“I have read a little upon that subject and have heard some lectures.”
“Can you tell me, then, whether or not the natural laws which prevailed on the earth ages and ages ago, before the earth was fit for men to live upon it, are the same as those which have been in operation in these later ages, since men have inhabited it?”
“I suppose that the same laws have prevailed from the beginning of the geologic periods. I think that geology makes that very evident.”
“If that were not so,” said Mr. Hume, “the past history of the globe would be a riddle to us; it would be confusion worse confounded. In regard to those early ages we could not reason from cause to effect, for we should know nothing of the forces and principles then in existence. In geologic studies we judge the past from the present, and if that be not a trustworthy method of reasoning, all the conclusions of geologists are as worthless as dreams. Have you any reason to suppose, from what you have read on this subject, that a curse changed the character of the earth as a dwelling-place for man some six thousand years ago? Is it true, as Milton says, that then
‘The sun
Had first his precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable, and from the north call
Decrepit winter—from the south to bring
Solstitial summer’s heat’?
Did the Creator then
‘Bid his angels turn askance
The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more
From the sun’s axle’?
Or was death then first introduced among the brute creation, as Milton fancies?—
‘But Discord first,
Daughter of sin, among the irrational
Death introduced through fierce antipathy;
Beast now with beast ’gan war, and fowl with fowl,
And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving,
Devoured each other.’”
“Animals must have died,” said Ansel, “for their remains lie imbedded in rock which certainly existed before man lived on the earth.”