Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 173

process? Since the creative power operates intermittently and has never been
observed on our planet, how can we learn about it by actualist procedures?
But with evolution, Lyell could shore up his defenses and relinquish only one
of the uniformities—his beloved time's cycle to be sure, but better one room
than the entire edifice. With evolution, he could hold firm to uniformity of
rate, especially with Darwin's congenial commitment to such a strict form of
natum non facit saltum (nature does not make leaps). He could also continue
to embrace both the uniformity of law, for evolution "has the advantage of
introducing a known general Law, instead of a perpetual intervention of the
First Cause" (in Wilson, 1970, 106)— and actualism, for Darwin insisted that
small-scale changes produced by breeders and planters were, by extension,
the stuff of all evolutionary change.
In short, Lyell accepted evolution in order to preserve his other three
uniformities, thereby to retain as much of his uniformitarian vision as
possible, when facts of the fossil record finally compelled his reluctant
allegiance to progression in life's history. Although I interpret Lyell's
embrace of evolution as the most conservative intellectual option available to
him, we must not diminish the pain and trouble of mind that it provoked.
Consider this remarkable passage, with its resplendent affirmation of both
human intellect and basic honesty before the world's complexity:
Species are abstractions, not realities—are like genera. Individuals are the
only realities. Nature neither makes nor breaks molds— all is plastic,
unfixed, transitional, progressive, or retrograde. There is only one great
resource to fall back upon, a reliance that all is for the best, trust in God, a
belief that truth is the highes aim, that if it destroys some idols it is better that
they should disappear, that the intelligent ruler of the universe has given us
this great volume as a privilege, that its interpretation is elevating, (in
Wilson, 1970, 121)