Our object is to know the time which had elapsed since the foundation of
the present continent had been laid at the bottom of the ocean, to the
present moment in which we speculate on these operations. The space is
long; the data for the calculations are, perhaps, deficient: No matter;
so far as we know our error, or the deficiency in our operation, we
proceed in science, and shall conclude in reason. It is not given to man
to know what things are truly in themselves, but only what those things
are in his thought. We seek not to know the precise measure of any
thing; we only understand the limits of a thing, in knowing what it is
not, either on the one side or the other.
We are investigating the age of the present earth, from the beginning of
that body which was in the bottom of the sea, to the perfection of its
nature, which we consider as in the moment of our existence; and we have
necessarily another aera, which is collateral, or correspondent, in the
progress of those natural events. This is the time required, in the
natural operations of this globe, for the destruction of a former
earth; an earth equally perfect with the present and an earth equally
productive of growing plants and living animals.
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