CHAPTER
V. PREJUDICES WHICH HAVE RETARDED THE PROGRESS
OF GEOLOGY. Prepossessions in regard to the duration of past time--Prejudices
arising from our
- peculiar positions as inhabitants of the land--Of these occasioned
by our not facing subterranean changes now in progress--All these
cause combine to make the forever course of Nature appear different
from the present--Objections to the doctrine that causes shallar in
kind and energy to those now acting have produced the former changes
of the earth's surface, considered.
IF
we reflect on the history of the progress of geology, as explained in the preceding
chapters, we perceive that there have been great fluctuations of opinion respecting
the nature of the causes to which all former changes of the earth's surface are
referable. The first observers conceived the monuments which the geologist endeavours
to decipher to relate to an original state of the earth, of to a period when there
were causes in activity, district, in kind and degree, from those now constituting
the economy of nature. These views were gradually modified, and some of them entirely
abandoned in proportion as observations were multiplied, and the signs of former
mutations more skilfully interpreted. Many appearances, which had for a long time
been regarded as indicating mysterious and extraordinary agency, were finally
recognized as the necessary result of the laws now governing |