Hutton
imagined that the like might be true of terrestrial changes; although no
one recognized more clearly than he the fact that the dry land is being
constantly washed down by rain and rivers and deposited in the sea; and
that thus, in a longer or shorter time, the inequalities of the earth's
surface must be leveled, and its high lards brought down to the ocean.
But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth, which,
upheaving the sea bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that these
operations of degradation and elevation might compensate each other: and
that thus, for any assignable time, the general features of our planet
might remain what they are. And inasmuch as, under these circumstances,
there need be no limit to the propagation of animals and plants, it is
clear that the consistent working out of the uniformitarian idea might
load to the conception of the eternity of the world. Not that I mean to
say that either Hutton or Lyell held this conception--assuredly not;
they would have been the first to repudiate it. Nevertheless, the
logical development of their arguments lends directly towards this
hypothesis.
The second hypothesis supposes that the present order of things, at some
no very remote time, had a sudden origin, and that the world, such as it
now is, had chaos for its phenomenal antecedent.
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