It A HISTORY OT 



writer mure than facts, they may be often carried to an extravagant 

 length ; and that time may be spent in reasoning upon nature, which 

 might be more usefully employed in writing her history. 



Too much speculation in natural history is certainly wrong ; but 

 there is a defect of an opposite nature that does much more preju- 

 dice ; namely, that of silencing all inquiry by alleging the benefits we 

 receive from a thing, instead of investigating the cause of its produc- 

 tion. If I inquire how a mountain came to be formed ; such a rea- 

 soner, enumerating its benefits, answers, because God knew it would 

 be useful. If I demand the cause of an earthquake, he finds some 

 good produced by it, and alleges that as the cause of its explosion. 

 Thus such an inquirer has constantly some ready reason for every ap- 

 pearance in nature, which serves to swell his periods, and. give splen- 

 dour to his declamation : every thing about him is, on some account 

 or other, declared to be good ; and he thinks it presumption to scru- 

 tinize into its defects, or to endeavour to imagine how it might be bet- 

 ter. Such writers, and there are many such, add very little to the ad- 

 vancement of knowledge. It is finely remarked by Bacon, that the 

 investigation of final causes* is a barren study ; and, like a virgin 

 dedicated to the Deity, brings forth nothing. In fact, those men who 

 want to compel every appearance and every irregularity in nature into 

 our service, and expatiate on their benefits, combat that very morality 

 which they would seem to promote. God has permitted thousands 

 of natural evils to exist in the world, because it is by their interven- 

 tion that man is capable of moral evil ; and he has permitted that we 

 should be subject to moral evil, that we might do something to deserve 

 eternal happiness, by showing that we had the rectitude to avoid it. 



CHAPTER IV. 



A REVIEW OF THE DIFFERENT THEORIES OF THE EARTH. 



HUMAN invention has been exercised for several ages to account for 

 the various irregularities of the earth. While those philosophers, 

 mentioned in the last chapter, see nothing but beauty, symmetry, and 

 order ; there are others, who look upon the gloomy side of nature, 

 enlarge on its defects, and seem to consider the earth, on which they 

 tread, as one scene of extensive desolation.t Beneath its surface the) 

 observe minerals and waters confusedly jumbled together ; its differ- 

 ent beds of earth irregularly lying upon each other ; mountains rising 

 from places that once were level ;f and hills sinking into valleys ; whole 

 regions swallowed by the sea, and others again rising out of its bosom. 

 All these they suppose to be but a few of the changes that have been 

 wrought in our globe ; and they send out the imagination to describe 

 its primaeval state of beauty. 



Of those who have written theories describing the manner of the 

 original formation of the earth, or accounting for its present appear 



Mnvestigatio causarum finalium sterilis est, et vcluti virgo Deo dicata nil puit 

 t Buffbn's second Discourse. t Senec. Qua;st. lib. vi. cap. 21 



