Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 110

interior of the earth, or they may be abortions of nature produced by her
incipient efforts in the work of creation" (I, 77).
We now begin to grasp Lyell's strategy. His story of Egypt recounts the great
seventeenth-century debate about the nature of fossils. Many scientists then
doubted that fossils could be remnants of organisms because the chronology
of Moses was too short to support such plenitude. Theories of the vis plastica
or virtus formativa then abounded.
As knowledge progresses, and all admit an earth of some antiquity, Lyell
changes metaphors. We no longer deny human presence completely, but now
try to compress history into far too short a time.
How fatal every error as to the quantity of time must prove to the
introduction of rational views concerning the state of things in former ages,
may be conceived by supposing that the annals of the civil and military
transactions of a great nation were perused under the impression that they
occurred in a period of one hundred instead of two thousand years. Such a
portion of history would immediately assume the air of a romance; the events
would seem devoid of credibility and inconsistent with the present course of
human affairs. A crowd of incidents would follow each other in thick
succession. Armies and fleets would appear to be assembled only to be
destroyed, and cities built merely to fall in ruins. There would be the most
violent transitions from foreign or intestine wars to periods of profound
peace, and the works effected during the years of disorder or tranquility
would be alike superhuman in magnitude. (I, 78-79)
Lyell also relied upon turn of phrase to convey his message. Consider some
snippets from his most impassioned section—chapter 1 of volume III, with
its restated epitome of the general doctrine, and its running head: "methods of
theorizing in geology." Again, we read of a contrast between vain
speculators, who view the past as different from the present, and patient
empiricists, who uphold uniformity in modes, rates, and amounts of change.
Note Lyell's