Having considered the past history of the globe, we may now be permitted
to bestow a glance upon the future which awaits it.
Can the actual state of the earth be considered as definitive? The
revolutions which have fashioned its surface, and produced the Alps in
Europe, Mount Ararat in Asia, the Cordilleras in the New World--are they
to be the last? In a word, will the terrestrial sphere for ever preserve
the form under which we know it--as it has been, so to speak, impressed
on our memories by the maps of the geographers?
It is difficult to reply with any confidence to this question;
nevertheless, our readers will not object to accompany us a step
further, while we express an opinion, founded on analogy and scientific
induction.
What are the causes which have produced the present inequalities of the
globe--the mountain-ranges, continents, and waters? The primordial cause
is, as we have had frequent occasion to repeat, the cooling of the
earth, and the progressive solidification of the external crust, the
nucleus of which still remains in a fluid or viscous state. These have
produced the contortions, furrows, and fractures which have led to the
elevation of the great mountain-ranges and the depression of the great
valleys--which have caused some continents to emerge from the bed of
ocean and have submerged others. The secondary causes which have
contributed to the formation of a vast extent of dry land are due to the
sedimentary deposits, which have resulted in the creation of new
continents by filling up the basins of the ancient seas.
Now these two causes, although in a minor degree, continue in operation
to the present day. The thickness of the terrestrial crust is only a
small fraction compared to that of the internal liquid mass. The
principal cause, then, of the great dislocations of the earth’s crust
is, so to speak, at our gates; it threatens us unceasingly. Of this the
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which are still frequent in our
day, give us disastrous and incontestable proofs. On the other hand, our
seas are continually forming new land: the bed of the Baltic Sea, for
instance, is gradually rising, in consequence of the deposits which will
obviously fill up its area entirely in an interval of time which it
might not be impossible to calculate.
It is, then, probable that the actual condition of the surface and the
respective limits of seas and continents have nothing fixed or definite
in them--that they are, on the contrary, open to great modifications in
the future.
There is another problem much more difficult of solution than the
preceding, but for which neither induction nor analogy furnish us with
any certain data--viz., the perpetuity of our species. Is man doomed to
disappear from the earth some day, like all the races of animals which
preceded him, and prepared the way for his advent? Will a new _glacial
period_, analogous to that which, during the Quaternary period, was felt
so rigorously, again come round to put an end to his existence? Like the
Trilobites of the Silurian period, the great Reptiles of the Lias, the
Mastodons of the Tertiary, and the Megatheriums of the Quaternary epoch,
is the human species to be annihilated--to perish from the globe by a
simple natural extinction? Or must we believe that man, gifted with the
attribute of reason, marked, so to say, with the Divine seal, is to be
the ultimate and supreme term of creation?
Science cannot pronounce upon these grave questions, which exceed the
competence, and extend beyond the circle of human reasoning. It is not
impossible that man should be only a step in the ascending and
progressive scale of animated beings. The Divine Power which has
lavished upon the earth life, sentiment, and thought; which has given
organisation to plants; to animals, motion, sensation, and intelligence;
to man, in addition to these multiple gifts, the faculty of reason,
doubled in value by the ideal--reserves to Himself perhaps in His wisdom
the privilege of creating alongside of man, or after him, a being still
more perfect. This new being, religion and modern poesy would present in
the ethereal and radiant type of the Christian angel, with moral
qualities whose nature and essence would escape our perceptions--of
which we could no more form a notion than one born blind could conceive
of colour, or the deaf and dumb of sound. _Erunt æquales angelis Dei._
“They will be as the angels of God,” says Holy Scripture, speaking of
man raised to the life eternal.
During the Metamorphic epoch the _mineral kingdom_ existed alone; the
rocks, silent and solitary, were all that was yet formed of the burning
earth. During the Primary epoch, the vegetable kingdom, newly created,
extended itself over the whole globe, which it soon covered from pole to
pole with an uninterrupted mass of verdure. During the Secondary and
Tertiary epochs, the vegetable and animal kingdoms divided the earth
between them. In the Quaternary epoch the _human kingdom_ appeared. Is
it in the future destinies of our planet to receive yet another lord?
And after the four kingdoms which now occupy it, is there to be a _new
kingdom_ created, the attributes of which can never be anything but an
impenetrable mystery, and which will differ from man in as great a
degree as man differs from the other animals, and plants from rocks?
We must be contented with suggesting, without hoping to solve, this
formidable problem. It is a great mystery, which, according to the fine
expression of Pliny, “lies hidden in the majesty of Nature,” _latet in
majestate naturæ_; or (to speak more in the spirit of Christian
philosophy) it is known only to the Almighty Creator of the Universe.
TABLE
OF
BRITISH SEDIMENTARY AND FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA.