306 Dr Daubeny on the Diluvial Theory, 



disposed to do, without our imagining a change in the laws of 

 nature ; and that, in accounting, according to our principles, for 

 the phenomena originating in the action of water, of some kind 

 or other, which the globe exhibits, we are no more driven to 

 resort to a distinct system of causes, than, in conceiving vast 

 chains of hills to have been thrown up in former periods of the 

 earth's history, we are obliged to call into play other than those 

 volcanic forces which, on a less considerable scale, we observe 

 at the present day in operation. 



The principal difference, indeed, between these two opinions 

 seems to be, that, whilst the one supposes the igneous and 

 aqueous agents at work to be proceeding at all times at a gentle 

 but uniform rate ; the other, on the contrary, imagines periodical 

 returns of violent action, with intervals of comparative tranquil- 

 lity, in both, and thus accounts for the elevation of large tracts 

 of land by the short but forcible operation of those agents, 

 which, according to the former hypothesis, have occasioned both 

 by an action that compensated for its inferior energy by its 

 longer duration. 



Neither of these explanations ought to be viewed as incon- 

 sistent with the actual course of nature ; for it is evidently quite 

 conceivable, that the same catastrophes, both of fire and water, 

 which we infer from natural phenomena, and have acquired a 

 knowledge of from history, may at some future period recur *. 

 According to this view, the deluge recorded by Moses as in- 

 strumental in destroying the human race, may have been the 



• Having appealed to Scripture as an historical document, my opponents 

 may perhaps retort upon me the assurance given in Holy Writ, that mankind 

 is never again to be destroyed by water, as inconsistent with the supposition 

 of another deluge taking place at any future time. To this objection, how- 

 ever, it may be sufficient to reply, that, in order that the same consequences 

 should result at present from such a catastrophe as followed from the Noachean 

 Flood, it would be necessary that it should sweep simultaneously over the 

 whole surface of the globe, — a circumstance which I am not prepared to ad- 

 mit with regard to any former deluge, and which I am therefore not obliged 

 to assume in any of those which are to follow. With respect, indeed, to the 

 universality of the Mosaic Deluge, since divines themselves are divided upon 

 it, laymen may surely be allowed a certain latitude of opinion ; and it has 

 always appeared to me, that the phenomena to which geologists appeal in proof 

 of the reality of the event alluded to, may be just as well explained by a 

 number of partial though extensive floods, as a single universal one. 



