The Cosmogonists Leibnitz 



cosmogonists who, often with the slenderest equipment of 

 knowledge of nature, endeavoured to account for the origin 

 of things. They were not disconcerted by phenomena that 

 contradicted their theories, for they usually never saw such 

 phenomena, and when they did, they easily explained 

 them away. 



Many of these writers were divines, yet even when they 

 were laymen they felt themselves bound to suit their 

 speculations to the received interpretation of the books of 

 Moses. Looking back from our present vantage ground, it 

 is difficult to realize that even the little which had been 

 ascertained about the structure of the earth was not 

 sufficient to prevent some, at least, of the monstrous 

 doctrines of these theorists from being promulgated. It 

 was a long time before men came to understand that any 

 ' true theory of the earth must rest upon evidence furnished 

 by the globe itself, and that no such theory could properly 

 be framed until a large body of evidence had been gathered 

 together. 



By a curious coincidence, the writings of the two last and 

 most illustrious of the cosmogonists appeared during the 

 middle of last century in the same year. Leibnitz (born in 

 1646), fascinated by the problems connected with the history 

 of the earth, had forniulated his prescient views on this 

 subject in his Protogaea, but this work was not fully pub- 

 lished until long after the death of its author. Adopting 

 the idea of Descartes, he believed that at first our planet 

 was a regularly shaped globe of molten liquid which gradu- 

 ally cooled and solidified, and in so doing assumed irregu- 

 larities of surface which formed mountain chains. The 

 first crust solidified as the most ancient or " primary " rocks, 



