396 ON THEORIES OF THE EARTH. 



Tliis is a sufficient view of the "theory" under 

 which all Europe became a land of philosophical geo- 

 logists, for which much of Europe yet fights, and 

 in which much of the rising aspiration is still educated. 

 We need not wonder at the progress of geology. If 

 future writers will pass it, together with the cosmogony 

 of Chaldea, it still influences minds which may be 

 startled at even the following slender criticism, which 

 a systematic writer must not avoid, if he is to do 

 his duty : though, to examine its loud pretences to 

 agree with the sacred records, shall be left to those who 

 can read a Book more often talked of than read. 



As every reader must needs know the common facts 

 of chemistry, I shall deceive no one by the admission 

 that the whole earth is soluble in a thousand times its 

 weight of water. It was therefore once a thousand 

 times heavier than it is now; so that it remains for this 

 theory to reconcile those two conditions to the laws of 

 the solar system. Again, there being no precipitants, 

 the rocks are formed by the abstraction of the solvent; 

 the unintelligible " subsidence" of this system. If the 

 water entered into abysses, then did one body contain 

 another far larger than itself, as even thus, it would 

 carry the dissolved rocks with it: if evaporated, it at 

 length departed into free space, against the laws of gra- 

 vity : if converted into earth, or destroyed, a new che- 

 mistry becomes necessary. But the rising and falling 

 of the ocean are treated with as much tranquillity as if 

 the changes of the tide were concerned; as if it could be 

 aught but the destruction and regeneration of oceans; 

 of a hollow sphere whose diameter is more than 8000 

 miles, and its thickness more than five. If, as has been 

 said, a higher temperature might have rendered it a 

 more active solvent, this is not Mr. Werner's theory; 

 since his temperature permits the existence of animals. 



