Charles Lyell, Historian of Time's Cycle - Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time - page 142

Even our strength of reason cannot stay nature's power:
We force the ox and the horse to labor for our advantage, and we deprive the
bee of his [ sic ] store; but, on the other hand, we raise the rich harvest with the
sweat of our brow, and behold it devoured by myriads of insects, and we are
often as incapable of arresting their depredations as of staying the shock of an
earthquake, or the course of a stream of burning lava. (I, 162)
Lyell admits, however, that this argument can extend only so far. The late
appearance of our bodies does not violate uniformity, but humans do not
challenge time's cycle as mere naked apes: "The superiority of man depends
not on those faculties and attributes which he shares in common with the
inferior animals, but on his reason by which he is distinguished from
them" (I, 155).
Although human reason is a violation of time's cycle, it is too grand, too
different, too godlike for inclusion in an argument about physical and organic
history. One might almost say that God made human reason at the end of
time so that something conscious might delight in the grand uniformity of
time's stately cycle: "No one of the fixed and constant laws of the animate or
inanimate world was subverted by human agency . . . the modifications
produced were on the occurrence of new and extraordinary circumstances,
and those not of a physical, but a moral nature" (I, 164).
Charles Lyell was struggling, not joyfully triumphing, with his most difficult
case.
Time's Stately Cycle as a Key to the Organization
of Lyell's Principles
Lyell published eleven editions of the Principles of Geology between 1830
and 1872 (see specifications of dates and major changes in the preface to the
last edition—Lyell, 1872). Since Lyell regarded his great work as a lifelong
source of income, he continually revised, shifted sections and chapters, and
experimented with differing formats—-much as the author of a modern best-
selling text produces