a me non fur cose create
Se non eterne;"[106]

and no small sensation was excited when Hutton seemed, with unhallowed
hand, desirous to erase characters already regarded by many as sacred.
"In the economy of the world," said the Scotch geologist, "I can find no
traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end;" a declaration the more
startling when coupled with the doctrine, that all past ages on the
globe had been brought about by the slow agency of existing causes. The
imagination was first fatigued and overpowered by endeavoring to
conceive the immensity of time required for the annihilation of whole
continents by so insensible a process; and when the thoughts had
wandered through these interminable periods, no resting-place was
assigned in the remotest distance. The oldest rocks were represented to
be of a derivative nature, the last of an antecedent series, and that,
perhaps, one of many pre-existing worlds. Such views of the immensity of
past time, like those unfolded by the Newtonian philosophy in regard to
space, were too vast to awaken ideas of sublimity unmixed with a painful
sense of our incapacity to conceive a plan of such infinite extent.
Worlds are seen beyond worlds immeasurably distant from each other, and,
beyond them all, innumerable other systems are faintly traced on the
confines of the visible universe.

The characteristic feature of the Huttonian theory was, as before
hinted, the exclusion of all causes not supposed to belong to the
present order of nature. But Hutton had made no step beyond Hooke, Moro,
and Raspe, in pointing out in what manner the laws now governing
subterranean movements might bring about geological changes, if
sufficient time be allowed. On the contrary, he seems to have fallen far
short of some of their views, especially when he refused to attribute
any part of the external configuration of the earth's crust to
subsidence. He imagined that the continents were first gradually
destroyed by aqueous degradation; and when their ruins had furnished
materials for new continents, they were upheaved by violent convulsions.
He therefore required alternate periods of general disturbance and
repose; and such he believed had been, and would forever be, the course
of nature.

Generelli, in his exposition of Moro's system, had made a far nearer
approximation towards reconciling geological appearances with the state
of nature as known to us; for while he agreed with Hutton, that the
decay