When
we consider the power and wisdom that must have been exerted in the
contriving, creating, and maintaining this living world which sustains
such a variety of plants and animals, the revolution of a mass of dead
matter according to the laws of projectiles, although in perfect wisdom,
is but like a unite among an infinite series of ascending numbers.

After the theory of that eloquent writer, founded on a mere accident, or
rather the error of a comet which produced the beautiful system of this
world, M. de Luc, in his Theory of the earth, has given us the history
of a disaster which befell this well contrived world;--a disaster which
caused the general deluge, and which, without a miracle, must have
undone a system of living beings that are so well adapted to the present
state of things. But, surely, general deluges form no part of the theory
of the earth; for, the purpose of this earth is evidently to maintain
vegetable and animal life, and not to destroy them.

Besides these imaginary great operations in the natural history of this
earth, we have also certain suppositions of geologists and mineralists
with regard to the effect of water, for explaining to us the
consolidation of the loose materials of which the strata of the earth
had been composed, and also for producing every other appearance, or any
which shall happen to occur in the examination of the earth, and require
to be explained. That this is no exaggerated representation, and
that this is all we have as a theory, in the suppositions of those
geologists, will appear from the following state of the case.

They suppose water the agent employed in forming the solid bodies of the
earth, and in producing those crystallised bodies which appear in
the mineral kingdom. That this is a mere supposition will appear by
considering; first, that they do not know how this agent water is to
operate in producing those effects; nor have they any direct proof
of the fact which is alleged, from a very fallaceous analogy; and,
secondly, that they cannot tell us where this operation is to be
performed. They cannot say that it is in the earth above the level of
the sea: for, the same appearances are found as deep as we can examine
below that level; besides, we see that water has the opposite effect
upon the surface of the earth, through which it percolates dissolving
soluble substances, and thus resolving solid bodies in preparing soil
for plants. If, again, it be below the l