Geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the creation of man differ from history.

The earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world, that our study and contemplation of the earth, and the laws which govern its animate productions, ought no more to be considered in the light of a disturbance or deviation from the system, than the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter should be regarded as a physical event in the history of those heavenly bodies, however influential they may have become from that time in advancing the progress of sound philosophy among men.

Probably there was a beginning-it is a metaphysical question, worthy a theologian-species have begun and ended-but the analogy is faint and distant.

There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most perfect forms.

When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.

Geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the creation of man differ from history.

It was a profound saying of Wilhelm Humboldt, that 'Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man.'