REVOLUTIONS OF THE GLOBE.

General or partial revolutions. — Age of the mountains.

— Biblical deluge.

— Periodic revolutions.

— Future cataclysms.

— Increase or decrease of the volume of the Earth.

GENERAL OR PARTIAL REVOLUTIONS.

— The geological periods mark the phases of the general aspect of the globe, in consequence of its transformations. But, with the exception of the diluvian period, which was characterized by a sudden upheaval, all the others elapsed slowly, without abrupt transitions. During all the time that the constitutive elements of the globe took to assume their definitive positions, the mutations must have been general. Once the base was consolidated, only partial modifications, on the surface, should have occurred.

— Besides the general revolutions, the Earth experienced a great number of local disturbances, which changed the aspect of certain regions. As regards the other two causes, fire and water contributed to these disturbances.

Fire acted by producing: either volcanic eruptions that buried, beneath thick layers of ashes and lavas, the surrounding lands, making cities disappear with their inhabitants; or earthquakes; or upheavals of the solid crust, which drove the waters toward the lower regions; or the sinking, to a greater or lesser extent, of that same crust, in some places, into which the waters rushed, leaving other places dry. It was thus that islands arose in the midst of the ocean, while others disappeared; that portions of continents became separated and formed islands, and that arms of the sea, dried up, joined islands and continents.

As to water, it acted by producing: either the irruption or the withdrawal of the sea on some coasts; or landslides which, intercepting the liquid currents, formed lakes; or overflows and inundations; or, finally, deposits at the mouths of rivers. These deposits, pushing back the sea, created new territories. Such is the origin of the delta of the Nile, or Lower Egypt; of the delta of the Rhône, or the Camargue.

AGE OF THE MOUNTAINS.

— By examining the terrains torn apart by the rising of the mountains and the layers that form their buttresses, it becomes possible to determine their geological age.

By geological age of the mountains, one must not understand the number of years they count of existence, but the period in which they were formed and, therefore, the relative antiquity that they present. It would be erroneous to believe that such antiquity corresponds to the elevation that is proper to them, or to the exclusively granitic nature that they may reveal, since the mass of granite, when its uplifting occurred, may have pierced and separated the superposed layers.

It was thus established, by means of observation, that the mountains of the Vosges, of Brittany, and of the Côte-d’Or, in France, which are not very high, belong to the most ancient formations. They date from the period of transition, if not earlier than the deposits of coal. The Jura was formed in the middle of the secondary period; it is contemporary with the giant reptiles. The Pyrenees were formed later, at the beginning of the tertiary period. Mont Blanc and the group of the western Alps are posterior to the Pyrenees and date from the middle of the tertiary period. The eastern Alps, which comprise the mountains of the Tyrol, are still more recent, inasmuch as they were only formed toward the end of that same period. Some mountains of Asia are even posterior to the diluvian period, or are contemporary with it.

These upheavals must have occasioned great local disturbances and inundations more or less considerable, through the displacement of the waters, through the interruption and change of the course of the rivers. [1]

BIBLICAL DELUGE.

— The biblical deluge, also known by the denomination of great Asiatic deluge, is a fact whose reality cannot be contested.

It must have been occasioned by the rising of a part of the mountains of that region, like that of Mexico. This opinion is corroborated by the existence of an inland sea, which formerly extended from the Black Sea to the Boreal ocean, attested by geological observations. The Sea of Azov, the Caspian Sea, whose waters are salt, although they have no communication with any other sea; the Lake Aral and the innumerable lakes scattered over the immense plains of Tartary and the steppes of Russia seem remnants of that ancient sea.

On the occasion of the rising of the mountains of the Caucasus, posterior to the universal deluge, part of those waters was driven back toward the north, in the direction of the Boreal ocean; another part, toward the south, in the direction of the Indian ocean. These inundated and devastated precisely Mesopotamia and all the region in which the ancestors of the Hebrew people dwelt.

Although this deluge extended over a very large surface, it is at present an ascertained point that it was only local; that it cannot have been caused by the rain, for, however copious it might be and even though it lasted forty days, calculation proves that the quantity of water fallen from the clouds could not suffice to cover all the earth, up to above the highest mountains.

For the men of that time, who knew no more than a very limited extent of the surface of the globe and who had no idea of its configuration, from the moment the inundation invaded the known countries, the entire Earth was, for them, invaded. If to this belief we add the imaginative and hyperbolic form of the description, a form peculiar to the oriental style, the exaggeration of the biblical narrative will no longer surprise us.

— The Asiatic deluge was evidently posterior to the appearance of man on the Earth, since the remembrance of it has been preserved by tradition among all the peoples of that part of the world, who consecrated it in their theogonies. [2]

It is likewise posterior to the great universal deluge that marked the beginning of the present geological period. When one speaks of antediluvian men and animals, the reference is to that first cataclysm.

PERIODIC REVOLUTIONS.

— Besides its annual movement around the Sun, origin of the seasons, its movement of rotation upon itself in 24 hours, origin of day and of night, the Earth has a third movement which is completed in about 25,000 years, or, more exactly, in 25,868 years, and which produces the phenomenon called, in astronomy, the precession of the equinoxes.

(Chap. V, no. 11.)

This movement, which cannot be explained in a few words, without the aid of figures and without a geometrical demonstration, consists in a kind of circular oscillation, which has been compared to that of a dying top, and by virtue of which the axis of the Earth, changing its inclination, describes a double cone whose vertex is at the center of the planet, the bases of these cones encompassing the surface circumscribed by the polar circles, that is, an amplitude of 23 and a half degrees of radius.

— The equinox is the instant in which the Sun, passing from one hemisphere to the other, finds itself perpendicular to the equator, which happens twice a year, on the 21st of March, when the Sun passes to the boreal hemisphere, and on the 22nd of September, when it returns to the austral hemisphere.

But, in consequence of the gradual change in the obliquity of the axis, which entails another change in the obliquity of the equator upon the ecliptic, the moment of the equinox advances each year by a few minutes (25 minutes and 7 seconds). It is to this advance that the name precession of the equinoxes was given (from the Latin præcedere, to walk forward, composed of præ, ahead, and cedere, to go).

With time, these few minutes make hours, days, months, and years, resulting in this, that the equinox of spring, which now occurs in the month of March, in a given time will occur in February, then in January, then in December. Then the month of December will have the temperature of March and March that of June and so on, until, returning to the month of March, things will find themselves again in the present state, which will take place at the end of 25,868 years, to begin indefinitely the same revolution anew. [3]

— From this conical movement of the axis, it results that the poles of the Earth do not constantly face the same points of the heavens; that the Polar Star will not always be the polar star; that the poles gradually incline more or less toward the Sun and receive from it rays more or less direct, whence it follows that Iceland and Lapland, for example, located beneath the polar circle, will be able, in a given time, to receive solar rays as if they were in the latitude of Spain and of Italy, and that, in the position of the opposite extreme, Spain and Italy may have the temperature of Iceland and of Lapland, and so on, at each renewal of the period of 25,000 years. [4]

— The consequences of this movement could not yet be determined with precision, because only a small part of its revolution has been able to be observed. In this regard, then, there are no more than presumptions, some of which have the character of probability.

These consequences are:

1st The alternate heating and cooling of the poles and, consequently, the melting of the polar ices during the half of the period of 25,000 years and the new formation of them during the other half of that period. It would result from this that the poles are not condemned to a perpetual sterility, it being granted to them to enjoy in their turn the benefits of fertility.

2nd The gradual displacement of the sea, making it invade little by little some lands and lay bare others, only to abandon them anew, returning to its former bed. This periodic movement, indefinitely renewed, would constitute a true universal tide of 25,000 years.

The slowness with which this movement of the sea operates renders it almost imperceptible for each generation. It becomes, however, perceptible at the end of some centuries. No sudden cataclysm can it cause, because men withdraw, from generation to generation, in proportion as the sea advances, and they advance over the lands from which the sea withdraws. It is to this cause, more than probable, that some learned men attribute the receding of the sea from certain coasts and the invasion of others by it.

— The slow, gradual, and periodic displacement of the sea is a fact that experience confirms and that numerous examples corroborate, at all points of the globe. It has for effect the maintenance of the productive forces of the Earth. The long immersion is for the terrains a time of repose, during which they recover the vital principles exhausted by a no less long production. The immense deposits of organic matter, formed by the permanence of the waters during centuries and centuries, are natural fertilizations, periodically renewed, and the generations succeed one another without perceiving such changes. [5] FUTURE CATACLYSMS.

— The great telluric commotions have been produced in the epochs in which the solid crust of the Earth, by its slight thickness, offered almost no resistance to the effervescence of the matters in ignition in its interior. Such commotions diminished, in proportion as that crust consolidated itself. Numerous volcanoes are already extinct, others the terrains of posterior formation have buried.

Still, certainly, local disturbances may yet be produced, by effect of volcanic eruptions, of the emergence of some new volcanoes, of sudden inundations of some regions; islands may arise from the sea and others be swallowed by it; but the time of the general cataclysms, like those that marked the great geological periods, has passed.

The Earth has acquired a stability which, without being absolutely invariable, henceforth places the human race in shelter from general disturbances, unless unknown causes intervene, foreign to it and which can in no way be foreseen.

— As for the comets, we are today perfectly reassured with regard to the influence they exercise, more salutary than harmful, since they appear destined to replenish the worlds, if we may thus express ourselves, bringing to them the vital principles that they store up in their course through space and on approaching the suns. Thus, then, they would be sooner sources of prosperities than messengers of misfortunes.

The fluidic nature, already well attested (Chap. VI, no. 28 and following), which is proper to them, removes all fear of violent collisions, inasmuch as, if one of them met the Earth, the latter would pass through it, as if it passed through a fog.

Still less to be feared is the tail that they drag, seeing that this is no more than the reflection of the solar light in the immense atmosphere that envelops them, so much so that it shows itself constantly directed toward the side opposite the Sun, changing direction in conformity with the position of that star. This gaseous matter could also, by virtue of the rapidity with which they travel, constitute a kind of hair, similar to the wake left by a ship in motion, or to the smoke of a locomotive.

Moreover, many comets have already approached the Earth, without causing it any harm. By virtue of their respective densities, the Earth would exercise upon the comet a greater attraction than that of it upon her. Only some remnants of old prejudices can make the presence of a comet inspire terror. [6]

— One must likewise cast into the list of chimerical hypotheses the possibility of the encounter of the Earth with another planet. The regularity and the invariability of the laws that preside over the movements of the celestial bodies render such an encounter devoid of all probability.

The Earth, however, will have an end. How? This still remains in the domain of conjectures; but, seeing that she is still far from the perfection that she can attain and from the old age that would indicate her decline, her present inhabitants may be certain that such will not take place in their time. (Chap. VII, no. 48 and following.)

— Physically, the Earth has had the convulsions of her infancy; she has now entered into a period of relative stability: into that of peaceful progress, which is effected by the regular return of the same physical phenomena and by the intelligent concourse of man.

She is, however, still in full labor of gestation of moral progress. Therein will reside the cause of her greatest commotions.

Until Humanity has advanced sufficiently in perfection, by intelligence and by the observance of the divine laws, the greatest disturbances will still be caused by men, more than by Nature, that is, they will be sooner moral and social than physical. INCREASE OR DECREASE OF THE VOLUME OF THE EARTH.

— Does the volume of the Earth increase, decrease, or remain stationary? Some, in order to maintain that the volume of the Earth increases, base themselves on the fact that the plants give to the soil more than they take from it, which, if in one sense is exact, in another is not. The plants nourish themselves as much, and even more, from the gaseous substances that they draw from the atmosphere, as from those that they suck up through their roots. Now, the atmosphere forms an integral part of the globe; the gases that constitute it come from the decomposition of the solid bodies, and these, recomposing themselves, take back what they had given to it. It is an exchange, or, rather, a perpetual transformation, in such a way that, the growth of them operating with the aid of the constitutive elements of the globe, the remains of the vegetables and of the animals, however considerable they may be, do not increase its mass by one atom. If, by this cause, the solid part of the globe increased in a permanent manner, this would take place at the expense of the atmosphere, which would diminish by as much and would end by becoming unfit for life, if it did not recover, by the decomposition of the solid bodies, what it loses by the composition of them.

At the origin of the Earth, the first geological layers were formed of the solid matters momentarily volatilized, by effect of the high temperature, and which, condensed later by the cooling, precipitated. Incontestably, they raised the surface of the soil a little, but without adding anything to the total mass, for there was there only a displacement of matter.

When, purged of the elements that it held in suspension, the atmosphere found itself in the normal state, things took the regular course in which they afterward followed. Today, the slightest modification in the constitution of the atmosphere would necessarily entail the destruction of the present inhabitants of the Earth; but it is also probable that new races would form themselves in other conditions.

Considered from this point of view, the mass of the globe, that is, the sum of the molecules that compose the whole of its solid, liquid, and gaseous parts, is incontestably the same, since its origin. If the globe experienced a dilation or a condensation, its volume would increase or diminish, without the mass undergoing any alteration. Therefore, if the Earth increased in mass, the fact would be the effect of a foreign cause, for she could not draw from herself the elements necessary for her increase.

There is an opinion according to which the globe would increase in mass and in volume by the influx of the interplanetary cosmic matter. This idea has nothing irrational about it, but it is too hypothetical to be admitted in principle. It is no more than a system combated by contrary systems, on which Science has as yet established nothing. Here, in this respect, is the opinion of the eminent Spirit who dictated the learned uranographic studies inserted above, in chapter VI:

“The worlds become exhausted through aging and tend to dissolve in order to serve as elements of formation for other universes. They restore little by little to the universal cosmic fluid of space what they drew from it to form themselves. Besides, all bodies wear away through friction; the rapid and incessant movement of the globe through the cosmic fluid results in constantly diminishing its mass, albeit by a quantity inappreciable in a given time. [7]

“The existence of the worlds may, in my view, be divided into three periods. 8 — First period: condensation of matter, a period in which the volume of the globe diminishes considerably, its mass remaining the same. It is the period of infancy. 9 — Second period: contraction, solidification of the crust; emergence of the germs, development of life up to the appearance of the most perfected type. At that moment, the globe is in all its plenitude, it is the epoch of virility; it loses, but very little, of its constitutive elements. 10 — As its inhabitants progress spiritually, it passes into the period of material decrease; it suffers losses, not only in consequence of friction, but also through the disaggregation of the molecules, like a hard stone that, corroded by time, ends up reduced to dust. In its double movement of rotation and translation, it surrenders to space fluidified particles of its substance, until the moment in which its dissolution is completed.

“But, then, as the power of attraction is in direct ratio to the mass, I do not say to the volume, the mass of the globe being diminished, its conditions of equilibrium in space are modified. Dominated by more powerful planets, to which it cannot serve as counterweight, there result from this deviations in its movements and, therefore, also profound changes in the conditions of life on its surface.

Thus, birth, life, and death; or infancy, virility, decrepitude are the three phases through which every agglomeration of organic or inorganic matter passes; 13 indestructible is only the Spirit, which is not matter.” — (GALILEO, Spiritist Society of Paris, 1868.) [1] The last century recorded a notable example of a phenomenon of this kind. Six days’ march from the city of Mexico, there existed, in 1750, a fertile and well-cultivated region, where rice, maize, and bananas grew in abundance. In the month of June, dreadful earthquakes shook the soil, renewing themselves continually during two whole months. On the night of the 28th to the 29th of September, a violent convulsion was produced; a territory of many leagues in extent began to rise little by little and ended by reaching the altitude of 500 feet, over a surface of 10 square leagues. The terrain undulated, like the waves of the sea at the breath of the tempest, thousands of mounds rose and sank alternately; finally, an abyss of nearly 3 leagues opened, from which were hurled to a prodigious height smoke, fire, glowing stones, and ashes. Six mountains arose from that gaping abyss, among which the volcano to which was given the name of Jorullo, which now rises 550 meters above the ancient plain. At the moment in which the shakings of the soil began, the two rivers Cuitimba and San Pedro, flowing back, inundated all the plain today occupied by the Jorullo; in the terrain, however, which without ceasing rose, another whirlpool opened and absorbed them. The two reappeared later, to the west, at a point very distant from their old beds. (Louis Figuier, La Terre avant le déluge - Google Books, p. 370.) [2] The Indian legend about the deluge relates, according to the book of the Vedas, that Brahma, transformed into a fish, addressed himself to the pious monarch Vaivaswata and said to him: “The moment of the dissolution of the Universe has come; soon all that exists on the Earth will be destroyed. You must build a ship in which you will embark, after having embarked seeds of all the vegetables. You will await me in that ship and I will come to you, bearing on my head a horn by which you will recognize me.” The holy man obeyed; he built a ship, embarked in it, and tied it by a very strong cable to the horn of the fish. The ship was towed during many years with extreme rapidity, through the darkness of a tremendous tempest, finally landing at the summit of Mount Himawat (Himalaya). Brahma then ordered Vaivaswata to create all beings and with them to people the Earth. The analogy of this legend with the biblical narrative of Noah is striking. From India it had passed to Egypt, like a multitude of other beliefs. Now, the book of the Vedas being anterior to that of Moses, the narration of the deluge found in the former cannot be a copy of that of the latter. What is probable is that Moses, who had learned the doctrines of the Egyptian priests, took from them his description.

[3] The precession of the equinoxes occasions another change: that which operates in the position of the signs of the zodiac. The Earth revolving around the Sun in a year, as it advances, the Sun, each month, finds itself before a constellation. These are twelve in number, namely: the Ram, the Bull, the Twins, the Crab, the Lion, the Virgin, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Archer, the Goat, the Water-Bearer, the Fishes. They are called zodiacal constellations, or signs of the zodiac, and form a circle in the plane of the terrestrial equator. According to the month of the birth of an individual it was said that he was born under such or such a sign; hence the prognostics of Astrology. But, by virtue of the precession of the equinoxes, it happens that the months no longer correspond to the same constellations. One who is born in the month of July is no longer in the sign of the Lion, but in that of the Crab. Thus falls the superstitious idea of the influence of the signs. (Chap. V, no. 12.) [4] The gradual displacement of the isothermal lines, a phenomenon that Science recognizes as positively as that of the displacement of the sea, is a material fact that supports this theory.

[5] Among the most recent facts that prove the displacement of the sea, these may be cited: In the gulf of Gascony, between the old Soulac and the Tower of Cordouan, when the sea is calm, stretches of wall are perceived at the bottom of the water: they are the remains of the ancient and great city of Noviomagus, invaded by the waves in 580. The rock of Cordouan, which was then joined to the shore, is now 12 kilometers away.

In the sea of the Channel, on the coast of Le Havre, the waters day by day gain ground and undermine the cliffs of Saint-Adresse, which little by little collapse. Two kilometers from the coast, between Saint-Adresse and Cape de la Hève, there exists a bank that was formerly in sight and joined to the mainland. Ancient documents attest that in that place, over which one now sails, there existed the village of Saint-Denis-chef-de-Caux. The sea having invaded, in the fourteenth century, the terrain, the church was swallowed up in 1378. They say that, in fine weather, its remains are seen at the bottom of the sea. In almost all the extent of the littoral of Holland, the sea is contained only by dint of dikes, which from time to time break. The ancient lake of Flevo, which joined itself to the sea in 1225, today forms the gulf of the Zuyderzée. This irruption of the ocean swallowed up many settlements.

According to this, the territory of Paris and of all France would be again occupied by the sea, as it has already been many times, as the geological observations demonstrate. Then, the mountainous parts will form islands, as are now Jersey, Guernsey, and England, formerly contiguous to the continent.

One will sail over regions that are at present traversed by railway; the ships will put in at Montmartre, at Mount Valérien, at the hills of Saint-Cloud and of Meudon; the woods and forests, now places of promenade, will be buried in the waters, covered with slime and peopled with fish, which will replace the birds.

The biblical deluge cannot have had this cause, for the invasion of the waters was sudden and the permanence of them of short duration, whereas, otherwise, that permanence would have been of many thousands of years and would still endure, without men perceiving it.

[6] The comet of 1861 traversed the orbit of the Earth at a point from which the latter was at a distance of only 20 hours. The Earth was, therefore, plunged into its atmosphere, without any accident resulting therefrom.

[7] In its movement of translation around the Sun, the velocity of the Earth is 400 leagues per minute. Its circumference being 9,000 leagues, in its movement of rotation around its axis, each point of the equator traverses 9,000 leagues in 24 hours, or 6 leagues and 3 tenths per minute.