DELUGE NOT UNIVERSAL 301 



to have scarcely merited. For if the biblical account is 

 to be taken literally, it furnishes us with a catastrophe of 

 the first order, and since this is said to have occurred 

 comparatively recently, or at least in historic time, the 

 uniformitarian, by his own principles, would have been 

 compelled to infer, as the catastrophist had done, that 

 such deluges form a part of the orderly scheme of the 

 world. The universality of the deluge had, however, 

 for various reasons, been denied, not only by geologists, 

 but by writers of other schools of thought, and towards 

 the middle of the century, belief in it amongst the 

 learned was gradually expiring ; such a number and 

 variety of convincing arguments as converged against 

 it could, indeed, but lead to that result ; and that 

 the deluge, so far from being universal, was a local, 

 and very local phenomenon, became an article of 

 belief, so settled amongst all good geologists and I 

 think I may add theologians that it may be said to 

 have finally fallen into the deep slumber of a decided 

 opinion, from which I for one have no desire to 

 arouse it. 



Thus the deluge, so far from shaking the uniformi- 

 tarian position, was rather itself submerged by uniformi- 

 tarian views, and growing geology was in danger of 

 taking the uniformitarian formula for an infallible 

 dogma. It was saved from this by physics, a clever 

 brother of its own, which had now discovered the famous 

 principle of the "conservation of energy," and another 

 equally famous, "the dissipation of energy." From 

 these it was deducible that the duration of the earth 

 as a living planet must be strictly limited in time. It 

 must have had a beginning, and at the beginning was 

 furnished with a store of energy, which it has ever since 

 been spending. In this spending of energy its life 

 consists, and when the store is at length exhausted 



