THE CONFLICT OF OLD AND NEW IDEAS 57 



and the IMountains of the Earth. There is something august and 

 stately in the Air of those things, that inspires the mind with great 

 thoughts and Passions ".^''^ "See", he exclaims, "How scornfully 

 they look down upon us, and bid defiance to all the Elements; 

 they have borne the Thunder and Lightning of Heaven, and all 

 the Artillery of the Skies, for innumerable Ages ; and do not fear 

 the crackling of thorns and shrubs that burn at their Feet".^^" 

 The writer of this passage is anticipating the poets of the late 

 Eighteenth century in his appreciation of the grand objects of 

 nature. And it was his interest in scientific observation that gave 

 him sufficient familiarity to interpret their spirit. For Burnet 

 the sky, the sea and the mountains were not the mere tinsel of 

 poetic adornment, but objects of reality and wonder and inspira- 

 tion. Here is a truly literary interpretation of new scientific 

 knowledge : ' ' The Continents were made of those three or four 

 primary masses into which the falling orb of the Earth was divided ; 

 but the Islands were made of the Fractures of these, and broken 

 off by the Fall, from the Skirts and Extremities of the Conti- 

 nents ".^^^ The sea, too, had its inspiration for him. "I havp ob- 

 served in many places a Ridge of Mountains some Distance from 

 the Sea, and a Plain from their Roots to the Shore; which Plain 

 no doubt was formerly covered by the Sea, bounded against those 

 Hills as its first and natural Ramparts, or as the Ledge or Lips of 

 its Yessel".^"® This is a successful attempt to translate into in- 

 telligible and striking imagery his scientific idea. One may smile 

 at his antiquated hypothesis, — that the Lord threw up the moun- 

 tains in a haphazard manner for men to wonder at, that the stars 

 in the sky were more orderly before the fall of man, that the earth 

 before the flood was as smooth as a table, — ^but one must admire the 

 \dgor of his imagination and this remarkably successful effort to 

 give literary life to a scientific discussion. One more illustration 

 will suffice: "If we should suppose the Ocean dry, and that we 

 looked down from the Top of some high Cloud upon the empty 

 Shell, how horribly and barbarously would it look? and \Wtli what 



i»Ibid. vol. I, p. 105. 

 "8 Ibid. vol. I, p. 172. 

 I*' Ibid. vol. I, p. 170. 

 ^^ Sacred Theory, vol. I, p. 125. 



