We have now another
object in our view; this is to investigate the operations of the globe,
at the time that the foundation of this land was laying in the waters of
the ocean, and to trace the existence and the nature of things, before
the present land appeared above the surface of the waters. We should
thus acquire some knowledge of the system according to which this world
is ruled, both in its preservation and production; and we might be thus
enabled to judge, how far the mineral system of the world shall appear
to be contrived with all the wisdom, which is so manifest in what are
termed the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
It must not be imagined that this undertaking is a thing unreasonable
in its nature; or that it is a work necessarily beset with any
unsurmountable difficulty; for, however imperfectly we may fulfill this
end proposed, yet, so far as it is to natural causes that are to be
ascribed the operations of former time, and so far as, from the present
state of things, or knowledge of natural history, we have it in our
power to reason from effect to cause, there are, in the constitution of
the world, which we now examine, certain means to read the annals of a
former earth.
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