This reasoning is, indeed, very far removed from that which is commonly employed for the purpose of conducting human operations, or establishing the political system of a nation; it is not, however, the less interesting to man, in that it cannot direct him immediately in his worldly affairs; and it is the only way of reasoning that can be employed in order to enlighten man with a view of those operations which are not to be limited in time, and which are to be concluded as in the system of nature, a system which man contemplates with much pleasure, and studies with much profit. Thus we have shown, that, from the top of the mountain to the shore of the sea, which are the two extremities of our land, every thing is in a state of change; the rock and solid strath dissolving, breaking, and decomposing, for the purpose of becoming soil; the soil travelling along the surface of the earth, in its way to the shore; and the shore wearing and wasting by the agitation of the sea, an agitation which is essential to the purposes of a living world. Without those operations, which wear and waste the coast, there would not be wind and rain; and, without those operations which wear and waste the solid land, the surface of the earth would become sterile. But showers of rain and fertile soil are necessarily required in the system of this world; consequently, the dissolution of the rocks, and solid strata of the earth, and the gradual, flow, but sure destruction of the present land, are operations necessary in the system of this world; so far from being evils, they are wisely calculated, in the system of nature, for the general good. CHAP. VIII. _The present Form of the Surface of the Earth explained, with a View of the Operation of Time upon our Land_. It is not to _common_ observation that it belongs to see the effects of time, and the operation of physical causes, in what is to be perceived upon the surface of this earth; the shepherd thinks the mountain, on which he feeds his flock, to have been always there, or since the beginning of things; the inhabitant of the valley cultivates the soil as his father had done, and thinks that this soil is coeval with the valley or the mountain. But the man of scientific observation, who looks into the chain of physical events connected with the present state of things, sees great changes that have been made, and foresees a different state that must follow in time, from the continued operation of that which actually is in nature.