y ingenious
commentaries on them. But there are great chasms in his facts, and
consequently in his reasoning. These he fills up by suppositions, which
may be as reasonably denied as granted. A sceptical reader therefore,
like myself, is left in the lurch. I acknowledge, however, he makes
more use of fact, than any other writer on a theory of the earth. But I
give one answer to all these theorists. That is as follows. They all
suppose the earth a created existence. They must suppose a creator
then; and that he possessed power and wisdom to a great degree. As he
intended the earth for the habitation of animals and vegetables, is it
reasonable to suppose, he made two jobs of his creation, that he first
made a chaotic lump and set it into rotatory motion, and then waited
the millions of ages necessary to form itself? That when it had done
this, he stepped in a second time, to create the animals and plants
which were to inhabit it? As the hand of a creator is to be called in,
it may as well be called in at one stage of the process as another. We
may as well suppose he created the earth at once, nearly in the state
in which we see it, fit for the preservation of the beings he placed on
it. But it is said, we have a proof that he did not create it in its
present solid form, but in a state of fluidity; because its present
shape of an oblate spheroid is precisely that which a fluid mass
revolving on its axis would assume.

I suppose that the same equilibrium between gravity and centrifugal
force, which would determine a fluid mass into the form of an oblate
spheroid, would determine the wise creator of that mass, if he made it
in a solid state, to give it the same spheroidical form. A revolving
fluid will continue to change its shape, till it attains that in which
its principles of contrary motion are balanced. For if you suppose them
not balanced, it will change its form. Now, the same balanced form is
necessary for the preservation of a revolving solid. The creator,
therefore, of a revolving solid, would make it an oblate spheroid, that
figure alone admitting a perfect equilibrium. He would make it in that
form, for another reason; that is, to prevent a shifting of the axis of
rotation. Had he created the earth perfectly spherical, its axis might
have been perpetually shifting, by the influence of the other bodies of
the system; and by placing the inhabitants of the earth successively
under its poles, it might have been depopu