THE FIRST CRUST OF THE EARTH. 325 
forms. Every form, as the temporary result of a multi- 
plicity of phenomena of motion, is as such perishable, and 
of limited duration. But, in the continual change of forms, 
matter and the motion inseparable from it remain eternal 
and indestructible. . 
Now, although Kant’s Cosmological Gas Theory is not able 
to explain the development of motion in the whole universe 
in a satisfactory manner, beyond that gaseous state of chaos, 
and although many other weighty considerations may be 
brought forward against it, especially by chemistry 
and geology, yet we must on the whole acknowledge its 
great merit, inasmuch as it explains in an excellent 
manner, by due consideration of development, the whole 
structure of all that is accessible to our observation, that is, 
the anatomy of the solar systems, and especially of our 
planetary system. It may be that this development was 
altogether different from what Kant supposes, and our 
earth may have arisen by the aggregation of numberless 
small meteorides, scattered in space, or in any other manner, 
but hitherto no one has as yet been able to establish any 
other theory of development, or to offer one in the place 
of Kant’s cosmogeny. 
After this general glance at the monistic cosmogeny, or 
the non-miraculous history of the development of the 
universe, let us now return to a minute fraction of it, to our 
mother earth, which we left as a ball flattened at both poles 
and in a fiery fluid state, its surface having condensed by 
becoming cooled into a very thin firm crust. The crust, on 
first cooling, must have covered the whole surface of the 
terrestrial sphere as a continuous smooth and thin shell. 
But soon it must have become uneven and hummocky ; for, 
