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COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE, &c.

PART II.

OF THE MODE OF THE FIRST FORMATIONS OF THE EARTH, ACCORDING TO THE MOSAICAL GEOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.

IT has been sufficiently shewn in the preceding Part, that the root or chaotic principle of the Mineral Geology cannot endure the test of the reformed philosophy of Newton to which it appealed. It will hardly expect, that we should enter into any argument to prove that Newton is right; before we infer absolutely, from that failure, that its own conclusions are wrong. Since it has admitted the authority of his philosophy as a test, it must abide by its decision; and the reader will have seen enough in the foregoing discussion to convince him, of the just title which that authority possesses to decide the question at issue; viz. the MODE, by which ALL first formations of this globe were really produced. He will be sensible, that the

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highest probability to which the energies of unassisted reason can attain in this question, is to be found in that philosophy; and therefore, that it cannot exist at the same time in the opposite philosophy, which it contradicts, refutes, and reprobates. The conclusions of the mineral geology upon this point, are therefore in direct opposition to the highest probability; and therefore, to say the least, they must be in the highest degree improbable.

Valuable, however, as the highest probability is, when the certainty of truth cannot be attained; yet, when the mind has once ascended to that eminence of secondary evidence, it experiences an eager yearning to advance still higher, in consequence of the innate appetite for truth which characterises the intellect of man. Let us then inquire, whether this final gratification is absolutely withheld from us; or, whether we may not be able to add to the sentiment of the highest probability, the consummation of positive certainty on this great question.

That this can only be supplied by competent and positive history, and that physical induction is utterly incompetent to impart it, is a truth felt, and indirectly avowed, by the mineral geology itself. "Before we proceed to determine causes, (says "the ingenuous M. D'Aubuisson,) let us endeavour to make ourselves acquainted with their

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effects. All the circumstances of the division of

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"mineral masses into beds and strata, as well as "the presence of these both in their primitive " and actual state, are yet far from being known to us; and we are constrained to say, in closing "the subject, that the determination of stratification, its circumstances, and laws, remain still a problem to be solved; and it is perhaps the most important of geognosy.-We should have nothing more now to do, than to compose an history of the revolutions which have taken place "in the terrestrial globe during the formation of its "mineral crust; but that those revolutions are of an "order which has nothing analogous to the effects, "which we see Nature produce. The thread of "induction is cut off, it can no longer conduct us : "to attempt to advance without its aid, would be

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voluntarily to lose ourselves in pure hypothesis. "Nevertheless (he adds), to fill up the void, as far as we are permitted, and to shew what observa"tion seems to indicate as most probable, and most simple, I shall summarily expose the manner in "which Werner represents the changes which pro

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gressively took place in the formation of the mine"ral strata." He then lays down the principle constituting the root of this geology, which we

So also M. Cuvier: "Unfortunately, in physical history, the "thread of operations is broken; the march of nature is changed, and none of the agents which she now employs, would have sufficed for the “production of her ancient operations." (Disc. Prélim. p. 13.—Th. § 8.) 2 Tom. i. p. 353.

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have just tried by the criterion of Newton; viz. "that the earth was heretofore covered by a vast CHAOTIC OCEAN very different from our actual seas, and containing the elements of the primitive "earth1."

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The prudence and judgment of this estimable writer are not so conspicuous in the conclusion of this passage, as his ingenuousness is in the former part. He first declares, that a void exists in the physical means of recording an history of the revolutions of the globe, occasioned by the thread of induction being cut off, and, that to attempt to advance without its guidance, is to plunge ourselves into pure hypothesis; and yet, he immediately proceeds to fill up that void with pure hypothesis, as if the presence of fiction is always a more desirable thing than the absence of truth: a principle, which has been the fruitful source of the most dangerous errors. But, how comes there to be any void at all? The truth is, that the mineral geology has created the void at which it repines, by rejecting the history which had filled it; and it is the place of the history so rejected, that it fills up with the hypothesis which we have confuted by the authority of NEWTON, whose "thread

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of induction" has not been "cut off," but, on the contrary, has conducted us to the measure of the highest probability, and therefore, to the verge of

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that certainty which can only be supplied by competent and positive history.

It is amusing, to observe the confidence with which the mineral geology offers to contrive an history that shall supply that void, as if we were left totally without one: "The ancient history

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of the globe," it remarks, " is in itself one of the "most curious subjects that can fix the attention "of enlightened men; and, if they take any "interest in pursuing, in the infancy of our species, the almost obliterated traces of so many nations which have become extinct, they will, no doubt, take a similar interest in tracing back, amidst the obscurity which covers the infancy of the globe, vestiges of revolutions which "took place anterior to the history of all nations.

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We admire the power by which the human "mind has measured the motions of globes, which "nature seemed to have placed for ever beyond

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our apprehension: genius and science have over

leaped the bounds of space; and a few observations, developed by reasoning, have unveiled "the mechanism of the world. Would there not

also be some glory for man to overleap the "bounds of time, and, by means of a few observa"tions-au moyen de quelques observations-to

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recover the history of this world, and the series of " events which preceded the birth of the human race? "-to restore the history of the thousands of years "which preceded the existence of man, and of

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