This is all that my theory requires, and this is what I
believe will be admitted, without any farther proof on my part.]
If the vegetable soil is thus constantly removed from the surface of the
land, and if its place is thus to be supplied from the dissolution of
the solid earth, as here represented, we may perceive an end to this
beautiful machine; an end, arising from no error in its constitution as
a world, but from that destructibility of its land which is so necessary
in the system of the globe, in the economy of life and vegetation.
The immense time necessarily required for this total destruction of
the land, must not be opposed to that view of future events, which is
indicated by the surest facts, and most approved principles. Time, which
measures every thing in our idea, and is often deficient to our schemes,
is to nature endless and as nothing; it cannot limit that by which alone
it had existence; and, as the natural course of time, which to us seems
infinite, cannot be bounded by any operation that may have an end, the
progress of things upon this globe, that is, the course of nature,
cannot be limited by time, which must proceed in a continual succession.
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