sented all the changes both of the moral and material world as
repeated at distant intervals, so as to follow each other in their
former connection of place and time. For they compared the course of
events on our globe to astronomical cycles; and not only did they
consider all sublunary affairs to be under the influence of the
celestial bodies, but they taught that on the earth, as well as in the
heavens, the same identical phenomena recurred again and again in a
perpetual vicissitude. The same individual men were doomed to be
re-born, and to perform the same actions as before; the same arts were
to be invented, and the same cities built and destroyed. The Argonautic
expedition was destined to sail again with the same heroes, and Achilles
with his Myrmidons to renew, the combat before the walls of Troy.

Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo
Dilectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella,
Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles.[232]

The geologist, however, may condemn these tenets as absurd, without
running into the opposite extreme, and denying that the order of nature
has, from the earliest periods, been uniform in the same sense in which
we believe it to be uniform at present, and expect it to remain so in
future. We have no reason to suppose, that when man first became master
of a small part of the globe, a greater change took place in its
physical condition than is now experienced when districts, never before
inhabited, become successively occupied by new settlers. When a powerful
European colony lands on the shores of Australia, and introduces at once
those arts which it has required many centuries to mature; when it
imports a multitude of plants and large animals from the opposite
extremity of the earth, and begins rapidly to extirpate many of the
indigenous species, a mightier revolution is effected in a brief period
than the first entrance of a savage horde, or their continued occupation
of the country for many centuries, can possibly be imagined to have
produced. If there be no impropriety in assuming that the system is
uniform when disturbances so unprecedented occur in certain localities,
we can with much greater confidence apply the same language to those
primeval ages when the aggregate number and power of the human race, or
the rate of their advancement in civilization, must be supposed to have
been far inferior. In reasoning on the state of the globe immediately
before our spec