LYELL, CHARLES. - Great geologist, born at Kinnordy (Scotland) on 14 Nov. 1797, died in London on 22 Feb.
1875. In 1830-33 he published the first edition of his course of lectures delivered at the Royal College of London, entitled Principles of Geology, in which the physical and biological phenomena and events of the past are identified with the exogenous and endogenous ones currently occurring on the surface of the earth (the law of “present causes” or “uniformitarianism,” whose foundations had been laid by Giovanni Arduino in 1775 and by Hutton in 1785). Other important publications concern his travels in Europe and the United States. Particularly noteworthy is the work entitled Elements of Geology (London, 1838).
He was an apologist for evolution, to which he attributed a profound religious significance: indeed, he admitted “an action of the Most Wise First Efficient Cause, immediate, regular, and permanent action, but infinitely varied.” “We cannot think that this world is a place of trial and moral cultivation for one of the lower animals, nor would any of these derive comfort and joy from faith in the life to come. To man, on the other hand, is granted this faith, so consonant with his reason and responsive to the religious sentiments impressed by nature upon his heart. This doctrine tends to raise him, up the scale of being, morally and spiritually...” (The geological evidences of the antiquity of man, ecc., London, 1863, p. 505).