OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 281 



attained a point in science where the human intellect 

 is compelled to acknowledge its weakness, and to feel 

 that no conception the wildest imagination can form 

 will bear the least comparison with the intrinsic 

 greatness of the subject. 



Geology. 



(313.) The researches of physical astronomy are 

 confessedly incompetent to carry us back to the 

 origin of our system, or to a period when its state 

 was, in any great essential, different from what it is at 

 present. So far as the causes now in action go, and 

 so far as our calculations will enable us to estimate 

 their effects, we are equally unable to perceive in 

 the general phenomena of the planetary system 

 either the evidence of a beginning, or the prospect 

 of an end. Geometers, as already stated, have de- 

 monstrated that, in the midst of all the fluctuations 

 which can possibly take place in the elements of the 

 orbits of the planets, by reason of their mutual at- 

 traction, the general balance of the parts of the 

 system will always be preserved, and every de- 

 parture from a mean state periodically compensated. 

 But neither the researches of the physical astro- 

 nomer, nor those of the geologist, give us any 

 ground for regarding our system, or the globe we 

 inhabit, as of eternal duration. On the contrary, 

 there are circumstances in the physical constitution 

 of our own planet which at least obscurely point to 

 an origin and a formation, however remote, since it 

 has been found that the figure of the earth is not 



