Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth

by John Playfair

423. In one respect, the geological writings of Kirwan are far inferior to De Luc's: They are evidently the productions of a man who has not seen nature with his own eyes; who has studied mineralogy in cabinets, or in books only; but who has seldom beheld fossils in their native place. With the balance in his hand, and the external characters of Werner in his view, he has examined minerals with diligence, and has discovered many of those marks which serve to ascertain their places, in a system of artificial arrangement. But to reason and to arrange are very different occupations of the mind; and a man may deserve praise as a mineralogist, who is but ill qualified for the researches of geology.

424. The same hurry and impatience are visible in the manner in which his argument against Dr Hutton is usually conducted. He has seldom been careful to make himself master of the opinions of his adversary; and what he gives as such, and directs his reasonings against, have often no resemblance to them whatsoever. Without any intention to deceive others, but deceived himself, he usually begins with misrepresenting Dr Hutton's notions, and then proceeds to the refutation of them. In this imaginary contest, it will readily be supposed, that he is in general successful: when a man has the framing both of his own argument, and that of his antagonist, he must be a very unskilful logician if he does not come off with the advantage.

425. It is but justice, however, to the Neptunists, to acknowledge, that they are not all liable to the censure of beginning their researches from a period antecedent to the existence of the laws of nature. This absurdity does not, so far as I know, infect the system of Werner. That mineralogist has not proposed to explain the first origin of things, though he has supposed, at some former period, a condition of the globe very unlike the present, viz. the entire submersion of the solid under the fluid part.

Note xxiv. § 129.

System of Buffon.

426. The affinity of Dr Hutton's theory to that of Buffon, is nothing more than what arises from their making use of the same agents, viz. fire and water, in producing the present condition of the earth's surface. In almost all other respects the two theories are extremely different. The order in which those agents are employed in them, is directly opposite, as has already been remarked; Buffon introducing the action of fire first, and of water only in the second place, to waste and destroy mineral bodies, and afterwards to dispose them anew, and arrange them into strata. He makes no provision for the consolidation of these strata, nor any for their angular elevation; he has no means of explaining the unstratified rocks; nor any, but one extremely imperfect, for explaining the inequalities of the earth's surface.

Again, Buffon mistook, in some degree, the true object of a theory of the earth; and though he did not go back, like the geologists just named, to a time when the laws of nature were not fully established, he begins from a condition of things too unlike the present to be the basis of any rational speculation. He does not, indeed, undertake to examine the state of our planetary system before the sun existed; for from such extravagance, even when most disposed to indulge his fancy, he would surely have revolted. But he treats of the world, when the earth and the planets had just ceased to be a part of the sun, and were newly detached from the body of that luminary.[231]

[231] According to Buffon, the granite is the true solar matter, unchanged but by its congelation.

This hypothesis concerning the origin of the planets, contrived chiefly to account for the circumstance of their motion being all in the same direction, and in other respects not only unsupported, but even inconsistent with the principle of gravitation, has nothing in common with a theory, confined as Dr Hutton's is, within the field which must for ever bound our inquiries, and not venturing to speculate about the earth, when in a condition totally different from the present.

427. In what relates to the future, the two systems are not more like than in what relates to the past Buffon represents the cooling of our planet, and its loss of heat, as a process continually advancing, and which has no limit, but the final extinction of life and motion over all the surface, and through all the interior, of the earth. The death of nature herself is the distant but gloomy object that terminates our view, and reminds us of the wild fictions of the Scandinavian mythology, according to which, annihilation is at last to extend its empire even to the gods. This dismal and unphilosophic vision was unworthy of the genius of Buffon, and wonderfully ill suited to the elegance and extent of his understanding. It forms a complete contrast to the theory of Dr Hutton, where nothing is to be seen beyond the continuation of the present order; where no latent seed of evil threatens final destruction to the whole; and where the movements are so perfect, that they can never terminate of themselves. This is surely a view of the world more suited to the dignity of Nature, and the wisdom of its Author, than has yet been offered by any other system of cosmology.