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. We have no right to anticipate any modifications in the results of existing causes in time to come, which are not conformable to analogy, unless they be produced by the progressive development of human power, or perhaps by some other new relations which may hereafter spring up between the moral and material worlds. In the same manner, when we speculate on the vicissitudes of the animate and inanimate creation in former ages, we ought not to look for any anomalous results, unless where man has interfered, or unless clear indications appear of some other _moral_ source of temporary derangement. CHAPTER X. SUPPOSED INTENSITY OF AQUEOUS FORCES AT REMOTE PERIODS. Intensity of aqueous causes--Slow accumulation of strata proved by fossils--Rate of denudation can only keep pace with deposition--Erratics, and effects of ice--Deluges, and the causes to which they are referred--Supposed universality of ancient deposits. _Intensity of aqueous causes._--The great problem considered in the preceding chapters, namely, whether the former changes of the earth made known to us by geology, resemble in kind and degree those now in daily progress, may still be contemplated from several other points of view. We may inquire, for example, whether there are any grounds for the belief entertained by many, that the intensity both of aqueous and of igneous forces, in remote ages, far exceeded that which we witness in our own times.