The human mind, dwelling on such considerations as these [evolution of the world], seems at times to have been affected by a sur-excitation of the imagination, and a consequent paralysis of the understanding, which led to a refusal to measure geological time by years at all, or to reckon by anything less than "eternities."

The Age of the Earth and Other Geological Studies, Chapter I (p. 15), T. Fisher Unwin. 1908