In order to proceed with order, precision, and clarity, and also to satisfy all the requirements of judicious criticism, we had to begin by seeking to know all the adversaries of the literal sense, that is to say, all the proponents of the contrary systems; we then had to study the reasons upon which they support their assertions.
These systems owe their origin to the discovery
of fossils whose presence in the various strata, and often at great depths, had to be explained. It was at first attributed to the flood. This idea appeared all the more natural because at that time, as today, only two great events upon the globe, two epochs of transformation, were recognized: creation and the flood. But, in order to answer all the difficulties presented by the geological facts, another cause for the presence of fossils was imagined, and recourse was had to the hypotheses of indeterminate periods. This was an expedient rather than an explanation, and even then these same facts seemed to contradict it. Here are the principal defenders of these systems:
Buffon, their first author: Theory of the Earth.
Burnet: Sacred Theory of the Earth.
Wisthon: New Theory of the Earth.
Woodvard: Essay on the History of the Earth.
Dolomieu: Journey in the Alps.
Pallas: Observations on the Formation of Mountains.
Deluc: Letters on the History of the Earth.
Cuvier: Discourse on the Revolutions of the Globe.
Brongniart: Period of Vegetations.
Ampère: Theory of the Earth.
Chalmers: Evidence of the Christian Religion.
Gervais de La Prise: Agreement of the Book of Genesis with Geology and Human Monuments.
Buckland: Geology and Mineralogy in Their Relations to Natural Theology.
Bertrand: Revolutions of the Globe.
De Saussure: Journey in the Alps.
Deshayes: Course of Geology.
Playfair: Theory of the Earth.
De Férussac: Universal Bulletin of Mines.
Elie de Beaumont: Theory of Uplifts.
Desdouits: Evenings of Montlhéry.
Jehan: New Treatise on the Geological Sciences.
Marcel de Serres: On the Cosmogony of Moses.
The Annals of Christian Philosophy.
Godefroy: Cosmogony of Revelation.
Boubée: Manual of Geology.
Auguste Nicolas: Studies on Christianity.
Father Piancianni: Commentaries on the Mosaic Account of Creation.
Louis Figuier: The Earth before the Flood.
Grevin: Study on the First Chapter of Genesis.
The Catholic World Review.
All these geologists do not profess the same ideas concerning the cosmogony of Moses; but all reject, in various degrees, the literal interpretation of the word day. The numerous systems they have adopted may, moreover, be reduced to five principal ones, from which the others differ only in details without importance.
FIRST SYSTEM
Invented by Buffon, maintained and developed by Deluc and Dolomieu, this system claims that the days
of Genesis are epochs, periods of several thousand centuries, during which the earth, before taking its present form, would have changed form and inhabitants many times, and undergone internal upheavals that would have buried within its strata all the living species, which others would have replaced upon the surface of the globe. One of the scholars who commend this system believed it necessary, after many calculations, to fix, as a skillful mathematician, the average duration of each epoch at two million years.1 They add that the order in which the fossils present themselves is an order of creation; and that each of these creations was separated from the others by an indefinite period of centuries.
SECOND SYSTEM
Little satisfied with this first system, Chalmers and Buckland conceived and elaborated a second, which counts a much more restricted number of proponents than the first. It consists in recognizing two distinct worlds: a pre-Adamite world, and the world that we inhabit. Thus, from this first phrase of the sacred books: In principio, Deus creavit cælum et terram [In the beginning, God created heaven and earth], one ought to conclude that an unlimited span of time
elapsed between the primordial act by virtue of which the elements of the material world came forth from nothingness, and the last revolution designated by the second verse of Genesis, or the evening of the first day of the Mosaic account. “It is clear,” says Jehan, “that it was in this interval, which may have been of immense extent, that the long series of events which determined the mineral structure of our globe, such as it is recognized by the investigations of science, was accomplished.”
THIRD SYSTEM
This system no longer has recourse, as the preceding one does, in order to explain certain geological phenomena, to those alternations of destruction and creation which cost certain geologists so little. Those who put it forward recognize that life upon the globe was not renewed, but only that other species, new families, were successively spread over its surface as the old races disappeared. They teach “that the analogy of station and destination, or of the conditions of existence and the role to be fulfilled, is the general law which presided over the distribution of life upon the globe; that, as these conditions changed, or as new ones were formed, new species replaced those which could no longer
exist, and which no longer had a role to fulfill; and this until the epoch when the equilibrium among the influential causes was established, that is to say, until the appearance of man.”2
FOURTH SYSTEM
The promoters and defenders of the first two systems claim only their respective hypothesis in order to explain the geological facts. They claim that these suffice to resolve all the difficulties presented by the mineral structure of the globe. Some geologists believe, on the contrary, that the requirements of science demand the combination of the one and the other.
We would pass over in silence this system, which is little in vogue, if it were not supported by a great name: that of Bishop Wiseman. “In admitting,” says the learned prelate, “the hypothesis set forth above (that of Buckland’s indefinite periods), that all the requirements of modern science are satisfied in the intermediate space between the creation and the organization of the earth under its present form, it might be that periods longer than a day were still necessary, if we suppose that the laws of nature were left to their ordinary course; for then a longer
interval would have been necessary for the plants to cover themselves with flowers and fruits, and to attain their complete development, as we must suppose that this took place before man was placed in their midst.”3
FIFTH SYSTEM
This system does not count many proponents. It is that of Saint Augustine, as we shall see later; that is why we speak of it. It consists in seeing in the detailed account of Moses concerning creation only a pure allegory. God would have created all things, and would have given them form together with being in a single cast, according to this utterance of Scripture: Creavit omnia simul [He created all things at once]; God created everything at once. The six days of Genesis would consequently be only an ideal division, rather than the indication of a multiple creation.
Of these five systems, the first two in some fashion absorb the others through the adoption of them by almost all the geologists whom we have mentioned. We shall therefore have only them directly in view in this work: in refuting them, we shall have set aside the objections that emerge from the last three.