Whiston, 1696.—Another production of the same school, and equally characteristic of the time, was that of Whiston, entitled, "A New Theory of the Earth; wherein the Creation of the world in Six Days, the Universal Deluge, and the General Conflagration, as laid down in the Holy Scriptures, are shown to be perfectly agreeable to Reason and Philosophy." He was at first a follower of Burnet; but his faith in the infallibility of that writer was shaken by the declared opinion of Newton, that there was every presumption in astronomy against any former change in the inclination of the earth's axis. This was a leading dogma in Burnet's system, though not original, for it was borrowed from an Italian, Alessandro degli Alessandri, who had suggested it in the beginning of the fifteenth century, to account for the former occupation of the present continents by the sea. La Place has since strengthened the arguments of Newton, against the probability of any former revolution of this kind.
The remarkable comet of 1680 was fresh in the memory of every one when Whiston first began his cosmological studies; and the principal novelty of his speculations consisted in attributing the deluge to the near approach to the earth of one of these erratic bodies. Having ascribed an increase of the waters to this source, he adopted Woodward's theory, supposing all stratified deposits to have resulted from the "chaotic sediment of the flood." Whiston was one of the first who ventured to propose that the text of Genesis should be interpreted differently from its ordinary acceptation, so that the doctrine of the earth having existed long previous to the creation of man might no longer be regarded as unorthodox. He had the art to throw an air of plausibility over the most improbable parts of his theory, and seemed to be proceeding in the most sober manner, and, by the aid of mathematical demonstration, to the establishment of his various propositions. Locke pronounced a panegyric on his theory, commending him for having explained so many wonderful and before inexplicable things. His book, as well as Burnet's, was attacked and refuted by Keill.[69] Like all who introduced purely hypothetical causes to account for natural phenomena, Whiston retarded the progress of truth, diverting men from the investigation of the laws of sublunary nature, and inducing them to waste time in speculations on the power of comets to drag the waters of the ocean over the land—on the condensation of the vapors of their tails into water, and other matters equally edifying.
Hutchinson, 1724.—John Hutchinson, who had been employed by Woodward in making his collection of fossils, published afterwards, in 1724, the first part of his "Moses's Principia," wherein he ridiculed Woodward's hypothesis. He and his numerous followers were accustomed to declaim loudly against human learning; and they maintained that the Hebrew Scriptures, when rightly translated, comprised a perfect system of natural philosophy, for which reason they objected to the Newtonian theory of gravitation.
Celsius.—Andrea Celsius, the Swedish astronomer, published about this time his remarks on the gradual diminution and sinking of the waters in the Baltic, to which I shall have occasion to advert more particularly in the sequel (ch. 29).
Scheuchzer, 1708.—In Germany, in the mean time, Scheuchzer published his "Complaint and Vindication of the Fishes" (1708), "Piscium Querelæ et Vindiciæ," a work of zoological merit, in which he gave some good plates and descriptions of fossil fish. Among other conclusions he labored to prove that the earth had been remodelled at the deluge. Pluche, also, in 1732, wrote to the same effect; while Holbach, in 1753, after considering the various attempts to refer all the ancient formations to the flood of Noah, exposed the inadequacy of this cause.
Italian Geologists—Vallisneri.—I return with pleasure to the geologists of Italy, who preceded, as has been already shown, the naturalists of other countries in their investigations into the ancient history of the earth, and who still maintained a decided pre-eminence. They refuted and ridiculed the physico-theological systems of Burnet, Whiston, and Woodward;[70] while Vallisneri,[71] in his comments on the Woodwardian theory, remarked how much the interests of religion, as well as those of sound philosophy, had suffered by perpetually mixing up the sacred writings with questions in physical science. The works of this author were rich in original observations. He attempted the first general sketch of the marine deposits of Italy, their geographical extent, and most characteristic organic remains. In his treatise "On the Origin of Springs," he explained their dependence on the order, and often on the dislocations, of the strata, and reasoned philosophically against the opinions of those who regarded the disordered state of the earth's crust as exhibiting signs of the wrath of God for the sins of man. He found himself under the necessity of contending, in his preliminary chapter, against St. Jerome, and four other principal interpreters of Scripture, besides several professors of divinity, "that springs did not flow by subterranean siphons and cavities from the sea upwards, losing their saltness in the passage," for this theory had been made to rest on the infallible testimony of Holy Writ.
Although reluctant to generalize on the rich materials accumulated in his travels, Vallisneri had been so much struck with the remarkable continuity of the more recent marine strata, from one end of Italy to the other, that he came to the conclusion that the ocean formerly extended over the whole earth, and after abiding there for a long time, had gradually subsided. This opinion, however untenable, was a great step beyond Woodward's diluvian hypothesis, against which Vallisneri, and after him all the Tuscan geologists, uniformly contended, while it was warmly supported by the members of the Institute of Bologna.[72]
Among others of that day, Spada, a priest of Grezzana, in 1737, wrote to prove that the petrified marine bodies near Verona were not diluvian.[73] Mattani drew a similar inference from the shells of Volterra and other places; while Costantini, on the other hand, whose observations on the valley of the Brenta and other districts were not without value, undertook to vindicate the truth of the deluge, as also to prove that Italy had been peopled by the descendants of Japhet.[74]
Moro, 1740.—Lazzaro Moro, in his work (published in 1740) "On the Marine Bodies which are found in the Mountains,"[75] attempted to apply the theory of earthquakes, as expounded by Strabo, Pliny, and other ancient authors, with whom he was familiar, to the geological phenomena described by Vallisneri.[76] His attention was awakened to the elevating power of subterranean forces by a remarkable phenomenon which happened in his own time, and which had also been noticed by Vallisneri in his letters. A new island rose in 1707 from deep water in the Gulf of Santorin, in the Mediterranean, during continued shocks of an earthquake, and, increasing rapidly in size, grew in less than a month to be half a mile in circumference, and about twenty-five feet above high-water mark. It was soon afterwards covered by volcanic ejections, but, when first examined, it was found to be a white rock, bearing on its surface living oysters and crustacea. In order to ridicule the various theories then in vogue, Moro ingeniously supposes the arrival on this new island of a party of naturalists ignorant of its recent origin. One immediately points to the marine shells, as proofs of the universal deluge; another argues that they demonstrate the former residence of the sea upon the mountains; a third dismisses them as mere sports of nature; while a fourth affirms that they were born and nourished within the rock in ancient caverns, into which salt water had been raised in the shape of vapor by the action of subterranean heat.
Moro pointed with great judgment to the faults and dislocations of the strata described by Vallisneri, in the Alps and other chains, in confirmation of his doctrine, that the continents had been heaved up by subterranean movements. He objected, on solid grounds, to the hypothesis of Burnet and of Woodward; yet he ventured so far to disregard the protest of Vallisneri, as to undertake the adaptation of every part of his own system to the Mosaic account of the creation. On the third day, he said, the globe was everywhere covered to the same depth by fresh water; and when it pleased the Supreme Being that the dry land should appear, volcanic explosions broke up the smooth and regular surface of the earth composed of primary rocks. These rose in mountain masses above the waves, and allowed melted metals and salts to ascend through fissures. The sea gradually acquired its saltness from volcanic exhalations, and, while it became more circumscribed in area, increased in depth. Sand and ashes ejected by volcanoes were regularly disposed along the bottom of the ocean, and formed the secondary strata, which in their turn were lifted up by earthquakes. We need not follow this author in tracing the progress of the creation of vegetables and animals on the other days of creation; but, upon the whole, it may be remarked, that few of the old cosmological theories had been conceived with so little violation of known analogies.