THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH.

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Thirdly, From the characters of the organic remains imbedded in its strata-That our globe must have remained for myriads of ages, in a condition unfitted to the support, or even existence, of organic life of any kind; that we can clearly perceive the starting point at which animated existence began upon its ancient surface; that the system of life then called into being was succeeded by several other systems of animal and vegetable life, and this in due course of adaptation to the particular conditions of the globe, respecting each of which systems it is equally proved, that there was a time when their existence had not commenced; that existing orders, genera, and species, have had a beginning, and this at a period comparatively recent in the physical history of our globe; that the various classes of organic beings, therefore, by which the earth has been inhabited, were not cotemporary on its surface, but that particular genera and species, after possessing the globe for incalculable periods of time, passed away from its surface, to be succeeded by others of a different character; and that the great changes in organic life (attested by the examination of fossil remains, and their comparison with existing kinds) furnish sufficient evidence of corresponding changes in the earlier conditions of our planet.

It is most clear that the phenomena here described cannot have been produced in less than myriads of such cycles of time as constitute the whole period

68 THE CONCLUSION STATED BY MR. BABBAGE.

that has elapsed since the creation of the human race. And it is thus unquestionably established, that "the whole duration of human society, lengthened as it appears to us, is scarcely an unit in that extended chronology, which acknowledges no 'beginning,' save that in which 'GOD created the heavens and the earth.""

These, then, are the concurrent evidences which render it impossible to escape the conviction of the immense antiquity of the earth, and of the whole system of created beings. And the mass of evidence which thus combines to prove the great antiquity of the earth, is (to borrow the language of an eminent philosopher,) so irresistible, and so unshaken by any opposing facts, that none but those who are alike incapable of observing the facts, and appreciating the reasoning, can for a moment conceive the present state of its surface to have been the result of only 6000 years of existence. Those observers and philosophers who have spent their lives in the study of Geology, have arrived at the conclusion that there exists irresistible evidence, that the date of the earth's first formation is far anterior to the epoch supposed to be assigned to it by Moses and it is now admitted by all competent observers that the formations, even those strata which are nearest the surface, must have occupied vast periods, probably millions of years, in arriving at their present state. Mr. Babbage, Ninth Bridg. Treat. 67, 68.

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CHAPTER IV.

General Considerations on the bearing of certain Conclusions in Geology, upon the Doctrine which the Mosaic Text has been commonly represented to teach, in regard to the Ancient History and Duration of the Globe.

"Prius autem intellige, et deinde ad opus accede."

FROM the consideration of the important results to which the cultivation of geological researches have led, and of the apparently startling proofs of the antiquity of the earth which form the subject of the preceding chapter, we now come to the consideration of the results which have attended the establishment, by Geologists, of truths so much at variance with the opinions generally founded, and cherished with all the jealousy of religious faith, upon the Mosaic narrative of the Creation.

Geology has indeed in its progress most singularly modified the views of the ancient history of the world, which were universally received until the lights of modern science became diffused. Natural history in our earlier days "extended no further," says an eminent writer, "than the class of creations which the earth's existing surface presented to our view;"-and "no well ascertained

70

ERRONEOUS HYPOTHESES.

66

ran

facts or striking deductions" he continues, counter to the pious conviction that the earth and all that was therein, were created in the short period of six days." In that "dark age" of Geology "her science" continues the same author, "rested on the two assumptions that the world was made in six days, and that it was afterwards overwhelmed in the waters of an universal deluge; and hence arose a series of erroneous positions, impregnable to human reason, because guarded with all the sanctities of religious belief." "The primitive

waters of the globe were held to be an universal menstruum, capable of dissolving the most refractory substances, and the primitive mountains themselves, the metallic ores, the hardest gems, and even the adamant itself, were supposed to be chemical precipitates from this chaotic fluid." Geologists however, were soon led to very different conclusions; they discovered proofs within the globe itself, that the external parts of the earth were "not all produced in the beginning of things in the state in which we now behold them, nor in an instant of time." On the contrary, the investigations of Geology could not fail to establish that "these parts of the globe acquired their actual configuration and condition gradually, under a great variety of circumstances, and at successive periods, during each of which, distinct races of living beings have flourished on the land and in the waters, the remains of these creatures still lying buried in

INDEPENDENT NATURE OF GEOLOGICAL TRUTHS. 71

the crust of the earth.' Lyell, Elements of Geology, p. 2.

Inquiries touching a system of nature "calculated for millions, not of years only, nor of the ages of man, but of the races of men, and the succession of empires," would seem to be of all inquiries the most exempt from considerations connected with the "memory of man, or any human record which continues the memory of man from age to age." It would seem clear that the geological occurrences of times passed away long before his creation, must be read only in the present state of the globe, and be capable of elucidation only by the clear testimonies of the fossil remains of the animals and plants which actually inhabited its surface, in the periods to which our inquiries relate; and equally clear that the laws of nature established in the science of man by his inductive reasonings," are the only means by which such testimonies can be read. And as a series of stratified deposits " represents volumes of history in which each writer has recorded the annals of his own times, and then laid down the book with the last written page uppermost, upon the volume in which the events of the era immediately preceding were communicated, "*. it seems equally plain that such deposits with their organic contents, must furnish a sufficient, a faithful, and a decisive authority with regard to the times and the events thus inscribed upon them. them. But

Lyell, Elem. Geol. p. 212.