Charles Lyell Quotes about Past

The present is the key to the past

Past, Keys

Charles Lyell (2005). “The Geological Evidence of Man”, p.8, Cosimo, Inc.

The ordinary naturalist is not sufficiently aware that when dogmatizing on what species are, he is grappling with the whole question of the organic world & its connection with the time past & with Man; that it involves the question of Man & his relation to the brutes, of instinct, intelligence & reason, of Creation, transmutation & progressive improvement or development. Each set of geological questions & of ethnological & zool. & botan. are parts of the great problem which is always assuming a new aspect.

Charles Lyell

Science, Past, Men

The question now at issue, whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and least mutilated by the hand of time.

Charles Lyell

Science, Past, Issues

Sir Charles Lyell (1863). “The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man: With Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation”, p.470