at first, have been
found capable of improvement, until at last adopted by universal
consent; while the method of speculating on a former distinct state of
things and causes, has led invariably to a multitude of contradictory
systems, which have been overthrown one after the other,--have been
found incapable of modification,--and which have often required to be
precisely reversed.

The remainder of this work will be devoted to an investigation of the
changes now going on in the crust of the earth and its inhabitants. The
importance which the student will attach to such researches will mainly
depend in the degree of confidence which he feels in the principles
above expounded. If he firmly believes in the resemblance or identity of
the ancient and present system of terrestrial changes, he will regard
every fact collected respecting the causes in diurnal action as
affording him a key to the interpretation of some mystery in the past.
Events which have occurred at the most distant periods in the animate
and inanimate world, will be acknowledged to throw light on each other,
and the deficiency of our information respecting some of the most
obscure parts of the present creation will be removed. For as, by
studying the external configuration of the existing land and its
inhabitants, we may restore in imagination the appearance of the ancient
continents which have passed away, so may we obtain from the deposits of
ancient seas and lakes an insight into the nature of the subaqueous
processes now in operation, and of many forms of organic life, which,
though now existing, are veiled from sight. Rocks, also, produced by
subterranean fire in former ages, at great depths in the bowels of the
earth, present us, when upraised by gradual movements, and exposed to
the light of heaven, with an image of those changes which the
deep-seated volcano may now occasion in the nether regions. Thus,
although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to
a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind
is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal
eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation of
our race, and is not even withheld from penetrating into the dark
secrets of the ocean, or the interior of the solid globe; free, like the
spirit which the poet described as animating the universe,

----ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque mar