Prlcp.] — OU [March 3, 17, & 



Beside, the theory is so extrar)rflin•^r\^ in its conjectured cause, and so 

 stupemhuisly disastrous in its conseciuences ; and so wholly at variance 

 with the ordinary procedures of Nature, that mankind have a right to take 

 their stand on tlie stability of normal laws, and to demand the clearest and 

 most indubitable proofs, l)efore thej^ yield their faith in all they have been 

 tautrhl l)y experience and history. 



Uniformity between cause and effect; stability of law; are the basis and 

 surety of all philosophizing. Building on such foundation mankind have 

 believed that this earth is their stable habitation, since man was placed 

 here, and that it is neither to be drowned nor ice-clad, to the destruction ot 

 the life upon it. We reasonably infer from all the past that the world was 

 made to support the life it sustains ; that the Power that could create both 

 it and that life, and adapted one to the other, had a purpose of their per- 

 manence, and would not permit that purpose to become frustrate. Against 

 such an inference, based in all knowledge of what has been, they who as- 

 sert an impending liability to the destruction of half or more of the human 

 race, witli its wealth and civilization, have a right to demand an attesting 

 example in the world's geological history, or reasons more cogent than 

 seem to have been offered, to prove that such destruction awaits the world. 



They have a right to say that so general a disaster is not compatible 

 with the established order of the universe. Those who offer an hypotheses, 

 the converse of this ground of security, have the burden of the proof and 

 of the argument resting heavily upon them. The facts they rely upon 

 must be clearly incapable of any other solution.; the cause assigned must 

 fit the effect. 



All physicists profess to adhere to the normal laws of nature ; as the law 

 of gravitation, the movements of the planets, &c., the formations of the 

 rocks, their elevations and depressions; of evaporations, and rainfalls, and 

 congelations, «S:c. ; an(T he who rests himself on such foundation is to be 

 taken to be upon the true foundation, until it is clearly shown that some 

 eccentricity of nature has been acting exceptionally, and has left the evi- 

 dences of her exceptional action in manner to be incapable of explana- 

 tion by her usual laws. Adhering to these laws geologists have generally 

 agreed that in the beginning this Earth was very hot and that its interior 

 was the source of igneous rocks ; that it was surrounded by water and 

 steam ; and in the pervasive waters the sedimfntary rocks were deposited 

 from the eroded inaterials of igneous rocks, and by incessant repetitions of 

 the erosions of both kinds of rocks, and that as late as the Carboniferous 

 Ages the Arctic had yet a Tropical climate. By heat the Earth was kept 

 expanded, but cooling by radiation it sradually grew less, and tlie crust of 

 rrick became too large for the internal mass, and consequently by its own 

 weight tlie collapse sunk the valleys and raised the hills, formed the oce;in 

 l)eds and heaved the mountain ranges, and the Earth's rocky covering be- 

 came plicated and corrugated, yet by a process as gradual and rpiiet as the 

 radiation of the internal heat. This process was onward until its cause 

 ceased; but the cessation of the radiation was no cause for a glaciation 



