THEORIES ON THE FORMATION OF THE EARTH.

Theory of projection. — Theory of condensation.

— Theory of incrustation.

— Soul of the Earth.

THEORY OF PROJECTION.

— Of all the theories concerning the origin of the Earth, the one that has attained the greatest vogue in these latter times is that of Buffon, whether because of the position he enjoyed in the learned world, or by reason of nothing more being known than what he said at that time.

Seeing that all the planets move in the same direction, from west to east, and in the same plane, traversing orbits whose inclination does not exceed 7 and a half degrees, Buffon concluded, from this uniformity, that they must have been set in motion by the same cause.

From the same point of view, he formulated the supposition that, the Sun being an incandescent mass in fusion, a comet may have collided with it and, scraping its surface, may have detached from it a portion that, projected into space by the violence of the collision, divided into many fragments, these fragments forming the planets, which continued to move circularly, by the combination of the centrifugal and centripetal forces, in the direction given by the line of the primitive collision, that is, in the plane of the ecliptic.

The planets would thus be parts of the incandescent substance of the Sun and, consequently, would also have been incandescent in their origin. They took, to cool and consolidate, a time proportionate to their respective volumes, and, when the temperature allowed it, life sprang forth upon their surface.

By virtue of the gradual lowering of the central heat, the Earth would arrive, after a certain time, at a state of complete cooling; the liquid mass would freeze entirely and the air, ever more condensed, would end by disappearing. The lowering of the temperature, rendering life impossible, would bring about the diminution, then the disappearance of all organized beings. Having begun at the poles, the cooling would gradually gain all the regions, as far as the Equator.

Such, according to Buffon, is the present state of the Moon which, smaller than the Earth, would today be an extinct world, from which life is forever excluded. The Sun itself would, at last, come to have the same fate. According to his calculations, the Earth would have spent about 74,000 years to reach its present temperature and within 93,000 years would see the end of the existence of organized Nature.

— The theory of Buffon, contradicted by the new discoveries of Science, is at present almost entirely abandoned, for the following reasons:

1st During a long time, it was believed that comets were solid bodies, whose encounter with a planet could occasion the destruction of the latter. On that hypothesis, Buffon's supposition had nothing improbable about it. It is known, however, now, that comets are formed of a gaseous matter, rarefied enough, nevertheless, that stars of medium magnitude can be perceived through their nuclei. Under these conditions, offering less resistance than the Sun, it is impossible that, in a violent collision such as this, they could be capable of hurling far away any portion of the solar mass. 2nd The incandescent nature of the Sun is also a hypothesis, which nothing, up to the present, confirms, and which, on the contrary, observations seem to belie. Although there is as yet no certainty as to its nature, the powerful means of observation that Science has at its disposal today have permitted it to be better studied, so that it is generally admitted that it is a globe composed of solid matter, surrounded by a luminous atmosphere, or photosphere, which is not in contact with its surface. 3rd In the time of Buffon, only the six planets that the ancients were acquainted with were known: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Afterward many others were discovered, three of which, chiefly, Juno, Ceres and Pallas, [1] have their orbits inclined by 13, 10 and 34 degrees, which does not agree with a single movement of projection.

4th Buffon's calculations regarding the cooling were recognized as absolutely inexact, ever since Fourier discovered the law of the decrease of heat. The Earth needed not merely 74,000 years to reach its present temperature, but some millions of years.

5th Buffon considered solely the central heat of the Earth, without taking into account that of the solar rays. Now, it is known today, in the presence of scientific data of rigorous precision, obtained by experiment, that, by virtue of the thickness of the terrestrial crust, the internal heat of the globe has long contributed only an insignificant portion to the temperature of the exterior surface. The variations that this temperature undergoes are periodic and due to the preponderant action of the solar heat (Chap. VII, no. 25). Since the effect of this cause is permanent, whereas that of the central heat is null, or nearly null, the diminution of the latter cannot bring sensible modifications to the surface of the Earth. For the Earth to become uninhabitable through cooling, the extinction of the Sun would be necessary. THEORY OF CONDENSATION.

— The theory of the formation of the Earth by the condensation of cosmic matter is the one that today prevails in Science, as being the one that observation best justifies, the one that resolves the greatest number of difficulties and that rests, more than all the others, upon the great principle of universal unity. It is the one we set forth above, in chapter VI: General uranography.

These two theories, as is seen, lead to the same result: a primitive state of incandescence of the globe; the formation of a solid crust by cooling; the existence of the central fire and the appearance of organic life, as soon as the temperature made it possible. They differ, however, on essential points, and it is probable that, if Buffon were living at present, he would adopt other ideas.

Geology takes the Earth at the point where direct observation is possible. Its earlier state, escaping observation, can only be conjectural. Now, between two hypotheses, good sense says that one should prefer the one that logic sanctions and that shows itself most in accord with the observed facts.

THEORY OF INCRUSTATION.

— Merely so as not to fail to mention it, we speak of this theory, which has nothing scientific about it, but which, nevertheless, achieved a certain repercussion in recent times and seduced some persons. It is summarized in the following letter:

“God, according to the Bible, created the world in six days, four thousand years before the Christian era. This assertion the geologists contest, founded upon the study of fossils and of the thousands of incontestable marks of antiquity that carry the origin of the Earth back to millions of years. Nevertheless, the Scripture spoke the truth, and so also did the geologists. And it was a simple countryman [2] who brought them into agreement by teaching that our globe is nothing more than an incrustative planet, very modern, composed of very ancient materials. “After the carrying away of the unknown planet, which had reached maturity, or in harmony with what existed in the place we now occupy, the soul of the Earth received the order to assemble its satellites, to form the present Earth, according to the rules of progress in all things and through all things. Only four of those heavenly bodies agreed to the association that was proposed to them. Only the Moon persisted in its autonomy, seeing that the globes too have their free will. To proceed with this fusion, the soul of the Earth directed toward the satellites an attractive magnetic ray, which put into a cataleptic state all the vegetable, animal and human furnishings that they possessed and that they brought to the community. The operation had as its only witnesses the soul of the Earth and the great celestial messengers who aided it in this great work, opening those globes to give them common bowels. Once the welding was performed, the waters flowed off into the voids that the absence of the Moon had left. The atmospheres merged and there began the awakening or the resurrection of the germs that were in catalepsy. Man was the last to be drawn out of the state of hypnotism and found himself surrounded by the luxuriant vegetation of the terrestrial paradise and by the animals that grazed in peace around him. All this could be done in six days, with workers as powerful as those whom God had charged with the task. The planet Asia brought the yellow race, that of the most ancient civilization; Africa the black race; Europe the white race and America the red race. “Thus, certain animals, of which only the remains are found, would never have lived on the present Earth, but would have been transported from other worlds undone by old age. The fossils, which are found in climates beneath which they could not have existed in this world, lived without doubt in very different zones on the globes where they were born. Such remains are found on the Earth at the poles, whereas the animals lived at the Equator of the globes to which they belonged.”

— This theory has against it the most positive data of experimental science, besides which it leaves intact the very question that it claims to resolve, the question of origin. It says, it is true, how the Earth would have been formed, but it does not say how the four worlds were formed that united to constitute it.

If things had happened thus, how would the absolute nonexistence of any vestiges of those immense weldings be explained, notwithstanding their having gone down to the bowels of the globe? Each of those worlds, Asia, Africa, Europe and America, which are claimed to have brought the materials proper to them, would have a particular geology, different from that of the others, which is not the case. On the contrary, it is seen, firstly, that the granitic nucleus is uniform, of homogeneous composition in all parts of the globe, without solution of continuity. Next, the geological strata present themselves of equal formation, identical as to constitution, superposed, everywhere, in the same order, continuous, without interruption, from one side of the seas to the other, from Europe to Asia, to Africa, to America, and reciprocally. These strata, which bear witness to the transformations of the globe, attest that such transformations were effected over its whole surface and not merely over a portion of it; they show the periods of appearance, existence, and disappearance of the same animal and vegetable species, in the different parts of the world, equally; they show the fauna and flora of those remote periods advancing simultaneously everywhere, under the influence of a uniform temperature, and changing character everywhere, in proportion as the temperature is modified. Such a state of things cannot be reconciled with the formation of the Earth by the adjunction of many different worlds. Moreover, it is to be asked what would have become of the sea, which occupies the void left by the Moon, had the latter not refused to unite with its sisters. What would happen to the present Earth, if one day the Moon had the fancy to come and take its place, expelling the sea from it?

— Such a system seduced some persons, because it seemed to explain the presence of the different races of men on the Earth and their localization. But, since those races were able to proliferate in distinct worlds, why could they not have developed in diverse points of the same globe? It is to want to resolve a difficulty by means of another greater difficulty. Effectively, whatever the rapidity and the dexterity with which the operation was carried out, that junction could not have been realized without violent upheavals. The more rapid it was, the more disastrous the cataclysms must have been. It seems, then, impossible that beings merely plunged into cataleptic sleep could have resisted them, so as then to awaken tranquilly. If they were only germs, in what would they consist? How would beings entirely formed be reduced to the state of germs? There would always remain the question of knowing how those germs developed anew. There too, we would have the Earth forming itself by a miraculous process, a process, however, less poetic and less grandiose than that of the biblical Genesis, while the natural laws give, of its formation, a much more complete explanation and, above all, a more rational one, deduced from observation. [3] SOUL OF THE EARTH.

— The soul of the Earth played a principal role in the theory of incrustation. Let us see whether this idea has a better foundation.

Organic development is always in relation with the development of the intellectual principle; the organism is completed in proportion as the faculties of the soul multiply; the organic scale constantly accompanies, in all beings, the progression of intelligence, from the polyp up to man, and it could not be otherwise, since the soul needs an instrument appropriate to the importance of the functions it is required to perform.

Of what use would it be to the oyster to possess the intelligence of the monkey, without the organs necessary for its manifestation? If, therefore, the Earth were an animate being, serving as a body to a special soul, that soul, by the very effect of its constitution, would have to be even more rudimentary than that of the polyp, seeing that the Earth has not even the vitality of the plant, whereas, by the role they attributed to its soul, they made of it a being endowed with reason and with the most complete free will, in sum: a kind of superior Spirit, which is not rational, since never has any Spirit found itself less endowed, nor more imprisoned.

Amplified in this sense, the idea of the soul of the Earth must, then, be enrolled among the systematic and chimerical conceptions.

By soul of the Earth, one may understand, more rationally, the collectivity of the Spirits charged with the elaboration and the direction of its constitutive elements, which already supposes a certain degree of intellectual development; or, better still: the Spirit to whom is confided the high direction of the moral destinies and of the progress of its inhabitants, a mission that can be attributed only to a being eminently superior in knowledge and in wisdom.

In such a case, that Spirit is not, properly speaking, the soul of the Earth, since it is not incarnated in it, nor subordinated to its material state. It is a chief set over its government, as a general is over the command of an army.

A Spirit, charged with a mission as important as that of the government of a world, could not have caprices, or else we would have to recognize in God the imprudence of confiding the execution of his laws to beings capable of contravening them, at their pleasure. Now, according to the doctrine of incrustation, it is the ill will of the soul of the Moon that would have given cause for the Earth to remain incomplete. There are ideas that refute themselves. (Spiritist Review of September 1868: The soul of the Earth.)

[1] Publisher's note: The planetoids Juno, Ceres and Pallas, as well as hundreds of others, are located between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.

[2] Miguel de Figagnières (Var), author of The Key of Life.

[3] When such a system is linked to a whole cosmogony, it is to be asked upon what rational basis the rest can rest.

The concordance that, by means of this system, is claimed to be established between the biblical Genesis and Science, is entirely illusory, since Science itself contradicts it.

The author of the above letter, a man of great learning, seduced for an instant by this theory, soon discovered its vulnerable sides and was not slow to combat it with the weapons of Science.