It is not two thousand years since vines were transplanted
into F/RANCE\, though there is no climate in the world more
favourable to them. It is not three centuries since horses, cows,
sheep, swine, dogs, corn, were known in A/MERICA\. Is it
possible, that during the revolutions of a whole eternity, there
never arose a C/OLUMBUS\, who might open the communication
between E/UROPE\ and that continent? We may as well imagine, that
all men would wear stockings for ten thousand years, and never
have the sense to think of garters to tie them. All these seem
convincing proofs of the youth, or rather infancy, of the world;
as being founded on the operation of principles more constant and
steady than those by which human society is governed and
directed. Nothing less than a total convulsion of the elements
will ever destroy all the E/UROPEAN\ animals and vegetables which
are now to be found in the Western world.
And what argument have you against such convulsions? replied
P/HILO\. Strong and almost incontestable proofs may be traced
over the whole earth, that every part of this globe has continued
for many ages entirely covered with water. And though order were
supposed inseparable from matter, and inherent in it; yet may
matter be susceptible of many and great revolutions, through the
endless periods of eternal duration. The incessant changes, to
which every part of it is subject, seem to intimate some such
general transformations; though, at the same time, it is
observable, that all the changes and corruptions of which we have
ever had experience, are but passages from one state of order to
another; nor can matter ever rest in total deformity and
confusion.
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