OPINIONS OF VOLTAIRE AND LAPLACE REGARDING GEOLOGY. 317 
mountains stated to be a disorderly mass of ruins of an ancient 
world, ‘ disperse $a et Id,’ like the ruins of a bombarded town, 
and finds them, on the contrary, arranged in definite order 
from one end of the universe to the other. ‘ It is, in fact, a 
chain of high and constant aqueducts, open in many spots, and 
giving that space to the rivers and arms of the sea which they 
require to irrigate the earth/ Noticing Burnet’s confusion- 
dogma again, he remarks that ‘ the mountains serve as reservoirs 
for rain, and are the sources of rivers, and no one can fail to see 
in this pretended confusion the wisdom and benevolence of God.’ 
He proceeds to state ‘ that every climate has its mountains, 
and that they are necessary for the machinery of the world. 
Animals could not live without them, for life cannot be with- 
out water. Water is evaporated by the sea, and is thus 
constantly purified ; the winds carry it to the summits of the 
hills, where it is precipitated, and it is shown that there is a 
relation between the supply and the size of the rivers.’ He 
does not believe in the Louville doctrine, and states that if it 
were true, the mountains would find themselves still in the same 
places, and that he cannot find proofs that the Alps and 
Caucasus have gone, even bit by bit, to Caffraria. He states 
that the ‘ bed of the ocean is a hollow, the remoter from the 
shore the deeper is it. There is not a rock in the open ocean 
except some islands. But if there were ever a time when the 
ocean has been on our mountains, if men and animals have 
ever lived in the hollow which now serves for the floor of the 
ocean, could they have existed there? From what mountains 
could they have received rivers ? The world then must have 
been something quite different from what it is now. And how 
could this globe turn on itself, having one-half hollowed out 
and the other half high above, and surcharged with an ocean ? 
How did this ocean manage to hold on to the mountain without 
flowing into the immense bed which Nature had hollowed out 
for it ? The philosophers who make a world, only manage to 
make a ridiculous one. There is, then, no “systeme” which can 
give the least probability to this idea so generally diffused, 
that our globe has changed its aspect, that the ocean has been 
long over habitable earth, and that men have lived formerly 
where porpoises and whales do now. Everything which 
vegetates, and that which is alive, does not change ; every 
species has lasted invariably as the same. It would be very 
strange that a millet- seed should retain for ever its nature, 
and that the whole globe varied in its own.’ He considers 
the formation of the Mediterranean and its water supply, 
and pooh-poohs the philosophers who stated that it has been 
formed by an accident, stating that it has always been in its 
place, and that the fundamental constitution of this universe 
