62 hutton's theory. 
temples, taken in connexion with the time, that at the shortest 
must have been consumed in finishing them, proves that a particu- 
lar scheme was formed at the beginning, and long pursued. 
The greater part of the edifices, affording evidence from their 
plan and decorations, that they were devoted to the services of 
religion, it would appear very probable that the body in whom 
the supreme control of affairs was vested, was a despotic priest- 
hood. It seems, besides, scarcely possible, that anything short 
of a dread of the anger of heaven, perpetually instilled by such a 
body of men, could procure the sacrifice of so vast an amount of 
human labour, for an object not immediately and visibly connected 
with the personal enjoyment of the individuals by whom it was 
performed. 
From the skill and science that must have been employed in 
cutting, transporting, and raising such immense masses of stone, 
it must be further evident, that this ancient people had arrived at 
a considerable degree of advancement in civilization and the arts. 
So long as he confined himself to inferences, such as these, when 
speaking of the ancient Egyptians, our traveller would be tread- 
ing on safe ground; but if from the scanty materials furnished on 
the spot, he should pretend to specify the particular methods by 
which that ancient people was consolidated, and why it flourished 
and fell, he would be forsaking the path of the inductive philoso- 
phy, and invading the field of the epic poet. In the science of 
Geology we are safe, so long as we confine ourselves to legiti- 
mate inferences from well established facts, and state what has 
happened, rather than the particular manner in which it was ac- 
complished; but when without interrogating nature we begin to 
state with precise accuracy, how the earth may have been formed, 
or its strata in the first instance deposited, and afterwards brought 
into the positions in which we find them, we fall into the errors of 
Hutton and Werner. The investigation of the causes of change, 
is not, however, to be neglected in the history of the earth any 
more than in that of man, and we are led, therefore, to notice the 
two principal agents by which the various revolutions to which 
our planet has been subjected, are supposed to have been produced. 
HUTTON'S THEORY. 
36. It has already appeared that of the various kinds of rock, 
some exhibit a crystalline structure, and the greater part a con- 
siderable degree of hardness. But we know of no examples of 
crystallization and consolidation, except from a state of fluidity. 
A heap of sand or of any dry powder, will remain for ages with- 
out exhibiting any tendency to unite into a solid body. We in- 
fer, therefore, that the crystalline rocks must have been in a fluid, 
and a part of the earthy ones also in a fluid, or the whole in a 
semifluid state. But the only two agents which are capable of 
bringing them into that state, are heat and moisture, fire and 
