CHAP. IV. elevations far above the level of the present PART III. sea; exhibit positive proofs, of THE SEA having occupied for a long time this portion of the globe, which has been rendered the habitation of mankind, by the departure of that sea. Thus far, then, the general result of the researches of the mineral geology, seems to coincide exactly with the declarations of the record, respecting the primeval history of this earth; and establishes, conformably to that record, Two great révolutions of its substance, subsequent to its first perfect formation: the FIRST, anterior to the production of animal or vegetable matter; the SECOND, posterior to the production of both. The first producing, by the violent action of mechanical agencies directed by the Supreme Will, a bed to receive the waters previously diffused over the whole sphere of the earth; the second producing, under the same direction, and by a repetition of the same operation, a new bed, into which the waters were transfused from their former bed. It moreover establishes the fact, of the sea having occupied that former bed during the entire compass of time intervening between those two revolutions; and finally, of that former bed being now the earth on which we inhabit. The causes employed in effecting the first revolution, those which were in action during the succeeding interval, and those which PART III. operated in accomplishing the second revolution, comprehend all the causes of general revolution of which the earth exhibits any pha-, CHAP. IV. nomena. We can thus proceed, with full confidence, by the guidance of the record. We know, and are sure, that no revolution general to the globe, has taken place since the last of those two; we know also, that no general revolution can have preceded that which first interrupted and altered the primitive continuity of the solid surface of the globe, to open a basin for the primitive sea; and we have no reason to imagine, that any general revolution occurred between the two. There have, therefore, been Two, and only Two, general revolutions in the substance and circumstances of this globe; so that all effects discoverable, or appearances discernible, which are truly attributable to general revolution, must find their physical causes in one or other of those, or in the period of time intervening between them; and they are amply competent to supply every requisition of reason and philosophy, in the inquiry after those causes. By this historical guidance, we are able to reduce them to their true order in time; and to determine their periods with security, and with sufficient accuracy. CHAPTER V. CHAP. V. BUT, if the researches of the mineral geology PART III. have really produced monumental evidences of these great facts; and if it has so powerfully enforced the attestation of those evidences as to demonstrate the exact correspondence of the facts with the statements of the Mosaical geology; why are not the two geologies one and the same, at least in the second question, viz. the revolutions which this earth has experienced? in what do they differ? They differ in this: that whereas the latter geology alleges two, and only two, general revolutions of the globe, the former affirms, "that the revolutions have been numerous1;" and, therefore, in explaining the phænomena, it ascribes them to various causes, entirely different from those to which, according to those two revolutions, they ought to be ascribed. Thus, the low levels, or plains, between chains of mountains, it ascribes to the hand of time; which, with the aid of atmospheric agents, has gradually and ! CUVIER, Th. of the Earth, § 5. p. 34. CHAP. V. PART III. imperceptibly eroded, and wasted away1, all the immense mass of matter which once filled up the void now existing, between the level of the mountainous summits, and that of the low surface beneath; leaving the mountains themselves untouched; Sed quæ corpora decedant in tempore quoque, but how, or when, this mighty waste took place, no reason however is assigned, why the mountains, which are composed of the same materials with the substance eroded and wasted, chanced to be spared. So that time and the atmosphere must have been unceasingly and capriciously at work, during a lapse of ages to which the remotest date of the Mosaical chronology is, by comparison, only as yesterday. But, upon what authority does it ground this contradiction of the record? Is it upon some other record which it can produce, and which it can show to be deserving of more credit than that of Moses? for the question, is entirely a question of historical fact. No! it can produce no historical testimony whatso ! D'AUBUISSON, i. p. 231. LUCRETIUS, i. 321. ever; it grounds its contradiction, wholly and PART III. absolutely, upon the same mode of argument CHAP. V. and induction, by which, in the first part of this inquiry, it concluded the formation of this earth from an elementary chaos; and, with the same philosophy and logic with which it there contradicted Newton, it here contradicts Moses. 66 This multiplication of revolutions, is no other than a multiplication of causes; a procedure, always suspicious in philosophy, because it always wears, primâ facie, a character of deficiency, either of judgment or inquiry. For, true philosophy abhors a multiplication of causes; and always seeks to reduce effects to the fewest causes that reason will permit. Its "rule of philosophizing" is, to refer effects of the same kind to the same cause, "quantum fieri potest— "as much as it is possible1." Whereas, the mineral geology, far from making the effort which this precept supposes, seeks for a new cause, that is, a new revolution, upon the occurrence of every new difficulty; so that its multiplied causes are, in fact, not proofs that the effects required the causes, but merely, evidences that it could not reconcile the effects to its own conceptions, without supposing those causes. But, since causes imply facts, the supposition of the ! See p. 44. |