16 quotes
In a rude state of society all great calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.
Principles of Geology (1832)
It will be necessary to dwell on futile reasoning and visionary hypothesis because the most extravagant systems were often invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent.
Principles of Geology (1832)
Strabo rejects this theory as insufficient to account for all the phenomena, and he proposes one of his own, the profoundness of which modern geologists are only beginning to appreciate.
Principles of Geology (1832)
Now, if it would be reasonable to draw such inferences with respect to
the future, we cannot but apply the same rules of induction to the
past.
Principles of Geology (1832)
When we study history we obtain a more profound insight into human nature by instituting a comparison between the present and former states of society.
Principles of Geology (1832)
We learn from a passage in Strabo, that it was a dogma of the Gaulish Druids that the universe was immortal, but destined to survive catastrophes both of fire and water. That this doctrine was communicated to them from the East, with much of their learning, cannot be doubted.
Principles of Geology (1832)
The elevating of the bottom of the sea, the sinking and submersion of the land, and most of the inequalities of the earth's surface, might, he said, be accounted for by the agency of these subterranean causes.
Principles of Geology (1832)
It seems, then, that the Greeks had not only derived from preceding nations, but had also, in some slight degree, deduced from their own observations, the theory of great periodical revolutions in the inorganic world.
Principles of Geology (1832)
Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world.
Principles of Geology (1832)
The Egyptian philosophers ventured on the perilous task of seeking out some analogy to the mode of operation employed by the Author of Nature in the first creation of organized beings, and they compared it to that which governs the birth of new individuals by generation.
Principles of Geology (1832)
Many distinguishing features of the surface may often be ascribed to the operation at a remote era of slow and tranquil causes-to the gradual deposition of sediment in a lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals therein.
Principles of Geology (1832)
In the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests, of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of the inhabitants.
Principles of Geology (1832)
In the Egyptian and Eastern cosmogonies, and in the Greek version of them, no very definite meaning can, in general, be attached to the term 'destruction of the world,' for sometimes it would seem almost to imply the annihilation of our planetary system, and at others a mere revolution of the surface of the earth.
Principles of Geology (1832)
The system of scholastic disputations encouraged in the Universities of the middle ages had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argumentation, and they often preferred absurd and extravagant propositions, because greater skill was required to maintain them; the end and object of such intellectual combats being victory and not truth.
Principles of Geology (1832)
The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke M.D.,'... appeared in 1705, containing 'A Discourse of Earthquakes'... His treatise... is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature.
Principles of Geology (1832)
The title of a work of Cardano's, published in 1552, De Subtilitate (corresponding to what would now be called Transcendental Philosophy), would lead us to expect, in the chapter on minerals, many far fetched theories characteristic of that age; but when treating of petrified shells, he decided that they clearly indicated the former sojourn of the sea upon the mountains.
Principles of Geology (1832)