Theory of the Earth

OUR object is to know the time which had elapsed since the foundation of the present continent had been laid at the bottom of the ocean, to the present moment in which we speculate on these operations. The space is long; the data for the calculations are, perhaps, deficient: no matter; so far as we know our error, or the deficiency in our operation, we proceed in science, and shall conclude in reason. It is not given to man to know what things are truly in themselves, but only what those things are in his thought. We seek not to know the precise measure of any thing; we only understand the limits of a thing, in knowing what it is not, either on the one side or the other.

WE are investigating the age of the present earth, from the beginning of that body which was in the bottom of the sea, to the perfection of its nature, which we consider as in the moment of our existence; and we have necessarily another area, which is collateral, or correspondent, in the progress of those natural events. This is the time required, in the natural operations of this globe, for the destruction of a former earth; and earth equally perfect with the present, and an earth equally productive of growing plants and living animals. Now, it must appear, that, if we had a measure for the one of those corresponding operations, we would have an equal knowledge of the other.

THE formation of a future earth being in the bottom of the ocean, at depths unfathomable to man, and in regions far beyond the reach of his observation, here is apart of the process which cannot be taken as a principle in forming an estimate of the whole. But, in the destruction of the present earth, we have a process that is performed within the limits of our observation; therefore, in knowing the measure of this operation, we shall find the means of calculating what had passed on a former occasion, as well as what will happen in the

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