So far, however, from any such belief existing as a necessary
consequence of the constitution of the human mind, the real fact
seems to be that the contrary belief has been almost universally
prevalent. In all old religions, and in the philosophical systems
of almost all ancient nations, the order of the universe has
been regarded as distinctly unstable, mutable, and temporary.
A beginning and an end have always been assumed, and the course
of terrestrial events between these two indefinite points has
been regarded as liable to constant interruption by revolutions
and catastrophes of different kinds, in many cases emanating from
supernatural sources. Few of the more ancient theological creeds,
and still fewer of the ancient philosophies, attained body and
shape without containing, in some form or another, the belief
in the existence of periodical convulsions, and of alternating
cycles of destruction and repair.
That geology, in its early infancy, should have become imbued
with the spirit of this belief, is no more than might have been
expected; and hence arose the at one time powerful and
generally-accepted doctrine of "Catastrophism." That the succession
of phenomena upon the globe, whereby the earth's crust had assumed
the configuration and composition which we find it to possess,
had been a discontinuous and broken succession, was the almost
inevitable conclusion of the older geologists.
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