1807.] 
Wise agree with the Neptunists i in think- 
ing that this central body must be solid. 
But whereas the Neptunists consider the 
great nucleus of the globe as altogether 
inert, ov dead; all the Vulcanists agree 
that it contains a principle of activity or 
motion. The adherents of Ba‘tun. think 
that there is sull a motion aud agitation 
in the central parts of the earth, “though 
less violent than during the first periods 
of its ebullition, when it was formed by 
2 comet sweeping off and receiving ui its 
train a portiou of the exterior part of the 
sun ; Enopigh, to resume the metaphor, 
the blood that formerly boiled in the 
veins of the earth bas become, aud must 
gradually become, more and more slug- 
gish. 
Against both of these hypotheses of 
the origin, fornration, and structure of the 
earth, ines from a chaotic aud fluid 
mass, or frum the collision of a comet 
with the sun, there lies this imsurmouct- 
able objection in the eye of sound plilo- 
sophy, that they are, however plausible 
and ingenious, parely hypothetical anc 
arbitrary. Neither chaos and confusion, 
nor an assumed evei& in the Iistory and 
physiology of the heavens, 1s to be intro- 
duced into the order of nature, because 
certain things appear to our partial 
views as being in some disorder and con- 
fusion. Nor are we to have recourse to 
toa fiction of causes, when those which 
occur in our experience seem insufficient. 
In reasoning concerning any phenome- 
- Wu, we o ought CO proceed from what we 
know, keeping still in view the unity, 
simplicity, and constancy, of nature in all 
her operations. Sunilar causes, as is ob- 
served by the great Newton, are to be us- 
signed to similar phenoment nor ure any 
causes to be admitted but such as are true 
and sufficient to account for ihe phenome- 
non inquired into, The meaning of this rule 
many philosophers have entirely mis- 
taken, imagining that by trwe or reul 
Sir Isaac only means such causes as realiy 
exist in nature, whether they have any 
actual concern in the production of any 
effect or no, and are net mere creatures 
of the imagination. Sir Isaac Newton's 
meaning is, that no cause of any event 
shall be admitted, or even considered, 
which we do not know to be actually con- 
curring or exciting some influence in that 
very event. A-commixture of the fiery 
train of a comet with a portion of the 
sun is perhaps possible; and a ball of 
fire, after gradual refrigeratiops, may be 
sufficient to account for the most striking 
phenomena in the form, structure, and 
Montary Mac, No. 161, 
The Enquirer.—No,. XXIV. ; 145 
interior furniture of this globe. And this 
is a cause which exists in nature. But 
Newton, would undoubtedly have reject- 
ed the system of Buffon for the same 
reason thag he rejected the conducting 
spirits of Aristotle, and the vortices of 
Des Cartes; not because such a cause 
does not exist in nature, nor yet because 
1, is inadequate for the wished- for expla- 
nation; but because we do not know that 
a comet was any how concerned in the 
phenomenon under consideration. As 
the assumption of a chaotic and. fluid 
mass, and that also of a comet strk- 
ing obliquely and carrying away in its 
train a limb, as it were, or spur of the 
sun, are both of thea inadmissible in 
philosaphical investigation, and «scribe 
an onwin to the earth violent, accidental, 
and wholly, out of the ordinary course of 
nature, so they do not give it any perma- 
nent existence. On the system, of the 
Neptunists, the washing away of the mat- 
ter of this earth into the sea, would re- 
duce it to. a level: it would be over- 
‘whelmed in water, and a peri od would 
be put to the exisience of that vast me- 
quality 1 its suriace which is necessary 
ty the production aud support of plants 
and animals. Onthat of the followers of 
Baffon, the vital heat which they suppose 
to revive and animate vegetation, the sup- 
port of animal hfe, must sooner omlater 
be wholly lost, and become what they 
snes the moon to be, one silent and 
dreary waste, one mass of ice. In. all 
this Eee is something fugitive, mone. 
strous, and unsatis factory, because uuna- 
tural, 
Yet neither the labours of the Nep- 
tunists nor the Vulcanists have been: in 
vain. Their observations have led to a 
system in which the agency of both fire 
and water is admitted, and which pro- 
vides for the permanent existence of the 
Site in its present form, “ the green 
abode of life;” asystem which ts already 
so well established by multiplied obser- 
vation and just induction, as to be ad- 
mitted by every one not tainted with in» 
veterate prejudice, and which every day 
receives fresh confirmation; a system 
which attributes the structure of . the 
earth to a cause existing in nature, and 
evidently operating towards the effect in- 
quired into, and which displays the in- 
telligence, goodness, aud immutability of 
the Great Creator. 
This system, from an examination. of 
the internal characters of fussile bodies, 
maintains that the stratified parts of our 
a alter being deposited by the wae 
ters 
