297. The existing forms of the Alps are, therefore, traceable chiefly to denudation as they rose from the sea, followed by more or less violent aqueous action, partly arrested during the glacial periods, while the produced diluvium was carried away into the valley of the Rhine or into the North Sea. One very important result of denudation had not yet been sufficiently regarded; namely, that when portions of a thick bed (as the Rudisten-kalk) had been entirely removed, the weight of the remaining masses, pressing unequally on the inferior beds, would, when these were soft (as the Neocomian marls), press them up into arched conditions, like those of the floors of coal-mines in what the miners called "creeps." Many anomalous positions of the beds of Spatangenkalk in the district of the Lake of Annecy were in all probability owing to this cause: they might be studied advantageously in the sloping base of the great Rochers de Lanfon, which, disintegrating in curved, nearly vertical flakes, each a thousand feet in height, were nevertheless a mere outlying remnant of the great horizontal formation of the Parmelan, and formed, like it, of very thin horizontal beds of Rudisten-kalk, imposed on shaly masses of Neocomian, modified by their pressure. More complex forms of harder rock were wrought by the streams and rains into fantastic outlines; and the transverse gorges were cut deep where they had been first traced by fault or distortion. The analysis of this aqueous action would alone require a series of discourses; but the sum of the facts was that the best and most interesting portions of the mountains were just those which were finally left, the centers and joints, as it were, of the Alpine anatomy. Immeasurable periods of time would be required to wear these away; and to all appearances, during the process of their destruction, others were rising to take their place, and forms of perhaps far more nobly organized mountain would witness the collateral progress of humanity. J. R. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 35: Read by Mr. Ruskin at the weekly evening meeting of the Royal Institution (see _Proceedings_, vol. iv., pp. 142-46), June 5, 1863.--ED.] THE RANGE OF INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTION PROPORTIONED TO THE RANK IN ANIMATED LIFE.[36] A THEOREM. 298. I suppose this theorem to be a truism; but I venture to state it, because it is surely desirable that it should be recognized as an axiom by metaphysicians, and practically does not seem to me yet to have been so. I say "animated life" because the word "life" by itself might have been taken to include that of vegetables; and I say "animated" instead of "spiritual" life because the Latin "anima," and pretty Italian corruption of it, "alma," involving the new idea of nourishment of the body as by the Aliment or Alms of God, seems to me to convey a better idea of the existence of conscious creatures than any derivative of "spiritus," "pneuma," or "psyche."