n follows of Moro's theory, by which, says
Generelli, we may explain all the phenomena, as Vallisneri so ardently
desired, "_without violence, without fictions, without hypothesis,
without miracles_."[79] The Carmelitan then proceeds to struggle against
an obvious objection to Moro's system, considered as a method of
explaining the revolutions of the earth, _naturally_. If earthquakes
have been the agents of such mighty changes, how does it happen that
their effects since the times of history have been so inconsiderable?
This same difficulty had, as we have seen, presented itself to Hooke,
half a century before, and forced him to resort to a former "crisis of
nature:" but Generelli defended his position by showing how numerous
were the accounts of eruptions and earthquakes, of new islands, and of
elevations and subsidences of land, and yet how much greater a number of
like events must have been unattested and unrecorded during the last six
thousand years. He also appealed to Vallisneri as an authority to prove
that the mineral masses containing shells, bore, upon the whole, but a
small proportion to those rocks which were destitute of organic remains;
and the latter, says the learned monk, might have been created as they
now exist, _in the beginning_.

Generelli then describes the continual waste of mountains and
continents, by the action of rivers and torrents, and concludes with
these eloquent and original observations:--"Is it possible that this
waste should have continued for six thousand, and _perhaps_ a greater
number of years, and that the mountains should remain so great, unless
their ruins have been repaired? Is it credible that the Author of Nature
should have founded the world upon such laws, as that the dry land
should forever be growing smaller, and at last become wholly submerged
beneath the waters? Is it credible that, amid so many created things,
the mountains alone should daily diminish in number and bulk, without
there being any repair of their losses? This would be contrary to that
order of Providence which is seen to reign in all other things in the
universe. Wherefore I deem it just to conclude, that the same cause
which, in the beginning of time, raised mountains from the abyss, has
down to the present day continued to produce others, in order to restore
from time to time the losses of all such as sink down in different
places, or are rent asunder, or in other way suffer disintegration. If
this be