
resulted from that publication, the popular
imagination has been much exercised by the
possible existence of forms intermediate between
the apes and man; the so-called "Missing Link."
Much has been written on this subject, some of it
well-founded and some very