st be leveled, and its high lands brought down to
the ocean. But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth,
which, upheaving the sea-bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that
these operations of degradation and elevation might compensate each other;
and that thus, for any assignable time, the general features of our
planet might remain what they are. And inasmuch as, under these
circumstances, there need be no limit to the propagation of animals and
plants, it is clear that the consistent working-out of the uniformitarian
idea might lead to the conception of the eternity of the world. Not that I
mean to say that either Hutton or Lyell held this conception--assuredly
not; they would have been the first to repudiate it. Nevertheless, the
logical development of their arguments tends directly toward this
hypothesis.

The second hypothesis supposes that the present order of things, at some
no very remote time, had a sudden origin, and that the world, such as it
now is, had chaos for its phenomenal antecedent. That is the doctrine
which you will find stated most fully and clearly in the immortal poem of
John Milton,--the English "Divina Commoedia,"--"Paradise Lost." I
believe it is largely to the influence of that remarkable work, combined
with the daily teachings to which we have all listened in our childhood,
that this hypothesis owes its general wide diffusion as one of the current
beliefs of English-speaking people. If you turn to the seventh book of
"Paradise Lost," you will find there stated the hypothesis to which I
refer, which is briefly this: that this visible universe of ours came into
existence at no great distance of time from the present; and that the
parts of which it is composed made their appearance, in a certain definite
order, in the space of six natural days, in such a manner that, on the
first of these days, light appeared; that, on the second, the firmament,
or sky, separated the waters above from the waters beneath the firmament;
that, on the third day, the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon
it a varied vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its
appearance; that the fourth day was signalized by the apparition of the
sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets; that, on the fifth day, aquatic
animals originated within the waters; that, on the sixth day, the earth
gave rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all varieties
of terrestrial animals except