these 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 perfect security. CHAPTER V. BUT, if the free and independent researches of the Mineral Geology have really discovered, and disclosed, monumental evidences of these great facts; if it has so powerfully enforced the attestation of those evidences, as thus to demonstrate an exact correspondence of the physical facts with the statements of the Mosaical Geology; why are not the two geologies one and the same, at least in this second question, viz.: the revolutions which this earth has experienced? In what do they differ? They differ in this: that whereas the latter geology propounds two and only two general revolutions of the globe, the former affirms, " that the "revolutions have been numerous1;" and, therefore, in attempting to explain the phenomena, it ascribes them to various imaginary causes, entirely different from those to which, according to the testimony of 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 "alone-la main seule du tems;" which, "with the "aid of the atmospheric elements—à l'aide des élé"ments atmosphériques," has gradually and imperceptibly eroded, and wasted away, all the immense ' CUVIER, Disc. Prél. p. 7.- Th. § 5. 2 D'AUBUISSON, tom. i. p. 231. mass of matter which once filled the void 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 shew 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 whatsoever; it grounds its contradiction, wholly and absolutely, upon the same mode of argument 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 1 LUCRETIUS, i. 321. "Un laps de tems qui dépasse presque, il est vrai, ce que notre imagination pourrait concevoir à cet égard." D'AUBUISSON, tom. i. p. 110. VOL. II. F same philosophy and the same logic with which it there contradicted Newton, it here contradicts Moses. 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 of 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 philosophising" is, to refer effects of the same kind to the same cause, "quantum fieri potest—as much as it is possible." Whereas, the mineral geology, far from making the effort which this precept requires, seeks for a new cause, that is, a new revolution, upon the occurrence of every new difficulty; so that its multipled causes are, in fact, not proofs that the effects require 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 former, is a supposition of the latter; so that supposititious facts, become the basis of its science; and, when it would assign dates to those facts, it is manifest, that its whole system must be a compound of supposititious history, and supposititious chronology. Thus it is, that the mineral geologists of Germany, as we are assured, have gravely determined, upon the pretended au See above, vol. i. p. 50. thority of Werner's principles, that "four great "seas" have successively, and at distant periods, covered the whole of this globe1: nor less, Thus also it is, that M. Cuvier affirms: that the "revolutions of the earth have been numerous;" that" it has frequently happened, that different parts 66 of our continent have risen from the bosom of the sea, and that they have been again covered by the "waters." And, such is the mode in which the mineral geology reasons in general, on the revolutionary phenomena of the earth3. In the midst of these aberrations, it is with no small pleasure that I find myself able to oppose to such incautious and unphilosophical specula→ tions, the high authority of Werner himself. "I "shall observe (says his able and upright disciple, "M. D'Aubuisson), that Werner was very cau "Dans les ouvrages de géognosie dernièrement publiés en Allemagne, d'après les principes de WERNER, on regarde les diverses "formations minérales comme le produit de quatres grandes mers suc"cessives." D'AUBUISSON, tom. i. p. 357. 2 Disc. Prél. p. 8.—§ 5. p. 36. See Note [IV.], On the numerous Revolutions of M. Cuvier, at the end of this volume. * Plato tells us, that in the time of Solon," the Greeks had inherited "the memorial of only ONE Deluge; which the Egyptian priests treated "with derision, affirming, that there had been many more before it :”—ENA γῆς κατακλυσμον μεμνησθε, πολλων εμπροσθεν γεγονότων. (Tim. p. 21.) The mineral geology will probably think, that it acquires a powerful ally in this assertion of the Egyptian priesthood; but, a sounder thinker will recognise, in the simplicity of the Grecian tradition, a far weightier and more important testimony, than in the unsupported plurality of the Feyp tian asseveration. |