740 DYNAMICAL GEOLOGY. 



the final diversity, has been shown to exemplify in many ways the 

 same great principle. 



Thus the earth's features and functions were successively indivi- 

 dualized, — first the more fundamental qualities being evolved, and 

 finally those myriad details in which its special characteristics, its 

 magnificent perfection, and its great purpose of existence and fit- 

 ness for duty, largely consist. 



Conclusion. — The causes of the earth's movements which have 

 been considered appear to explain the evolution of the prominent 

 features of the globe ; and the special history made out for .North 

 America may be safely regarded as an example of what will here- 

 after be accomplished for all the continents. 



But Geology, while reaching so deeply into the origin of things, 

 leaves wholly unexplained the creation of matter, life, and spirit, 

 and that spiritual element which pervades the whole history like a 

 prophecy, becoming more and more clearly pronounced with the 

 progressing ages, and having its consummation and fulfilment in 

 Man. It gives no cause for the arrangement of the continents 

 together in one hemisphere (p. 10) and mainly in the same tem- 

 perate zone, or their situation about the narrow Atlantic, with the 

 barrier-mountains in the remote west of America and in the remote 

 east of Europe and Asia, thus gathering the civilized world into one 

 vast arena (p. 29) ; it does not account for the oceans having that 

 exact relation in extent and depth to the land which, under all 

 the changes, allowed of submergence and emergence through small 

 oscillations of the crust, and hence permitted the spreading out 

 of sandstones and shales by the waves and currents, the building 

 up of limestones through animal life, and the accumulation of coal 

 beds through the growth of plants, — and all in numberless alterna- 

 tions ; nor for the various adaptations of the system of plants and 

 animals to the wants of the last species in that system. Through 

 the whole history of the globe there was a shaping, provisioning, 

 and exalting of the earth with reference to a being of mind, to be 

 sustained, educated, exalted. This is the spiritual element in geo- 

 logical history, for which attraction, water, and fire have no ex- 

 planation. 



