218 THE LAW. 



men the conditions unmistakably indicated by those sim- 

 ple pleistocene implements. 



[Time Geological.] 



Whatever may have been the creational development of 

 plants and animals whenever the advent or whatever the 

 first condition of the human race the groups and systems 

 of geology afford irrefragable evidence of the lapse of vast 

 epochs of TIME. The idea of immense duration is at once 

 suggested by an examination of the stratified rocks. The 

 innumerable alternations of their shales, limestones, sand- 

 stones, and conglomerates their vast thickness their re- 

 peated laminations the alternation of marine and fresh- 

 water beds their upheaval into dry land and subsequent 

 submergence, again and again the various races that have 

 lived and grown and been entombed in them, system after 

 system all this, and much more that will readily suggest 

 itself to the reflecting mind, must clench beyond cavil the 

 conviction of the unconceivable duration of geological time. 

 In all our reasonings, then, we must never lose sight of the 

 element TIME. With unlimited duration at command, we 

 have a power equal to the mightiest results ; and forces 

 which in themselves appear puny and feeble, become giants 

 when backed by that spirit of unrest whose eye never 

 closes, whose wing never wearies, and whose foot never 

 tires. The hardest rock is hollowed by the ceaseless water- 

 drop ; the Nilotic plain has been borne, particle by particle, 

 from the mountains of Abyssinia ; and the massive coral- 

 reef of a thousand leagues owes its origin to an animated 

 speck all but invisible to the unassisted eye. The problems 

 of geology, like the problems of mechanics, are thus de- 

 pendent for their solution on the conjoint elements of force 



