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Scripture and reason equally assures us that this astonishing machine, the Universe, was produced and created by an infinite Architect. For nothing is, without a cause; nor can man, endued with reason, admit an infinite series of secondary causes: we must stop therefore at some limit in this profession; a primary, infinite, and absolutely perfect cause.
Let us reflect upon our own natures, let us consider animals and insects, let us contemplate a single vegetable, we everywhere discover the most admirable wisdom, inimitable by any human of finite art: What genius, what art, can imitate one of those fibers whose various and infinite complications form the human body? In its most minute filament we see the finger of God, and the seal of the great Artificer of Universal Nature. If we turn out attention to the properties of the elements, the mind is lost in its own astonishment: If we survey the starts removed from us by such immense spaces (either by unassisted sight, or by those instruments with which art has improved it) consider their laws, their magnitudes, their courses in the depths of an infinite space; prescribed to hours, minutes, moments, our mind must be filled with the idea of an infinite power and wisdom, and their infinite Architect. The life of man would be insufficient to recapitulate in the briefest manner all the separate wonders of his production, much more thoroughly and fully to consider them.
Under the protection of the gracious being, I have determined on this occasion to enter into the reasons which have induced me to believe, that at the beginning to the world, there was created only one single, sexual pair of every species of living things.
To the proofs of this proposition, I request those who are my auditors to lend a favourable ear and willing attention.
Our holy Faith instructs us to believe that the Divinity created a single pair of the human kind, one individual Male, the other Female: The sacred writings of Moses acquaint us that they were placed in the Garden of Eden, and that Adam there gave names to every species of animal, God causing them to appear before him.
By a sexual pair I mean one male, and one female in every species where the individuals differ in sex: but there are certain classes of animals natural Hermaphrodites, and of these only a single individual was originally formed in each kind.
Experience teaches that in single and exclusive marriages both in men and animals, the offspring produced exceeds the number of the parents. These as they grow up become further multiplied; thus in the descending line, in every step which we stop to consider, we find the numbers always greater than in the next above which immediately precedes it; and the numbers of every species now exceed what they formerly were. If we trace this train back in the opposite order, and consider the ascending series, we shall find the number of individuals less and less at every step; so that many owe their origin to few, these to still fewer, and so on till the decreasing progression terminates in an individual pair; and the first link in this chain of secondary causes must be referred to an act of creation in the Deity.
To enter into the remainder of the subject with as much brevity as possible, I think myself not greatly in danger of error in laying down the following proposition: “That the Continent in the first ages of the world lay immersed under the sea, except a single island in the midst of this immense ocean; where all animals lived commodiously, and all vegetables were produced the greatest luxuriance.”
We had before learned from the declarations of revelation, and the testimony of reason, that of mankind a single individual only of each sex was created. By the Mosaic History we are informed that Paradise was given to Adam for an habitation, and that the various species of animals contributed there to his pleasure and conveniency.
Now if all the animals were in Paradise, which appears from Adam’s giving them names, all the insects must have been inhabitants of Paradise; and therefore all the species of vegetables must have had their stations assigned them in this delightful garden. For every vegetable nourished its peculiar insect, and most insects are confined for their food to particular vegetables.
An infinite number of exams may be brought in proof of this:
The Silkwork cannot live or be propagated but where mulberry-tree is plentiful.
The Coccionella lives upon the Indian fig only.
Some species of fish subsist only upon particular worms, as the Greenland whale upon the Medusa. Some live only upon herbs, as the Cretan Scarus, or Char.
There are birds who feed only upon certain berries, as the Ficedula, upon figs and grapes.
Others who eat nothing but particular kinds of insects allotted to them, as the Pici: thus flies are the food of the Muscicapa, Shellfish to the Haematopos, Ants to the Myrmecophaga, Earthworms to the mole, the nocturnal Phalaenae to the Bat.
Fish and birds of prey live upon other species of their own tribe, they are the Hunters of their respective elements.
Thus one animal by the death of another supports its life, which it cannot prolong unless it finds a table spread, suited to its natural appetite.
Beside if that part of the globe occupied by land and the continent had been originally of the same extent which it is this day, it would have been difficult and almost impossible for Adam to have found every animal; their natural wildness would presently have dispersed them over the whole earth; to think the land was originally created of the same size that it is at present, equally full of herbs and trees, equally inhabited by animals, and only two of the human species placed in a single corner of it, is as absurd as to suppose the planet Jupiter similar in all respects to our globe, and abounding in plants and animals, but not to be inhabited by man or any other rational being, to consider this scene of beauty, and repay the debt of glory to his Creator.
Is it credible that the Deity should have replenished the whole earth with animals to destroy them all in a little time by a flood, except a pair of each species preserved in the ark?
He who has ordered all things with the most singular wisdom, and has regulated the number of the offspring of every kind of animal with a proportion so exact, employed certainly as accurate a calculation in creating them. He has done noting in vain, nothing inconsistent with the laws he has once laid down; if we should admit that many individuals of any species of living thing were created a dispersed over all the world, we at once assign limits to creation beyond which it could not extend; and what reason can plead for multiplying creations in one species, when by that of a few, a single pair, a single individual the same might be obtained.
Let us now proceed to the consideration of the earth itself, and we hope that truth of this proposition will clearly appear a posteriori.
It is evident from ocular inspection that the land increases from year to year, and that the bounds of our continent are extended.
We see the sea ports of East and West Bothnia every year decreasing, and becoming incapable of admitting vessels, by the sand and soil thrown up, which are always adding new increments to the shore; the inhabitants of the ports are obliged to change their seats, and sometimes remove a quarter of a mile nearer the sear; of this we have seen examples at Pithoa, Luloa and Hudwickval. On the Easter side of Gothland near Hoburg, the increase of the continent for the last 90 years is distinctly visible, being about 2 or 3 toises annually. New Slite and Kylle, in the same country, are enormous stones which rudely represent large temples, giants, and colossal statues in the magnitude, yet worked out of the most solid rock by the force of the water.
The two very tall mountains of Torfburg and Hoburg, in Gothland, are formed of calcareous rock, and were marked and hollowed out by the force of the water at the same time that all Gothland lay immersed in the sea, except these two mountains, which raised their heads out of the deep in the same manner, and with a similar appearance to the Carolinian islands in the present state.
It is impossible to see without admiration the immense masses of stone and rock which everywhere lie scatter without order upon the face of the earth; when broken they are found to consist of mica, quartz, and spat; an evident indication that they (as well as all other stones) were formed on earth, and produced in subterraneous places; but by the force of the waves they were freed from the superincumbent earth, and cast upon the shore; as we frequently see similar masses upon the coasts.
The inhabitants of West Bothnia have observed by marks upon stones that the sea decreases every ten years four inches five lines perpendicularly; which amounts in an age to four feet five inches. According to which calculation 6000 years ago the sea was 240 feet deeper than it is at this present.
To these proofs we may add the infinite number of shells of sea fish found in calcareous mountains. The calcareous Mountains at Raetvic and Dalicum are full of petrified Conchs and Orthocerotes. That Conchaceous earth so frequent in Helfingia is all composed of fragments of Mytuli, or conchs, of a dirty yellow color: no man can be ignorant that the sea, not the dry land, was the place of their production; that these Conchs and bivalves are found at a certain distance from land, and not in the deeps; who does not see that the sea cast forth upon the shore the testaceous covering of its dead shell fish? Hence we infer that the sea once penetrated 20 miles up into Dalekarlia, or further, wherever any vestiges of shells are to be discovered.
Whoever ascribes these circumstances to the Deluge, which came suddenly and was a suddenly past, must be totally ignorant in Natural Philosophy; and if he sees anything, sees with the eyes of others. The sea every year becomes deeper by casting up earth, sand, and stones upon the shores, hence the earth increases in breadth, the sea in depth, and occupies the void space made by the earthy matter it cast up, which it is straightened on every side in narrower limits.
About Hoburg in Gothland I have seen immense stones, moveable by no animals or human art, yet cast up by the sea upon the shore: they consisted of pure marble, of white and red particles; a species of stone not produced in this country but in the Carolinian islands, from whence without doubt they were transferred higher by the force of the waves, especially as they were upon the eastern shore. One stone of a particular size, of that kind called micaceous, lies at the distance of a quarter of a mile from Hoburg; it is too large for any application of human force to have moved, yet it does not lie in the place where it is generated; for the neighbouring matter is not proper for that purpose: from hence we may infer that it was brought hither by some violent commotion of the sea from Sweden or Muscovy, while Gothland was yet immersed under it.
Translated by F. J. Brand
Reading and Discussion Questions
1.Linnaeus takes for granted in the piece that creation occurred as described in Genesis. He is also an extremely accomplished observer of plants, animals, and their environments. What does this lead him to conclude about the surface of the earth and how it has changed over time? What evidence does he provide to support his views?
2.What mechanisms are at work in the alteration of the surface of the earth since its creation?