The whole of the lowland is many feet above the sea; it
must therefore have been raised out of the sea, according to your
theory: and what proofs have you of that?"
Well, that is a question both grand and deep, on which I shall not
enter yet; but meanwhile, to satisfy you that I wish to play fair
with you, I ask you to believe nothing but what you can prove for
yourselves. Let me ask you this: suppose that you had proof
positive that I had fallen into the river in the morning; would not
your meeting me in the evening be also proof positive that somehow or
other I had in the course of the day got out of the river? I think
you will accept that logic as sound.
Now if I can give you proof positive, proof which you can see with
your own eyes, and handle with your own hands, and alas! often feel
but too keenly with your own feet, that the whole of the lowlands
were once beneath the sea; then will it not be certain that, somehow
or other, they must have been raised out of the sea again?
And that I propose to do in my next paper, when I speak of the
pebbles in the street.
Meanwhile I wish you to face fairly the truly grand idea, which all I
have said tends to prove true--that all the soil we see is made by
the destruction of older soils, whether soft as clay, or hard as
rock; that rain, rivers, and seas are perpetually melting and
grinding up old land, to compose new land out of it; and that it must
have been doing so, as long as rain, rivers, and seas have existed.
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