THE I-IYDROLOGIC CYCLE AND

THE WISDOM OF GOD

A Theme in Geoteleology
BY YI-FU TUAN

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 The Hydrologic Cycle
and the
Wisdom of God
A THEME IN GEOTELEOLOGY

By YI-FU TUAN

Published for the University of Toronto Department of

Geography by the University of Toronto Press

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The Hydrologic Cycle
and the
Wisdom of God
A THEME IN GEOTELEOLOGY

By YI-FU TUAN

Published for the University of Toronto Department of

Geography by the University of Toronto Press
 epeueJ U! pajuPd
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Al(deliloa9 JO jUaWpedaa OjUOI0.l ,0 Al!SlaA!Un @
Le Prieur: Monsieur, vous regardez sans doute avec un peu
de chagrin ces nuages qui s'amassent, & qui
nous oteront, selon toutes les apparences, Ie
plaisir de la promenade?
Le Chevalier: La vue ne mIen paroit plus affligeante depuis que
je connois leur destination. C'est pour remplir
nos fontaines & nos rivieres que les vapeurs
a
montent de la mer. J'aime voir tous ces gros
nuages partir en diligence pour aller porter Ie
rafrafchissement & la fertiliM dans les provinces
les plus eloignees. C'est tres-reellement une
commission dont ils acquittent.
Abbe de Pluche, Le Spectacle
de la Nature, 1733

The central concept of the science of hydrology is the so-

called hydrologic cycle-the circulation of water from the
oceans through the atmosphere to the land, and thence by run-
off overland or by infiltration and underground movement back
to the sea, or alternatively back to the atmosphere by evapo-
transpiration.
H. E. Thomas and L. B. Leopold,
Science, 1964

v
 PREFACE

This work is published in the hope that it will contribute to the

conversation of scholars with similar interests. The work must
stand on its own merit; a preface that is also a muted apology
should not be necessary. However, "the hydrologic cycle and
the wisdom of God" is perhaps an unusual theme to be taken up
by a geographer. It may therefore be helpful to my geographi-
cal readers to know how I have strayed into this channel of re-
search.
The present study has two roots: one is my interest in his-
torical attitudes towards dry lands, and the other is a concern
for the unity of the several branches of physical geography.
We do not have to probe deeply into the history of geographical
ideas before we become aware of the very late recognition of
the extent of dry lands and of aridity as a climatic fact. There
are probably various reasons for this conceptual neglect of a
distinctive and fairly accessible environment. One is the dom-
inance in Western thought of the Greek conception of climatic
zones; these are astronomically derived and explain tempera-
ture rather than precipitation contrasts. In the extensive lit-
erature on climatic determinism, for example, we frequently
find comparisons of human manners and institutions between
cold countries in the north and warm countries in the south; but
seldom between wet coasts and dry interiors until the nineteenth
century. Another reason for the neglect of the great deserts is,
as I hope to show, the dominance in Western thought of the idea
of Providence. A provident God will see to it that the finished
earth is green with grass and forests; from the Hexameron of
St. Basil to the Seasons of James Thomson one encounters evi-
dence of this faith in a green earth. God provides for the
earth's fertility by making the oceans so large that they supply
sufficient moisture to water the land. He also makes mountains
so that surplus water can flow off as rivers to irrigate the land,
and in addition bring to it new layers of fertile silt. We have
here the major elements of the hydrologic cycle-a concept that
has been found to be eminently serviceable in explaining the

vii
harmonies of nature and the wisdom of nature's God.
The other root is my interest in seeing whether there exists
an over-arching concept under which most of the processes
studied in physical geography can find a place. I was not looking
for a static scheme but a dynamic concept, to use a shopworn but
unavoidable expression; and I found it-as had several other ge-
ographers-in the idea of the hydrologic cycle. While digging
into the history of this idea I was surprised by its rich ramifica-
tions, and delighted to see how it had extended into fields of
learning that now no longer overlap or even share a common bor-
der. A few names taken at random from the modern period will
show something of the range of talents who, in their differing
capacities, have enriched the flavour (though not necessarily the
scientific validity) of the concept: Edmund Halley, Andrew
Marvell, John Ray, Oliver Goldsmith, James Hutton, Goethe.
It hardly needs saying that from the standpoint of specialized
research in physical geography a governing concept, such as the
hydrologic cycle, is not essential. Not only the expert on soils
but even the practising hydrologist can afford to ignore general-
ized statements concerning the hydrologic cycle, and a fortiori
the philosophical, theological, and literary roots of that concept.
But if the scientific investigator were to wish occasionally for a
broader concourse or an intellectual satisfaction that derives
more from the sweep of the view than from the sharpness of the
focus, he will find it in the history of his own field-and not
least in the history of the hydrologic cycle as it relates to the
harmony of nature and the wisdom of God.
I hope this monograph will interest two kinds of readers:
the physical geographer in mufti, and, more importantly, the
student of attitudes towards our natural environment.
Acknowledgements: The substance of this study rests on my
reading of the printed original texts; but in my forays into in-
tellectual history that is marginal to the central theme, I have
gladly raided the works of other scholars for bibliographic
guidance and ideas. It seems to me lacking in courtesy to rele-
gate my indebtedness to the more important of my secondary
sources entirely to the undignified position of the footnote. I
therefore take the liberty of bringing the following works, to
which lowe the most debt, to the front: R. J. Chorley, A. J.
Dunn, R. P. Beckinsale, The History of the Study of Landforms,
Wiley, 1964; C. J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore,

viii
University of California Press, 1967; S. K. Heninger, Jr., A
Handbook of Renaissance Meteorology, Duke University Press,
1960; M. H. Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory,
Norton Library, 1963; and The Breaking of the Circle, Columbia
University Press, 1962; E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan
World Picture, Chatto & Windus, 1960; J. K. Wright, The Ge-
ographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades, Dover, 1965.
An early draft of this essay was written while I was enjoy-
ing the hospitality of Dr. and Mrs. R. P. Beckinsale at Oxford.
Dr. Beckinsale was kind enough to read the draft and make many
helpful suggestions; he is of course in no way responsible for the
defects of the present, expanded version.
Figures 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8 are reproduced by kind permission
of the Curators of the Bodleian Library.

ix
 CONTENTS

PREFACE
vii

ILLUSTRATIONS
xiii

INTRODUCTION
3

I The Hydrologic Cycle and John Ray 7

II Trails and Intimations 19

III The Hydrologic Cycle: Burnet to Guyot 86

POSTSCRIPT
149
BIBLIOGRAPHY 151

xi
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE
1. The hydrologic cycle. 5

2. Portrait of John Ray in The Wisdom of God. 8

3. Drainage of south-east Kent as symbolized by a

half-kneeling man, from a manuscript map in
the Ankographia by Christopher Packe. 30

4. Thomas Robinson's conception of the sub- and

superterranean circulations of water in New
Observations on the Natural Histor;y of the
World of Matter (1696). 34

5. "And there is nothing new under the Sunne. "

"The Argument of the Front and of the Worke, "
from An Apologie by George Hakewill. 49

6. Diagrams illustrating various conceptions of

the hydrologic cycle. Top: Medieval and
Renaissance; Centre: John Ray; Bottom:
Modern. 51

7. Portrait of Thomas Burnet in Sacred Theor;y

of the Earth (1684). 87

8. The hydrologic cycle according to Thomas

Burnet. 92

9. Top: The hydro-geologic cycle according to

John Playfair. Bottom: The hydrologic cycle
represented in a circular diagram. 131

xiii
THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE AND THE WISDOM OF GOD:

A THEME IN GEOTELEOLOGY
 INTRODUC TION

In the earth sciences there are relatively few fundamental con-

cepts that are capable of subsuming under them a vast number
of seemingly little related facts. One such concept is the hydro-
logic cycle. In its simplest form it describes the circulation of
water as it evaporates from the oceans, enters the atmosphere,
is precipitated to the earth, and the part that falls back to land
ultimately returns to the oceans by surface and underground
channels. In almost any textbook on physical geography and hy-
drology-and in some technical papers too-we may expect to
find some such statement, supplemented by a few statistics and
perhaps also a very simple diagram.
It is increasingly realized that the movements of water in
the earth's crust, on its surface and in the air, are exceedingly
complex. They vary greatly both in the length of the path trav-
elled and in the time taken. A very short cycle may complete
itself without touching the earth's surface; changes of aqueous
state may occur repeatedly in the air. Another type of a very
short cycle is mere evaporation from the sea and immediate
return to it. The cycle most frequently discussed under the
heading of water circulation is the familiar scheme in which
water proceeds from the ocean to the land in the form of vapour,
condenses and precipitates over the land, and is returned to the
ocean by rivers. This we may call the "standard" cycle. If
the water is eventually returned to its oceanic source via the
slow carrier of moving ice then we may call it a long cycle.
But there exists a still longer cycle in the extremely slow
course of connate water. In length of time, then, the cycle may
be completed in a few seconds or it may take a few millennia,
and indeed, much, much longer.
What sense, we may wonder, is there in grouping such
vastly dissimilar processes under the heading of the hydrologic
cycle? We can justify a family relationship, perhaps, by saying
(with P. H. Kuenen) 1 that, in whatever sequence the events occur

1p. H. Kuenen, Realms of Water: Some Aspects of Its Cycle

in Nature (New York: John Wiley, 1955), pp, 11-12,
3
 and however varied the pattern may be, again and again we come
up against the same ineluctable principle of cycle. And that no
matter whether this cycle takes a short or long time to complete,
whether it be complicated or simple, the outcome is always the
same: water returns to its point of departure, the ocean (Fig. 1).
Nevertheless, hydrologists are feeling less and less happy
with the concept. As commonly stated and illustrated it appears
so loose and generalized as to be almost meaningless. Certainly
it is of little applied use. In modern works on physical geog-
raphy and hydrology the theme of the hydrologic cycle is pre-
sented briefly almost as a matter of habit, a routine affirmation
of the ''unity of things" that has little bearing on the subsequent,
detailed analyses of specific hydrologic processes. It may also
appear curious that only one of the cycles-the one I have called
"standard "-should receive the most persistent attention.
One purpose of this essay is to show that, for at least one
hundred and fifty years (ca. 1700-1850), the concept of the hy-
drologic cycle in the "standard" form was a handmaiden of nat-
ural theology as much as it was a child of natural philosophy.
It is not to be presumed, however, that theologians merely took
over and simplified a concept of science and used it for their
own didactic purposes. In the nineteenth century this may have
been true, but towards the end of the seventeenth century and in
the beginning of the eighteenth such a description of the develop-
ment of the concept would have been misleading. Not only was
there no sharp distinction then between natural theology and
science but scholars who wrote on the theme of the water cycle
within the context of a physico-theological treatise actually con-
tributed to it. The contribution lay largely in extending the
number of physical processes and facts that can be subsumed
in a unified scheme. For it was this unity-the beautiful econ-
omy of means and ends-that illustrated the wisdom of God.
The eighteenth century was a period of faith in reason. Super-
stitions inherited from the Middle Ages already seemed curious
relics of a distant past. While the New Science added nothing
to Trinitarian theology it gave a new lease of life to natural
theology, which sought for the attributes of the Creator-God in
the heavens, on earth and on earth's inhabitants. Of the three
classes of evidence-astronomical, terrestrial and biological-
terrestrial evidence proved in some ways to be the most diffi-
cult to draw upon in support of the notion of a wise and provident

....
SHORT CYCLE LON

Fig. 1. The Hydrologic Cycle. (Reproduced from Kuenen, Realm

God. Until the concept of the hydrologic cycle was introduced
and elaborated, it was difficult to argue convincingly for ra-
tionality in the pattern of land and sea, in the existence of
mountains, in the occurrence of floods, etc. The hydrologic
cycle served as an ordering principle, and when combined with
the geologic cycle, it assumed a grandeur of inclusiveness that
makes some of our modern efforts to describe the earth look
like a medley of disjointed facts and ideas. It therefore seems
to me worthwhile to attempt to trace the origins, the develop-
ment, and the eventual enfeeblement of the concept of the water
cycle. For in its finer expressions the concept does honour to
the ingenuity of the human mind if not indeed to the wisdom of
God.

6
 CHAPTER I

THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE AND JOHN RAY

In contrast to the abbreviated discussion of the hydrologic cycle

in modern textbooks on physical geography, and even in some
technical papers, we may turn to the understanding of the con-
cept at the opening of the eighteenth century as expressed by
John Ray (1627-1705), an English naturalist whom one modern
biographer has described as a man of "outstanding genius. ,,1
My reason for selecting Ray to introduce the theme of this
essay is not that he has made the most original contribution to
the idea of the hydrologic cycle. Indeed it is not rewarding to
decide on degrees of originality when we are concerned with a
concept the roots of which are multiple, deep, and entangled.
But Ray's exposition may be usefully taken up at this point for
the following reasons: (a) It is remarkably full. (b) It illustrates
how teleological thinking may lead to certain kinds of scientific
insight. This need not surprise us, for to emphasize wisdom in
God's work (as Ray did) was to emphasize the relatedness of the
parts to one another and to the whole. Facts need not be naively
accepted. The relationships among them were all important.
Some of the relationships that Ray held have since been proved
wrong but in the main they attested to his prescience. (c) Ray's
arguments for the wisdom of God from the facts of physical
geography assumed a pattern which influenced the thinking of
successive generations of writers until well into the nineteenth
century. His work, The Wisdom of God, was greatly esteemed
and very popular. First published in 1691 it saw twelve editions
by 1759, and the latest was issued as recently as 1827. William
Paley's Natural Theology (1802), for example, was another
popular book; it reached a twentieth edition before its twentieth
year and was last reprinted in 1879. But, of Paley's work we

1C. E. Raven, John Ray, Naturalist, His Life and Works

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942), p. x.

7
8
may say that it essentially paraphrased John Ray's masterpiece.
Ray at first had little use for the facts of physical geography
as evidence of God's wisdom. The notion of the hydrologic cycle,
which, after all, had already been in existence for some time,
did not appear in the first two editions of The Wisdom of God
(1691, 1692). In these editions individual parts of the earth
were praised for their intrinsic beauty and for their usefulness
to man. Thus on the sea, Ray had this to say:
The Sea, what infinite Variety of Fishes doth it
nourish! 0 . . How doth it exactly compose itself
to a Level, or equal Supercies, and in the Earth
make up one Spherical Roundness? How doth it
constantly observe its Ebbs and Flows, its Spring
and Nepe-tides, and still retains its Saltness, so
convenient for the Maintenance of its Inhabitants,
serving also the Uses of Man for Navigation, and
the Convenience of Carriage?2
Another merit, Ray added, is that the sea does not over-
flow and stand above the land as it would have been natural for
the sea to do. A principle of Aristotelian physics was provi-
dentially suspended.

Why So Much Water?

This was all very well but, Why so much water? How does
one reconcile the vastness of the seas (most of it useless to
man) with a provident God? By modern convention any question
preceded by "why" or "what need" rules itself out as a scientif-
ically proper inquiry. Ray and his philosophical contemporaries
could not know. And we shall see how the attempt to answer
this seemingly idle question led to the eventual establishment
of a whole, hitherto little noted, pattern of relationships in
physical geography. In Ray's words, then, the question was:
But what Need was there (may some say) that the
Sea should be made so large, that its Superficies
should equal, if not exceed, that of the dry land?
Where is the Wisdom of the Creator in making so
much useless sea, and so little dry land, which

2John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of

the Creation (2nd edition; London, 1692), p. 720

9
 would have been far more beneficial and service-
able to Mankind? Might not at least half the Sea
have been spar'd and added to the Land, for the
Entertainment and Maintenance of Men, who by
the continual Striving and Fighting to enlarge their
Bounds and encroaching upon one another, seem
to be straitened for Want of Room ?3
Men needed more space. The third edition of The Wisdom
of God was published in 1701. By then the idea that population
increases would exert pressure on the limited resources of the
earth had already been in the air for at least a century and a
half. Ray appears to have picked up the idea to give urgency to
his question. He did not, however, provide an answer himself:
it came instead from two younger contemporaries, the brilliant
classicist Richard Bentley (1662-1742) and the mathematician
John Keill (1671-1721). They reached the same conclusion.
Bentley's preceded Keill's in publication by five years but it
left no echo. Keill's answer, given in his meticulous Examina-
tion of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth (1698), was vigorously
taken up by Ray. In the third edition of The Wisdom of God,
Ray gave Keill's answer in his own words and italicized them
for emphasis.
This, as most other of the Atheists Arguments,
proceeds from a deep Ignorance of Natural Phil os -
ophy; for if there were but half the Sea that now is,
there would be also but half the Quantity of Vapours,
and consequently we could have but half so many
Rivers as now there are to supply all the dry land
we have at present, and half as much more; for the
quantity of Vapours which are rais'd, bears a Pro-
portion to the Surface whence they are rais'd, as
well as to the Heat which rais'd them. The Wise
Creator therefore did so prudently order it, that
the Sea should be large enough to supply Vapours
sufficient for all the Land, which it would not do
if it were less than now it is [po 88].
The main elements of the hydrologic cycle are discernible
in this paragraph: evaporation from the sea, the amount of va-
pour raised being proportional to the size of the evaporating

3Ibid. (3rd edition, 1701), p. 87,

10
surface; the transportation of the vapour to the land, its conden-
sation over it to produce rivers. The number of rivers avail-
able to water the land, in other words, depends on the size of
the sea. The segment of the cycle that is not explicitly given
is that the rivers eventually return the water to the sea, thus
maintaining its level.
Keill's statement might have remained a solitary insight,
like Bentley's, but for the fact that it received Ray's patronage.
Enclosure in The Wisdom of God ensured it a long life and a
wide audience. Ray, moreover, extended Keill's argument.
He raised hypothetical objections to it and in the process of
demolishing the objections he sharpened and further enriched
the whole concept of the hydrologic cycle,

The Problem of Vapour Exchange

Having given Keill's answer to the apparent disproportion
between sea and land, Ray pursued the problem by asking:
But against this it may be objected, Why should
not all the Vapours which are rais'd out of the Sea
fall down again into it by Rain? Is there not as
much Reason that the Vapours which are exhaled
out of the Earth should be carried down to the Sea,
as that those raised out of the Sea be brought up
upon the dry Land? If some by Winds be driven
from the Sea up Land, others by the same Cause
will be blown down from Land to Sea, and so bal-
ancing one another, they will in Sum fall equally
upon Sea and Land; and consequently the Sea con-
tribute nothing to the Watering of the Earth, or
the Maintenance of Rivers. 4
Ray's answer was again prescient in broad conception
though incorrect in detail. Ray appears to have believed that
insofar as it is a question of watering the earth by rain there
need be no supply of vapour from the sea. Sufficient vapour was
"exhaled out of" the land to do that. Without additional water
from the sea, as Ray saw it, precipitation and evaporation
would have been in balance over land, there being "no more
return'd upon it by Rain, so as to rest upon it, than an

4Ibid, (8th edition, 1722), p. 80.

11
equivalent Quantity to what was rais'd out of it" (p. 81). This,
of course, is incorrect. Areas cut off to any extent from
oceanic sources of moisture are quite dry. But even if there
were a state of approximate balance between precipitation and
evaporation the land would have been at best subhumid, of un-
certain productivity. The water available would barely have
sufficed to serve "for the Nutrition of Plants and Animals. "
But, to pursue Ray's train of thought, his answer to his
own question was that though fl • • • as to the Watering of the
Earth there needs be no Supply from the Sea, " the rivers must
be supplied in other ways. The rivers are fed by "Rain and
Vapours" and the question is, "Whence these Vapours are
brought? We answer, From the Sea. But what brings them up
from the Sea? I answer, The Winds" (Fig. 6, centre). By
giving this answer, however, Ray realized that he had returned
to the original difficulty, namely: "Why should not the Winds
carry them that are exhaled out of the Earth down to the Sea,
as well as Bring them up upon the Earth, which are rais'd from
the Sea? Or, which is all one, why should not the Wind blow
indifferently from Sea and Land?" Ray professed ignorance
and asserted as a simple matter of fact, "That the Winds do
bring abundantly more Vapours up from the Sea than they carry
down thither" (p. 81).
He offered two proofs. "First, Because otherwise there
can be no Account given of Floods." The excess of water on
land argues for a predOminant transportation of vapours from
sea to land.
It is clear, That Floods with us proceed from Rain;
and it is often a vast Quantity of Water they carry
down to the Sea. Whence come those Vapours which
supply all this Water, I hope those who bring up
Springs and Rivers from the great Abyss, will not
bring those Vapours, which unite into Drops, and
descend in Rain from thence too. Should they rise
from the dry land only, they would soon render it
dry indeed; more parch'd than the Desarts of Libya
[po 82).
The second proof is more direct. "That the Winds bring
up more Vapours from the Sea than they carry down thither, is,
Because the Winds do more frequently blow from the Sea than
to the Sea." The evidence presented has a modern ring: it is

12
in the deformation of coastal vegetation. "Trees which grow on
and near the Sea-shores all along the Western Coast of England
[have] Heads and Boughs [that run] far to Landward; but toward
the Sea [they are] so snub'd by the Winds, as if their Boughs and
Leaves had been pared or shaven off on that Side" (pp. 83-84).

Mountains, Rain and Flood

In Ray's view, then, rivers are fed by the "Surplusage of
Water after the Earth is sated with Rain" (p. 82). The surplus
itself is possible because of the vast amount of vapour that the
winds bring into the land from the sea. Ray contended that
rivers and springs are fed by "distil'd" vapour or rain, and not
through the ''breaking up [of] the Fountains of the great Deep, "
nor through the direct condensation of vapours on the sides of
mountains, a notion Ray attributed to Edmund Halley. 5
The efficacy of rains to produce flood is borne out by per-
sonal observation.
I myself have observed a Thunder-Cloud in pas-
sage, to have in less than two hours space poured
down so much Water upon the Earth, as besides
what sunk into the parched and thirsty ground, and
filled all Ditches and Ponds, caused a considerable
Flood in the Rivers, setting all the Meadows on
note. . . . Now it is to be considered, that not
only the Air above the Dry Land, but also all that
covers the whole Ocean, is charged with Vapours,
which are nothing else but diffused Water: all which
was brought together by Winds . . . and caused to
distil down in Rain upon the Earth. 6
The wisdom of God is by now amply demonstrated in the
apportionments of physical geography. The problem raised by
the inordinate size of the oceans has been disposed of. There
remained a few other questions which Ray answered with con-
fidence. One was the unsightliness and uselessness of
mountains. A critic like Thomas Burnet, for instance (although

5Ibid., p. 82. Also, Ray, Miscellaneous Discourses, Con-

cerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World (London, 1692),
p. 67; criticism of Halley, p. 82.
6Ibid., p. 69.

13
"
"
-------~~~=====~~--------------------­

Ray did not specify him by name), might say "That the present
Earth looks like a Heap of Rubbish and Ruins; and That there
are no greater Examples of Confusion in Nature, than Moun-
tains singly or jointly considered . . . . " In answer Rayas-
serted that the " . . . great use and necessity of Mountains and
Hills is for the Generation and Maintenance of Rivers and Foun-
tains which (in our Hypothesis, that all proceed from Rain-
Water) could not be without them, or but rarely. ,,7 He quoted
in approval Edmund Halley's suggestion that the end and use of
mountains was that "their Ridges being placed through the midst
of the Continents, might serve as it were Alembicks to distil
fresh Water for the use of Man and Beast." But Ray objected to
Halley's hesitation in admitting "Final Causes" in the origin of
mountains. "What needs this hesitancy and dubitation in a thing
that is clear ?,,8
Another question was: "To what Purpose serve the Floods?"
The answer that Ray gave completed the hydrologic cycle. It
was, "To return back to the Sea the Surplusage of Water after
the Earth is sated with Rain." But this did not really answer
the question of purpose. Ray continued, "It must be further
ask'd, What need more Rain be poured upon the Earth than is
sufficient to water it? I reply, That the Rain brings down from
the Mountains and higher Grounds a great Quantity of Earth,
and in Times of Floods spreads it upon the Meadows and Levels,
rendering them thereby so fruitful as to stand in need of no Cul-
ture, or Manuring." The theme of erosion and deposition is
thus insinuated into a segment of the hydrologic cycle. 9

Green Grass and other Herbs

Step by step Ray built up his case for the wisdom of God as
exemplified in physical geography. The earth exhaled sufficient
vapour so that upon its distillation the water would be adequate
to the needs of the land. The rivers and floods, fed by distilled
vapours from the great seas, were also necessary for they
brought down from the mountains fertile soil with which to

7Ibid., p. 168; also Ray, Three Physico-Theological Dis-

courses (London, 1721), p. 34.
8Ibid., p. 253.
9 Ray , The Wisdom of God . (1722), p. 82.

14
fertilize the meadows and levels. However, in his enthusias m
Ray had greatly overdrawn the extent of the well-watered and
fertile earth. It was characteristic of those who followed the
same train of thought as Ray-the train of thought guided by the
hydrologic cycle-to neglect the deserts. An unreal image of
the fertile earth, necessary to one's conception of God's provi-
dence, persisted until well into the nineteenth century. The
following rhapsodic statements illustrate Ray's too-generous
view of the earth's fertility:
The great Use and Convenience, the Beauty
and Variety of so many Springs and Fountains; so
many Brooks and Rivers, so many Lakes and stand-
ing Pools of Water, and these so scatter'd and dis-
pers'd all the Earth over, that no Part of it is
destitute of them, without which it must, without a
Supply otherways, be desolate and void of Inhabi-
tants' afford abundant Arguments of Wisdom and
Council. 10
And here is a description of the "whole dry land" but it ap-
pears nevertheless to be largely inspired by England and is
strictly applicable perhaps only to Eden:
Add to all this, that the whole dry Land is, for
the most Part cover'd over with a lovely Carpet
of green Grass, and other Herbs, of a Colour not
only most grateful and agreeable, but most useful
and salutary to the Eye; and this also deck'd and
adorn'd with great Variety of Flowers of beautiful
Colours and Figures, and most pleasant and frag-
rant Odours, for the Refreshment of our Spirits and
our innocent Delight; as also with beautiful Shrubs
and stately Trees, affording as not only pleasant
and nourishing Fruits, many LIquors, Drugs, and
good Medicines, but Timber, and Utensils for all
Sorts of Trades and the Convenience of Man; out
of many Thousands of which we will only name a
few, lest we should be tedious and too bulky
[po 207J.

10Ibid. (1692), pp. 74-75; (1722), p. 86.

15
Erosion and Deposition
In trying to explain the purpose of floods, John Ray noted
that they carry material from the mountains and deposit them
on the plains. Their work is that of erosion, transportation,
and deposition. The movement of water from the mountains
across the plains to the sea is a segment of the hydrologic cycle.
Historically, however, this segment of the cycle has not been
closely associated with the work performed by moving water.
The effects of moving water on the land usually receive separ-
ate treatment as events in a denudational chronology. Ray did,
as we have noted, introduce the idea of erosion and deposition
into the conceptual scheme of the water cycle. But his more
explicit comments on denudation and deposition occur in the con-
text of another intellectual problem of his time. This was not
the problem of relating the present geographical pattern of land
and water to the wisdom of God; it was rather the question of
the future and final state of the world.
The earth, in spite of its beauty and utility, is not eternal.
It is not man's final home. Scripture guarantees its ultimate
dissolution. Do present processes working on the earth's sur-
face offer any clue as to its final state? Ray contemplated "the
possibility of the Waters again naturally overflowing and cover-
ing the Earth. ,,11 It seemed possible. "For, First of all, The
Rains continually washing down and carrying away Earth from
the Mountains, it is necessary, that as well the height as the
bulk of them should answerably decrease; and that they do so,
is evident in Experience." The hills will continue to "sink" so
"long as there falls any Rains, and as they retain any declivity,
that is, till they be levelled with the Plains" (p. 44).
Ray then proceeded to describe the concomitant process of
deposition. "By reason of the abundance of Earth thus washed
off the Mountains by Shots of Rain, and carried down with the
floods to the sea; about the outlets of the Rivers, where the vio-
lent Motion of the Water ceases, settling to the bottom, and
raising it by degrees above the Surface of the Water, the Land
continually gains upon, and drives back the Sea" (p. 45).
Elsewhere, the aggradation of the lower valleys and the
smoothing of the coastline are described in these words:

11 Ray , Miscellaneous Discourses, . . . , p. 39.

16
 Now the Rain thus continually washing away, and
carrying down Earth from the Mountains and higher
Grounds, and raising up the Vallies near the Sea,
as long as there is any descent for the Rivers, so
long will they continue to run, carry forward the
low ground, and streighten the Sea, which also by
its working, by reason of the declivity, easily
carries down the Earth towards the lower and mid-
dle parts of its Channel . . . and by degrees may
fill it up [pp. 47-48J.
Deposition at the mouths of rivers results in the gaining of
the land upon the sea. Ray also considered the opposite possi-
bility: that the sea might devour the land through the slow pro-
cess of wave action. He was doubtful, however, of its success:
wave action is too slow and the mass of land to be consumed too
large.
But this according to the leisurely proceedings
of Nature, would not c-ome to pass in many Ages,
I might say, in Ages of Ages: Nay, some think,
that those vast Ridges and Chains of Mountains,
which run through the middle of the Continents,
are by reason of their great height, weight and
solidity, too great a Morsel ever to be devoured
by the Jaws of the Sea.
In any case, it was not a dispute Ray cared to participate in 'fbe-
cause this is not the dissolution the Apostle here speaks of,
which must be by Fire 11 (p. 50).
These ideas, the dissolution of land mass by rain and water
on the one hand and marine erosion on the other, had been an-
ticipated by George Hakewill and Bernhard Varenius among
Ray's immediate predecessors. Ray added one or two original
touches of detail, including the modern notion. of physical
weathering exerted by the pressure of roots.
What force a gentle, if continual pressure hath,
we may understand also by the Roots of Trees,
which we see will sometimes pierce through the
Chinks of Stone Walls, and in time make great
Cracks and Rifts in them; nay, will get under their
very foundations [po 53].
Ray cannot be said to have anticipated the geologic cycle in
spite of his keen comments on weathering, erosion, and depositiono

17
For the word "cycle" to have any meaning the demolished
mountains must be seen as somehow capable of resuscitation.
Alluvial plains, the product of destroyed mountains, must be
susceptible to renewed uplift. The possibility of vertical crustal
movements of large order was, however, implicitly acknowledged
by Ray. He encountered it not in the context of the "Dissolution
of the World" but in the problem of accounting for sea shells on
high mountain tops. Ray believed that such highly elevated shell
beds were once below sea-level, that the shells at the sea bottom
were successively covered by "Several Coats, or Floors of
Earth, brought down from the Mountains in Land-Floods; the
several Beds or Floors to be seen in such broken Mountains,
being the several Settlings of particular Floods. ,,12
Ray's primary interest was in botany. His interest in the
earth's physical patterns and history was tertiary. It is all the
more remarkable that his observations on the earth were so
keen. His "solution" to the problem of the distribution of land
and water was the hydrologic cycle, to the problem of the earth's
dissolution the possible development of a level surface, and to
the problem of elevated shell beds the occurrence of large verti-
cal displacement. It is true that Ray did not link these separate
problems together and thus missed the opportunity of offering a
grand intellectual scheme-a complex hydro-geologic cycle-
under which the disparate facts of the earth may be seen to bear
unexpected relationships with one another. That must be left to
his successors. Indeed, a satisfactory synthesis is yet to be
achieved.

12Ray , Philosophical Let ters, Between the late Learned Mr.

Ray and several of his Ingenious Correspondents, Natives and
Foreigners (London 1718), p. 166.
18
 CHAPTER II

TRAILS AND INTIMATIONS

Ray's exposition of geoteleology, using the concept of the hydro-

logic cycle and the dissolution of the world, lent a unity to the
multiple facets of physical geography that few modern scientific
expositors can (or perhaps wish to) match. We may now turn
to some of the earlier views and controversies that have pre-
pared the way-by no means a smooth and straight one-to Ray's
fulsome treatment at the opening of the eighteenth century. The
complex strains in Ray's physical and geoteleological conception
may be disentangled and shown to include at least the following:
(1) the size of the sea, (2) the circular motion of air, vapour,
and water, (3) the fertility of the earth, and (4) importantly
(supplying, as it were, the underlying motive), the providence
and wisdom of God.

The Size of the Sea

The starting point of Ray's teleological geology was the dif-
ficulty of reconciling the size of the sea, essentially of little
service to man, to the wisdom of God. In the Middle Ages, in
contrast, a more pressing problem was why the water, a purer
substance than land in the hierarchy of fire, air, water, and
land, did not cover the whole earth. One answer was that it
simply expressed the arbitrary working of God's will. Com-
mentators on the Psalms were nevertheless uneasy with the ar-
bitrary fiat by which God established the earth above the waters.
There existed also in the Middle Ages a continental theory of
physical geography. This was the belief that the oceans of the
earth occupied relatively small and enclosed basins. The con-
tinental theory had the support of such popular figures as
Martianus Capella and Macrobius, and the high authority of the

19
Second Book of Esdras. 1 Such support prevented the widespread
acceptance of the rival, oceanic hypothesis, adumbrated (for in-
stance) by Abelard, that all of the earth's surface except the
Oekoumene was covered by water. 2 According to Humboldt,
Columbus subscribed to the continental theory. He found it con-
venient for persuading the Spanish monarch that the oceans were
of modest size. The authority of Esdras was, for this purpose,
especially useful. 3 The great overseas explorations of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries tended to make the continental
theory increaSingly untenable, although its persisting influence
may be seen in the strongly-held notion of a large southern con-
tinent-a notion that survived even the voyages of Captain Cook.
Broad stretches of water became an awkward fact when one held
to a narrow view of God's providence. As we have noted, Ray
in his earlier defence of the sea pointed out that God also pro-
vided for the fishes, that the round "Superficies" of water and
the regular motion of the tides were manifestations of an order
consistent with God's wisdom, and that the sea served "the Uses
of Man for Navigation." This last point became very popular in
maritime England. But the most widely used argument in de-
fence of the sea was the one presented by John Keill and elabor-
ated by John Ray, namely, that the seas had to be large in order
to supply sufficient moisture to fertilize the earth.

IJ. K. Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the

Crusades (New York: Dover, 1965), pp. 187-188. G. H. T.
Kimble, Geography in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen & Co.,
1938), pp. 162-163. "On the third day you commanded the
waters to be gathered together in the seventh part of the earth,
but six parts you dried up and kept them so that some of them
might be planted and cultivated and serve before you, " The Se-
cond Book of Esdras, 6:42, in The Apocrypha, E. J. Goodspeed
translation.
2Wright, p. 188. A Norlind, "Das Problem des gegenseitigen
Verhaltnisses von Land und Wasser und seine Behandlung im
Mitlelalter, " Lunds Universitets Arsskrift, N. S. (Lund and
Leipzig), XIV, No. 12, Part I (1918).
3Alexander von Humboldt, Examen Critique de l'Histoire de la
Geographie du Nouveau Continent (Paris, 1836), I, p. 186.

20
The Hydrologic Cycle
The development of a concept of water circulation that is in
line with divine wisdom required some sort of support from au-
thority. Until well into the nineteenth century the Bible provided
the indisputable imprimatur. Its single most influential message,
with regard to water circulation, was the verse in Ecclesiastes,
"All rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full: Unto the
place from which the rivers come thither they return again"
(1: 7). Medieval writers on the origin of springs and rivers
leaned on its authority. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies the verse was repeatedly laced into the hydrological dis-
course of the physical theologians. Rather surprisingly, it
found its way even into the exposition of the great Victorian
rationalist Thomas Huxley. His presentation of the hydrologic
cycle, given in the second half of the nineteenth century, is
worth quoting in some detail for it combines the modern pen-
chant for the particular with the older habit of the sweeping
statement, rounded off with a Biblical quotation.
Thus, in seeking for the sources of the Thames,
we are led from the springs of the earth to the rain
of the heavens; and from this to the watery vapour
which forms part of the atmosphere; and thence to
the great caldron, the ocean, whence the heat of the
sun distils that vapour. The great stream of fresh
water which flows over Teddington Weir is fed, in
large measure, by vapour which has been raised
far away on the Atlantic. South and southwest winds
sweeping across the ocean become highly charged
with watery vapour; and these warm moist winds,
striking the Cotteswold Hills, deposit their freight
of moisture in showers of rain, much of which
reaches the Thames basin. This water is ultimately
carried out to sea by the flow of the river, and
mingles once more with its present ocean, but only
to be removed in due course by further evaporation.
The waters of the earth thus moved in a continued
cycle, without beginning and without end. From
rain to river, from river to sea, from sea to air,
and back again from air to earth-such is the cir-
cuit in which every drop of water is compelled to
circulate . . . . In the words of a wise man of old-

21
P:U9S

'All the rivers run into the sea: yet the sea is not
full; unto the place from whence the rivers come,
Thether they return again. ,4
The idea that circular motion is characteristic of the nature
of things is ancient, and probably of Near Eastern and Indian
origin if we trace it back far enough. By the fifth or fourth cen-
tury B. C. a particular aspect of it-the water cycle-was al-
ready known to the Greeks near one end of the Eurasian continent
and perhaps to the Chinese at the other. 5
In pre-modern Europe the water cycle in varying degrees of
completeness may be extracted from the teachings of Anaxi-
mander of Miletus, Anaxagoras, Herodotus, Plato (Critias),
Aristotle, Vitruvius, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoric of Chartres,
Peter Alphonsi, William Caxton, Bartholomew Anglicus; and at
the threshold of the modern age of science, from Bernard
Palissy.
Such a list would be much longer if we were to include water-
cycle theories that later lost currency: for example, the impor-
tant body of opinion that emphasized the subterranean movement
of water from sea to land and so, in a sense, reversed the cycle
as we know it today. Although it is possible to compile a list
of thinkers who have contributed to the idea of the water cycle
and arrange them in chronologic order, we are far from being
able to establish a direct line of influence. There are large
gaps in historical knowledge. There exist also works of striking
independence which appear to owe little to contemporary views
and which have had negligible impact on subsequent thought.
Bernard Palissy's Discours Admirables (1580), and J. B.

4T . H. Huxley, Physiography: An Introduction to the Study of

Nature (3rd edition; London: Macmillan, 1880), pp. 73-74.
5In a Taoist work of the third century B. C., the Lu Shih Chhun
Chhui, there is the statement that "The Waters flow eastwards
from their sources, resting neither by day nor by night. Down
they come inexhaustibly, yet the deeps are never full. The
small (streams) become large and the heavy (waters in the sea)
become light (and mount to the clouds). This is (part of) the
Rotation of the Tao, "J. Needham, Science and Civilization in
China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), III,
p. 467.

22
Lamarck's Hydrogeologie (1802) are two examples. Both con-
tain original interpretations on the hydrologic cycle. Palissy's,
in particular, was at least a century ahead of his time, 6
A comprehensive history of the concept of the hydrologic
cycle has yet to be attempted. Short summaries are available,
and the facts need not be repeated here. 7 Our main interest,

6Palissy says that God does not wish to leave anything in idle-
ness. So "rain water that falls in the winter goes up in summer,
to come again in winter, and the waters and the action of the sun
and dry winds, striking the land, cause great quantities of water
to rise: which, being gathered in the air and formed into clouds,
have gone in all directions like heralds sent by God. And when
the winds rush these vapours the waters fall on all parts of the
land, and when it pleased God that these clouds (which are noth-
ing more than a mass of water) should dissolve, these vapours
are turned into rain that falls on the ground, " The Admirable
Discourses of Bernard Palissy, translated by Aurele la Rocque
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957), p. 53. Lamarck's
Hydrogeologie, a much neglected work, was published at his own
expense in 1802. Unlike others, Lamarck wondered how the
sea was able to maintain its size despite the large volume of
sediments (not water) that was dumped into it by rivers; J. B.
Lamarck, Hydrogeology, translated by A. V. Carozzi (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1964), pp. 34, 39-40.
7The history of the concept of the hydrologic cycle is often
treated implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) in connection with
the origin of springs and rivers, and the nature of ground water.
See, for example, F. D. Adams, "The Origin of Springs and
Rivers, "Chapt. 12 in The Birth and Development of the Geolo-
gical Sciences (New York: Dover, 1954); O. E. Meinzer, "The
History and Development of Ground-water Hydrology, " Journ. ,
Washington Academy of Science, XXIV (1934), 6-32; M. N.
Baker and R. E. Horton, "Historical Development of Ideas Re-
garding the Origin of Springs and Ground Water, " Trans. ,
Amer. Geophys. Union, Part IT (1936), 395-400. On the hydro-
logic cycle itself, two recent articles are, R. R. Parizek,
"Development of the Hydrologic Cycle Concept and our Challenge
in the 20th Century, " Mineral Industries, XXXII (1963), 1-8
and A. K. Biswas, "The Hydrologic Cycle, " Civil Engineering,
XXXV (1965), 70-74.

23
.=

moreover, is in relating the cycle to a special conception of

God's providence. John Ray's writings exemplified this attitude;
and other views, similarly framed in theological doctrine and
extending in time from George Hakewill in the seventeenth cen-
tury to three Bridgwater lecturers during the nineteenth century,
will be treated in some detail later. To place these views in
their context we may usefully examine here some antecedent and
parallel approaches. These may be labelled: (a) the "reversed"
hydrologic cycle; (b) the hydrologic cycle, cosmic order, and
the circle of perfection; and (c) the vertical, one-dimensional
cycle.
(a) The "reversed" hydrologic cycle. The classical writers
who have exerted a powerful influence on the meteorological
thinking of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance were Ar-
istotle and Pliny. The Meteorologica was available in Latin be-
fore the beginning of the thirteenth century. And the "Roman
encyclopedist most widely read in the Renaissance was Pliny. ,,8
The ideas of Aristotle on the origin of springs and rivers, as
they have been preserved in the Meteorologica, are somewhat
conflicting. In one passage he gave a sketch of a water cycle
that is remarkably modern. In another he appears to have
looked upon the cool mountains as direct condensers of mois-
ture in the air. The water so condensed was then held by them
like water in saturated sponges to be gradually released in
springs. In a third idea, the most ambiguously stated of all,
he suggested that the mountains "also cool the vapour that rises
and condense it back to water. ,,9 The question is, rise from
where? If the moisture is supposed to rise from the interior,
then we have a hint of the reversed cycle. But the ambiguous
passage in the Meteorologica has provoked conflicting inter-
pretations.
Pliny the Elder gave Aristotle as his authority. He was,
however, not at all reticent in assigning the interior of the earth
as the source for water that bursted out in springs on mountain

88. K. Heninger, Jr., A Handbook of Renaissance Meteorology

(Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1960), p. 12.
9Aristotle Meteorologica, Chapt. 1, translated by E. W.
Webster in The Works of Aristotle, I ("Great Books of the
Western World"; Chicago, London . . . : Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Inc., 1952).

24
ridges.
The intention of the Artificer of nature must have
been to unite earth and water in a mutual embrace,
earth opening her bosom and water penetrating her
entire frame by means of a network of veins radiating
within and without, above and below, the water burst-
ing out even at the tops of the mountain ridges, to
which it is driven and squeezed out by the weight of
the earth, and spouts out like a jet of water from a
pipe, and is so far from being in danger of falling
down that it leaps upward to all the loftiest elevations.
This theory shows clearly why the seas do not in-
crease in bulk with the daily accession of so many
rivers. The consequence is that the earth at every
point of the globe is encircled and engirdled by sea
flowing round it, and this does not need theoretical
investigation, but has already been ascertained by
experience. 10
Pliny may be credited with the most uncompromising statement
of the reversed hydrologic cycle.
Medieval scholars interested in science probably depended
more on Pliny than on Seneca. Nevertheless, Seneca's Quaes-
tiones Naturales served as a major source for meteorological
knowledge during the Middle Ages. Even in the late Renaissance
his authority was acknowledged, a.s, for example, in William
Fulke's important work, A Goodly Gallery (1563). The quaes-
tiones Naturales was an ill-sorted compilation of largely second-
hand ideas. On the origin of springs and rivers Seneca
considered three opinions that then prevailed. One of them is
an explicit encapsulation of the main elements of the reversed
hydrologic cycle.
The Sea . . . does not get larger, because it does
not assimilate the water that runs into it, but forth-
with restores it to the earth. For the sea water re-
turns by a secret path, and is filtered in its passage
back. Being dashed about as it passes through the
endless, winding channels in tlie ground, it loses its

10Pliny Natural History, translated by H. Rackham (London:

Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1938), Bk. II, LXV, pp.
301-303.

25
 salinity, and, purged of its bitterness in such a
variety of ground as it passes through, it eventually
changes into pure, fresh water. 11
Seneca did not comment on this opinion. Another, on which
he commented favourably, was the idea (following Aristotle) that
sluggish air turned into water in the cool dark hollows of the
earth. Just as above the earth a change in the density of the
atmosphere produced rain so beneath the earth the change of
density started a river. The air above ground could not long
remain sluggish and heavy for it was subject, from time to time,
to rarefaction by the sun's heat or expansion by the force of the
wind. But underground the forces that turned air into water
were constant-perpetual darkness, cold, and inert density.
They could, therefore, supply without a break the sources of
fountain or flood.
We Stoics are satisfied that the earth is interchange-
able in its elements. So all this air that she has ex-
haled in her interior, since it was not taken up by
the free atmosphere, condenses and is forthwith con-
verted into moisture [pp. 119-120].
"There, " he added, "you have the first cause of the origin of
underground water. "
Seneca rejected rain as the cause of rivers. His authority,
along with that of Pliny, might well have contributed to the per-
sistent dissociation of rainwater from the origin of rivers
throughout the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance. Seneca
first pointed out how "Some suppose that all the water that the
earth drinks in from rain is sent out again into the rivers ";
and how they adduced as evidence for this the fact that countries
of infrequent rain have few rivers and vice versa.
[But], a great deal can obviously be urged in reply
to this. First of all, as a diligent digger among my
vines, I can affirm from observation that no rain is
ever so heavy as to wet the ground to a depth of more
than 10 feet. . . . How, then, can rain, which merely
damps the surface, store up a supply sufficient for
rivers? [Pp. 117-118 0 ]

11John Clarke, Physical Science in the Time of Nero, Being

a Translation of the Quaestiones Naturales of Seneca (London,
1910), pp. 116-117.

26
 In the Dark Ages scholars showed little concern for the
origin of springs and rivers. The influential opinions of ISidore
of Seville (A. D. 570-636) were derivative. His encyclopaedia,
the Etymologies, reflected the method and content of the Latin
encyclopaedias of the Empire, including that of the elder Pliny.
Isidore's Etymologies was by far the most comprehensive com-
pendium of secular knowledge for his period. Its enduring im-
pact through the succeeding centuries was attested by the
innumerable references to it in the works of later writers, and
in its successive editions since the invention of printing. On the
theme of rains and clouds, for example, Isidore was paraphrased
by Bede and both authors were cited as authorities by the English
Franciscan, Bartholomew, in his discussion of m~teors. The
Italian "Religioso, " Ristoro d' Arezzo, subscribed to the re-
versed hydrologic cycle in his comprehensive treatise on nature.
One of his sources was probably Isidore of Seville. 12 As to
Isidore's opinion on the origin of springs and rivers, the follow-
ing two passages suggest that he endorsed the concept of the re-
versed cycle, although not in the authoritative terms of Pliny.
Moreover that the sea does not increase, though it
receives all streams and all springs, is accounted
for in this way; partly that its very greatness does
not feel the waters flowing in; secondly, because the
bitter water consumes the fresh that is added, or
that the clouds draw up much water to themselves,
or that the winds carry it off, and the sun partly
dries it up; lastly, because the water leaks through
certain secret holes in the earth, and turns and
runs back to the sources of rivers and to the springs. 13
A rather muddy statement on subsurface water circulation
appears in the chapter, "On the abyss ";
The abyss is the deep water which cannot be pene-
trated; whether caverns of unknown waters from which

12H. D. Austin, "Accredited Citations in Ristoro d' Arezzo's

Composizione del Mondo, a Study of Sources" (Ph. D disserta-
tion, Johns Hopkins University, 1911); reference in Adams,
p. 336; see also p. 432.
13Isidore EtymolOgies, Chapt. 14, translated by Ernest
Brehaut in An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages; Isidore of
Seville (New York: Burt Franklin reprint, 1964), p. 240.

27
 springs and rivers flow; or the waters that pass
secretly beneath, whence it is called abyss. For
all waters or torrents return by secret channels
to the abyss which is their source. 14
Roman encyclopaedists like Pliny and Seneca expressed sur-
prise that the ocean level did not rise with the addition of water
from the rivers. This was the problem that led them to consider
the origin of springs and floods. In the medieval period it was
the well-known verse in Ecclesiastes (1:7) that underlined the
anomaly. The favoured solution was the reversed hydrologic
cycle, whether this was based on the authority of Pliny and
Seneca, or read into the Ecclesiastes itself. It was acknow-
ledged that the sun could draw up some of the water from the
sea or that the winds might skim water off its surface but the
chief cause lay in the subterranean connections. The bias may
be detected in Isidore. It was clearly expressed, using the au-
thority of Ecclesiastes against the opinions of certain pagan
philosophers, by Friar Bartholomew sometime before 1260.
In an English translation of De proprietatibus rerum (Berthelet
edition of 1535), Bartholomew admitted the view of philosophers
who "tells that swete waters that renne in to the see bene con-
sumpte and wasted by heate of the sonne, ozels they ben foode
and nouryshynge of saltnesse of the see, But Ecclesiastes, the
maker of waters saythe that they come ayen by prevy veynes of
the erthe to the well heedes, and cometh out of the mother, that
is the see, and walmeth and springeth out in weele heedes. ,,15
John Swan in his Speculum mundi, to give an example from
the seventeenth century, appealed to the authority of Ecclesiastes
1: 7 in arguing for subterranean circulation. The "aeriall va-
pours" of Aristotle may contribute to the volume of flow but
Solomon makes it plain that the sea is the principal cause of all
rivers. The freshness of the springs, always a problem in the
reversed hydrologic cycle, Swan ascribed to "percolation and
straining through the narrow springie passages of the earth. ,,16

14Ibid., Chapt. 20, p. 241.

15Bertholomeus de proprietatibus rerum, translated by John
de Trevisa, edited by Berthelet (London, 1535), Bk. XIII,
Chapt. 3, CLXXVII.
16John Swan, Speculum Mundi (Cambridge, 1643), pp. 200-201.

28
 The persistence of the ancient doctrine that the ani mated
body mirrored the main elements of the universe tended to in-
fluence opinion towards the reversed hydrologic cycle. As blood
vessels permeate the human body so do channels the body of the
earth. William Caxton's The Mirrour of the World is translated
from a thirteenth century source. In it is the passage:
All is lyke wyse as the blood of a man gooth out
& yesueth in somme place, aIle in lyke wyse renneth
the water by the vaynes of therthe and sourdeth and
spryngeth out by the fontaynes and welles; fro which
it gooth al aboute that, whean one delveth in therthe
depe in medowe or in montaygne or in valeye, men
fynde water. . . . 17
Caxton's translation was first made in 1481; later editions
appeared in 1490 and 1529. The extension of the doctrine of
microcosm into the Elizabethan period is seen in the following
extract from Sir Walter Ralegh's The History of the World.
[Man's) blood, which disperseth itself by the
branches of veins through all the body, may be re-
sembled to those waters which are carried by
brooks and rivers over all the earth, his breath
to the air, his natural heat to the inclosed warmth
which the earth has itself. . . . 18
Even in the eighteenth century the doctrine of microcosm
could receive a hearing in London's Royal Society. Thus in
1736, before that august Society, Christopher Packe commended
glowingly the "concerted Regularity" of the valleys in Kent and
likened them to the veins of the body (Fig. 3). Packe, however,
attempted to compare a system of valleys eroded on the earth's
surface with a system of veins inside an animated body. The
analogy, though inapt, was doggedly pursued. Packe merely
hinted at the existence of a subterranean net of channels, "anal-
ogous to the arteries." His account of the hydrologic cycle was

17William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, edited by Oliver

H. Prior (Extra Series CX [London: Early English Text Society,
1913]), p. 109; first published, 1481.
18Sir Walter Ralegh, The History of the World, Bk. I, Chapt.
II, Sec. V, in The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh (Oxford, 1829),
p. 59.

29
;'.s

1'1(.\1

(.

t•• IlIlIIo.:::>'I'-'V ...

Fig. 3. Drainage of south-east Kent as symbolized by a half-

kneeling man, from a manuscript map in the
Ankographia by Christopher Packe.

30
in fact superterranean. 19
There is no logical contradiction between the idea of a re-
versed hydrologic cycle and the superterranean system we have
come to accept. Scholars in different ages have not hesitated
to subscribe to both until well into the eighteenth century. In
St. Basil's Hexameron and Isidore's Etymologies the two cycles-
one operating above and one below the surface-are described as
though they bear no relation to each other: the one above accounts
for the phenomena of clouds and rain, the one below the origin of
springs and rivers. In Caxton's rendering of The Mirrour of the
World, water in the veins of the earth is described as flowing
out of fountains and wells. But in it there is also a sketch of a
water cycle that runs its course above the earth's surface.
The sonne is the foundement of all hete . . . .
Whan the sonne spredeth his rayes vpon therthe &
upon the mareys ['marais' -marshes] he dryeth
them strongly, and draweth vpon the moisture
which he enhaunseth on hye. But this is a mois-
ture subtyl . . . named vapour; and it mounteth
unto the myddle of thayer, and there it assem-
bleth. . . and lytil & lytil it increceth, that it
cometh thycke and derke in suche wise that it
taketh fro vs the sight of the sonne. And this

19 Christopher Packe, A Dissertation upon the Surface of the

Earth, as Delineated in a Speciman of a Phllosophico-
chorographical Chart of East Kent (London, 1737), pp. 4-5.
It may be added that the macro-microcosmic doctrine does not
necessitate a subterranean interpretation of the hydrologic cycle,
Processes through the aerial regions may be likened to processes
inside an animated body. Charles Singer draws attention to a
particularly crude analogy from the writings of Saint Hildegard
(1098-1180) of Bingen. She describes how "if the excess of
waters below are drawn up to the clouds (by the just judgment of
God in the requital of sinners), then the moisture from the ~
aquosus transudes through the fortis et albus lucidusque aer as
a draught drunk into the urinary bladder; and the same waters
descend in an inundation, " Charles Singer, "The Scientific
Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard" in Studies in the History
and Method of Science, edited by C. Singer (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1917), p. 39.

31
-
thynge is the c loude. . . .
And when it groweth over thycke, it becometh
water which falleth on the erthe.. 20
Caxton's presentation of a dual system of water movement
found close parallel in other popular Renaissance works such
as those by William Fulke and Pierre de la Primaudaye. In all
three the water cycle above the ground explained the phenomenon
of precipitation but not any kind of surface run-off. For the or-
igin of springs and rivers, explanation was persistently sought
in a subterranean source based usually (though not inevitably)
on the idea of a reversed hydrologic cycle.
The dual system appears to have remained popular, if less
naively assumed, through the course of the seventeenth century.
Consider, for example, the most esteemed work on physical
geography for that period-and indeed into the eighteenth cen-
tury-the Geographia Generalis of Bernhard Varenius. To the
question why the ocean was not bigger when it received so many
rivers, Varenius gave two answers: one was that the water de-
livered to the sea was returned to the springs and rivers through
subterranean passages; and the other affirmed that much of the
vapour that was removed from the ocean and transported to the
higher regions became rain, some of which then fell into the
sea and some on the land. Varenius acknowledged that various
views existed on the origin of the water that supplied the springs
and rivers. He provided a lengthy review of ideas, those of
Seneca, Aristotle, Cardanus, and of philosophers closer to his
time. For Varenius the main difficulty in the subterranean
theory was to explain the upward movement of water, and the
hoary problem of how the sea water lost its saltiness in the pro-
cess. He arrived at a compromise, and in the English transla-
tion provided by Richard Blome, said: "Therefore the waters of
Fountains proceed partly from the Sea or Subterranean waters,
partly from Rivers, and Dew, that moisten the Earth. But the
water of Rivers partly proceedeth from Springs, and partly from
Rain and Snow. ,,21
In Thomas Robinson (d. 1719) we have an English naturalist
of the Lake District who can lay no special claim to scientific

20Caxton, p. 11 7 .
21Bernhard Varenius, Cosmography and Geography, Blome
translation of the Geographia Generalis (London, 1682), p. 116.

32
distinction. His three published works on natural history con-
tain ideas that are naive even for his time and are heavily laced
with theology, but they also reveal a deep personal knowledge
of the mines in Cumberland, and occasionally show sharp in-
sights on the structure of mountains. Of interest to our theme
is his New Observations on the Natural History of the World of
Matter, published in 1696. In it is a diagram (reproduced in
Fig. 4) which illustrates clearly the common notion of how water
circulates both above and below the earth's surface. Above the
earth's surface vapours are shown to rise out of the seas; they
move to the mountains where they condense into showers and
may at times cause the rivers to flood. But, despite this belief
Robinson was in no doubt that springs and rivers originate, not
in rain, but in waters that move upward through a complex maze
of subterranean "dikes" and veins to the mountain tops where
they burst forth in springs. 22 In an earlier essay, Robinson
believed he could detect an analogy between the bursting forth
of fountains at the mountain top and the breaking of a blood
vessel in the animal's neck. Mountain tops are more subject
to accidents (tempests and thunder) than the flat plains where
the veins are thickly buried. "And thus, in our Bodies, 'tis
much easier to break a Vein in the Neck or Arm, where they
lye nearest the skin; than in the Buttocks, or any other such
Fleshy-part. ,,23
The belief that a system of subterranean passages connected
the sea with surface drainage lingered on at least to the last
quarter of the eighteenth century. John Wesley's popularization
of science, highly successful in terms of circulation and re-
publication, is evidence of its persistence. He admitted the
greater role of vapours rising from the sea in the provision of
water on the land:
That this is really the case, will easily be al-
lowed, by all who serious ly consider, 1. That the
vapours rising from the sea, are more than suffi-
cient to supply both the surface of the earth, and
the rivers with water. 2. That the mountains, by
their particular structure, arrest the vapours that

22Thomas Robinson, New Observations on the Natural History

of the World of Matter (London, 1696), pp. 42-43.
23Robinson, The Anatomy of the Earth (London, 1694), p. 14.

33
 ..
~~~~~~~~~~:.~(/.:{;:.~}>::.::. I'arc 1
JC

." '.:: ... " . '., :: ,:::-::', :,;.'

Fig. 4. Thomas Robinson's conception of the sub- and superterranean

circulations of water in New Observations on the Natural History of the
World of Matter (1696). Legend as given by the author:
A. The Central Fire disseminating a Vital heat, through the whole
Cortex or Shel of the Globe.
B. The Mountains from the Centre to the Surface.
C. Heaths D. Plains
E. The Channel of the Sea.
The flatt Strata or Beds of Matter with their Acclivities to the
Mountains and Declivities to the Seas together with their Elevations
and Depressions thus described~. The windings and turnings
of the greater Veins, Dividing the several Classes of Matter des-
cribed thus ~ through which the whole Mass of subterranean
Water Circulates. Their Lesser Fibres, or Rami Factions, filling
all the flat Strata with feeders of Water, which breaking out upon

7
 float in the atmosphere, and having collected them
in their reservoirs, dismiss them again through
their sides, either in perpetual or intermitting
currents.
Nevertheless Wesley added: "And yet we need not deny, that
some springs may arise from the sea, or the great abyss: those
in particular, which at all times afford the same quantity of
water. ,,24
The role of the air, whether as a medium through which va-
pours move or as an agent transporting the vapours back and
forth between the sea and the land is, of course, irrelevant to
the reversed hydrologic cycle. An important argument for the
subterranean supply of water to springs and rivers is that their
volume of flow appears to be largely independent of rainfall
fluctuations, that is, of events in the air. This apparent inde-
pendence is particularly striking in the cavernous limestone
country of the Mediterranean basin. 25 There may also be
another, more complex reason for emphasizing a subterranean
source independent of the vagaries of weather. Atmospheric
turbulences are signs of an inconstant and imperfect nature be-
low the orbit of the moon. The Garden of Eden is without weath-
er. Ideally Eden is a balmy and sunny place having more or less
the climate of sub-tropical desert, and yet watered by four peren-
nial streams. Such geography demands a subterranean source
for surface water.
(b) The hydrologic cycle, cosmic order and the circle of
I

perfection. "One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks of God

is a circle . . . and a circle is endlesse; His Sun and Moone

24John Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation

(London, 1777), pp. 27-28; first published, 1763.
25K. Kretschmer, "Die Physische Erdkunde im Christlichen
Mittelalter, " Geographysiche Abhandlungen harausgegeben von
Albrecht Penck (Vienna, 1889), pp. 81-83.

the Surface of the Earth cause Springs & c. described thus

~~~
~
F. The Seas with the Rivers flowing into them from the Tops of the
Mountains swelling them into a Gibbosity; and causing in them a
Continual Fermentation.
G. Vapors Arising from the Seas, which being Attracted by the Cold-
ness of the Mountains, fixeth there; Forming an Atmosphere round
the whole Globe.
r'

and stars move circularly. ,,26

Commenting on this remark of Donne's, Marjorie Nicolson
observes that "No metaphor was more loved by Renaissance
poets than that of the circle, which they had inherited from
Pythagorean and Platonic ancestors, who in turn had borrowed
it from orientals, to whom the serpent, swallowing its tail, was
an 'Hieroglyphick' of eternity. ,,27 The circle of perfection,
Christianized, became a symbol of the perfection and wisdom
of God. Chaos would have reigned but for God who had imposed
order and bade the stars and the moon to move in circular form
and take their places in the celestial hierarchy. However, the
circular perfection of classical philosophy existed only in the
heavens above the orbit of the moon. Below it was the region
of change and irregularity. The sub lunar elements -fire, air,
water, and earth-lacked not only the permanence of the celes-
tial bodies but also their orderliness of motion. Pythagoras'
speech in Ovid's Metamorphoses encapsulates the theme of ele-
mental evanescence. In the English translation (1626) the speech
proclaims that though the elements have their several seats,
yet all
Of these are made, to these again they fall.
Received earth to water rarifies;
To air extenuated waters rise;
To air, when it itself again refines,
To elemental fire extracted shines.
They in like order back again repair;
The grosser fire condenseth into air;
Air into water; water, thick'ning, then
Grows solid and converts to earth again.
None holds his own: for nature ever joys
In change and with new forms supplies. 28
The theme of the mutability of elements and their linkage
to the doings of man was a common one in Elizabethan literature.

26John Donne, Sermon, Christmas Day 1624, in The Sermons

of John Donne, edited by E. M. Simpson and G. R. Potier
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), VI, p. 173.
27Marjorie H. Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1962), p. 47.
280vid Metamorphoses, translated by George Sandys (London,
1626).

36
It promoted melancholia. Mutability reigned beneath the moon;
it signified a defective nature. But mutability orderly enacted
within a cyclic frame could be interpreted as a pattern of the
good. In the sublunary sphere perfection may find its image in
the cycles of change rather than in the circles of motion. Thus
the transmutation of elements lent itself also to optimistic read-
ing. It had in fact been variously used to demonstrate the power
of God, to illustrate the virtue of exchange, and as an argument
against the possibility of universal decay Now, the cycle of the
0

transmutation of elements contains the smaller hydrologic cycle.

"To air extenuated waters rise" and then air changes back into
water, but water-in the hydrologic cycle-does not "thicken"
into earth. During the Renaissance, and in fact until well into
the seventeenth century, it was possible to expound the cyclic
transmutation of elements together with the cyclic changes in the
state of water. Both may be admired as part of one grand cir-
cuit; or each separately. Consider, for example, Saluste du
Bartas' very popular and influential account of the Creation,
first published in 1578. On the seventh day of the first week,
God rested and was pleased to contemplate His works. Of all
that He had achieved it is significant that (according to Du
Bartas) the first item He picked out for citation was the hydro-
logic cycle.
One while, hee sees how the 'ample Sea doth take
The Liquid homage of each other Lake;
And how again the Heav'ns exhale, form it,
Aboundant vapours (for our benfit).
And yet it swels not for those tribute streams,
Nor yet it shrinks not for those boyling beams. 29
In these few lines the cycle provides a scheme for hinting at the
virtues of exchange and balance in the created world, which, at
the same time, provides for man.
In Sir Walter Ralegh's The History of the World, we find
first belief in the transmutation of elements: how water by con-
densation may become earth; earth rarefied may become water;
water, air; air, fire. Then he uses the hydrologic cycle as a
process in nature that illustrates God's power. Without the ex-
ercise of that power nature would become "silent, virtueless,

29Du Bartas: His Divine Weekes and Workes, translated by

Josuah Sylvester (London, 1621), p. 140; first published 1578.

37
-
and dead. "
For as it is God's infinite power and every-where-
presence . . . that giveth to the sun power to draw
up vapours, to vapours to be made clouds; clouds to
contain rain, and rain to fall: so all second and in-
strumental causes, together with nature itself, with-
out that operative faculty which God gave them,
would become altogether silent, virtueless, and
dead: of all which excellently Orpheus, Per te
virescunt omnia; 'All things by thee spring forth
in youthful green. ,30
The cyclicity of all aspects of nature was pursued with un-
relenting persistence in the Ecclesiastes of the Bible. The book
provided a rich source for the more exhalted kind of moralizing.
Gregory of Nyssa (330 A. D. - ?) for example, preached a ser-
mon on Ecclesiastes and asked that man contemplate the cir-
cular processes of nature. Note how the sea is the receptacle
for waters which flow into it from all sides. Why does the sea
grow no larger? Gregory did not answer his own question in
this particular sermon; instead he pointed to another recurrent
phenomenon, the revolution of the sun about the earth. 31 It is
ironic that Ecclesiastes, an example of pessimistic Oriental
literature, should so often have been used to illustrate, not the
vanity but the Wisdom, of all created things. The world-weary
wisdom of the preacher was taken to support the world-affirming
wisdom of God. In the early part of the seventeenth century
George Hakewill wrote to declare "the Power and Providence of
God in the Government of the World" and to censure "the com-
mon Error touching Natures Perpetuall and Universall Decay. "
One of the arguments was taken from the "weightie authoritie"
of Solomon, "The wisest man that ever lived, " and "his reason
drawne from the Circulation of all things as it were in a ring. "

30Ralegh, Bk. I, Chapt. I, Sec. X.

31Gregory of Nyssa, On Ecclesiastes, Sermon I, in From
Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa's MysticalWrit-
ings, selected by Jean Danielon, translated and edited by Her-
bert Musurillo (London: J. Murray, 1963). Elsewhere he
explained the constancy of river flow by the ancient doctrine of
the transmutation of elements: that earth can change into water,
and water into earth. See Kretschmer, pp. 93 -95.

38
How often, Hakewill noted, does Solomon "beat upon the circu-
lation and running round of all things." Both the wind and the
water move in circuits. "Whereupon hee inferres, the thing
that hath beene, it is that that shall bee, and that which is done,
is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the
Sunne. ,,32 From this rather drab conclusion, Hakewill drew
the cheerful inference that nature does not suffer universal de-
cay. And within the scheme of the "Circulation of all things, 11
Hakewill was to contribute in a modest way to the twin ideas of
the hydrologic and geologic cycles.
It should be said that not only Solomon and the English di-
vine Hakewill 'fiJeat upon the circulation and running around of
all things." Among outstanding scientists of the seventeenth
century, William Harvey and Robert Hooke saw the pervasive-
ness of circular processes in nature. To Harvey circular mo-
tion was the noblest form of motion. He accepted the teaching
of Aristotle and believed that sublunary bodies and living organ-
isms aspired to the pattern of the circle as displayed in the or-
bits of the heavenly bodies. After giving an account of his
epochal discovery on the nature of blood circulation, he drew
attention to the hydrologic cycle-not to the reversed cycle but
to the one above ground in which water was driven by the heat
of the sun. The heart, seat of organic life, was compared with
the sun; and just as the motion of air and water emulated the
circular pattern of the superior, heavenly bodies, so the move-
ment of blood emulated that of superterranean water.
The moist earth, warmed by the sun, evaporates;
the vapours drawn upwards are condensed, and de-
scending in the form of rain, moisten the earth again;
and by this arrangement are generations of living
things produced . . . . And so, in all likelihood, does
it come to pass in the body, through the motion of the
blood; the various parts are nourished, cherished,
quickened by the warmer, more perfect, vaporous,
spirituous, and, as I may say, alimentive blood;
which, on the contrary, in contact with these parts
becomes cooled, coagulated, and, so to speak,
effete; whence it returns to its sovereign the heart,

32George Hakewill, An Apologie (3rd edition; Oxford, 1635),

p. 53; first published, 1627.

39
 as if to its source, or to the inmost home of the
body, there to recover its state of excellence or
perfection . . . . [All] this depends on the motion
and action of the heart . . . . The heart, conse-
quently, is the beginning of life; the sun of the
microcosm, even as the sun in his turn might well
be designated the heart of the world. 33
Near the end of the seventeenth century, Robert Hooke
wrote:
Nature . . . is, as it were, a continual circula-
tion. Water is rais'd in Vapours into the Air by
one Quality and precipated [sic] down in drops by
an other, the Rivers run into the Sea, and the Sea
again supplies them. In the circular Motion of all
the Planets, there is a direct Motibn which makes
them indeavour to recede from the Sun or Center,
and a magnetic or attractive Power that keeps them
from receding. Generation creates and Death
destroys; Winter reduces which Summer produces.
. . . All things almost circulate and have their
Vicissitudes. 34
There are echoes of the Preacher in this passage. Its special
relevance to our theme is the juxtaposition of circles of motion
with cycles of change.
Unlike Hakewill and Harvey, Hooke did not impute any
special virtue to the circulatory process; he simply noted it as
a law of nature. In works of a more popular and philosophical
kind, belief in the superior virtues of circular motion persisted
into the nineteenth century-although "virtue" tended to take on
increasingly utilitarian meaning. Evidence of continuing inter-
est in the "round circuit" lay in the repetitive references to the

33William Harvey, "An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion

of the Heart and Blood in Animals" [Exercitatio Anatomica,
first published in 1628] in The Works of William Harvey, M. D. ,
translated by Robert Willis (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp-
oration, 1965), pp. 46-47.
34Robert Hooke, "The Earth grows old and less fruitful" in
A Discourse of the Causes of Earthquakes, July 30, 1699, in
The Posthumous Works of Dr. Robert Hooke, edited by Richard
Waller (London, 1705), p. 313.

40
hydrologic cycle in the more popular works on natural theology
of the early part of the nineteenth century. Occasionally, faith
in the special merit of circular motion found more fulsome and
explicit expression, as, for example, in the writings of Thomas
Dick. "To insure all the advantage we now derive from the
liquid element, " wrote Dick, "motion was requisite." Had the
waters been in a stagnant state a thousand inconveniences and
disasters would have inevitably followed.
But the All-wise Creator has impressed upon its
various masses a Circulating motion. . . . The rills
pour their liquid stores into the rivers; the rivers
roll their watery treasures into the ocean. By the
solar heat, a portion of these oceanic waters is
carried up into the atmosphere, till at last it de-
scends in rain and dew, to supply the springs . . .
so that there is a constant motion and circulation
of the watery element, that it may serve as an
agent for carrying forward the various processes
of nature, and for ministering to the wants of man
and beast. 35
The theme of the hydrologic cycle appears to have encour-
aged the luxuriance of pseudo-science and much fervid prose.
As one of the more sensible manifestations of circularity and
order in nature it served also, though with far greater restraint
and far more sparingly, as poetiC analogy or simile for the ways
of God and the fate of man. Scattered instances of this poetic
use occur from Isaiah to Goethe. In Isaiah (55:10-11), the
Lord says,
For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from
heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the
earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it
may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accom-
plish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the
things whereto I sent it.
John the Scot (ca. 800-ca. 880), in his De divisione na-
turae, adduced the harmony and divine revelation in nature from

35Thomas Dick, The Christian Philosopher (8th edition;

Glasgow, 1842), p. 112.

41
the cyclical course of all things. The movement of divine good-
ness is compared with the cyclic movement of water. As the
river flows from the source downward to the sea, so "divine
goodness . . . flows downward like a stream, first into the
primordial causes, bringing them into being. Next, continuing
downward through these primordial causes, ineffable in their
workings, but still in harmony with them, they flow from higher
to lower, finally reaching the lowest ranks of the All. The re-
turn flow is through the most secret pores of nature by a most
concealed path to the source. ,,36
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 ?-1153), monk, powerful church-
man as well as a theologian of mystical bent, compared the sea
to Christ. "The sea is the source of fountains and rivers; the
Lord Jesus Christ is the source of every kind of virtue and
knowledge." In the following extract from a sermon both the
subterranean and superterrane an courses of the hydrologic cycle
appear as allegories for spiritual operations:
If all waters seek incessantly to return to the sea,
making their way thither sometimes by hidden and
subterranean channels, so that they may go forth
from it again in continual and untiring circuit, be-
coming visible once more to man and available for
his service, why are not those spiritual streams
rendered back constantly and without reserve to
their legitimate source, that they may not cease
to water the fields in our hearts? Let the rivers
of diverse graces return from whence they came,
that they may flow forth anew. Let the heavenly
shower rise again to its heavenly source, that it
may be poured anew and still more plentifully upon
the earth. 37

36John of Scot, De Divisione Naturae, V, 866 A-D. Quotation

is a paraphrase of John of Scot's idea given by C. J. Glacken
in Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1967), pp. 210-211.
37Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon XIII in the Cantica C antic orum,
translated by So J. Eales in Life and Works of Saint Bernard,
Abbot of Clairvaux, edited by John Mabillon (London: John
Hodges, 1889), IV, p. 67; quoted in Wright, p. 200.

42
 Bernard's sermons on the Song of Songs are richly meta-
phorical. Parts of the water cycle appear again and again to
illustrate relationships in the spiritual realm. Thus Christ, the
true noontide sun, exterminates all shadows and dries up
marshes (Sermon XXXIII, p. 218). But the demon noonday
swallows up the rivers of the learned, and the torrents of those
who are powerful (p. 224). Ingratitude is likened to a burning
wind which dries up for itself the fountain of goodness, the dew
of mercy and the flowing stream of grace (Sermon LI, p. 311).
These use the image of evaporation, the upward component of
the hydrologic cycle, The downward component finds expression
in images of dew and rain: Our dry hearts are being watered by
the dew of the word, and the plentiful rain, which God has re-
served to His inheritance (p. 310). On the other hand, men of
a turbulent spirit may cause the waters "to rise from the earth
into the air, when they open their mouth against the heaven. . .
and thus, like sour and bitter showers, make the earth marshy
and barren" (Sermon LVIII, p. 350).
The hydrologic cycle continues to be used for poetic effect
in Renaissance literature. Heninger gives examples from the
works of Thomas Nashe and Edmund Spenser. In Nashe a pecul-
iar species of the reversed hydrologic cycle appears. Carried
in one poetic flight is the idea that vapours are drawn out of the
land by the sun; they are "received" into clouds which then dis-
pose of them over the sea. "And had I [Christ] been in Heaven
as I was on Earth, the Sunne shoulde have exhaled from thee all
they trespasses as meteors, which the clowdes, his cofferers,
receiving, might foorth-with have conduited downe into the Sea
and drowned for ever, ,,38 One of the traditional symbols for
Christ is the sun.
In Spenser's translation of du Bellay's Antiquitez de Rome,
the rise and decline of Rome is described as a process analogous
to the cyclic changes in the state of vapours. As clouds dissi-
pate, so also will Roman power, thus demonstrating "that all in
th'end to nought shall fade." Echoes of the Preacher again ob-
trude.

38Thomas Nashe, "Christs Teares over Jerusalem, " in Works,

edited by R. B. McKerrow (London: A. H. Bullen, 1904); quoted
in Heninger, p. 49.

43
 No otherwise than raynie cloud, first fed
With earthly vapours gathered in the ayre,
Eftsoones in compas arch't, to steepe his hed,
Doth plunge himselfe in Thetys bosome faire;
And mounting up againe, from whence he came,
With his great bellie spreds the dimmed world,
Till at the last dissolving his moist frame,
In raine, or snowe, or haile he forth is horld;
This Citie, which was first but shepheards shade,
Uprising be degrees, grewe to such height
The Queen of land and sea her selfe she made.
At last not able to beare so great weight,
Her power disperst, though all the world did vede;
To shew that all in th'end to nought shall fade. 39
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) seemed partial to the imagery
of the hydrologic cycle: it served his poetic purpose on more
than one occasion. In "Eyes and Tears, " for example, appear
the lines
I have through every Garden been,
Amongst the Red, the White, the Green;
And yet, from all the flow'rs I saw,
No Hony, but these Tears could draw.
So the all-seeing Sun each day
Distills the World with Chymick Ray;
But finds the Essence only Showers,
Which straight in pity back he powers.
(Marvell, Miscellaneous Poems,
London, 1681)
But perhaps the most sensitive literary use of the hydro-
logic cycle occurs in Marvell's poem "On a Drop of Dew, " which
is an allegory of human destiny.
See how the Orient Dew,
Shed from the Bosom of the Moon
Into the blowing Roses,
Yet careless of its Mansion new;
For the dear Region where 'twas born

39Edmund Spenser, Ruines of Rome by du Bellay, 20:267-280,

in The Minor Poems, edited by C. B. Osgood and H. G.
Lotspeich (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1947); quoted
in Heninger, p. 49.

44

tr ,,-
 Round in it self incloses:
And in its little Globes Extent,
Frames as it can its native Element.
How it the purple flow'r does slight,
Scarce touching where it lyes,
But gazing back upon the Skies,
Shines with a mournful Ligbt;
Like its own Tear,
Because so long divided from the Sphear.
Restless it routes and unsecure,
Trembling lest it grow impure:
Till the warm Sun pitty its Pain,
And to the Skies exhale it back again
So the Soul, that Drop, that Ray
Of the clear Fountain of Eternal Day,
Could it within the humane flow'r be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green;
And, recollecting its own Light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater Heaven in an Heaven less. 40
The circle of perfection was already breaking, according
to Marjorie Nicolson, when Andrew Marvell wrote. 41 As a
principle in ethics and esthetics this was undoubtedly true. The
circle was an ever present guide to thought during the Renais-
sance. It ruled man's conception of the heavens and the earth,
and the microcosmic body of man. It inspired poets as well as
artists. By the later part of the seventeenth century the impact
had weakened. But Milton could still take for granted that the
circular motion was native to the elements; and as meteorologic
science advanced, the model of circular perfection was pre-
served in the elaboration of the hydrologic cycle, a scheme in
nature which served admirably to illustrate God's wisdom until
well into the nineteenth century. Even the poetic treatment of
the cycle had not disappeared with the seventeenth century. It
was a ruling idea, for instance, with Goethe. Faust opens with
the three archangels, each of whom notes a cyclic aspect of
nature. In the "Klassische Walpurgisnacht" (Faust II, Act II) ,

40Quoted in Nicolson, pp. 75-76.

41Ibid., p. 75.

45
 Thales is made to praise the quiet rule of nature, to sing paeans
to the slow but powerful influences of water and atmosphere on
the earth. Through the mouth of Thales, Goethe brought to-
gether, in a dozen declamatory lines, the idea of the hydrologic
cycle and of fluvial processes that result in mountains and
plains.
Heil ~ Heil ~ aufs neue ~
Wie ich mich bliihend freue,
Vom Schonen, Wahren durchdrungen.
Alles ist aus dem Wasser entsprungen:~
Alles wird durch das Wasser erhalten!
Ozean, gonn' uns dein ewiges Walten.
Wenn du nicht Wolken sendetest.
Nicht reiche Bache spendetest,
Hin und her nicht Flusse wendetest,
Die Strome nicht vollandetest,
Was waren Gebirge, was Ebnen und Welt?
Du bist's, der des frischeste Leben erhlilt.
In a poem of his early period, Goethe saw an analogy be-
tween the course of the human soul and the cyclic course of
water.
Des Menschen Seele
Gleicht dem Wasser
Vom Himmel kommt es,
Zum Himmel steigt es,
Und wieder nieder
Zur Erde muss es
Ewig wechselnd. 0

(c) The vertical, one-dimensional cycle. Preceding verse

7 in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes is a verse that describes
the circulation of the wind. "The wind goeth toward the south,
and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually,
and the wind returneth again according to his circuits." This
verse, taken together with the more widely quoted and immedi-
ately succeeding verse concerning the sea, would have provided
a basis for the correct conception of the hydrologic cycle. How-
ever, the two are not usually taken together. Verse seven read
in isolation customarily summoned the idea of a subterranean
circulation of water. Wind naturally had no part in the scheme.
But, until the seventeenth century wind was of little or no im-
portance even to a conception of the water cycle above the earth.

46

b
The horizontal component-the transfer of vapour from water
to land and from land to water, the movement of wind from
north to south and then back again "according to his circuit"-
is missing from most of the Renaissance characterizations of
the hydrologic cycle. It does not appear, for instance, in the
poetic, analogical treatments of the hydrologic cycle as they
are presented in Spenser's translation of du Bellay, nor in a
later period in Marvell's allegory. The dew's aspiration, as
that of the human soul, was a vertical one.
The lack of a horizontal component is to be expected for
the medieval universe was a storeyed universe; and the medie-
val view of nature, one in which the elements -fire, air, water,
and earth-are seen to lie one above the other, persisted into
the seventeenth century. The ancient theory of the transmuta-
tion of elements emphasized changes along the vertical axis.
Pythagoras' speech in Ovid's Metamorphoses has already been
quoted to illustrate the idea (still popular in Elizabethan times)
of the transmutation of elements from the one below to the one
above, and then back again: "To air extenuated waters rise; To
air, when it itself again refines, To elemental fire extracted
shines. They in like order back again repair . . . . "
Ovid's younger contemporary Philo, in arguing for the
eternity of the world, presented a similar scheme of the con-
tinuous transmutation and balancing of elements up and down
their storied structure.
For earth will never anywhere stand mounted on
water, nor water on air, nor air on fire. But the
naturally heavy elements, earth and water, will
occupy the central position. . . while the naturally
light air and fire occupy the upper position.
Once more we must not suppose that the world is
destroyed by mutation, for there is a balance of
powers in the interchange of the elements and such
a balance produces unswerving stability and unshaken
permanence, since it neither encroaches nor is en-
croached on. . . .42

42philo De aeternitate mundi, translated by F. H. Colson

(London: Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1929-1962), IX,
pp. 115-116.

47
\,

The theme of the transmutation of substances lasted into

the seventeenth century. It was broached, for instance, in Sir
Walter Ralegh's highly popular and esteemed History of the
World. And George Hakewill, on the frontispiece of his Apolo-
~, ringingly declared against the decay of the world, seeing
as one of his arguments the spectacle of the cyclic mutation of
elements up and down the stratified sublunary cosmos (Fig. 5).
For as Earth is resolved into Water, the Water
rarefied into Ayre, and the Ayre into Fire, in the
way of their ascension; So in their descending down-
ward, by a natural Compensation, the Fire becom-
meth Ayre, the Ayre thickeneth into Water, and the
Water again into Earth. 43
Emphasis on the vertical dimension in circulating process
appears also in alchemical thinking. The wheel is a favourite
symbol in alchemy for the circulating process, the circulatio.
The alchemists were well aware that their work in decomposing
substances and putting them together again was a process which
could be symbolized by a dragon biting its own tail or the wheel.
But Carl Jung points out that the circulatio to them "meant first
the ascensus and descensus, as for instance the rise and fall of
birds symboliZing the preCipitation of vapours, and secondly the
rotation of the universe as a model for the work, and hence the
cycling of the year in which the work takes place. ,,44
Scientific meteorology in the sixteenth century was still
largely based on Aristotle's Meteorologica and on a medieval
conception of the universe derived from Aristotle and the Roman
encyclopaedists. Among the works widely thought to be authori-
tative during the Renaissance was the De proprietatibus rerum
of Bartholomew Anglicus. Written probably before 1260 by an
English Franciscan, this work quickly travelled over Europe.
It was translated into French in 1372, into Spanish, Dutch, and
into English by John of Trevisa in 1398. 45 The English version

43 Hakewill, "The Argument of the Front and of the Worke, "

An Apologie (frontispiece).
44Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (New York: Pantheon,
1953), p. 157.
45R . Steele, Medieval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1924), p. 1; first published, 1893.

48
 ***~***t*t********"
***,'***'*****'*****
THE
ARGVMENT
OFTHE FRONT AND
OF THE VVORKE.

A lthough the eRE A TOR and Difpofer ofall

things hath left all Particulars and Individualls,under
the cir~le of the Moon" to the flroake of 1i"" and
'D,atb I yet by His powcrfoll Hand He holdethbacketbe
Sythe of 1im, from dcflroying or i_mpayring the Vniverfc :
Though the falI\~.HaDd {hall at Iaft deUroy the Whole- by
Pi". •
In the ltJeane til1'll!i hltllllth fo-otdalacd,tha the t(cm~s
of which aU fub-Iunary bocIiesarecompofcd doc fo
one the other, and are againe fo ~otten, eacll l
beg:
from other ;
that while they fceme to dye,they kome immortall.For as
Eartb is refolved ibto Wattr, the W/lter rarefied inw A,",
and the A,rr into Pirt, in the way of their afa:Dfion, So in
their defcending dov9h-\lvh~, bi a mutuall CompenJation
the Pi" becommeth .A,",thc
the Wattr againe into &r,b.
A"., thickneth into Wattr,anJ
And as aShip which rideth at Anchor is tolred to and fTo
~ the Windes and Waves, and yet cannot move beyond the
length omis ~ble, but is caric:d about in a Round JlilI
moovmg , yet n~ver remooved• J

Or a, a Jr1erle, at every turne, hringeth about all his

Spo~kes to the fame place$, obferving a ~onl\ancy evcn in
turmng-
So though there be manychangeaandnriationsin
the World, yet all things come about onetime or ang..
ther to the fame points againe.
And there is nothing new under the S./fnt.

Fig_ 5, "And there is nothing new under the Sunne_" "The Ar-
gument of the Front and of the Worke, " from
An Apologie by George Hakewill.

49
 was first printed in 1495, again in 1535 (Berthelet edition), and
then in an expanded and modified edition in 1582. The water
cycle, based on Bede and Isidore, is described by Bartholomew
as though it were essentially a one-dimensional process.
For fumosyties that benne drawen out of the waters
and of the erth by strength of he ate of heven, ben
drawe to the nethermost party of the mydle space
of the ayre and there by coldnes of the place they
bene made thycke, & then by dissolvynge and de-
partyng the moysture thereof and wastynge all,
these fumosytyes ben resolved and fallen and tornen
into reyne and shours. . . . 46
Bartholomew recognized the role of the winds in introducing
moisture into the air but also thought that the dissolution of the
cloud into rain was the result of heat.
Wyndes that blowe uppon the see, gatheren moche
humour of the over partyes of the water, and berynge
them up with them in to the ayre, at laste they tourne
in to mater of reyne. When there is moch matter in
a watry cloude and the cloude is very thycke: the im-
pression of beames is stronge upon the cloude so that
at the last by vertu of that hete the cloud is dissolved
& falleth . . . into strong reyne. 47
Rivers, however, were not caused by rain. Bartholomew
subscribed to the subterranean theory; and so not only the upper
horizontal component of the hydrologic cycle, the wafting of va-
pours from sea to land, was lacking but also the lower compo-
nent, the return of water to the sea, which was not seen as
part of a superterranean process (Fig. 6, top).
Another source of meteorologic knowledge during the
Renaissance was William Caxton's Mirrour of the World.
Again it was not an original work but an English translation of
the late Medieval poem Image du Monde. As with Bartholomew's
work, in the Mirrour of the World the hydrologic cycle was given
a characteristic vertical bias. The wording of the cycle closely
paralleled that of Trevisa's translation of Bartholomew. In the
Mirrour, however, an experiment was suggested to illustrate

46Bertholomeus de proprietatibus rerum (London, 1535), Bk.

II, Chapt. 7, CLXI.
47Ibid.

50

b
 /
------'

_ _ _ --~
-----
,,' L------J
,,' t I
,',If I ~

!; i-------I

+ t
I
I
I
t

_/
Fig. 6. Diagrams illustrating various conceptions
of the hydrologic cycle.
Top: The Medieval and Renaissance conception. Centre: The
hydrologic cycle according to John Ray. Bottom: The modern
hydrologic cycle (after a popular textbook).
____ _. vapour
- __ .. water

51
 the processes that would lead to the formation of clouds and
rain. As moisture rose out of the earth under the influence of
the sun, so also "smoke or fumee" issued out of a wet cloth
drying by the fire. And if a person should hold his hand over
this "fumee, he sholde fele a vapour which sholde make his
hande moyst and weet; yf it dured longe he sholde apertly knowe
that his hande were all weet, and that water shold droppe and
falle therof. ,,48
The most important and popular meteorologic treatise of
the Renaissance, prepared by an Englishman for the English
public, was William Fulke's A Goodly Gallery with a most
pleas aunt prospect, into the garden of natural contemplation,
to beholde the naturall causes of all kinds of Meteors. First
published in 1563, it was reprinted in 1571, 1601, and 1602.
Fulke's characterization of the hydrologic cycle was again es-
sentially vertical. He said that to understand vapours one must
see them as warm and moist fumes and smokes, easily resolv-
able into water, much like the breath that comes out of a man's
mouth or out of a pot of water standing on fire.
These vapours are drawen up from the waters and
watry places, by the heate of the Sunne, even unto
the midle region of the ayre, and there after diverse
maner of meating with coldness many kynde of moist
Meteors are generated, as sometime cloudes and
ryne, sometime snowe and hayle. 49
The phenomenon of evaporation was readily observed.
Since the early Middle Ages its relation to the heat of the sun
or the burning wind admitted no doubt. Nevertheless, in com-
pliance with the scientific temper of his treatise, Fulke evoked
a commonplace experience and then argued for the conclusions
to be drawn from it.
If there be a plate of water on a s mothe and hard
stone, standing in the heate of the sunne, it wyl
soone be drye, which is none otherwyse, but the
sonne draweth up the water in thinne vapores, for
no man is . . . fonde to saye, that it can sinke into
stoone or metall,. and it is as great foly to thinke,
48C axton, p. 118.
49William Fulke, A Goodly Gallery with a most pleasaunt pros-
pect. . . (London, 1571), opp. Folio 3; first published, 1563.

52

...
 it is consumed to nothyng: for it is a general rule,
that that which is once a thing, can not by chaunging
become nothyng [opp. Folio 3].
William Fulke's exposition of the vertical hydrologic cycle
and related meteorologic processes was more thorough than
those that can be found in other works published in England
during the sixteenth and in the early decades of the seventeenth
century. He attempted to explain the zonal pattern of rain as
well as its seasonal distribution in terms of the angle that the
sun's beams make with the earth.
In places where the Sunnes beames strike directly
against the earth, and the water, the heat is so
great, that it burneth up the exhalations and vapors,
so that there are no fiery Meteors, much lesse
watery as it is in the South partes of the world under
and near to the Equinoctall lyne.
But in places where the beames are cast indirectly,
and obliquely, & where they are not nyghe to the
direct beames, nor to farre of from them: there is
a moderate heate, drawyng out great aboundaunce
of matter, so that in those contries, many Meteores
of many sortes as generated, as in the farre North
partes are few, but watrie impressions [Folio 4,
opp. Folio 5].
Fulke thought that the inclination of the sun's beams also
explained why, in his experience, "In Autumne & Sprynge, are
oftener Meteores seen, then in Sommer and Wynter, except it
be in such places, where the Sommer and Wynter are of the
temper of Spryng and Autumne" (opp. Folio 5).
Clouds are vapours made thick in the middle region of the
air. Their height above the ground varies, ''1 thinke they be
sometime nine mile, sometime three myle, sometime halfe a
myle, & somtyme lesse than a quarter of a myle from the
earth" (opp. Folio 48), Fulke's judicious guesses fall com-
mendably close to modern conceptions of cloud height.
The vertical hydrologic cycle appears in two French Ren-
aissance works: La Sepmaine of Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas
and l'Academie Fransoise of Pierre de la Primaudaye. Both
were translated into English at the opening of the seventeenth
century and immediately gained a wide public. Du Bartas' La
Sepmaine was particularly influential; his name was evoked in

53
Spenser's rendition of the Antiquitez de Rome (in which the hy-
drologic cycle served as poetic analogy), and frequently in
George Hakewill's Apologie. La Sepmaine (Divine Weekes and
Workes in English) is also believed to have exerted a strong
influence on Milton's Paradise Lost. Du Bartas' account of the
Creation was first published in 1578, and within six years de-
mand appears to have justified the printing of another thirty
editions. In 1605 Joshua Sylvester rendered the complete se-
quence of the Divine Weekes into English verse, although por-
tions of it-including the section on meteors--had been translated
earlier. The English rendition was very close to the original
and proved popular; other editions were issued in 1608, 1611,
1613, and 1621. 50 The hydrologic cycle was likened to the pro-
cesses in the alembic.
For, like as in a Limbeck, th 'heat of Fire
Raiseth a Vapour, which still mounting higher
To the Still's top; when the odoriferous sweat
Above that Mitre can no further get,
It softly thickning, falleth drop by drop,
And cleer as Crystall, in the glass doth hop;
The purest humor in the Sea, the Sun
Exhales in th'Aire: which there resolv'd anon,
Returns to water; and descends again
By sundry waies unto his Mother Main. 51
In contrast with the traditional views propagated by Barth-
olomew and Fulke, and with that of his fellow countryman and
contemporary La Primaudaye, Du Bartas appears to have be-
lieved that fountains, springs, and rivers were fed by water con-
densed in the air rather than by water conducted through
subterranean channels. Water "thickened" in the air returns
to "his Mother Main" by sundry ways. One way is that the
water enters the dry earth "through the wide sive of her void
entrails, " and out of the cavernous earth it pours in a thousand
fountains.
These Fountains make fresh Brooks with murmuring
currents;
These murmuring Brooks, the swift and violent
Torrents;

50Heninger, p. 19.
51Du Bartas: His Divine Weekes and Works, p. 50.

54
 These violent Torrents, mighty Rivers; These,
These Rivers make the vast, deep, dreadfull Seas.
Melting snow on the mountains also contributes to the volume of
the streams which eventually join to form a large river,
And that, at length, however great and large
(Lord of the Plain) doth in some Gulf discharge
His parent-Tribute to Oceanus,
According to th 'Externall Rendez-vous [po 501.
Du Bartas' hydrologic cycle is more flexible than other
popular accounts of it in the late Renaissance. In his exposition,
water was returned to the sea not only directly as rain over the
sea but indirectly through rivers; and these rivers were fed by
the rain and snow that fell on dry land. Only one major segment
of the hydrologic cycle failed to find specific statement, and that
was the upper horizontal component-the movement of vapours
in the air from the sea to the land. But perhaps it can be
pressed that this movement is implied in Du Bartas' account of
the hydrologic cycle, in the following lines and in the lines al-
ready quoted. All streams enter "in the Main Sea, " and yet
"do naught at all augment her. "
For that, besides that all these Floods in one,
Matcht with great Neptune, seem as much as none;
The Sun (as yerst I said) and Windes withall,
Sweeping the sun-face of the Brinie-Ball,
Extract as much still of her humours thin,
As weeping Aire and welling Earth pours in
[po 511.
Pierre de la Primaudaye's l'Academie Franqoise is an
encyclopaedic compilation that includes, besides a "notable
description of the whole World, " also the "Manners and Call-
ings of all Estates, " the "Soule and Body of Man, " and Chris-
tian philosophy. The third volume of the l'Academie contains
a section on the meteors. It was published in 1590 and trans-
lated into English by R. Dolman in 1601. The entire work, com-
pleted in French in 1613, was translated into English by Thomas
Bowes in 1618. The prose exposition of the French Academie
is more soberly moralizing than Du Bartas' poetic account.
The meteors, for instance, teach us the providence of God; it
is however a grim sort of providence for lightnings, floods, and
whirlwinds are supposed to remind us of it. Again, the hydro-
logic cycle presented by La Primaudaye is characteristically

55
vertical in emphasis. Air tends "alwaie upwards, and . . . is
continually mooved up and downe. "52 Clouds "are nothing else
but vapors attracted out of the waters by the power of the sun"
(p. 747). They ascend like "a great smoke" and we have ex-
perience of this when wet cloth is left to dry before the fire or
in the sun.
So it is then, that the water ceaseth not to mount
from earth up into the aire, and then to descend
down againe, for the course thereof is perpetuall,
as if there were a sea mounting from earth to
heaven, which we call Aire, then descending from
thence down hither to us [po 747}.
However, La Primaudaye saw that vapours served little
purpose if they simply remained over the sea to be condensed
into clouds and returned to the sea as rain. The providence of
God therefore ordained that the vapours be carried in clouds
"like chariots" to be distributed "through all the quarters of the
world." Had a La Primaudaye then presented the clouds as the
source of water for the springs and rivers, we would have had
a modern hydrologic cycle that included the horizontal compo-
nent. But the French encyclopaedist failed to connect the rivers
with the rain clouds; he subscribed to the subterranean hypoth-
esis and saw the fountains through which the waters came as
being connected with the sea by conduits in the bowels of the
earth (p. 769).
It may be said in summary that the hydrologic cycle was
conceived as essentially the transmutations of water up and
down the vertical during the Renaissance, but that works writ-
ten in the last quarter of the sixteenth century began to show an
awareness of the horizontal component. This awareness was
still partial. Thus in the Divine Weekes of Du Bartas the upper
segment, the horizontal transport of vapours in the air, was
lacking; whereas in La Primaudaye's Academie it was the lower
segment, the movement of the waters back to the sea. The role
of moving air in the lateral transportation of vapours also ap-
pears to have been little understood by Renaissance writers.
One probable explanation is that philosophers before the middle
of the seventeenth century were still unsure whether the wind

52Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French Academie, translated

by Thomas Bowes (London, 1618), p. 736.

56
was a "meteor, " i. e., a dry "exhalation" (according to Ar-
istotle)-just as vapour was a moist "exhalation"-or whether
it was simply a moving current of air as Hippocrates believed.
Bartholomew wavered between the two ideas. To William Fulke
the "wynd is an exhalation whote and drie, drawne up into the
aire by the power of the Sunne, & by reason of the wayght there-
of being driven down . . . . ,,53 John Swan, in a compendium
(1635) that strongly reflected the influence of Du Bartas and
Fulke, endorsed this view. He characterized as false the the-
ory that wind was simply moving air, and affirmed "that winds
are generated by virtue of the Sunne, which causeth an hot and
drie Exhalation to be evaporated, or aspired out of the earth. ,,54
La Primaudaye, on the other hand, confidently asserted that
"the windes are nothing else but the aire, which is mooved and
driven more violently than ordinarie . . . . ,,55 It is curious that
winds are almost entirely seen as the effect of meteorolOgiC
processes rather than as a cause. How is the air moved to
produce wind? It is moved, according to La Primaudaye,
"either by the heate of the Sunne, or by the vapours and exhala-
tions which this heat causeth to rise out of the waters, and out
of the earth, or by the waves of the Sea, or by the cause of the
earth, and such like causes . . . " (p. 736). Clouds transport
vapour to l'all quarters of the world" like chariots (p. 747), but
La Primaudaye nowhere suggested it was the wind that drove
the chariots. We may add that not only the speed but the direc-
tion of surface winds often seems quite unrelated to the motion
of clouds, especially high clouds. This has been a puzzle to
weather observers in the eighteenth century; and indeed the re-
lation between the general movement of winds, vapour transport,
and cloud formation is not at all obvious.

Fertility and the Problem of Dissolution

One attraction of the hydrologic cycle is that it explains the
origin of rain and rivers which are essential to the maintenance
of the earth's productivity. Let us note first that the value
placed on rain water as distinct from river water has varied

53 Fulke, Folio 18.

54Swan , p. 167.
55La Primaudaye, p, 736.

57
 through time. In the ancient world, under the influence of the
commonly accepted supremacy of Egypt's Nile, it would seem
that river water was thought to be somewhat superior to water
from the sky on which a country like Greece, for example, de-
pended. Rain water was liable to fluctuate and disappoint the
Greek farmer in his hour of need; the Egyptian farmer, in con-
trast, could depend on the Nile which, of its own accord, flooded
his field and then withdrew from it. 56 The symbolism of water
is extremely rich in the Bible and in the exegetical literature of
the Church Fathers: the water is the living water of the fountain
which cleanses, washes away the stains of sin, quenches thirst,
refreshes the People of God, and is fruitful. Showers are a
sign of God's pleasure: over the restored Holy Land showers of
rain and dew will make the sand and the wilderness bear fruit
(Isaiah 35).57 But images of springs and fountains, of pure
water bubbling out of the ground, are far more common than
those of water falling from the clouds.
Away from the semi-aridity of the eastern Mediterranean
basin, in southern and particularly northwestern Europe, the
bias appears to have swung in favour of rain water. The belief
that rain water was superior to other forms of water in fertiliz-
ing the earth was noticeable in the meteorologic literature of
the Renaissance and it lingered on to the end of the seventeenth
century. One encounters opinions such as that in the Berthelet
edition of the Bartholomeus de proprietatibus rerum (1535):
Though rain water easily putrefies, ". . . it is more freshe
and swete than other waters, when it abydeth in his owne clere-
nes and vertue." Rain water is "hevenly water" and is there-
fore ''most proffitable to things that growe in erthe." And after

56Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, translated by George

Rawlinson ("Great Books of the Western World, " VI; Chicago,
London . . . : Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), Bk. II,
Chapt. 13-14. Herodotus, however, sees that as the land con-
tinues to rise it will soon be out of the reach of Nile floods; and
since there is no rain in Egypt it will be worse off than Greece.
See Glacken, pp. 89-90.
57See, for example, the short essay on "Water, Drink,
Fountain, "by R. C. Walls in A Theological Word Book of the
Bible, edited by Alan Richardson (New York: Macmillan Paper-
backs, 1962), pp. 279-281.

58

br
rain water "welle water is beste . . . for the welle is heed and
spryng of lyryng water, that springeth and renneth continually
out of pryvye veynes of the erthe. ,,58
A probable reason for the belief in the special powers of
rain water is that it was drawn as vapour out of the earth by the
heat of the sun, and that rain water retained some of the genera-
tive virtues of the sun's heat. Thus William Fulke wrote in
The Goodly Gallery,
The rain water doubtles, doth more encrease and
cherishe thinges growyng on the earth, than any other
water wherwith they may be watered, because the
rain water, reteinerth much of the sunns heate in it,
that is no smal comfort to all growing plantes.
However, Fulke had to admit, a little reluctantly, that in rain-
less countries like Egypt and Syria, the overflowings of the
rivers do "marvelous ely fatten the earth. ,,59
There was also the association of the pouring of rain from
heaven with the descent of God's grace. The dry cisterns of the
heart are "watered by the dew of the word, and the plentiful
rain, which God has reserved to His inheritance" (Bernard of
Clairvaux).60 In the chapter of the French Academie entitled,
"Of the fertilitie caused by dewes and raine, and of the provi-
dence of God therein, ,,61 La Primaudaye preached how the earth
waxed barren without rain from heaven; even so man could not
perform anything if God did not dispense from on high his
grace. 62
In Peri udropodias (1634), Tobias Whitaker characterized
rain water as "light and concoctible, limpid and thin in respect
of quality, sweet and grateful to the taste, and most proportion-
able to the best of waters." A commonly noted trait of rain
water in this period was that it was subject to rapid putrefaction.

58 Bertholomeus de proprietatibus rerum, Bk. XIII, CLXXVI.

59Fulke, opp. Folio 50.
60Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon LI, p. 310.
61La Primaudaye, p. 751.
62Ibid., p. 754. Note also the influence of the Bible. Holy
Scriptures speak of Jehovah or His influence as a shower
strengthening and refreshing the plants and creatures on earth,
Deut. 32:2; Psalms 71:6; Isaiah 55:10-11. See Heninger, p. 52.

59
There existed an implicit belief in some relation between the
power to engender life and the factors of decay. After praising
rain water, Whitaker added typically:
But because rain water is an exhalation, although
the thinnest part of all other waters extracted by
the power of the sun as is evident; and bec ause of
its universal collection and conmixture with ayre
and clouds, which often times are infected and ill
aspected, it is more easily disposed to putrefaction,
and not thought fit to be used without correction,
(that is to say) taken fresh boyled. 63
The belief in rain's superior virtue persisted in England at
least to the end of the seventeenth century. Thomas Burnet's
Sacred Theory of the Earth, for example, was criticized on
many counts, and among them was that his primitive, paradis-
iacal earth did not provide for rain. It was watered instead by
rivers -rivers that flowed down from the north polar region to-
wards the Torrid zone. Erasmus Warren, one of Burnet's the-
ological critics, praised the hydrologic cycle for it resulted in
rain. Rain saved men the "endless and unspeakable" trouble of
having to cut ditches to bring the river water to the fields.
But now kind Nature saves them from that labour,
while Clouds do the work effectually for them. For
they filling their Buckets by the help of the Sun, and
then emptying the same to the best advantage; excuse
them from the drudgery, by taking it upon them-
selves. 64
And moreover, Warren argued, when God compared Egypt
with Palestine he preferred the latter "because in Egypt the
Seed sown was watered with the foot as a garden of herbs; but
Palestine was a land of hills and valleys, and drank water of
the rain of heaven" (p. 148). To this Thomas Burnet replied
that Egypt, though watered only by the Nile, was nevertheless
likened to the Garden of the Lord in Genesis. The idea that
rain water contributed more to the productivity of the land than
river water was hardly tenable. The richness of the Nile Valley
was too well known. In commenting on Burnet's answer to his

63 Tobias Whitaker, Peri udropodias, or a Discourse of

Waters (London, 1634), pp. 66-68.
64Erasmus Warren, Geologica (London, 1690), p. 148.

60
criticism, Warren could only observe feebly that "a Land watered
with Rivers and Showres at once may excel a Land watered with
Rivers only. ,,65
In the Renaissance conception of the hydrologic cycle, va-
pours were thought to be drawn out of the earth; alternatively,
they were described as having been removed from the earth and
marshes (Caxton) or from the "waters and watry places" (Fulke).
There lacked the idea that the sea contributed most of the mois-
ture to the watering of the land. Even in the eighteenth century,
John Ray (for example) thought that the rain over the continents
came out of the vapours drawn from them. The dry earth, in
other words, provided sufficient moisture for its own watering-
by and large. The rivers represented a "surplusage" of water
(Fig. 6, centre). They were not absolutely essential to the pro-
ductivity of the earth except at a few unfortunate spots like
Egypt. We may well be seeing here evidence of a lingering be-
lief in the slightly inferior status of rivers. Another point of
interest in John Ray's scheme of the hydrologic cycle is the way
he associated the origin of the rivers with the sea. This too
suggests the influence of an older view. For in the medieval
and Renaissance conception the cycle that produced rain above
the earth is often divorced from the cycle (the reversed hydro-
logic cycle) that produced fountains and rivers (Fig. 6, top).
The earth is made fertile by both rain water and river
water. Rivers are necessary to countries without adequate
rain; and, moreover, they enhance the fertility of the flooded
areas by the addition of silt transported from the mountains. 66
With this latter notion we stand at the edge of another problem,
which is the relation between the maintenance of the earth's
fertility and its final dissolution. Silt removed by rivers from
the mountains and deposited in the valleys fertilize the valleys.
But what would happen to the earth if this process were to con-
tinue indefinitely? John Ray considered this question briefly
and toyed with the idea that the combined operation of erosion
and deposition would lead to the levelling of the land masses.
But he rejected it as the earth's final end in favour of consum-

65Warren, A Defence of the Discourse Concerning the Earth

before the Flood (London, 1691), p. 53.
66John Ray, The Wisdom of God . . . (8th edition; London,
1722), p. 82.

61
mati on by fire, which had the support of the Bible. 67
The concern shown by Ray and his successors for the fer-
tility of the earth, and, to a less extent, the manner of its final
dissolution, echoes an ancient concern of Western man. It goes
back to those Greeks and Romans who pondered over the ques-
tion: is there evidence of decay in nature, of progressive de-
cline in fertility? Has the earth lost its power of generation?
The argument against nature's decay is relevant to our con-
cern, for in the process of developing the case for the fertility
of the earth, ideas related to the hydrologic and geologic cycles
were introduced. Consider again Philo's argument, in De
aeternitate mundi, for the continued fertility of the earth. Man-
kind may have declined but not the earth and its products, the
plants and their fruits.
Has the earth grown so old that it may be thought
to have been sterilized by length of time? On the
contrary it remains as it was ever young, because
it is the fourth part of the All and is bound to remain
undecayed in order to conserve the sum of things,
just as also its sister elements, water, air and fire
continue to defy old age. A clear proof that the earth
retains its vigour continually and perpetually at its
height is its vegetation, for purified either by the
overflow of rivers, as they say is the case in Egypt,
or by annual rains, it takes a respite and relaxation
from the weary toil of bearing fruit, and then after
this interval of rest recuperates its native force till
it reaches its full strength and then begins again to
bear fruits like the old and supplies in abundance to
each kind of living creature such food as they need. 68
Thus Philo raised two points in defense of the earth's per-
sistent fertility. One is the evidence of vegetation. "Weary
toil" depletes the fertility of the earth, but after a respite and
purified by annual rains or river water, it is able to bear fruit
again. The other point is that the earth is "the fourth part of
the All, " the other three being the sister elements of water,
air, and fire. The maintenance of a balance among them by
cyclic processes of transmutation means that none is subject to

67Ray, Miscellaneous Discourses, . " (L ond on, 1692) , p .

50.
68Philo, pp. 61-63.

62
progressive decay.
We must not suppose that the world is destroyed
by transmutation, for there is a balance of powers
in the interchange of the elements and such a bal-
ance produces unswerving stability and unshaken
permanence, since it neither encroaches nor is
encroached upon. And thus the reciprocation, the
giving and taking of values, equalized according to
the standards of proportion creates sound health
and perpetual security. These things show the
world to be everlasting [pp. 115-116].
The transmutation cycle, I have already suggested, may be
seen as the antecedent and more inclusive form of the water
cycle. Their points of similarity are evident: the cyclic changes
of state, the idea of balance (which in the water cycle is ex-
pressed by the much noted phenomenon of the rivers running
into the sea and yet the sea is not full), and the idea that the ex-
planation for the fertility of the earth lies in the nature of the
cycle.
Rivers that flow over the earth fertilize it with material
brought down from the mountains, as Ray believed, or purify
it in Philo's more poetic conception. However, rivers and rain-
drops-given sufficient time-will also bring about the earth's
dissolution. Philo as well as John Ray could see that the pro-
longed erosion of the land by water would end in the making of
a level plain. Ray denied this vision in deference to Biblical
teachingo Philo would have regarded the existence of such a
denuded plain as an argument for the "Eternity of the World, "
a thesis he wished to prove. But the land, as Philo could see,
was far from even.
The constant unevennesses and the great multitude
of mountains with their vast heights soaring to hea-
ven are indications that the earth is far from ever-
lasting. For in the course of infinite time it would
long ago . . . have under the rain-pour become an
open, level road from end to end. For it is a na-
tural characteristic of water that sometimes, partic-
ularly when it dashes down from a great height, it
drives everything out before it by its force, some-
times by constant dripping it scoops out and hollows
and so completely undermines the hardest and

63
 stoniest ground quite as much as a digger would
[po 119].
With these few words Philo expressed the essential geomor-
phological concept that, in the course of time, even a mountain-
ous country would be reduced to an open surface by rain and
river erosion. But there are in fact few examples of large and
smooth surfaces of erosion on earth. Most of them show clear
evidence of renewed dissection. Moreover, "constant uneven-
ness" and "mountains with their vast heights" are still very
prominent features of the terrestrial scene. The answer to the
problem of the lack of large erosional surfaces is that the
earth's crust is unstable; and that though mountains may decay
through erosion, they are capable of renewed growth through
uplift. It is of interest to note how Philo anticipated this answer.
He pursued his argument for the "Eternity of the World" thus:
'The unevenness of the earth would no longer exist
if the world was from everlasting.' Why so, my
dear sirs? For others will come forward to say that
trees and mountains differ not in nature. The trees
shed their leaves at some seasons and then bloom
again at others. . . . In the same way the mountains,
too, have parts broken off but others come as accre-
tions. But the accretions take long periods of time
to become recognizable, because as the process of
growth in trees is more rapid their advance is ap-
prehended more quickly, while in mountains that
process is slower, and, therefore, their after-
growths become just perceptible only after a long
time [pp. 133-134].
As to how mountains grow,
when the fiery element enclosed in the earth is
driven upward by the natural force of fire, it tra-
vels towards its proper place, and . . . it pulls
up with it a large quantity of earthy stuff, as much
as it can. . . . This earthy substance forced to
travel with it for a long distance, rises to a great
height and contracts and tapers, and passes finally
into a pointed peak with the shape of fire for its
pattern [po 135}.
Notwithstanding the importance of Philo's influence on
Christian writers, belief in the decay of nature remained very

64
much alive in the Christian tradition. It found expression in
various guises at the beginning of modern Europe (A. D. 1500-
1650). Martin Luther saw the world's decay in degenerative
cycles. John Donne in his darker mood used nature's decay as
a vehicle for literary expression. The most complete statement
of the gloomy doctrine was, however, The Fall of Man (1616) by
Godfrey Goodman, chaplain to the Queen. It called forth a vig-
orous rebuttal by George Hakewill. His book, Apologie, was
an immediate success. First published in 1627, it reached a
third and enlarged edition in 1635. It "almost immediately had
repercussions at home and abroad. Discussion of the question
became so popular that in the year following the book's appear-
ance it was made the subject of a philosophical disputation at
Cambridge. The respondent, who argued against the theory of
decay, called upon Milton for aid, and the poet complied with a
Latin poem entitled "Naturam non pati senium. ,,69 Hakewill
himself emphasized the wide currency of the idea of nature's
old age in his time.
The opinion of the Worlds Decay is so generally
received, not onely among the Vulgar, but of the
Learned, both Divines and others, that the very
commonnesse of it makes it current with many,
without any further examination: That which is held,
not onely by the multitude, but by the Learned, pass-
ing smoothly for the most part without any checke or
controll.70
Hakewill appears to have believed that he was the first to
undertake to combat the idea of nature's decay.
I have walked (I confess) in an untrodden path,
neither can I trace the prints of any footsteppes
that have gone before mee, but onely as it led
them to some other way, thwarting, and upon the
by, not directly: some parts belonging to this dis-
course, some have slightly handled, none thorough-
ly considered of the whole [preface and p. 1].
Hakewill could justifiably claim to have been the first to handle
the theme in comprehensive detail. However, the Apologie was

69Cited in R. F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns (St. Louis:

Washington University Press, 1961), p. 36.
70Hakewill, An Apologie (Oxford, 1630), preface and p. 1.

65
distinguished less for the originality of its individual ideas than
for the maturity of its scholarship: in the writing of it Hakewill
appears to have consulted some six hundred authors. Philo was
given as a reference. Indeed the two authors shared a basic out-
look to the extent that both argued against the decay of the world.
According to Philo, the earth continues to be fertile because it
is only the "fourth part of the All, " and maintains a balance with
the other three elements in cyclic transmutation. Hakewill, as
we have noted, repeated this argument in the frontispiece declar-
ation of the Apologie: " . . . the Elements, of which all sublunary
bodies are composed, does so beget one the other, and are
againe so begotten, each from the other; that while they seem to
age they become immortall"71 (Fig. 5).
Hakewill, however, was able to go a step beyond Philo in
this particular line of reasoning: to the ancient idea of the trans-
mutation of elements he added the related idea of the hydrologic
cycle. Elements are shown to change from one to the other with-
in the framework of water circulation. "God hath ordained this
change. . . that the world might the better bee preserved for
the commoditie of the beasts; but chiefly of men" (p. 140). The
hydrologic cycle demonstrates the "providence and government"
of God who will not allow the earth to undergo gradual decay until
its final consummation by fire. Hakewill characterized the hy-
drologic cycle as follows:
The world consists of the four Elements, one of
which is the water, which at first was gathered in
the Ocean, and thence dispersed into all parts of
the world. Wherefore although all waters at the
first doe flow from the Ocean; and besides, watry
vapours are raised out of it by the perpetuall force
of the Sun, and last of all some parts of the Ocean
are changed into aire, yet it cannot thence come
to pass, that the Ocean should be diminished. The
reason is, because whatsoever is drawn and flowes
from it, anon by the providence and government of
God is restored and rendred, and flowes back againe
unto it; the vapours also which ascend on high, are
turned into raine, snow, and other Meteors, and at
length return to the Sea; and though a great part of

7lIbid. (1635), frontispiece.

66
 the Sea be turned into aire, that aire is againe turned
into water, by which meanes that is repaid which is
borrowed from the Sea . . . [po 140].
Circulation of water, both in the air and through subterra-
nean passages, maintains the depth of "the mother of waters. "
[The] great deepe hath undoubtedly lost nothing of
her ancient bounds or depth, but what is impaired
in one place, is again restored to her in another.
The rivers which the earth sucked from her by se-
cret veines, it renders back again with full mouth,
and the vapours which the Sunne drawes up, empty
themselves again into her bosome [po 140].
However, it is difficult to see how a cyclic scheme that
maintains the level of the ocean is thereby also enabled to sup-
port the generative powers of the earth. Unlike later apologists
(Ray, for example), Hakewill did not push the idea that rains
and rivers, which he recognized as essential to the cyclic pro-
cess, would, providentially, also maintain the earth's fertility.
Philo thought that rains and rivers could "purify" the earth after
"the weary toil of bearing fruit, " and thus prevent it from un-
dergoing progressive decay. He did not, however, relate them
to a water cycle. Hakewill recognized the role of rains and
rivers in the water cycle but failed to present them as the
agents that contributed to the earth's fertility. Instead, he
chose to stress their destructive roles, how they were capable
of levelling the land.
This diminution then of the Mountains . . . is caused
partly by Raine-water [quoting Job] and partly by
Rivers, which by continuall fretting, by little and
little wash away and eate out both the tops, and sides,
and feete of Mountains: whence the parts thus fretted
through by continuall falling downe, weare out the
Mountains, and fill up the lower places of the val-
leyes, making the one to increase, as the other to
decrease . . . [po 147].
Hakewill was much taken with the levelling of mountains
and the filling of valleys. He cited Josephus Blancanus' De
mundi fabrice and Ovid's Metamorphoses in support of his
theme, and offered, in addition, architectural evidence. In the
"whole globe of the earth, " nothing is lost. What the mountain
loses is credited to the valley.

67
 1
So some write of the triumphall Arch of Septimius,
at the foote of the Capitoll mountaine in Rome, now
almost covered with earth, insomuch as they are in-
forced to descend downe into it, by as many staires
as formerly they were used to ascend; whereas con-
trariwise the Romane Capitoll it selfe seated on the
mountaine which hangs over it (as witnesseth George
Agricola) discovers its foundation plainely above
ground, which without question was at the first lay-
ing thereof deepe rooted in the earth, whereby it
appeares, that what the mountains looseth the val-
ley gaines; and consequently that in the whole globe
of the earth nothing is lost . . . . ,,72
Philo, we remember, also presented a rudimentary sketch
of the denudational cycle. Hakewill's account sufficiently re-
sembles it that we may be led to think that he had simply para-
phrased his ancient precursor. There is, however, one
significant detail missing in Hakewill's account. In arguing
against the thesis of nature's decay, Philo introduced the idea
that mountains also grew, that certain parts of the earth were
being pushed up by "the natural force of fire." Hakewill ap-
pears to have entertained no such idea. He was hard pressed
to answer his theological opponent, Godfrey Goodman, who did
not see how the mountains, once worn down to "levell, " could
be built up again. The process is irreversible. "Surely at
length in a farre shorter time then eternity, they [the moun-
tains] would be made levell, and so prove a bottome, and then
you shall have them rich meadowes." To this criticism Hake-
will could only suggest that vegetation decomposed into soil,
and artfully gained a debater's point by turning his critic's fa-
vourable view of meadows to his account:
That then wee shall have them rich meadows;
Why my Lord what losse in this to the world?
Nay what losse to the earth that instead of barren
mountaines wee shall at length have fat and fruit-
ful valleyes. 73

72Ibid. (1630), pp. 137-138.

73Ibid., Part II: An Answer to Foure Arguments . . . (1635),
pp. 61-62.

68
 Elsewhere Hakewill gave a vague answer based on analogy
with the hydrologic cycle.
As the Ocean is maintained by the returne of the
rivers, which are drayned and derived from it: So
is the earth by the dissolution and reversion of those
bodies, which from it receive their growth and nour-
ishment [po 149].
Another objection that Hakewill had to countenance was
the strong evidence of decay in fertility in the Holy Land. But
to Hakewill, this awkward fact raised no special difficulty and
he believed he could offer a satisfactory answer.
When I say, I compare these multitudes of men
and cattell with the narrow bounds of that countrey;
I am forced to beleeve that it was indeed a most
fruitfull soyle . . . . Yet the reports of some who
have taken a survey of it in these latter ages, beare
us in hand, that the fruitfulness proceeded from a
speciall favour of Almighty God towards this peo-
ple . . . .
Now then as this extraordinary fruitfulnesse pro-
ceeded from an extraordinary favour: so this favour
ceaSing, the fruitfulnesse might likewise cease with-
out any natural decay of the soyle. The country
about Sodome and Gemorrha WaS for fruitfulnesse
as the Paradice, a garden of the Lord, till the curse
of God fell upon it, then it became a wast land, and
so remaines to this day. . . . And if it be degener-
ated from its ancient fertility. . . I should rather
impute it to the curse of God upon that accursed
nation which possesseth it, or to their ill-manuring
of the earth . . . then to any Natural decay in the
goodnesse of the soyle [pp. 150-151].

Anthropocentric Teleology and Providence

A major force behind the elaboration of the hydrologic cycle
from the seventeenth century onwards was the belief that the
configuration of the earth-no less than the motion of the stars-
manifested the wisdom and providence of God. The interpreta-
tion of these divine attributes varied greatly in different ti mes
and places. The Bible provided the authority; but the Bible was

69
1\1 !

open to diverse and even contradictory readings. As an attri-

bute of Jehovah, Providence limited itself almost exclusively
to the welfare of a small group of people. On the other hand it
can take on a much grander sense, that, for example, of order
and fitness in nature as suggested by "the way of the eagle in
the air, the way of a serpent upon the rock, the way of a ship
in the sea, and the way of a man with a maid" (Proverbs 30:19).
Or its grandeur is manifest in austere impartiality: "He maketh
his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 4: 45). The rebirth of
science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries occurred at
a time when the narrower interpretation of providence tended
to be dominant. Writers have described its operation as though
it served no other needs than those of man. Absurd delusions
of human importance occur; perhaps the most extreme example
is provided by the popular French author and naturalist, Ber-
nardin de St. Pierre. The stripes on the melon, he believed,
were providentially put there for the convenience of division into
slices during family meals. 74 Philosophers who have expounded
on the hydrologic cycle have not confined Providence to such ab-
surdity. Thus the cycle may be taken as exemplifying the econ-
omy of natural processes in a world created by God; and uses
aside, intrinsic beauty abides in cyclic motion.
Nevertheless, from the seventeenth century onwards the
constricted, man-centred understanding of providence would
appear to be gaining ground at the expense of the more balanced
interpretation of the Middle Ages. Or, to put it another way,
the medieval model of the universe withstood the erosion of time
and new ideas remarkably well; in spite of revolutionary dis-
coveries in astronomy it lived in the literary imagination with
little change until late in the seventeenth century. A feature of

74Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Etudes de la Nature (Paris,

1826), II, p. 376. As we may expect, Saint-Pierre brings in
the hydrologic cycle to explain the seeming haphazard distribu-
tion of seas and gulfs. "Qu'on suppose, par example, . . . que
la Mediterranee n'exist plus; que deviendront tant de fleuves de
l'Europe, de l'Asie et de I 'Afrique , qui sont entretenus par les
vapeurs qui s' e IElVent de cette mer, et qui rapportant leur eaux
dans une proportion admirable, comme les calculs de plusieurs
savans l'ont tres bien demontre?" (I, p. 141.)

70
the medieval model was the recognition of the smallness and im-
purity of the earth. From Cicero to Pierre Boistuau the insig-
nificant body on which man lives has aroused contempt. C. S.
Lewis gives several examples of the depreciation of the earth
by authors from the Dark Ages like Chalcidius, Alanus ab
Insulis, Macrobius, and Boethius. In contrast to the vain-
glorious optimism of some writers in the Age of Enlightenment,
Chalcidius (fourth century A.D. ) wholly rejected the obsequious
cosmos of Genesis in which the heavenly bodies were made "to
give light upon the earth." He held it would be absurd to sup-
pose that the eternal bodies above the Moon were ordered for
the sake of perishable things below. Alanus saw man as
"suburban, " far from the central castle in which the Emperor
sat enthroned. Macrobius characterized the earth as a sort of
cosmic dustbin containing the "offscourings of creation." For
Boethius (430-524) the earth was a mere mathematical point. 75
To see the earth in such li'ght would release the thinker
from any pressing need to analyze its apportionments for evi-
dence of special favour to man. It must be admitted, however,
that there was a strong man-centred, utilitarian streak in some
of the apologetic writings of such early Christians as Mincius
Felix, Lactantius, Origen, and even St. Basil. We should re-
member that these early Christian thinkers had to defend the
rationality of their religion against the criticism of pagan philos-
ophers; and one natural line of defence was to follow the accept-
ed fashion which identified the utilitarian with the rational.
Origen, for example, could slip on the respectable garb of
Stoic doctrine and argue that the Creator has made everything
to serve the rational being; we need dogs to guard our sheep,
beasts to carry our baggage, and leopards to exercise our cour-
age. 76 But, aside from the strain of apologetics the Church
Fathers 1 vision of nature was not unduly iimited by utilitarian
blinkers. With St. Augustine the anthropocentric bias was not-
ably subdued; indeed he evinced such sensitivity to the beauties
of nature and the world that they were to him a temptation, a
temptation he could resist by reminding himself and others that

75C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1964). On Chalcidius, p. 55; Alanus, p. 58;
Macrobius, p. 63; Boethius, p. 83 0

76S ee Glacken, p. 186.

71
nature declared God's existence and glory. As to the providen-
tial character of the earth, St. Augustine wrote ". . . the heat
which is disagreeable to them [to human beings] some animals
find the most suitable conditions for a healthy life. ,,77
In a later period St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) noted
in one of his sermons the providential arrangement of the re-
versed hydrologic cycle: that water appeared from hidden chan-
nels in the earth to become "visible once more to man and
available for his service. ,,78 But he made the point largely to
illustrate a spiritual lesson. To give one more example: In the
Middle Ages a pressing problem was to explain the phrase in
the Psalms which said that God established the earth above or
on the waters. Various ideas were put forth; that the cause of
the phenomenon was physical and mechanical, that it was due
to the arbitrary exercise of God's will or that it was teleological.
Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (1235-1253), presented
a teleological argument inspired by the words of Genesis.
"Truly it is a fact that, in order that the animals of this earth
might have a habitation and a refuge, the water receded into
the concave parts of the earth and the surface of the land ap-
peared dry and distinct. ,,79
Ideas concerning the status of man in creation during the
Middle Ages were modest in comparison with the form they
eventually assumed from the time of the emergence of modern
science. The Renaissance may be seen as a transitional period
in the history of man-centred teleology. By the time of Eliza-
beth I, educated Englishman "did not doubt that the world and
its contents had been made for man. ,,80 The New Astronomy
displaced earth from the centre of the universe but paradoxi-
cally enthroned man, its tenant. No longer the suburbanite of
Alanus, man moved to dwell in the central castle. The medieval
and hierarchical Chain of Being still held; there was, however,

77 Augustine, City of God, translated by Marcus Dods ("Great

Books of the Western World, " XVIII; Chicago, London.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), Bk. XII, Chapt. 4.
78Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon XIII, p. 67.
79 GIven In Wnght ,p. 187 .
o
0 0

80E . M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture

(London: Chatto and Windus, 1960), p. 73.

72
a shift in the relative status of the segments. In the Middle
Ages the upper links still commanded attention. Man and earth
occupied the lowest place in an hierarchy that extended down-
ward from God's throne. From the Renaissance onwards it was
increasingly the lower links of the chain that really mattered.
In the lower hierarchy man occupied the highest position.
Parallel to this shift was the gradual disappearance of one
meaning of mutual service and of the dignity of all members,
including the humblest, in God's abounding creation. In its
most exalted expression this was the service of disinterested
charity towards non-rational beings. The Desert Fathers oc-
casionally exemplified this attitude-St. Francis and his true
disciples as a practice of daily living. Macarias the Alexand-
rian cured a young hyena of blindness. Theon used to mingle
with the animals of the desert and give them drink. Sulpitius
told of an old monk who fed a lion with dates, and of a she-wolf
who regularly appeared to share a monk's meal. 81 And of
course numerous stories of this kind were associated with St.
Francis who in fact treated the ani mals as if they were rational;
and who carried heterodoxy to the extent of shOWing courtesy
even to the inanimate elements of nature. But we are describ-
ing here a marginal practice of Christianity; far more central
and influential was the doctrine that man exercised rightful
dominion over sublunary nature. From the time of the Renais-
sance onwards, however, not only the Franciscan ideal of char-
ity but even the feudal ideal of service, based on a graded
system of rights and obligations, weakened-to be replaced by
modern values that were more anthropocentric and more nar-
rowly utilitarian than they had been in the past.
We can illustrate the shift in various ways: by noting, for
example, the changes in wording and emphasis in the concep-
tion of an ordered and related universe. In the medieval image
the Chain of Being Signified not only an unfaltering order but
also a sympathetic universe where no part was superfluous,
and therefore no part was without its unique dignity. A late
expression of this attitude is discernible in the following lines:
The noblest creatures need the vil'st on ground,
The vil'st are served by the honour'd most.

81For attitude of desert hermits toward wild animals, see W.

H. Mackean, Christian Monasticism in Egypt (London: S. P.
C. K., 1920), p. 137.
73
 And, which is more, the very heav'nly host
Doth serve the basest creature void of sense
Yet over-rule them in each clime and coast.
(Davies of Hereford, Mirum in Modum,
1602)82
Peter Heylyn's Cosmographie was published only fifty years
after the appearance of Davies of Hereford's Mirum in Modum.
In it, however, was a passage on the ordered world which, not-
withstanding certain vestigial expressions from an earlier time,
exemplified the modern attitude in its human presumption.
But nothing more sets forth the Power and Wisdom
of Almighty God . . . than that most admirable inter-
mixture of Want with Plenty, whereby he hath united
all the parts of the World in a continuall Traffique
and Commerce with one another; some Countries be-
ing destitute of those Commodities with which others
abound, and being plentifull in those which the others
want. Insomuch that as in the Body of man, that
Microcosm. . . the Head cannot say that it has no
need of the Foot, nor the Foot of the Hand, nor other
members of the rest: so neither in the Body of the
great World, can Europe say to Asia, or Spain to
England, I have no need of your Commodities . . . . 83
Extreme anthropocentric beliefs found vivid expression in
the seventeenth century. The bees were wonderfully organized
but the chief thing was that they should "teach the art of order
to a peopled kingdom." The sun itself was created to provide
light to man, a not uncommon opinion in the Century of Genius
that appears to have-in the words of Robert Boyle-"choque
DesCartes." The French philosopher eschewed the extreme
anthropocentrism of his time. The English chemist and the-
ologian, Robert Boyle, tried to advance a middle position.
What Des-Cartes says, that 'tis childish and ab-
surd to think that God had created the Sun, which
is many times bigger than the Earth, only to afford
Light to Man . . . is somewhat invidiously propos'd;
there being few able writers, that confine the Utility

82See Tillyard, p. 28.

83Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in Four Bookes (London, 1652),
p. 5.

74
 of the Sun directly to the affording [of} Light to Man:
and the littleness of his Bulk, ought not to make it
thought absurd, that God may have had an especial
Eye to his Welfare, in framing that bright globe. 84
In another part of the book Boyle asserted: "I see no Ab-
surdity in supposing, that, among other Uses of the Sun, and
of the Stars, the Service of Man might be intended" (p. 77).
Robert Boyle also drew attention to the usefulness of floods
and rains to man, particularly the Nile floods of Egypt and the
rains in Europe. He did not, however, present these gifts of
nature in the context of a hydrologic cycle, as did John Keill,
John Ray, and a long succession of writers in the eighteenth and
ear ly nineteenth centuries.
From the seventeenth century onward literature that sub-
scribed to the anthropocentric interpretation of the earth grew
ever more effusive and profuse. We may now illustrate this
trend by sampling the opinion of those writers who have con-
tributed towards the elaboration and acceptance of the hydro-
logic cycle.
George Hakewill put man at the centre of the world when
he praised the sea-the mother of waters-not only for the cyclic
constancy of its ebbs and flows, but for her "native saltness, &
by reason thereof, her strength, for the better support of nav-
igable vessels. ,,85 John Ray repeated this opinion almost word
for word. He praised the sea for the regularity of its tidal mo-
tion, and for its "saltness, so convenient for the Maintenance of
its Inhabitants, serving also the Uses of Man for Navigation,
and the Convenience of Carriage, ,,86 Ray wavered between the
broad and narrow meanings of Providence. On the one hand,
we are asked to admire the intrinsic beauty and cleverness of
God's creation as in the "incredible Smallness and Subtleness
of some Animacules.·" Part of our business in Eternity, he
presumed, was to "contemplate the Works of God, and to give
him the glory of his Wisdom, Power, and Goodness, manifested
in the Creation of them." On the other hand he stated in the
table of contents that a purpose of the Discourse was to show

84Robert Boyle, A Disquisition about the Final Causes of

Natural Things (London, 1688), p. 28,
85Hakewill (1635), p. 141.
86Ray, The Wisdom of God . . . (1692), p. 72.

75
that the "World was in some Sense made for Man, " immediately
adding, however, the qualifier "yet not so as to have no other
End or Use of its Creation but to serve him. ,,87
Ambivalence in the interpretation of Providence also ap-
pears in John Woodward's An Essay towards a Natural History
of the Earth. The narrow view sees the earth, in spite of its
catastrophic history and apparent disorder, as designed for man.
Though the whole series of this extraordinary
catastrophe may seem at first view to exhibit nothing
but tumult and dis order, and nothing but hurry, jar-
ring, and distraction of things; yet if we draw some-
what nearer, and take a closer prospect of it, if we
look into its retired movement and latent springs, we
may there trace out a steady hand producing good
out of evil, the most consummate order and beauty
out of confusion and deformity, acting with the most
excellent contrivance and wisdom throughout the
whole course of this grand affair, and directing all
the several steps and periods to an end, and that a
most noble and excellent one, no less than the hap-
piness of the whole race of mankind; the benefit and
universal good of all the many generations of men
which were to come after; which were to inhabit
this earth, thus modelled anew, thus suited to their
present condition and necessities. 88
This extract reads like a categorical affirmation of the
earth as created especially for man; yet in another part of the
book Woodward suggested a far broader interpretation of provi-
dence. After discussing the various ways through which the
earth was watered, he affirmed: "That the final Cause of this
Distribution of Water, in such Quantity, to all Parts of the
Earth indifferently in Springs, Rivers, and Rain: and of this
perpetual Circulation and Motion of it, is the Propagation of
Bodyes, Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals, in a continued
Succession" (p. 143).

87Ibid. (1722), pp. 169-170.

88John Woodward, An Essay towards a Natural History of the
Earth and Terrestrial Bodyes (London, 1723), pp. 94-95; first
published, 1695.

76
 William Whiston, a professor of Mathematics at Cambridge,
gave a somewhat different reading on the "Use of the Earth" than
either Ray or Woodward. First, like the medieval cosmologists
he drew attention to the insignificance of the earth compared with
other heavenly bodies, and asserted that the stars and planets
were not created just for humans. Secondly, he believed that the
"wise and careful Providence of God" was most clearly manifest
in planetary motion, the orbits being either "truly circular, or
not very different from the same." The earth itself has no spe-
cial merit. On the contrary,
as to the main Use of this Earth, 'tis to afford Habita-
tion to a sinful and lapsed Race of Creatures, of small
Abilities or Capacities at present, but of great Vices
and Wickedness; and is esteemed, as far as appears,
in its present Constitution so peculiarly and solely fit
for them, that when they are gone, or their Disposi-
tions and Faculties reform'd and improv'd, a better
Scene of Nature, (a new Heaven, and a new Earth)
is to be introduc'd, for such better and more noble
Creatures. The old one, which now obtains, being
in its present State, it seems, only a Sort of Prison
or Confinement, which is to be our lot whilst we are
sinful and miserable but no longer. 89
In the context of the hydrologic cycle, the bias towards man
and land animals in the interpretation of Providence is evident
in the emphasis on soil fertility: the large oceans and the moun-
tains exist and are so placed as to ensure sufficient water to
all the land. John Keill's explanation was eagerly adopted by
Ray and his many followers. Edmund Halley, a contemporary,
had shown little interest in the role of Providence and Final
Causes in his scientific papers. His account of the hydrologic
cycle, first published in 1693, was an unpolemical, scientific
report, but he introduced one teleological notion that found much
favour among those who wanted to see marks of God's wisdom
and providence in the configuration of the earth. Halley wrote:
This, if we may allow final Causes, seems to be
the design of the Hills, that their Ridges being plac'd
thro' the midst of the Continents, might serve, as it

89 William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth (London, 1725),

p. 57; first published, 1696.

77
 were, for Alembicks to distil fresh Water for the
use of Man and Beast, and their heights to give a
descent to those Streams to run gently, like so
many Veins, of the Macrocosm to be more bene-
ficial to the Creation. 90
John Keill used this comment of Halley's as an argument
against Thomas Burnet's view of mountains as mere "ruines. "
John Ray also endorsed Halley's view but chided him for his
hesitation in assigning final causes. Across the Atlantic Cotton
Mather (1663-1728) was a vigorous exponent of "geo-pious"
sentiments. He too picked up Halley's off-hand reference to
providential design and hurled it at "the vain colts of asses,
that fain would be wise. "
[They] have cavilled at the unequal surface of
the earth, have opened against the mountains,
as if they were superfluous excrescences;
but. . . the sagacious Dr. Halley has observed,
That the ridges of mountains being placed through
the midst of their continents, do serve as al-
embics, to distill fresh water in vast quantities
for the use of the world . . . . 91
Cotton Mather carried the idea of Providence to further ex-
tremes in the essay "Of Rain" which includes a summary of the
hydrologic cycle. It has little claim to originality. Mather's
ideas are mostly borrowed from John Ray and William Derham
but of interest is his presentation. Ray was a distinguished
botanist as well as a natural theologian. The anthropocentrism
that coloured his more didactic writings took on gaudy hues in
the works of less restrained popularizers. In the following
passages from Mather, we see first a short statement of the
hydrologic cycle, and then an optimistic picture of the availabil-
ity of water, in the form of either rain or river (the Nile again),
which illustrates the providence of God.
The rain is water by the heat of the sun divided into
very small and invisible parts; which ascending in
the air, till it encounters with the cold, is by degrees

90Edmund' Halley, Miscellanea Curiosa (London, 1708), I,

p. 11; first published, 1693.
91Cotton Mather, The Christian Philosopher (Charlestown,
1815), p. 105; first published, 1721.

78
 condensed into clouds, and thence descends in
drops. . , . Though the rain be much of it exhaled
from the salt sea, yet by this natural distillation it
is rendered fresh and drinkable to a degree, which
hardly any artificial distillation has yet affected.
The clouds are so carried about by the winds, as
to be so equally dispersed, that no part of the earth
wants convenient showers, unless when it pleases
God, for the punishment of a sinful people, to with-
hold rain, by a special interposition of his provi-
dence: or, if any land wants rain, they have a supply
some other way; as in the land of Egypt, where little
rain falls, there is an abundant recompense made
for that want, by the annual overflowing of the Nile. 92
The author would then seem to press his enthusias m for
rain to the edge of absurdity: "The gradual falling of the rain by
drops, is an admirable accomodation to water the earth. It is
the best way imaginable. If it should fall in a continual stream,
like a river, everything would be vastly incommoded with it. "
Mather's enthusiasm, however, was not exceptional for his
time. A contemporary in England, William Wollaston (1660-
1724), printed in private his Religion of Nature Delineated in
1722, a year after Cotton Mather published his Christian Philos-
opher from which the above quotations were taken. Wollaston's
book was well received once it became available to the public.
Ten thousand copies were sold in a very few years; a sixth edi-
tion appeared in 1738. Wollaston was a moral philosopher and
philologist. The references in his book to physical geography
were slight in substance though boldly expressed, Wollaston's
sketch of the hydrologic cycle, with its image of rain descend-
ing prOVidentially as though from a watering-pot, closely par-
alleled that of Cotton Mather in content and style.
[It) appears I think plainly enough in the parts and
model of the world, that there is a contrivance and
a respect to certain ends. . . . Who can observe the
vapors to ascend, especially from the sea, meet
above the clouds, and fall again after condensation,
and not understand this to be a kind of distillation
in order to clear the water of its grosser salts, and

92 Mather , "Of Rain, " Essay XII, ibid., pp. 59-60.

79
'I"

then by rains and dews to supply the fountains and

rivers with fresh and wholsom liquor; to nourish
the vegetables below by showers, which descend in
drops as from a watering-pot upon a garden. . . . I
say, who can do this, and not see a design, in such
regular pieces, so nicely wrought, and so pre-
served? 93
One of the most popular quasi-scientific works published
in the eighteenth century was Le Spectacle de la Nature by Abbe
Noel-Antoine Pluche (1688-1761). Daniel Mornet, after an in-
vestigation of the catalogues of five hundred private libraries
in France during the eighteenth century, concluded that in pop-
ularity Pluche's Le Spectacle de la Nature outstripped the works
of Buffon, Voltaire, and Rousseau. 94 Its popularity in England
may be judged by the appearance of an English translation in
1733, almost immediately after the first Paris edition, and it
went into an eighth edition between 1753 and 1763. The language
is blatantly teleologic and anthropocentric. The Author of Na-
ture is seen as "ami qui paroit absent." We do not see him but
we recognize his endless concern for us by his endless gifts.
a
''11 nous parle chaque instant pour des liberalites qui sont
inepuisables, qui couvre tout la terre, & qui n'y font que pour
nous. ,,95 The theme of the hydrologic cycle is given several
times, each time to emphasize a different aspect of its service
to man. But perhaps the following dialogue between the prior
and the knight adequately summarizes the Abbe Pluche's atti-
tude to nature in general, and to the hydrologic cycle in particu-
lar.
Le Prieur: Monsieur, vous regardez sans doute avec
un peu de chagrin ces nuages qui s 'amassent, & qui
nous oteront, selon toutes les apparences, Ie plaisir
de la promenade?
Le Chevalier: La vue ne m'en paroit plus affligeante
depuis que je connois leur destination. C 'est pour

93William Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated

(London, 1738), p. 82; first published, 1722.
94Daniel Mornet, Les Sciences de la Nature en France au
xvm e Siecle (Paris, 1911), p. 9.
95Abbe Noel-Antoine Pluche, Le Spectacle de la Nature (La
Haye, 1739), I, p. xi.

80
 remplir nos fontaines & nos rivieres que les vapeurs
a
montent de la mer. J'aime voir tous ces gros
nuages partir en diligence pour aller porter Ie
rafrafchissement & la fertilite dans les provinces
les plus eloignees. C 'est tres-reellement une
commission dont ils acquittent. 96
In England, a work comparable in scope and popularity was
Oliver Goldsmith's A History of the Earth and Animated Nature.
An unoriginal compendium based to a large extent on Buffon
(and to a less extent on Pluche), it is of no interest to the de-
velopment of science but it is pertinent to the gauging of intellec-
tual fashions in the eighteenth century. Goldsmith's Animated
Nature was first published, shortly before his death, in 1774 in
eight volumes. Each set cost two pounds and eight shillings, a
price that would have deterred all buyers but wealthy biblio-
philes and those with a keen interest in science But the work
o

proved to be a success. Eventually it went through twenty-two

editions, some corrected and expanded, the last appearing as
late as 1876. 97 Animated Nature skirts the province of physical
geography but it is in touching physical geography that Gold-
smith appears most exercised over the question of God's provi-
dence, whether it is biased in favour of man. Typically, the
question arose because of the great size of the oceans. Though
the assemblage of waters diffused round our habitable globe is
great, yet (he thought) "they are rendered subservient to the
necessities and the conveniences of so little a being as man. "
[But) if it should be asked whether they be made for
him alone, the question is not easily resolved. Some
philosophers have perceived so much analogy to man
in the formation of the ocean, that they have not hesi-
tated to assert its being made for him alone . . . .
As to any objection from the ocean's occupying too
large a share of the globe, they contend, that there
could not have been a smaller surface employed to
supply the earth with a due share of evaporation. 98

96lbid. (Utrecht, 1736), Ill, p. 179.

97R. M. Wardle, Oliver Goldsmith (Lawrence: University of
Kansas Press, 1957), p. 286 0
980liver Goldsmith, A History of the Earth and Animated Na-
ture (Philadelphia, 1795), I, p. 143; first published, 17740

81
 On the other hand, some
observe that multitudes of animals are concealed in
the ocean, and but a small part of them are known;
the rest, therefore, they fail not to say, were cer-
tainly made for their own benefit, and not for ours.
How far either of these opinions be just, I will not
presume to determine; but of this we are certain,
that God has endowed us with abilities to turn this
great extend of waters to our own advantage. He
has made these things, perhaps, for other uses; but
he has given us faculties to convert them to our own.
. . . Let us then boldly affirm, that the earth, and
all its wonders, are ours; since we are furnished
with powers to force them into our service. . . .
Indeed when I consider the human race as nature
has formed them, there is but very little of the
habitable globe that seems made for them. But,
when I consider them as accumulating the expe-
rience of ages, in commanding the earth, there is
nothing so great or so terrible [po 144].
Another popular compendium of science in the eighteenth
century was that of John Wesley. Originally published in 1763
in two volumes, it met with quick success and was frequently
reprinted. In the process of being worked up as new editions
it expanded to five volumes. A Survey of the Wisdom of God in
Creation can lay no claim to originality. Wesley himself said
that it was based largely on the Latin work of John Francis
Buddaeus. He also quoted freely from the established works of
such writers as Ray and Derham and many others, including
Cotton Mather. In praise of water for its various services to
man, Wesley wrote:
If, from the earth, and the creatures that live upon
it, we cast our eyes upon the water, we soon perceive
that had it been more or less rarefied, it had not
been so proper for the use of man. And who gave it
that just configuration of parts and exact degree of
motion, which makes it so fluent, and yet so strong
as to carry and waft away the most enormous bur-
dens? Who has instructed the rivers to run in so
many winding streams through vast tracts of land,
in order to water them the more plentifully? Then
to disembogue themselves into the ocean, so making
82
 it the common centre of commerce: and thence to re-
turn through the earth and air, to their fountain heads,
in one perpetual circulation ?99
In this paragraph Wesley commends water in the accepted
manner, for its uses to man, to commerce, and to the mainten-
ance of the earth's productivity. The appraisal is occasionally
given an eccentric twist. Thus Wesley claimed to see especial
providence in the winding of the streams, for by such means the
streams were enabled to water the vast tracts of land "more
plentifully. "
The writers we have noted so far were divines and popular-
izers of science. Their works expressed ambivalence towards
the precise character of providence. None can be said to have
held consistently to the narrow view. "The earth is made for
the use of man and yet. . ." was the characteristic formulation.
When we turn from popular writers like Mather, Pluche, Gold-
smith, and Wesley to scholars who have Significantly added to
our knowledge of the earth, we find that they too reveal an am-
bivalent attitude towards providence. A few examples suffice to
illustrate it.
James Hutton's Theory of the Earth is now widely regarded
as a classic in geology in which modern ideas like uniformitar-
ianism and the relation of stream patterns to landforms were
forestalled or first given detailed expression. Published in
book form in 1795 in a modest edition of only four or five hun-
dred copies, it met with so little demand that it did not call for
reprinting again until 1959-a fate in sharp contrast to such
works as Pluche's Le Spectacle de la Nature and Wesley's A
Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation. In Theory of the
Earth, Hutton viewed the planet as proper habitat for all living
creatures. The complexity of its surface configuration and its
ceaseless activity, including the activity of water in circulation,
are necessary to their accommodation.
Where so many living creatures are to ply their
respective powers, in pursuing the end for which
they were intended, we are not to look for nature
in a quiescent state; matter itself must be in motion,
and the scenes of life a continued or repeated series

99Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation

(New edition; London, 1809), IV, p. 43.

83
 of agitations and events. 100
Hutton then proceeded to suggest that if we take a point of
view broader than that of survival and utility,
the Globe of this earth is evidently made for man.
He alone, of all the beings which have life upon this
body, enjoys the whole and every part; he alone is
capable of kno.wing the nature of this world, which
he thus possesses in virtue of his proper right; and
he alone can make the knowledge of this system a
source of pleasure, and the means of happiness
[I, p. 4].
William Buckland (1784-1856), first Reader in geology at
Oxford, exemplified the ambivalent attitude of the eighteenth
and early nineteenth century towards providence. In his inau-
gural lecture he likened God to Omnipotent Architect who de-
signed the earth for "the daily wants of its rational inhabi-
tants. ,,101 To Buckland providential design was evident "not
only at the moment in which he laid the first foundations of the
earth, but also through the long series of shocks and destruc-
tive convulsions which he has caused subsequently to pass over
it" (p. 12). In his Bridgewater Treatise the hydrologic cycle
was given as an example of Design. The size of the oceans
manifested it in that large oceans were necessary to the pro-
duction of fertile soils for human use. This is an old story
but Buckland went further in suggesting that metals also existed
for human use. Their distribution and availability in the ex-
posed parts of the earth's crust bore witness to Design that en-
sured the "essential conditions of the earth's habitability by
civilized man." A less inflated view of man's importance, how-
ever, followed:
I would in this, as in all other cases, be unwilling
to press the theory of relation to the human race, so
far as to contend that all the great geological phenom-
ena we have been considering were conducted solely
and exclusively with a view to the benefit of man. 102

100James Hutton, Th~ory of the Earth (New York: Stechert-

Hafner, 1959), I, p. 4; first published, 1795.
101William Buckland, Vindiciae Geologicae (Oxford, 1820),
p. 12.
102Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy (London, 1836), p. 99.

84
 Buckland's inaugural lecture was designed to show "that
the study of geology has a tendency to confirm the evidence of
natural religion." The Bridgewater treatises, including Buck-
land's, espoused a similar aim. The bias in favour of man in
these ostensibly apologetic works does not therefore surprise.
What does seem surprising is to see such strongly man-centred
views appear in straight scientific treatises. For instance,
Roderick Murchison'S The Silurian System carries no apologetic
intent. It is a detailed, rather plodding, piece of historical
geology. Nevertheless, at the end of Part I there is a ringing
declaration on the lesson to be gained from studying the history
of the earth. Such study "convinces us that every variation of
[the earth's] surface has been but a step towards the accomplish-
ment of one great end, " which was to fashion the earth "into a
fit abode for Man by the ordinances of Infinite Wisdom. ,,103

103Roderick Murchison, The Silurian System (London, 1839),

p. 575.

85
 .!!

CHAPTER III

THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE: BURNET TO GUYOT

At the opening of the eighteenth century John Ray was able to

present the hydrologic cycle as a unifying concept which brought
under it a remarkable range of facts. In spite of weaknesses
now obvious to us, we may admire the intellectual structure for
its coherence and scale, characteristics that stand in sharp con-
trast to the fragmented physical geography of twentieth-century
scholarship. The structure was not original with Ray although
he had contributed to it. To trace the evolution of this structure
to its multifarious roots would mean the retelling of a substan-
tial segment of Western intellectual history, going back indeed
to the cosmologies and cyclic notions of the Greeks and the He-
brews. This I have not been able to do. Instead, in the second
part of this essay I have tried to block in some of the cultural
and intellectual attitudes out of which (and in response to which)
the concept of the hydrologic cycle evolved until it took the form
given by Ray. We may now discuss the immediate cause of the
renewed interest in the hydrologic cycle at the end of the seven-
teenth century, trace the development of this physico-theological
idea in relation to the new findings of science, and demonstrate
its persistence well into the Victorian era as a stubbornly re-
iterated cliche.

The Burnet-Keill Controversy

The immediate cause of the renewed interest in the hydro-
logic cycle was the publication of Thomas Burnet's Sacred The-
ory of the Earth in English in 1684 (Fig. 7). Educated at
Cambridge at a time when Cambridge was dominated by Ne-
i, oplatonism, it came as a shock to Burnet (when he was visiting
the Alps) to see Nature not clothed in that geometric beauty,
harmony of plan and restraint he had learned to expect. The
Sacred Theory was an attempt to use the teaching of old theology

86
Fig. 7. Thomas Burnet in Sacred Theory of the Earth (1684).

87
and new science to explain the "multifarious Confusion." Three
major irregularities offended Burnet's sense of order: (1) The
distribution and shape of land and water. "Our Earth is . . .
divided into Sea and Land, without any Regularity in the Por-
tions . . . . Islands [lie] scatter'd like Limbs torn from the rest
of the Body; great Rocks stand rear'd up in the Waters; the
Promontories and Capes shoot into the Sea, and the Sinus's and
Creeks on the other hand run as much into the Land; and these
without any Order or Uniformity." (2) The subterranean ca-
verns, the "inward parts" of the Earth which "are generally
broken or hollow, especially about the Mountains and high
Lands." (3) The mountains, like the Alps Burnet had seen, and
others which together "would take up a very considerable part
of the dry Land." The rest of physical features-the "Lesser
Hills, Valleys, Plains, Lakes and Marshes, Sands and Des-
arts "-are "also without any regular Disposition. ,,1
The circle is a most convenient hieroglyphic for the wisdom
of God. Before the seventeenth century the circular motion of
the planets was widely and confidently taken to exhibit this wis-
dom. But what of the earth? It is round. And "wherfor God
made the world al round?" The answer in William Caxton's
words was:
God fourmed the world al round; ffor of all the
formes that be, of what dyuerse maners they be,
may none be so plenere ne resseyue somoche by
nature as may the figure rounde. 2
There remained the problem of mountains and valleys. How-
ever, according to Caxton, "neytha montayne ne valeys, how
somever hye ne depe it be, taketh not away fro therthe his rounde-
nesse, no more than the galle chestnut leueth to be rounde for his
prickis" (p. 57). The device for seeing roundness where none in
fact existed in perfection was ingenious: if you "mounte hye in
thayr" all the great mountains and deep valleys should no more
detract from the earth's roundness than a man's hair on an
apple!

1Thomas Burnet, The Theory of the Earth (London, 1684), Bk.

I, pp. 148-149.
2William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, edited by Oliver H.
Prior (Extra Series CX [London: Early English Text Society,
1913]), p. 58; first published, 1481.

88
 In the seventeenth century the literary and popular concep-
tion of the universe-still the medieval one of immutable hea-
vens and circular orbits-was severely jarred under the impact
of the new astronomy. The lack of geometric beauty in the
shape of the earth became more evident than ever. Burnet was
not alone in decrying its irregularities. John Donne asked,
"But keepes the earth her round proportion still?" Mountains
and valleys were like "warts" and "pock-holes" on it. Obviously,
''beauties best, proportion, is dead. ,,3 "Tis not, " Andrew Mar-
vell observed, "what once it was, the World." It is now "But a
rude heap together hurl'd;/ All negligently overthrown, / Gulfes,
Deserts, Precipices, Stone. ,,4 A scientist of the eminence of
Robert Hooke voiced similar belief:
For I have very good Reason to believe, that
there has been times of the Earth wherein it has had
a much smoother and softer, and more succous Skin
than now it hath, when it more abounded with spiritu-
ous Substances, when all the Powers were more strong
and vegete, and when those Scars, Roughness and
Stiffness were not in being. . . . 5
What could have marred the original harmony of shape and
brought on the scars and roughness? The poets had no answer.
Hooke suggested earthquakes and water erosion in the context
of the theory that the earth was grOwing old and less fertile.
But the most imaginative answer-one that at first aroused the
greatest of interest and, later, controversy-was that of Burnet.
The earth, according to Burnet, once had the beauty of "Youth
and blooming Nature, fresh and fruitful." Not a wrinkle or
scar marred its body. Even the air was calm. But this "inno-
cency of Nature, " this smooth, Ante-deluvian globe was visited
by sin and so had to be demolished. Divine Providence there-
fore caused the frames of the smooth earth to break, and fall
into the water-filled "Great Abysse. ,,6 Consider, then, the

3John Donne, The First Anniversary (1612), lines 285-306.

4Andrew Marvell, "Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax"
(ca. 1651), LXXXXVI.
TRobert Hooke, A Discourse of the Causes of Earthquakes,
July 1699, in The Posthumous Works of Dr. Robert Hooke,
edited by Richard Waller (London, 1705).
6 Burnet , pp. 68-69.

89
consequences of the disaster, one transient and the other per-
manent.
First, an universal Deluge would overflow all the
parts and Regions of the broken Earth, during the
great commotion and agitation of the Abysse, by the
violent fall of the Earth into it. This would be the
first and unquestionable effect of this dissolution,
and all that World would be destroyed. Then when
the agitation of the Abysse was assuag'd, and the
Waters by degrees were retir'd into their Channels,
and the dry land appear'd, you would see the true
image of the present Earth in the ruines of the first.
The surface of the Globe would be divided into Land
and Sea; the Land would consist of Plains and Val-
leys and Mountains, according as the pieces of this
ruine were plac'd and dispos'd [po 69].
Burnet wrote clearly and extremely well. The clarity of
his text was enhanced by simple diagrams. In the period from
1685 to 1715 nearly all the worthies of theology and science in
England expressed themselves on Burnet's theories. The de-
cade following the publication of the first (the Latin) edition of
the Telluris Theoria Sacra (1681) was one in which Burnet's
work received wide acclaim and earned him many honours.
But from 1690 onwards it was subjected to stringent and mount-
ing criticisms from both theologians and natural philosophers.
Some of the more acute of these criticisms were made by the
mathematician John Keill. In trying to dismantle Burnet's cos-
mogony and geological history, Keill introduced and restated
several ideas that were later incorporated by John Ray. These
ideas eventually became, through constant repetition and em-
broidery, a stock concept that served to explain so well the fit-
ness of the earth for human habitation.
Burnet envisaged a primitive and innocent earth without de-
formities. It had neither seas nor mountains and valleys. But
how could such an earth be watered?
How could Fountains rise, or Rivers flow in an
Earth of that Form and Nature? We have shut up
the Sea with thick walls on every side . . . and we
have remov'd all the Hills and the Mountains where
the Springs use to rise, and from whence the Rivers
descend to water the face of the ground: And lastly,

90
 we have left. . . no Ocean to receive them [Bk. II,
p. 223].
Such an earth would more likely be a barren wilderness than
paradisiacal. Burnet confessed that this was the most prob-
lematical part of his theory. Moreover, he had imbibed the
common opinion of the philosophers that all rivers rose from the
sea and returned to it. His primitive earth had no sea; it was
locked up in the abyss by the earth's crust. But this awkward
blockage led Burnet to reflect on what he considered to be a more
modern and solid opinion on the origin of springs and rivers: that
they rose chiefly from rains and melted snows, not from the sea.
And as soon as I had undeceiv'd my self in that
particular, I see it was necessary to consider, and
examine how the Rains fell in that first Earth, to
understand what the state of their Waters and Rivers
would be [po 224].
Burnet then proceeded to describe a fantastic system of air
and vapour circulation over the primitive earth. It was in fact
the hydrologic cycle on a grand hemispherical scale. Two sim-
ple diagrams appear in Burnet's book to illustrate his main
thesis. One shows the movement of vapours; these are sucked
out by the sun from the equatorial belt and made to drift towards
the poles where they are condensed. The other diagram shows
how the waters thus produced then feed the streams that flow
back towards the equator (Fig. 8).
What Burnet lacked in scientific knowledge he made up by
imagination. He had, moreover, the literary skills with which
to impart a semblance of reality to an imagined world. His con-
ception of the hydrologic cycle is worth recapitulating in some
detail for its novelty as well as for the controversy it aroused.
First, there was the problem of "watery Meteors." Burnet be-
lieved that the earth was at first soft and moist, but that as it
grew more dry, the "Rays of the Sun would pierce more deep
into it, and reach at length the great Abysse which lay under-
neath, and was an unexhausted source of new vapours" (p. 224).
What course would the vapours take? How could they con-
dense, "there being no Mountains at that time, nor contrary
Winds, nor any such causes to stop them or compress them?"
Burnet answered as follows.
And as the heat of the Sun was chiefly towards the
middle parts of the Earth, so the copious Vapours

91
 B o-OJc . 2 1(.

Fig. 8. The hydrologic cycle according to Thomas Burnet.

Top: The River in the Air; vapours rise from the Torrid zone and move
to the Pole where they are distilled. Bottom: Streams from the Pole
move to the Torrid zone , bifurcating in the process; the Torrid zone
itself is utterly sterile and effectively separates the two hemispheres.

92
 rais'd there were most rarified and agitated; and
being once in the open Air, their course would be
that way where they found the least resistance to
their motion; and that would certainly be towards
the Poles . . . . For East and West they would meet
with . . . Vapours as agitated as themselves . • . .
But towards the North and the South, they would find
a more easie passage, the Cold of those parts . . .
making way to their motion and dilatation without
much resistance. So. . . the Vapours of that Earth,
which were rais'd chiefly about the Aequinoctial and
middle parts of it, would be towards the extream
parts of it, or towards the Poles. And in consequence
of this, when these Vapours were arriv'd in those
cooler parts of the Air, they would be condens'd
into Rain. . . rp. 225].
This was the hydrologic cycle, "the establisht order of Na-
ture in that Ante-diluvian World . . . . " Springs and rivers
were not fed by subterranean channels connected with an open
sea. Over the primitive earth,
all . . . Waters came from above, and that with a.
constant supply and circulation. 0 Aristotle, I
0 •

remember, in his Meteors speaking of the course

of the Vapours, saith, there is a River in the Air,
constantly flOWing betwixt the Heavens and the
Earth, made by the ascending and descending Va-
pours; This was more remarkably true in the
Primitive Earth, where the state of Nature was
more constant and regular; there was indeed an
uninterrupted flood of Vapours rising in one Region
of the Earth, and flowing to another, and there con-
tinually distilling in Dews and Rain, which made
this Aereal River [po 226].
Another major difficulty confronted Burnet: "How these
Waters would flow upon the even surface of the Earth, or form
themselves into Rivers. 0 0 0"The answer he gave must now
seem fantastic: the original earth was not perfectly spherical
but oval, the polar parts being a little further from the centre
than the equatorial. With such a shape the waters that fell over
the polar regions would have a continual descent towards the
equator, and thus complete the hemispherical hydrologic cycle
(po 228).
93
 Tis true, these derivations of the Waters at first
would be very irregular and diffuse, till the Chanels
were a little worn and hollowed. . . . The Current
indeed would be easie and gentle all along, and if it
chanc'd some places to rest or be stopt, it would
spread it self into a pleasant Lake, till by fresh sup-
plies it had rais'd its Waters so high, as to overflow
and break loose again; then it would pursue its way,
with many other Rivers its companions, through all
the temperate Climates, as far as the Torrid Zone
[po 229].
As the rivers moved towards the Torrid Zone they would
begin to bifurcate through the steady loss of water, and even-
tually disappear altogether in the dry sand. The Ancients, said
Thomas Burnet, generally accounted the Torrid Zone as unin-
habitable. They were wrong for the earth of their time; but the
Torrid Zone of the first earth was indeed uninhabitable and
utterly impassable because of the heat. However, the pri mi-
tive Torrid Zone-though hotter than the present one-was also
narrower, for another idea of Burnet's was that the axis of the
primitive earth was not tilted the way it is now (pp. 240-242).
Except for the narrow Torrid Zone that divided the globe into
two hemispheres, the primitive earth was paradisiacal: luxuriant
in vegetation, well-watered, and seasonless. It enjoyed "perpet-
ual Spring, the Fields always green, the Flowers always fresh,
and the Trees always cover'd with Leaves and Fruit" (p. 243).
Churchmen attacked Burnet for his unorthodox use of the
Scripture. More importantly Burnet's theory was attacked for
its wayward esthetics and false science. In 1690 Erasmus
Warren, Rector of Worlington, sharply criticized Burnet's
ideas in a book called Geologica. "Has not this Earth, " Warren
asked, "as much to shew for its being made by Rule and Mea-
sure, as another of a pretended different Form, could have
had?" But when it came to finding uses for the present earth's
system of mountains and seas, Warren showed a singular lack
of imagination. The seas are useful,
for now a great part of Mankind live by the Seas,
either in way of Traffick or Navigation: not to say
that all are some way or other the better for them.
. . . Mountains also now are most eminently ser-
viceable; That is to say, in Bounding Nations; in
94
 Dividing Kingdoms; in Deriving Rivers; in Yielding
Minerals; and in breeding and harbouring innumer-
able wild Creatures. 7
Thomas Burnet could more or less reply to the esthetic ob-
jections of Erasmus Warren and to other critics as ignorant of
science as Burnet himself; but the precise objections raised by
the Cambridge mathematician, John Keill, were quite another
matter. Burnet, Keill quickly pointed out, never did explain
how a sealess earth could supply moisture to the air and, even-
tually, to the earth.
And seeing the Sea as it is now laid open to the
action of the Sun, is but just sufficient to supply us
with Rain and Vapours; does it not seem a thing
against common sense to suppose that the Abyss
inclos'd with a thick shell could have sent out a
quantity of Vapours great enough for such an ef-
fect?8
But these were words. Keill was eager to reduce the matter
to calculation. In Burnet's first earth, there must have been
some way or ways by which the sun's rays could penetrate the
crust and draw vapours out of the abyss. Perhaps there were
pores and cracks in the crust?
If we allow'd the mouths of all the Pores, Cracks
and Chaps, thro' which the Sun must have acted on
the Abyss to have been 1/10,000 part of the Earth's
surface; there would then have been five thousand
times less Vapours to have serv'd twice as great a
quantity of dry Land; and therefore that in a Country
as bigg as Britain, there would not have been so
much as one River . . . [po 68].
Thus Burnet's sealess earth, far from being the lush Eden
he envisaged, "would be nothing else but a Desart, " according
to Keill. With the sea, half of the earth is uninhabitable by man,
but without it the entire earth would be lifeless. Another point
remained to be answered. Could not the Abyss supply water
to the springs and rivers through subterranean channels?
Burnet himself denied this possibility for his primitive earth,

7Erasmus Warren, Geologica (London, 1690), p. 147.

8 John Keill, An Examination of the Reflections on the Theory
of the Earth (Oxford, 1699), p. 68.

95
confident as he was of his special device for vapour and water
circulation above the earth. Both Woodward and Whiston be-
lieved that water from the Abyss contributed significantly to
surface flow. Keill, however, was of the opinion that, given
the present size of the seas, "a superior circulation of Vapours
drawn from the Sea by the heat of the Sun" provided sufficient
means.
For it is certain that nature never provides two
distinct ways to produce the same effect, when one
will serve. But the increase and decrease of
Rivers, according to wet and dry Seasons of the
year, do sufficiently show their Origination from a
Superior circulation of Rains and Vapours. For if
they were furnished by Vapours exhaled from the
Abyss through subterraneous Pipes and Channels,
I see no reason why this subterraneous fire, which
always acts equally, should not always equally pro-
duce the same effect in dry weather that it does in
wet. 9
Keill dismantled Burnet's theory by incisively demonstrat-
ing that one of the major (so-called) deformities of the present
earth-the seas-was in fact necessary to the maintenance of
fertility. The other major deformity in Burnet's view was the
confusion of mountains. Keill's defence of mountains lacked
the originality and force of his defence of the seas. He ap-
pealed to the authority of the "Learned and Ingenious Mathe-
matician and Philosopher Mr. Edmund Halley" (p. 47).
Mountains are capable of condensing vapours by offering them
"resistance." Mountains are "absolutely necessary for the
subsistence of Mankind." Without them, even if there were
water it would ''without doubt. . . stagnate and stink, for how
is it possible for water to run where there is no rising ground"
(p. 49). On a smooth regular earth there could be no rivers.
And the great advantages, Which Countries reap
by being well furnished with Rivers, is very evi-
dent; for without them there could be no great
Towns, nor any converse with far inland Countries;

9Keill, An Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth,

with some Remarks on Mr. Whiston's New Theory of the Earth
(2nd edition; London, 1734), p. 148.

96
 since without them it is almost impossible to supply
a vast multitude of People with things necessary for
life [po 50].
The triumph of Keill over Burnet vindicated the concept of
the hydrologic cycle; in an expanded form it succeeded in pro-
viding a sense of order to the apparent confusion of land and
sea, mountains and valleys, a confusion that jarred on Burnet's
sensibilities. One consequence of the success of the concept
was a tendency to exaggerate the extent of fertile, well-watered
land. Thus Keill appears to have believed that the land had few
barren places. In attempting to calculate the amount of water
the ocean received from the rivers, he used data from the
River Po and assumed that the Lombardy plain represented the
average moisture condition of dry land. Possible objections
were forestalled by asserting: "It is true, there are in the Earth
some barren places which have no great quantity of water or
Rivers in them, but they being but small will not much alter our
account" (p. 128).

Richard Bentley's Eighth Boyle Lecture

The main personalities of the debate on the nature of the
earth, insofar as it was scientific rather than esthetic or ex-
egetical, were Burnet and Keill; but we should acknowledge the
remarkable insights of a contemporary, Richard Bentley. In
1692, when Bentley was a young man and only in deacon's or-
ders, he received the unusual honour of being asked to deliver
the first series of the Robert Boyle lectures. His subject was
"A Confutation of Atheism." In the first five discourses Bentley
argued for the existence of a provident God from the human soul
and body. In the last three he argued from "the origin and frame
of the world." For the historian of ideas these have a peculiar
interest because they were read by Newton and had his approval.
But for us the last lecture itself merits special attention be-
cause in it Bentley examined the problem of the size of oceans
and the existence of mountains.
Let us consider the ample provision of Waters. . . .
Though some have grudged the great share that it
takes of the Surface of the Earth, yet we shall pro-
pose this too, as a conspicuous mark and character
of the Wisdom of God. We dare venture to

97
 affirm, that these copious Stores of Waters are no
more than necessary for the present constitution of
our Globe . . . . For is not an immense quantity of
it continually exhaled by the Sun, to fill the Atmos-
phere with Vapours and Clouds, and feed the Plants
of the Earth with the balm of Dews and the fatness
of Showers ?10
The large surface of water is necessary to maintain balance
between the amount removed by wind and sun and the amount
delivered to it by rivers.
For it's evident and necessary, if we follow the most
fair and probable Hypothesis, that the Origin of Foun-
tains is from Vapors and Rain, that the Receptacle of
Waters, into which the mouths of all these Rivers
must empty themselves, ought to have so spacious
a Surface, that as much Water may be continually
brushed off by the Winds and exhaled by the Sun, as
(besides what falls again in Showers upon its own
Surface) is brought into it by all the Rivers
[PP. 30-31].
With these considerations in mind,
how rash. . . and vain are those busy Projectors
in Speculation, that imagin they could recover to
the World many new and noble Countries . . .
without any damage to the old ones, could this same
Mass of the Ocean be lodged and circumscribed in
a much deeper Channel and within narrower Shores!
For by how much they would diminish the present
extent of the Sea, so much they would impair the
Fertility and Fountains and Rivers of the Earth:
because the quantity of Vapors, that must be exhaled
to supply all these, would be lessened proportionally
to the bounds of the Ocean; for the Vapors are not
to be measured from the bulk of the Water but from
the Space of the Surface. So that this also doth in-
ferr the superlative Wisdom and Goodness of God
[pp. 31-32J.

10 Richard Bentley, A Confutation of Atheism, from the Origin

and Frame of the World (London, 1693), p. 29.

98
 These arguments are familiar because we have already en-
countered them in Keill's criticism of Thomas Burnet. In pri-
ority of publication however the honour goes to Richard Bentley
who first developed the argument in favour of large seas in his
Boyle sermon preached at St. Mary-Ie-Bow on December 5th,
1692. The sermon appeared in print the following year. Both
Keill and Ray could have had easy access to the sermon, but if
so, neither acknowledged their debt to Richard Bentley when
they expounded similar views in 1698 and 1701 respectively.
Ray credited the insight to Keill, and Keill was silent as to his
source. 11
It seems clear that in the last sermon, Bentley was contro-
verting the views of Thomas Burnet, although Burnet was not
specified by name. The shafts of criticism were levelled in-
stead at the "busy Projectors in Speculation." At that time,
however, Burnet was by far the most famous of the speculators.
In one sermon Bentley sought to confound those who "are out of
Love with the features and meen of our Earth." Against them
he argued for the need of large surfaces of water, for the need
of turbulent processes in nature, and for a less purely geometric
conception of beauty. We have already presented his first argu-
ment which forestalled that of John Keill. On the necessity of
turbulent processes and their inevitable effect on surface con-
figuration, Bentley wrote:
For supposing the Existence of Sea and Mountains;
if the Banks of that Sea must never be jagged and
torn by the impetuous assaults or the silent under-
minings of Waves; if violent Rains and Tempest
must not wash down the Earth and Gravel from the
tops of some of those Mountains, and expose their
naked Ribbs to the face of the Sun; if the Seeds of
subterranean Minerals must not ferment, and some-
times cause Earthquakes and furious eruptions of
Volcano's, and tumble down broken Rocks, and lay
them in confusion: then either all things must have

lIIt seems unlikely that Bentley could have got his idea from
Keill. Although Bentley was a young man of just over thirty
years at the time of the sermon, Keill the mathematician was
even younger-a student twenty years of age at Balliol College,
Oxford.

99
 been over-ruled miraculously by the immediate
interposition of God without any mechanical Af-
fections or settled Laws of Nature, or else the body
of the Earth must have been as fixed as God or as
hard as Adamant and wholly unfit for Our habita-
tion. 12
As to calling an irregular surface deformed and ugly,
Bentley pointed out the arbitrariness of the judgment and the
complete neglect of the propriety of a shape to' its nature and
function.
There is no Universal Reason. . . that a Figure
by us called Regular . . . is absolutely more
beautiful than any irregular one. All Pulchritude
is relative; and all Bodies are truly and physically
beautiful under all possible Shapes and Proportions;
that are good in their Kind, that are fit for their
proper uses and ends of their Natures. We ought
not then to believe . . . that the Mountains are
mishapen, because they are not exact Pyramids
or Cones . . . . Let them consider, that these
Ranges of barren Mountains by condensing the
Vapors and producing Rains and Fountains and
Rivers, give the very Plains and Valleys them-
selves that fertility they boast of. . . . Who would
part with these Solid and Substantial Blessings for
the little fantastical pleasantness of a smooth uni-
form Convexity and Rotundity of a Globe? [Po 37. J

Stimulus from Halley

Criticism of Burnet's theory was not all negative. To take
effect it must be supported by an alternative interpretation.
Against the view that the present earth is chaotic, one needs to
offer a concept that discerns order in the seeming confusion.
Arguments must be gathered to show that not only the ante-
diluvian earth displayed the wisdom of God but the present one
also This saving concept was the hydrologic cycle. Loosely
o

stated it is of ancient origin; but, although the concept is vitally

concerned with water in all its forms and with the movements

12Bentley, pp. 35-36.

100
of water, its scientific elaboration from the Renaissance to the
end of the seventeenth century was slow, and appears to have
been little affected (at least directly) by contemporaneous
achievements in hydraulic engineering and in quantitative hydrol-
ogy first in Italy, then in France. In England the concept of the
hydrologic cycle did gain new impetus from the technical writ-
ings of Edmund Halley. Halley avoided questions of teleology,
except for the almost whimsical attribution of Final Causes to
the formation of mountains; his study on vapour transfer and the
water cycle, however, found favour with the scientific critics
of Burnet. Both Keill and Ray exploited Halley's research for
their own didactic purposes. Armed with Halley's facts and the
conclusions that can be drawn from them, they were able to de-
molish the image of an earth in ruin, and build up in its place
an earth that is fully compatible with the present providence of
God.
We recall that during the Renaissance the ability of the sun's
heat to draw up vapours from the watery surfaces of the earth
was well known. In Caxton's Mirrour of the World (1481) atten-
tion was directed to specific, incontrovertible cases of this
phenomenon: for example, the drying up of wet cloth in the air.
William Fulke argued in 1563 for the reality of evaporation by
claiming that if water were left in a hard smooth basin of stone
in the sun it would soon dry up. However, nobody appears to
have bothered to perform a simple experiment to determine the
loss numerically. As Halley reminded the Royal Society in
1687,
that the quantity of aqueous Vapours contained in
the Medium of the Air, is very considerable, seems
most evident from the great Rains and Snows which
are sometimes observed to fall . . . but in what
proportion these Vapours rise. . . has not, that I
know of, been any where examined, tho it seem to
be one of the most necessary Ingredients of a real
and philosophical meteorology. . . . 13

13Edmund Halley, "An Estimate of the Quantity of Vapour

raised out of the Sea by the warmth of the Sun; derived from an
Experiment shown before the Royal Society, . . ," Philosophi-
cal Trans. Royal Society, XVI, No. 189 (1687), 366,

101
 Halley's conception of the hydrologic cycle appeared in the
Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions for 1691. It was
distinguished from the many vague expressions that saw print
both before and after his time in being based on experiment and
calculations. It was probably also the most complete statement
of the cycle thus far. In the following extracts, Halley first
described the exchanges of vapours and water between the sea
and the land; these motions were to become, in the course of
the eighteenth century, the chief meaning of the hydrologic cy-
cle. Later in the same paper Halley showed that he was well
aware of other types of cyclic processes.
Those Vapours . . . that are raised copiously in
the Sea, and by the Winds are carried over the low
Land to those Ridges of Mountains, are there com-
pelled by the stream of the Air to mount up with it
to the tops of the Mountains, where the Water pre-
sently precipitates, gleeting down by the Crannies
of the stone; and part of the Vapour entring into the
Caverns of the Hills, the Water thereof gathers as
ill an Alembick into the Basins of stone it finds,
which being once filled, all the overplus of Water
that comes thither runs over by the lowest place,
and breaking out by the sides of the Hills, forms
single springs. 14
Mountain springs are the chief sources of
such streams as the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube,
which latter one would hardly think the collection
of Water condensed out of Vapour, unless we con-
sider . . . that it is the sum of all those Springs
which break out on the South side of the Carpathian
Mountains, and on the North side of the immense
Ridge of the Alps . . . . And it may almost pass
for a Rule, that the Magnitude of a River . . . is
proportionable to the length and height of the Ridges
from whence its Fountains arise [po 471].
But the vapours blown inland and returned by the rivers into
the seas constitute only a small portion of all the vapours

14Halley, "An Account of the Circulation of the watry Vapours

of the Sea, and of the Cause of Springs . . . , ibid., for 1691,
XVII, No. 192 (1693), 471.

102
extracted by the sun from the seas. "By much the greatest part
of the whole Vapour, " according to Halley, was returned to the
seas as dews and rains without ever touching land. And, more-
over, some of the rain that falls over the sea may be derived
from moisture carried by the winds from the land to the sea; al-
though the land could only supply this moisture because it had
previously been wetted by condensed sea vapours. This was the
"third part" of the total amount evaporated from the seas.
A third part falls on the lower Lands, and is the
Pabulum of Plants, where yet it does not rest, but
is again exhaled in Vapour by the Action of the Sun,
and is either carried by the Winds to the Sea to fall
in Rain or Dew there, or else to the Mountains to
be there turned into Springs; and though this does
not immediately come to pass, yet after several
vicissitudes of rising in Vapour and falling in Rain
or Dews, each particle of the Water is at length re-
turned to the Sea from whence it came. Add to this
that the Rain-waters, after the Earth is fully sated
with moisture, does by the Valleys . . . find its
way into the River, and so is compendiously sent
back to the Sea. After this manner is the Circula-
tion performed . . . [po 472].
The hydrologic cycle Halley described was one of remark-
able complexity. John Ray was clearly indebted to it. A mea-
sure of Ray's independence of thought is that he did not accept
Halley's thesis whole. Halley appears to have believed in some
process of direct condensation on the slopes of mountains. Va-
pours may "precipitate" as water on the mountains and generate
springs without passing through the form of rain. Halley claimed
that this "Theory of Springs is not a bare Hypothesis, but
founded on Experience, which it was my luck to gain in my abode
at St. Helena, where in the Nighttime, on the tops of the Hills,
about 800 Yards above the Sea, there was so strange a conden-
sation, or rather precipitation of the Vapours, that it was a
great Impediment to my Coelestial Observations. ,,15 Rayac-
knowledged this opinion to be "ingenious" but he himself believed
that all springs and rivers proceeded from rain water. Ray too
claimed the authority of personal experience.

15Halley , Miscellanea Curiosa (London, 1708), I, p. 9.

103
 I myself have observed a Thunder-Cloud in passage,
to have in less than two hours space poured down so
much Water upon the earth, as besides what sunk
into the parched and thirsty ground, and filled all
Ditches and Ponds, caused a considerable Flood in
the Rivers, setting all the Meadows on flote . . . . 16
We remember that Ray made a distinction between the rain
that moistens the soil, thus making it productive, and the rain
that causes rivers and floods. The former is due to the conden-
sation of vapours that are exhaled out of dry land; the latter is
caused by the condensation of "surplus" vapours which the Winds
bring over the land from the great oceans. This scheme fits in
well with Ray's conception of the Mosaic Deluge. To produce
the Deluge vapours from the dry land itself obviously do not
suffice. And since Ray has renounced the theory of collapse
into a water-filled Abyss, the only adequate source of vapour
and water is the ocean. So, having personally observed how a
thundercloud can in less than two hours produce enough water to
flood the meadows, he concluded that the Mosaic flood may be
understood if ''by Winds, or whatever Means seem'd good to
God" all the vapours from the ocean were brought together, and
there "caused to distil down in Rain upon the Earth" (p. 69).
A further difference between Ray and Halley is reflected in
their views on the amount of vapour that is removed from the
sea and returned again to the sea by rain and dew. Halley cal-
culated a minimal figure for the "loss in Vapour" from the Med-
iterranean in a summer day, and it is 5,280 million tons. By
contrast, the rivers return to the sea only 1, 827 million tons in
the same period. 17 What has happened to the difference?
Halley's answer is that a large part of the vapour removed from
the sea during the day is returned to the sea "by the cool of the
Night" as dew or rain (p. 10). Ray, on the other hand, saw the
difference as being made up by water from the Ocean. Further-
more, he believed that winds can transport vapour over great
distances, beyond the catchment area of the Mediterranean basin
and into the Northern Countries.

16John Ray, Miscellaneous Discourses, Concerning the Dis-

solution and Changes of the World (London, 1692), po 69.
17Halley, Miscellanea Curiosa, pp. 4-5.

104
 If you proceed to ask what becomes of the Surplusage
of the Water, which the Mediterranean receives
from the Ocean, and spends in Vapour; I answer, It
seems to me that it must be cast farther off over the
Tops of the Mountains, and supply in part Rain to
these Northern Countries; for we know that the South
Wind brings Rain with us, and all Europe over 18
[Fig. 6, centre].

Relation to General Wind Circulation

In Ecclesiastes the circulation of wind and the hydrologic
cycle appear in subjacent verses. The intimate relation thus
implied, however, was not explored by the numerous writers
who sought out Ecclesiastes for authority and inspiration. The
reason probably lies in the fact that the critical verse (1:7) was
commonly interpreted as giving support to the concept of a sub-
terranean cycle of water movement quite unrelated to the mo-
tions of the wind above ground. In Renaissance meteorology
the dichotomy persisted between a subterranean cycle respon-
sible for rivers and a superterranean cycle responsible for
rains and dew; moreover, the superterranean cycle retained the
essential, one-dimensional verticality of the Middle Ages. In
the seventeenth century far greater emphasis was placed on the
horizontal displacement of air and of the vapours they carry.
The ideas of Nathanael Carpenter and John Woodward, for ex-
ample, on the role of winds in the transportation of vapour show
great advance when compared with those of Renaissance meteor-
olOgists. Thus, on the relation of the humidity of the winds and
their source regions, Carpenter wrote:
Winde which bloweth from one Region to another . . .
partaketh of a twofold qualitie; the one derived from
the place whence it is ingendred; the other from the
Region through which it passeth . . . our Easterne
wind is found to be driest of all others, whereof no
other cause can be given, then that it comes over a
great Continent of land lying towards the East, out
of which many drie & earthly exhalations are drawn:
so the Westerne winde is observed to be very moist,

18Ray, Miscellaneous Discourses, . . . , p. 246.

105
 because it passeth over the huge Atlantick Ocean,
which must needs cast forth many watrie and moist
vapours, which beget raine and showres. 19
Carpenter in this passage appears to have approached closely
to a full statement of the hydrologic cycle in which the twin con-
cepts of wind and vapour circulations are synthesized. In fact
Carpenter wrote outside the conceptual framework of the hydro-
logic cycle as we know it. His account of how "All Rivers have
their first original1 from the Sea" was a species of the concept
of subterranean circulation. 20
On the horizontal (as well as vertical) movements of winds
and vapours, John Woodward expressed the belief that though
the Quantity of Water . . . rising and falling be cer-
tain and constant as to the whole, yet it varies in
the several Parts of the Globe; by reason that the
Vapours float in the Atmosphere, sailing in Clouds
from Place to Place, and are not restored down
again in a Perpendicular upon the same precise
Tract of Land, or Sea, or both together, from
which Originally they arose, but any other indif-
ferently. So that some Regions receive back more

19Nathanael Carpenter, Geography Delineated Forth in Two

Bookes (Oxford, 1625), Bk. II, p, 32.
20Ibid., pp. 142-153. Carpenter gives a lengthy review of the
various hypotheses on the origin of springs and rivers including
that of the Church Father, based on Ecclesiastes 1, and that of
Thomas Aquinas. On page 153, he offers his own rather curious
version: "It will be expected at least that we should disclose our
owne opinion, . . . First therefore, we will suppose as probable:
that the earth is in a manner compassed round about with water
[the reason being], the porous and spongy nature of the Earth,
which is apt to drinke in the water of the sea, in the same
light . . . as also from experience of Miners. [This subterr-
anean water lies no higher than the level of the sea.] Now to
know how the water thus naturally settled, is not with standing
lifted up higher to become the source of springs, we must under-
stand, that it comes to passe not onely by the heat of the sunne
and starres, piercing farre under the superficies of the earth
. . . But also to subterranean fires hid in the bowells of the
earth, in many places. "

106
 in Rain than they send up in Vapour: as, on the con-
trary, others send up more in Vapour than they re-
ceive in Rain. 21
At the opening of the eighteenth century the nature of the
Burnet-Keill controversy required that the discourse between
the adversaries be pursued in the context of a hydrologic cycle
closely linked to notions of planetary wind circulation. It may
be recalled that Burnet saw a meridional movement of wind and
vapour. Winds carried the vapours from the torrid zone to the
cold poles where they were distilled, and the distilled water
then flowed back to the torrid zone. Keill, on the other hand,
believed that winds moved primarily from east to west, and
that the vapours they carried could not be carried very far be-
fore they were condensed into drops of rain.
Notwithstanding these efforts, circulations of water and air
have in the main been treated as separate entities. There was
no lack of scientific interest in planetary wind movement in the
later part of the seventeenth century. Such well known scholars
as Bernhard Varenius, Robert Hooke, and Edmund Halley en-
riched the field. In 1686, before the Royal Society of London,
Robert Hooke summarized his views on the exchange of air be-
tween polar and equatorial regions thus:
From these Considerations . . . will follow a nec-
essary motion or tendency of the lower Parts of the
Air near the Earth, from the Polar Parts towards
the Aequinoctial, and consequently of the higher
Parts of the Air from the Aequinoctial Parts towards
the Polar, and consequently a kind of Circulation of
the Body of the Air, which I conceive to be the cause
of many considerable Phaenomena of the Air, Winds
and Waters. . . . 22
But it is the relation of the circulation of air to the
"Phaenomena of the Air" and, in particular, to "Waters" that
was left little explored. Halley, to give another prominent ex-
ample among scientists, had written influential papers on both
water and air dirculations, but made little of their relations.
Theo-philosophical writers like Ray and Derham, popularizers

21John Woodward, An Essay towards a Natural History of the

Earth and Terrestrial Bodyes (3rd edition; London, 1732), p. 133.
22The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, p. 363.

107
like Mather, Goldsmith, and Wesley, have similarly neglected
the connection between the two systems. As is the general run
of mid-twentieth century textbooks on weather, "water" and
"wind" are kept in separate chapters. Only the more sophisti-
cated among modern writers stress the intimate relation between
water balance, wind circulation, and other forms of energy ex-
change.

The Round Circuit and The Well-Watered Earth

After John Ray, not much further insight was added to the
concept of the hydrologic cycle for the next one hundred and
fifty years. Indeed among the more didactic works of this per-
iod, what precision the concept had originally was (on occasion)
blunted in the interest of rhetoric and in the effort to subsume
under it an increasing burden of incompatible ideas and ill-
sorted facts. It would serve no useful purpose to give lengthy
extracts from the many works that used the cycle as a vehicle
to order the seeming infelicities of the earth and thus commend
the wisd'Jm of God. A sample, taken from writers of varying
scientific capability and apologetic intent, suffices to impress
upon us its persistent popularity.
William Derham, Canon, F. R. S. William Derham was a
contemporary of Ray's and wrote the preface to the third edition
of Ray's Three Physico-Theological Discourses which appeared
in 1713, seven years after the author's death. In 1713 Derham's
own Physico-Theology was published. In the dedication to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Derham referred obliquely to his
qualifications as a member of the Royal Society and a divine to
do what he could "towards the Improvement of philosophical
matters to Theological Uses." He disclaimed scholarship. "I
drew up what I had to say, making it rather the diverting Ex-
ercises of my Leisure Hours, than more serious Theological
Studies." Nevertheless Physico-Theology was a heavily docu-
mented book, the footnotes not infrequently exceeding the length
of the text. Indebtedness to Ray is evident in the numerous re-
ferences to him. Even more popular than Ray's Wisdom of God,
Derham's Physico-Theology reached a twelfth edition by 1754,
and was translated into French, Swedish, and German. Since its
publication it became, according to Nicolson, one of the most

108
popular "scientific It handbooks for two generations of poets. 23
The providential nature of the creation is clearly di-
agrammed by Derham in the list of contents. Under the heading,
Atmosphere, for example, we find a schema that contains some
of the more utilitarian properties of air and water circulation.
The Atmosphere
Composed of Air and Vapours
Useful to
Respiration and Animal Life
Vegetation of Plants
Conveyance of
The Winged Tribes
Sound
The Functions of Nature
Reflecting and Refracting Light
Containing the
Winds, which are of great Use and Necessity
To the Salubrity and Pleasure of the Air
In various Engines
In Navigation
Clouds and Rain: Of great Use to the
Refreshment of the Earth and the Things therein
Origine of Fountains, according to some
As to the distribution of land and water Derham wrote, lIal-
though it may seem rude and undesigned to a careless View, and
is by some tax'd as such, yet is admirably well adjusted to the
Uses and Conveniences of our World. II Usefulness aside Derham
in fact believed that the waters are harmoniously distributed.
liThe Northern balances the Southern Ocean, the Atlantick the
Pacifick Sea. 1124 Derham attempted to show, within the frame-
work of the hydrologic cycle, how almost all the major facets
of physical geography-vapours, clouds, rain, temperature,
soil fertility, rivers and river gradients -affected one another
and gave evidence of design by lithe most indulgent Creator. II

23Marjorie H. Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory

(New York: Norton Library, 1963), p. 346.
24William Derham, Physico-Theology; or A Demonstration of
the Being and Attributes of God, From His Works of Creation
(London, 1713; 12th edition; London, 1754), pp. 47-48.

109
 The great Oceans, and the lesser Seas and Lakes,
are so admirably well distributed throughout the
Globe, as to afford sufficient Vapours for Clouds
and Rains, to temperate the Cold of the Northern
frozen Air, to cool and mitigate the Heats of the
Torrid Zone, and to refresh the Earth with fertile
Showers; yea, in some Measure to minister fresh
Waters to the Fountains and Rivers. Nay, so abun-
dant is this great Blessing, which the most indul-
gent Creator hath afforded us by Means of this
Distribution of the Waters I am speaking of, that
there is more than a scanty, bare Provision, or
mere Sufficiency; even a Plenty, a Surplusage of
this useful Creation of God, (the fresh Waters)
afforded to the World; and they so well ordered, as
not to drown the Nations of the Earth, nor to stag-
nate, stink, and poison, or annoy them; but to be
gently carried through convenient Channels back
again to their grand Fountain the Sea; and many of
them through such large Tracts of Land, and to
such prodigious Distances, that it is a great Won-
der the Fountains should be high enough, or the
Seas low enough, ever to afford so long a Convey-
ance. 25
To Derham, there was no mere "Sufficiency" of fresh water
but a "Surplusage." Emphasis on fertility recurs in the chapter,
"Of the Soils and Moulds in the Earth." Every country abounds
with its proper trees. Vegetables flourish and abundantly an-
swer the command of the Creator when the earth and waters
were ordered to their peculiar places. "And God said, Let the
Earth bring forth Grass, the Herb yielding Seed, and the Tree
yielding Fruit after his Kind" (Gen. 1:2). Derham quoted from
the Holy Writ and added the gloss, "All which we actually see is
so" (p. 61).,
Shaftesbury, heterodox Deistic view. Compared with Ray's
discussion of the hydrologic cycle, Derham'S is far less detailed
and far more rhetorical. In the first part of the eighteenth cen-
tury, other semi-philosophical works of wide appeal appeared in
England, including those of Cotton Mather, William Wollaston,

25Ibid. (1754), pp, 49-52.

110
and Anthony Cooper the third Earl of Shaftesbury. We have al-
ready sampled the exuberance of Mather and Wollaston. Shaftes-
bury's hymns to nature displayed a special sort of exuberance-
one that became possible when Biblical constraints were wholly
removed. As a philosophical Deist Shaftesbury was not obliged
to interpret the Bible's more awesome messages: the Flood, the
Last Judgment, or the Dissolution of the World. His Character-
isticks was subtitled A Philosophical Rhapsody. And rhapsodic
indeed was Shaftesbury's appraisal of the earth.
How comfortable is it to those who come out hence
alive, to breathe a purer Air! to see the rejoicing
Light of Day! and tread the fertile Gound! How gladly
they contemplate the Surface of the Earth, their hab-
itation, heated and enliven'd by the Sun, and temper'd
by the fresh Air of fanning Breezes! These exercise
the resty Plants, and scour the unactive Globe. And
when the Sun draws hence thick clouded Streams and
Vapours, 'tis only to digest and exult the unwholesom
Particles, and commit 'em to the sprightly Air;
which soon imparting its quick and vital Spirit, ren-
ders 'em again with improvement to the Earth, in
gentle Breathings, or in rich Dews and Fruitful
Showers. 26
In contrast to orthodox Christian apologists, who saw fer-
tility nearly everywhere (the exceptions being those places which
God specifically condemned), Shaftesbury's euphoria extended
even to the barren parts of the world, the existence of which he
clearly recognized. The "vast Deserts, " ghastly in a sense,
yet "want not their Peculiar Beautys, The Wildness pleases.
We seem to live alone with Nature. We view her in her inmost
Recesses, and contemplate her with more Delight in these or-
iginal Wilds, then in the artificial labyrinths and feign'd Wilder-
nesses of the Palace," However contrary deserts are to human
nature, they are "beauteous in themselves, and fit to raise our
Thoughts in Admiration of that Divine Wisdom, so far superior
to our short Views If (p. 388).

26 Anthony Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteris-

ticks, II, An Enquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit: A Philos-
ophical Rhapsody (2nd edition; London, 1714), p. 377; first
published, 1711.

111
 A distorted emphasis on the earth's fertility rested not only
on a narrow, anthropocentric conception of God's providence
but also on a mechanical view of nature. Such a view, for ex-
ample, was expressed by the geographer Nathanael Carpenter
jn 1625, when he likened the earth to a clock, mill,or some
"great Engine. ,,27 By the end of the century the mechanical
analogy had gained wide acceptance. It is in the character of
an engine or machine to remind us of a purpose beyond itself.
Nature, insofar as it is like a machine, must have been designed
by God for other ends; one such end was without doubt man's
material prosperity. Or as Carpenter put it, "for the better
convenience of mans life, and encrease of fruits for the use of
man" (Bk. II, p. 169). Man is a part of, but is not identical
with, a mechanical nature that existed largely to cater to his
needs. An earth redundant with useless deserts and seas is
clearly defective as machinery for promoting human prosperity.
Shaftesbury must be numbered among those who did not
share this mechanical interpretation of nature. He saw the re-
lation of God to nature as that of mind to human body rather than
of clockmaker to c lock. More influential, however, was his com-
parison of God and nature to the artist and his art. Nature, in-
sofar as it may be likened to an artwork, was not merely
something to be manipulated for human benefit; it existed as an
object of intrinsic value. Beauty was seen to be distinct from
utility. The vast deserts may be of little use but can boast of
other virtues. The hydrologic cycle performed an all-important
service: the sun drew up vapours to "digest and exult the un-
wholsom Particles" so that rich dews and fruitful showers may
improve the earth.28 The virtue of the cycle however lay also
in its own harmony. Shaftesbury's philosophy did not require
the earth to be pervasively fertile. God can clothe His wisdom
in more sublime and mysterious ways. Despite frequent de-
partures from theological orthodoxy, Shaftesbury's views were
well received and came to exercise appreciable influence on the
esthetic taste of the eighteenth century. Shaftesbury's popular-
ity may be gauged by the fact that the complete Characteristicks,
first published in 1711, reached eleven editions in 1790, in com-
parison, for example, with John Locke's Collected Works which

27 Carpenter, Bk. I, p. 12.

28Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, p. 378.

112
went into nine editions in the same period. 29
A Continental detour. Insofar as one sought for evidences
of God's wisdom in the physical geography of the earth, it was
Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory that bestirred the newly estab-
lished channels of natural religion and initiated a debate that
for a time engaged some of the sharpest minds in England.
From the end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the
eighteenth the main arguments for God's providence vis-a.-vis
the configuration of the earth were marshalled there. However,
they were not confined to Britain: Continental scholars picked
up the argument that hinged on the hydrologic cycle and used it
in their expositions of physico-theology. To indicate that the
hydrologic cycle, with all its theological frills, was not the way-
ward effulgence of one nation, let us sample the opinion of scho-
lars beyond Britain.
In 1734, Johann Fabricius, a theology professor at the Col-
lege of Hamburg, published a book bearing the unusual title of
Hydrotheologie. Its considerable success in Germany prompted
a Dr. Burnard to translate it into French. The French version,
the Theologie de l'eau, first appeared in 1741 and then again in
1743. Popular though it was, the Hydrotheologie now seems a
dull, unoriginal work on the goodness and wisdom of God as
manifested in the creation of water. The hydrologic cycle makes
its expected entry, but unimaginatively, contributing neither
content nor style to the growing literature. Fabricius' work
was portentously documented with frequent quotations from the
Bible, classical authors, and such British writers as Halley,
Boyle, Derham, Ray, and Keill. Fabricius' indebtedness to
William Derham'S Physico-Theology-itself a derivative work-
is especially evident. 30

29R. L. Brett, The Third Earl of. Shaftesbury: A Study in

Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory (London: Hutchinson, 1952),
p. 186.
30Johann Albert Fabricius, Hydrotheologie (Hamburg, 1734).
The long subtitle: Versurch durch aufmerksame Betrachtung
der Eigenschaften, reichen Austheilung und Bewegung der
Wasser die Menschen zur Liebe und Bewunderung ihres . . .
Schopfers zu ermuntern . . . Nebst einem Verzeichniss von
alten und neuen See- und Wasser-Rechten; wie auch Materien
und Schriften, die dahin gehoren . . . etc. The French

113
 Far better written, far larger in scope, more popular and
influential than Fabricius' Hydrotheologie was the Spectacle de
la Nature of Abbe Noel-Antoine Pluche. 31 As we have already
noted, in the eighteenth century this clever compendium appears
to have exceeded in popularity even the works of Buffon and
R0usseau. Le Spectacle de la Nature was didactic in intention
as it was designed to form the spirit of "les jeunes-Gens cur-
ieux. II Its effect, however, was far broader than the education
of the young. Pluche's conception of the hydrologic cycle closely
resembled that of his English contemporaries. But it was even
more bluntly teleological, even more narrowly anthropocentric
in the interpretation of Providence, and it led to the same prac-
tice of exaggerating the extent of the green earth.
From a survey of so many beneficent plants with
which the earth is covered, we may pass on to a
consideration of springs and rivers by which the
earth is watered. We shall follow with some care
the movement of these waters which have received
orders to sweep our homes, fertilize our plains,
quench the thirst of animals, give increase to
plants, furnish our tables with fish of excellent
succulence, and, by facilitating reCiprocal traf-
fic, link the different regions of the world. We
shall then try to discover the origin of their course.
By looking into the depths of mountains and plains,
we shall be able to catch a glimpse of the marvellous
structure of the reservoirs which hold the waters.
We shall take note of the purpose of the mountains
which gather them, the artifice of the channels
which distribute them, and of the nature, use and
produce of the vast basin where they go to be of
service. We shall assay the ways of the air which
keep the vapours going continually, and on the mov-
ing force which raises them to sufficient height so

translation bears the title Theologie de I 'eau, ou essai sur la

bonte, la sagesse et la puissance de Dieu, manifestees dans la
creation de I 'eau (Paris, 1743). The hydrologic cycle ("utilite
de l'etendue des mers") on p. 151.
31 Abbe Noel-Antoine Pluche, Le Spectacle de la Nature (8
volumes; La Haye, 1735-1747).

114
 that they are able to wet even the mountains, and to
disperse the waters sufficiently so as to maintain-
by constantly renewed distillation-the flow of the
rivers as well as the greenness of the earth [I, p. ixJ.
Elsewhere, Pluche showed an interest in the mechanisms
of the hydrologiC cycle. He believed that the quantity of water
provided by vapours was a great deal more than that which
flowed out daily at the mouths of rivers; that two-thirds of the
water lost to the oceans through evaporation were reserved for
the needs of the Torrid Zone; that as much rain fell over the
seas as over the land (III, pp. 131, 140). All the apparently
useless things on earth turned out to be useful on closer exam-
ination. Thus the sea with all its salts was actually that which
quenched our thirst. The winds that we complain about so much
brought to us the vapours of the sea. And what seemed to Pluche
a particularly convincing evidence for intelligence was the pre-
sence of bodies of sand at the core of the subterranean reser-
voirs. They were put there, he believed, for an especial
purpose, namely, so that the waters should not be released all
at once (III, p. 153).
The great work on natural history in the eighteenth century
was Count Buffon's Histoire Naturelle. The first volumes in the
series began to appear shortly after the publication of the last
volume of Pluche's popular compendium; and to the end of the
eighteenth century Buffon's masterpiece probably had a smaller,
though more select, public than Le Spectacle de la Nature.
Buffon was well aware of English cosmological thought as ex-
pressed by such writers as Whiston, Burnet, Woodward, Keill,
Ray, and Halley. Some were dismissed by him as undeserving
of serious notice. Whiston was "plus ingenieux que raisonnable, "
and Burnet a heterodox theologian with his head wrapped in
poetic visions. Woodward came out relatively well. Compared
with Whiston and Burnet, Buffon thought of him as a good ob-
server but even so "peu regIe dans ses idees. ,,32 Buffon's con-
ception of the hydrologic cycle was based on Halley's paper in
the Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society. Buffon,
however, has combined the hydrologic cycle with the erosional
work of streams.

32Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle

(2nd edition; Paris, 1750), I, pp. 66,67.

115
 That which produce the greatest and most widespread
changes on the surface of the earth are the waters
from the sky, the rivers, the streams and the tor-
rents. Their ultimate source goes back to the va-
pours which the sun raises from the surface of the
seas and which the winds carry to all the zones of
the earth. These vapours, held up by the air and
pushed about by the winds, attach themselves to the
mountain summits they encounter, and accumulate
there in such great quantity that they form clouds
continually and fall incessantly as rain, dew, mist
or snow. All these waters at first descend on the
plains without following any fixed route, but little by
little they deepen their bed. Seeking, by the natural
inclination of slopes, the lowest places in the moun-
tain and those rocks which are the easiest to cut or
penetrate, they have removed earths and sands, cut
deep ravines in the plains by their rapid flow and
have opened routes all the way to the sea, which re-
ceives as much water at her borders as she loses in
evaporation . . . [po 116].
But to Buffon it was the continual movement of the sea that
produced the initial great inequalities of the earth. The sea
currents have carved the valleys and built up the hills. The
waters from the sky, on the other hand, tended little by little to
destroy the work of the sea. They lowered the mountains, filled
up the valleys, the mouths of rivers and gulfs, and in this way
they eventually brought the land down to the level of the sea (p.
124). As to Burnet's notion that the inequalities on the surface
of the earth are a mark of imperfection, Buffon replied that they
are necessary to the preservation of life. If the earth had a
regular surface, a "triste mer" will cover the entire globe (p.
308). By contrast, we now have pleasant hills out of which fresh
waters run and these maintain the greenness of the earth. But
Buffon didn't wish to put too much weight on the "moral" argu-
ment. It sufficed for him to see that the irregularities are the
necessary consequences of physical forces (p. 309).
Buffon's famous Swedish contemporary, Karl von Linne
(Linnaeus, 1707 -1778), deserves brief mention here, more as
another illustration of the pervasiveness of a way of thinking than
because of any contribution Linnaeus has brought to it. In the

116
Oeconomy of Nature, Linnaeus asserts that all things in the uni-
verse declare to man the wisdom of the Creator; that in order
to perpetuate the established course of nature the divine wisdom
has arranged for all things to contribute to the preservation of
every species; that the death and destruction of one thing should
always be subservient to the restitution of another. No heavy
utilitarian streak mars the tone of the Linnaean discourse.
Mountains and valleys do not detract from the beauty of the earth;
they have a pleasant aspect, and moreover they increase the sur-
face area of land, allow different plants to thrive and enable rain
water to run in continual streams to the sea. The sea supplies
exhalations to the lower atmosphere which are condensed into
clouds and rain. Most of the rain falls over the mountains and
contributes to the springs and fountains that emerge at their
base.
The chief sources of rivers are fountains, and rills
growing by gradual supplies into still larger and
larger streams, till at last, after the conflux of a
vast number of them, they find no stop, but falling
into the sea with lessened rapidity, they there de-
posit the united stores they have gathered, along
with foreign matter, and such earthy substances, as
they tore off in their way. Thus the water returns
in a circle, whence it first drew its origin, that it
may act over the same scene again. 33
In England, the sea was considered by some to be unrea-
sonably large. Burnet postulated a primeval earth that had no
sea at all. others, in controverting Burnet, argued for the rea-
sonableness of the present size of the sea and drew on the hydro-
logic cycle for support. The Swedish naturalist Linnaeus
commended the hydrologic cycle as illustrating the wisdom of
God but his point of departured differed from that of English
scholars like Bentley, KeiIl, and Ray. In diametric opposition
to Burnet, Linnaeus postulated a primeval earth that was nearly
all water. He supported his thesis from the presence of fossil
sea shells on dry land and from the fact that rivers were even

33The quotation is from the Stillingfleet-Biberg translation of

Linnaeus f Oeconomia naturae; B. Stillingfleet, Miscellaneous
Tracts Relating to Natural History, Husbandry, and Physick .
(4th edition; London, 1791), p. 44.

117
now contributing to the growth of the continent by dumping mate-
rials along the shores. Linnaeus therefore conceived the or-
iginal Eden as an island where all the animals and plants, now
widely scattered over the earth, were conveniently gathered for
the service and pleasure of the first man. 34
Two English popularizers: Goldsmith and Wesley. Let us
return to England. In the last decades of the eighteenth century
there appeared in England two very popular natural histories
written by men who had won fame in other fields: Oliver
Goldsmith and John Wesley. Both authors drew heavily on the
findings of Continental authorities. We have noted that the chief
source for Goldsmith's Animated Nature was Buffon's Histoire
Naturelle. Another writer on whom Goldsmith depended-though
to a less extent than on Buffon-was Pluche. In discussing the
hydrologic cycle Goldsmith evaluated the rival hypotheses of
both the French hydrologist De la Hire and of Edmund Halley.
De la Hire contended-with an impressive display of experi-
mental evidence and calculations-that rains were quite incapable
of maintaining the flow of rivers; and that rivers, therefore,
must be supplied from the sea, strained through the pores of the
earth.35 Halley, on the other hand, attempted to demonstrate
that clouds alone yielded sufficient water for the supply of rivers.
Goldsmith thereupon remarked that an appeal to the seeming im-
partiality of mathematics did not of itself resolve the problem.
"Both sides have brought mathematics to their aid; and have
shown, that long and laborious calculations can at any time be
made, to obscure both sides of the question. 36 In Goldsmith's
time Halley's hypothesis enjoyed the greater popularity. Yet to
Goldsmith "it is still pressed with great difficulties." The

34Given in his address "Oratio de Telluris Habitabilis Incre-

mento, " 1743; see K. H. Hagberg, Carl Linnaeus, translated
from the Swedish by Alan Blair (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952),
pp. 198-199. Stillingfleet, pp. 66-68.
35For De la Hire's idea on the inadequacy of rainwater as
the source of springs, see his article "Remarque sur l'eau de
la pluie, & sur l'origine des Fontaines; avec quelques particu-
laritez sur la construction des Cisternes," Memoire de l'Acad-
emie Royale des Sciences, 1703 (Paris, 1705), pp. 56-69.
360liver Goldsmith, A History of the Earth and Animated Na-
ture (philadelphia, 1795), I, p. 123.

118
reader, he said, must be content to "settle in conscious ignor-
ance. "
To Goldsmith, ever since the "Wisest of the Jews" first
preached the cyclic course of all nature, the great circulation
of water that enabled the earth to maintain its fertility and ver-
dure has persistently attracted the curiosity of man, and "di-
vided the opinions of mankind, more than any other topic in
natural history" (p. 122). The hydrologic cycle found favour
because it excused the disproportionate size of the oceans and
argued for the fertility of the earth. It was Goldsmith's belief
that when we surveyed the surface of our globe the most obvious
beauty was its verdant covering (p. 19). However, he recog-
nized more fully than perhaps most of his eminent contempor-
aries that certain parts of the globe were desolate. Of the polar
regions he said "Nothing can be more mournful or hideous than
the picture which travellers present of those wretched regions"
(p. 17). Unlike Shaftesbury, Goldsmith had little appetite for
deserts which he characterized as "entirely barren, except
where they are found to produce serpents, and that in such
quantities, that some extensive plains seem almost entirely
covered with them" (p. 18).
In March 1775, John Wesley wrote: -''I had finished the ad-
ditions which I designed to make to the System of Natural Philos-
0phy' before I saw Dr. Goldsmith's 'History of the Earth and
Animated Nature.' It seemed to me, that had he published this
but a few years sooner, my design would have been quite super-
ceded. ,,37 However, the tone of Wesley's survey differs mark-
edly from that of Goldsmith. It is less objective and more
concerned with purpose. The basic sources are not the same.
Instead of the scientific writings of Buffon, Wesley depended on
the philosophical work of the German author John Francis
Buddaeus, and also on the works of such scientist-theologians
as Ray, Derham, and Niewentyt. The hydrologic cycle is a
prominent theme in the volume on physical geography. Thus,
of mountains Wesley wrote:
The benefit of mountains in general is not only,
that vapours driven against them are condensed,
so as to be precipitated through the chinks of the

37John Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation

(New edition; London, 1809), I, p. x.

119
 rocks, but that afterwards in their bowels they are
preserved till they form rivulets, and then rivers.
Vapours would fall in rain or dew though there
were no mountains, but then they would fall equally,
over considerable places of the globe at once and
so would be sucked deep in the ground, or make an
universal puddle; whereas by means of mountains
they are perpetually pouring down in particular
places, and treasuring up a constant supply to the
rivers [III, p. 9].
In discussing the distribution of land and water, Wesley par-
aphrased-and in several places repeated word for word-the
views of William Derham. Like Derham he claimed that the
present distribution of the waters and the dry land only seemed
undesigned to the careless looker; that in fact they showed a
"just equipoise, "and, moreover, are so ordered as to supply
no !'bare sufficiency" but a "surplusage" of waters to the land
(p. 30). There are, it is true, the !'vast sandy des arts of the
Mongol Tartars, "but, providentially, "wherever you dig there
rises fresh water. Were it not for this they must have been al-
together uninhabited, either by man or beast" (p. 36).
Christopher Packe, M. D. The author of A Dissertation
upon the Surface of the Earth, Christopher Packe, was neither
a prolific man of letters interested in the popularization of
science, nor a scientist of the stature of Buffon or Hutton. His
interest for us lies in one rather unusual idea which he developed
in the context of the hydrologic cycle. Packe was very proud of
his designs for a large-scaled map of East Kent. He described
it as a "Philosophico-Chorographical Chart, " and displayed a
sample, together with his explanations, to the Royal Society in
1736. The chart showed the ramifications of valleys (which he
compared with the veins of an animal body) in great detail. He
emphasized the "exact and uniform Regularity" of these valleys
and noted that they were adjusted to fit with the "known Motion"
of water. The routes for the conduction of water,
begin with the smallest and almost imperceptible
Depressions at the extremities of the Hills, which
deep !ning and wid 'ning by degrees into manifest
Channels are collected into Branches, and these
again into greater and greater, till by one common
Conveyance they disgorge themselves into the

120
 Marshes, and from thence into the Sea; the Land
all the way gradually descending thither. 38
The water is kept in constant circulation through the network
of channels,
by some Operation or other that continually exhales
an immense quantity of Vapours from both the Sea
and the Earth, which are condensed by the hills and
remanded by these Channels into the Sea; there
seems to be a constant Necessity for many, and
oftentimes for most of these Passages, according
to the Quantity of Dews, Rains and Springs that
need Avoidance into the main Collection [po 5].
However, Packe had to retreat almost immediately from
this position. Much of Kent is underlain by chalk and there are
many dry valleys.
Many of these Channels are always dry . . . even
in the wettest Seasons . . . So that whatever might
be the Original Use of these Vallies in Nature's
first Work, many of them must have been ever
since useless, as they are now [pp. 11-12].
What could have been the first use of these dry valleys?
Packe suggested that they were used for the drainage of the
Mosaic Deluge; that they were in fact caused by the withdrawal
of the Flood. But this regular system of channels sloping gently
to the sea also has a present use-for air drainage.
May not then these Vallies by dividing that Element
[air], replete with gross and faeculent Vapours,
into so many Streams, by continually agitating it
against the Hills, and running it in different Direc-
tions in these winding Channels, may they not purify
and volatilize it, and thereby preserve its Elasticity?
May they not by mixing the Land and Sea-Airs . .
and by blending them intimately together, greatly
fertilize the Soil, and promote the various Works
of Vegetation? [Pp. 12-13.]
But to Packe these were philosophical questions. He sub-
mitted that he had neither the ability nor the leisure to pursue

38Christopher Packe, A Dissertation upon the Surface of the

Earth, As Delineated in a Speciman of a Philosophico-
chorographical Chart of East Kent (London, 1737), p. 5.

121
them. He was content with the collection of facts, with noting
the exact and uniform "Regularity" of the valleys for the cir-
culation of the "Fluid, " the circulation itself being accountable
by the hydrologic Cycle.
The scientific statement. The scientific understanding of
the hydrologic cycle during the last quarter of the eighteenth
century may be illustrated from the writings of Dobson, Hutton,
Dalton, and Playfair. Again we shall see that even the scien-
tists, when they undertook to describe the hydrologic cycle, oc-
casionally slipped into a style of writing more expressive of
religious sentiment than of scientific detachment.
Hutton, Dalton, and Playfair are of course well-known
figures. Practically unknown is Dr. Dobson of Liverpool, whose
importance to us lies in his paper on annual evaporation at
Liverpool. This paper was communicated to the Royal Society,
not by Dobson, but by John Fothergill, a fellow of the Royal So-
ciety. Since Halley's famous work on the "Circulation of Watry
Vapours, " which saw print in 1693, the quantitative aspects of
the hydrologic cycle gained little attention in England. Dobson's
study came more than eighty years after Halley's. The neglect
was remarkable in view of the popularity and the almost con-
stant exploitation of the concept of the hydrologic cycle in
physico-theology .
An interesting difference in approach existed between
Halley's and Dobson's studies on the problems of evaporation,
stream flow, and the hydrologic cycle. They selected different
types of earth surface for emphasis. Halley calculated the
amount of vapour that would be removed from the Mediterranean
Sea during a summer day and compared the figure with the
amount of water returned to the sea by rivers in the same pe-
riod. There was a large discrepancy: far more was evaporated
from the sea than returned to it by rivers; and Halley suggested
that a large portion of the vapour lost during daytime was prob-
ably given back to the sea at night as dew and rain. Dobson, in
contrast, was interested in the problem of water balance over
land. To determine the relation between annual precipitation
and evaporation, he procured,
two well-varnished tin vessels; one of which was to
serve the purpose of a rain-gage; the other was to
be employed as . . . evaporating vessel. . . .
These vessels were placed in the middle of a

122
 grass-plot, on a rising ground adjoining and im-
mediately overlooking the town of Liverpool. 39
Records of monthly precipitation and evaporation were kept
during the years 1772-1775 inclusive, as well as temperature
and strength of wind, the latter designated by the number of dots.
According to Dobson, the records showed that annual precipita-
tion (37.43 inches) in Lancashire slightly exceeded the annual
evaporation (36.78 inches) even when the evaporation figures
were based on loss from surfaces of open water.
And we farther find, that the quantity exhaled from
the surface of the earth is little more than a sixth
part of what descends in rain; we must therefore
have very large supplies from other regions, from
the surrounding sea, and from the ocean of warmer
climates . . . [po 254}.
Dobson concluded his paper with a precis of the hydrologic
cycle, followed by the almost-to-be-anticipated encomium on
the wisdom of the ancient Preacher. So Lancashire imported
the bulk of its moisture from warmer seas:
These foreign supplies, however, are uniformly
restored to the sources from which they were de-
rived: for that proportion of rain which rises not
in vapour, after moistening and refreshing the
earth, forms springs, brooks, and rivers, and is
perpetually returning to the ocean whence it was
taken; so truly philosophical are the words of the
preacher when speaking of this vast circulation:
'All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not
full: unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again' [pp. 254-255}.
The fame of the Edinburgh physician, James Hutton, now
rests firmly on The Theory of the Earth. It is an accepted
classic in geology. Less widely known is the fact that in 1784,
several years before the publication of The Theory of the Earth,
Hutton read a paper called "The Theory of Rain" to the Royal
Society of Edinburgh. This paper lacks the substance and

39Dr. Dobson, "Observations on the Annual Evaporation at

Liverpool in Lancashire; and on Evaporation considered as a
Test of the Moisture or Dryness of the Atmosphere, " Philos.
Trans., Royal Society, LXVII (1777), 245.

123
originality of the later work, but is relevant to our theme in
several respects: for instance, it combined the concept of the
hydrologic cycle with the idea of the general wind circulation,
and these circulatory processes were thought by Hutton to il-
lustrate the wisdom and economy of nature. Also, in his dis-
cussion of the "design" of hydrologic processes he fell into the
common error of exaggerating the extent of fertile land. Sci-
entifically, the weakest point in "The Theory of Rain" is that,
unlike Dr. Dobson of Liverpool, Dr. Hutton of Edinburgh failed
to substantiate his ideas with experiments and calculations.
The main problem for Hutton was to explain condensation.
Hutton believed that water is condensed from atmospheric va-
pour when air of different temperature and sufficient degree of
saturation mix. It is a remarkable idea for his time. 40 That
condensation will take place when saturated air masses of sharp-
ly different temperatures meet is still a generally accepted idea
in meteorology. But present thinking is that only fog or low
cloud may be so produced, not rain. Also, what must appear
quaint to present thinking is the teleological principle that lies
at the basis of Hutton's theory of rain:
The law of nature, on which this theory of rain is
founded, may be now considered in relation to its
final cause; or how far it may appear to be conceived
in wisdom for the purpose of the world, as affording
a proper climate for plants and animals [po 48].
According to Hutton, if the laws governing evaporation and
condensation were any different from "that which has been now
established in nature, the summer's heat, which is the cause of
vegetation, could never have been attended, as at present, with
refreshing showers of rain" (p. 48). Hutton's expository style,
especially where he tries to develop a consistent theory, does
not encourage quotation at length. In substance what he said
was that if temperature alone governed the changes in the state
of water "the summer hemisphere of the globe would be parched
with drought, and the winter hemisphere deluged with rain" (p.
50). But, fortunately for the wise economy of the world, this is
not the case. Rain is the result of the mixing of saturated air

40James Hutton, "The Theory of Rain, " Royal Society of

Edinburgh, I, Part 2 (1788), 41-86; read by the author, Febru-
ary 2nd, 1784.

124
of different temperatures. Tropical air moves poleward and so
removes some of the heat from the torrid regions, while cold
air from the frigid regions moves equatorward and tempers
"the excessive heat that is excited upon the surface of the earth
in the summer solstice" (p. 48). This exchange is part of the
general circulation of the atmosphere but in the process of ex-
change and mixing, c1ouds-providentially-also form and rain
falls. In this system then we see,
that the cold regions of the polar circles are not use-
less and inactive in the operations of this world. In
like manner, the frozen regions of the Alpine situa-
tions of the Continent, serve a purpose . . . by pre-
serving, in the accumulated snows, a store of the
winter cold for the summer season; and thus pre-
paring cold portions of the atmosphere to be mixed
with the warmer portions, saturated with humidity,
and ready to produce rain [po 49].
Instead of an excess of cloud and condensation on the one
hand, and, on the other, of sunshine and evaporation, Hutton
saw in the present system a wise avoidance of extremes and yet
one so contrived as to boast "a variety of different degrees. "
It is a system in which "temperate drought and moisture, rain
and sunshine. . . are everywhere bestowed with the most provi-
dent attention." Perfection of design is evident "where such a
multitude of different beings, dependent on the various tempera-
ment of those opposite elements, are to be provided with the
necessary conditions for their life . . . [po 51J.
Hutton believed in the widespread occurrence of rain. "In
the actual system of the globe, " he wrote, "there is ample pro-
vision made, in general, for rain . . . . " He has, however, a
section entitled Of apparent Exceptions from the Generality of
Rain. For us who are familiar with the prominent patches of
lemon yellow on climate wall-maps and the knowledge that more
than a quarter of the earth's land surface is deficient in mois-
ture' it comes as a surprise to read Hutton and discover what
he conceived to be the exceptions to the "Generality of Rain. "
The Lower Egypt, and a narrow spot upon the
coast of Peru are the only examples we have of
this singular occurrence. It would have been im-
possible, a priori, to have concluded, that, of all
the places upon the earth, these two should have

125
 been those in which rain should not happen; the
knowledge of man, in tracing future effects from
known causes, will ever be, perhaps too imperfect
for such an understanding . . . . But, though we
may not form that judgment a priori, yet, finding
that these are the only places in which rain does
not fall, we may be allowed to conclude, that such
is the natural state of the winds about those places,
as to prevent the proper conditions for producing
rain [po 62].
It may be thought that these exceptions to the generality of
rain would be inconsistent with Hutton's theory. Not so, accord-
ing to Hutton.
That the greater part of the earth should be found
without rain, would certainly be inconsistent with
the theory, but that a particular spot or two, con-
taining no diversity of climate or of country, no
variation of mountain and of valley, should be
found without rain, instead of transgressing the
necessary conclusion of a generality with regard
to rain, confirms the theory [po 63].
Again we cannot but be impressed by Hutton's inability to
see the Sahara when he got as close to it as Lower Egypt. His
neglect of the great deserts of Tartary, when he could pick out
the dry spot in Peru, also seems, to say the least, wayward.
"The Theory of Rain" shows how theory can blind one to facts.
But where the facts appear to support the theory they are readily
acknowledged. Thus Hutton recognized that more rain falls over
the Great Lakes region of North America than over the Caspian
Sea of Asia. That "a greater quantity of rain falls upon a given
surface in the smaller continent of the new world, than upon a
similar one in the greater continent of the old" is, for Hutton,
a confirmation of his ideas (p. 70).
In Hutton's later and far more substantial work, Theory of
the Earth, the disquisition on the water cycle is short; and,
atypically for the work as a whole it is tinted by teleological
notions. The processes of the water circuit are linked to the
denudation of the land. It is this theme of land degradation,
which Hutton elaborated with remarkable detail, that is now his
chief clai m to originality in the history of geomorphological

126
thought. We may wonder to what extent his initial conception
of the denudation of the land is the result of his awareness of
certain implications of the water cycle. We have noted how the
theme of the "Dissolution of the Earth, " in which the concept of
the denudation of land to a common base-level is adumbrated,
has in fact grown out of a different intellectual root from that of
the water cycle. Writers who have treated of both (Hakewill and
Ray, for example), have treated them as separate themes.
Buffon may well have been aware of the linkage between them
since he provided a brief note on the power of streams to erode
within the broader context of the hydrologic cycle. Hutton was
probably also aware of the link. He saw water as "essential in
the constitution of the world, " that water "is the source of growth
and circulation to the organized bodies of this earth, in being the
receptacle of rivers, and the fountain of our vapours. ,,41 Physi-
cal geography manifests the wisdom of necessity. It is neces-
sary for a living world that the surface of the globe should
consist of both land and water.
It is necessary that the land should be solid and
stable, resisting with great power, the violent
efforts of the ocean; and, at the same time, that
this solid land should be resolved by the influence
of the sun and atmosphere, so as to decay, and
thus become a soil for vegetation. But these gen-
eral intentions are perfectly fulfilled in the con-
stitution of our earth [po 166].
And again in the following extract from the earlier version
(1788) of the Theory of the Earth, Hutton showed an awareness
of the relation of water circulation to the weathering of rocks
and the removal of the decayed layer by rivers.
Therefore, the surface of this land, inhabited by
man, and covered with plants and animals, is
made by nature to decay, in dissolving from that
hard and compact state in which it is found below
the soil; and this soil is necessarily washed away,
by the continual circulation of the water, running
from the summits of the mountains towards the

41Hutton, Theory of the Earth (New York: Stechert-Hafner,

1959), I, p. 7; first published, 1795.

127
 general receptacle of that fluid. 42
But the emphasis in Theory of the Earth was not on the
water cycle; it was on a segment of that cycle-the segment in
which waters ran downslope from the mountains to the sea and
performed the work of erosion.
A major weakness, we have noted, in Hutton's ideas on rain
and the hydrologic cycle was that he had not troubled to substan-
tiate them with calculations. Had he done so he could hardly
have avoided seeing, for example, the vast discrepancy between
the amount of water that his method of condensation could pro-
duce and the amount actually produced. In spite of the example
set by Halley, quantitative evaluations of the hydrologic cycle
were few and far between during the course of the eighteenth
century. Dobson's small essay was an exception. It attracted
the attention of John Dalton whose own meteorological essays
carried the quantitative characterization of the hydrologic cycle
a few steps further. Dalton in fact contributed significantly to
meteorology before he achieved lasting fame for his fundamental
work in chemistry. In 1793 there appeared a short essay of his
called "On Evaporation, Rain, Hail, Snow, and Dew." Certain
conclusions he then reached we still regard as in the main valid
today. Among them we may note in paraphrase the following:
1. Evaporation from land must on the whole be less than
the rain that falls upon land; otherwise there could be no rivers.
2. Evaporation is less in winter than in summer.
3. It seems probable that evaporation from both land and
water, in the temperate and frigid zones, is not equal to the
rain that falls there, even in summer.
4. The reason that a southwest wind in the temperate zone
brings rain seems to be that, coming from the torrid zone, it
is charged with vapour, and losing heat as it proceeds northward,
a precipitation of the vapour ensues; but a northeast wind, blow-
ing from a cold into a warmer country, has its capacity for va-
pour increased, and therefore it usually promotes evaporation.
5. More rain falls in mountainous than in level countries.
However, the relation between height of mountains and rain is
not perfectly clear. Thus Switzerland and the Alps do not in
general receive more rain than the north of England.

42Hutton, "Theory of the Earth, " Trans. Royal Society of

Edinburgh, I (1788), 214.

128
 6. Raindrops increase in size through the process of co-
alescence. 43
These conclusions of Dalton's would not look out of place in
a modern textbook on meteorology. But one that would i mmedi-
ately follows the coalescent theory of rain drops.
We should scarcely be excused, in concluding this
essay without calling the reader's attention for the
moment to the beneficent and wise laws established
by the Author of Nature, to provide for the various
exigencies of the sublunary creation, and to make the
several parts dependent upon each other, so as to
form one well regulated system, or whole. In the
torrid zone, and we may add in the temperate and
frigid zones also, in summer, the heat produced by
the action of the solar rays would be insupportable,
were not a large portion of it absorbed, in the pro-
cess of evaporation, into the atmosphere, without in-
creasing its temperature; this heat is again given out
in winter, when the vapour is condensed, and miti-
gates the severity of the cold . . . [po 137].
It is not only Dalton's reference to the beneficent Author of
Nature in an otherwise purely scientific essay that now seems to
us quaint. It is also his insistence on "one well regulated system
or whole." Belief in the wholeness of nature, intelligible in all
its multi-faceted relations to the human person, was still com-
monly held at that time. The belief needed no examination for it
was guaranteed by a particular conception of God.
In 1799 John Dalton read a paper to the Literary and Phil-
osophical Society of Manchester. The subject was: "Experiments
and Observations to determine whether the Quantity of RAIN and
DEW is equal to the Quantity of WATER carried off by the Rivers
and raised by Evaporation; with an Enquiry into the ORIGIN of
SPRINGS." In this paper Dalton sought to demonstrate the sup-
eriority of Halley's theory of springs and rivers to that of De La
Hire. We remember how Oliver Goldsmith was unable to judge
between them for both were based on experi ments and calcula-
tions. Dalton also sought to calculate the water balance for the
whole of England and Wales, thus going beyond the earlier effort
43John Dalton, "On Evaporation, Rain, Hail, Snow, and Dew, "
Sixth Essay in Meteorological Observations and Essays (2nd
edition; Manchester, 1834), pp. 130-136.

129
of Dobson who attempted to do this for Lancashire.
I think we may fairly conclude-that the rain and
dew of this country are equivalent to the quantity
of water carried off by evaporation and by the
rivers. And as nature acts upon general laws,
we ought to infer, that it must be the case in
every other country, until the contrary is proved. 44
At the beginning of this paper Dalton could not refrain from
expressing again his admiration for the beautiful system of na-
ture and for the provident, unceasing circulation of water.
It is scarcely possible to contemplate without ad-
miration the beautiful system of nature by which
the surface of the earth is continually supplied with
water, and that unceasing circulation of a fluid so
essentially necessary to the very being of the ani-
mal and vegetable kingdoms takes place [po 346].
Hutton's Theory of the Earth received little attention. The
neglect was at least in part the result of Hutton's turgid style.
This defect John Playfair undertook to remove~ In 1802 he pub-
lished the Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth.
Playfair expounded Hutton's basic themes in language far more
lucid than the original, and he provided further examples. The
Illustrations, though better received than the original Theory,
nevertheless had nothing like the popularity of the physico-
theological works such as those produced by Ray and his imita-
tor Paley, nor the apologetic opera known as the Bridgewater
Treatises.
In the course of expounding Hutton, Playfair explicitly joined
the geologic cycle to the hydrologic cycle (Fig. 9).
We have been long accustomed to admire that
beautiful contrivance in nature, by which the
water of the ocean, drawn up in vapour by the
atmosphere, imparts, in its descent, fertility to
the earth, and becomes the great cause of vegeta-
tion and of life; but now we find, that this vapour

44Dalton, "Experiments and Observations to determine whether

the Quantity of Rain and Dew is equal to the Quantity of Water
carried off by the Rivers and raised by Evaporation; With an
Enquiry into the Origin of Springs, " Memoirs of the Literary
and Philosophical SOCiety of Manchester, V, Part II (1802), 365.

130
 ,I
I

Fig. 9. Top: The hydro-geologic cycle according to John

Playfair. Bottom: The hydrologic cycle represented in a circu-
lar diagram. (Reproduced from Wisler and Brater, Hydrology,
by kind permission. )

131
 not only fertilizes, but creates the soil; prepares
it from the solid rock, and, after employing it in
the great operations of the surface, carries it back
into the regions where all its mineral characters
are renewed. Thus, the circulation of moisture
through the air, is a prime mover, not only in
the annual succession of seasons, but in the great
geological cycle, by which the waste and repro-
duction of entire continents is circumscribed. 45
A special merit of the Huttonian theory, Playfair added,
was that jt ascribed to the features of the earth's crust an order
similar to that which existed in the province of biology:
that it produces seas and continents, not by acci-
dent, but by the operation of regular and uniform
causes; that it makes the decay of one part sub-
servient to the restoration of another, and gives
stability to the whole, not by perpetuating individ-
uals but by reproducing them in succession [po 176].
A conclusion that Playfair drew from Hutton's theory was
that nature could not decay. Playfair compared Buffon's gloomy
view with that which he attributed to Hutton. Now, Buffon had
great merit, Playfair conceded, but his representation of the
earth as continually cooling and that this led to the final extinc-
tion of all life and motion was a "dismal and unphilosophic vi-
sion." It was unworthy of the genius of Buffon and "forms a
complete contrast to the theory of Dr. Hutton, where nothing is
to be seen beyond the continuation of the present order; where
no latent feed of evil threatens final destruction of the whole;
and where the movements are so perfect, that they can never
terminate of themselves." This, Playfair concluded, was
surely "a view of the world more suited to the dignity of Nature,
and the Wisdom of its Author, than has yet been offered by any
other system of cosmology" (p. 486).
More compliments to God: Nineteenth century. Playfair's
Illustrations may be taken as the last work in which theological
motivations have contributed towards a more comprehensive
grasp of the relatedness of the multifarious hydro-geological

45John Playfair, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the

Earth (Edinburgh, 1802), p. 128; reprinted with original pagina-
tion (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956).

132
processes. Thereafter, compliments continued to be lavished
on the Author of Nature but they were not based on fresh insights.
In physical geography the hydrologic cycle remained the most
serviceable concept to the apologist. It would be monotonous in
the extreme to quote from the many reputable authors in the first
half of the nineteenth century who trotted out the same concept
and seldom bothered even to vary the rhetoric. Some idea of
the cycle's persistence and popularity may be gained from the
following selections out of a long list.
William Paley's Natural Theology; or evidence of the exist-
ence and attributes of the Deity, Collected from the appearances
of nature was first published in 1802. Of this work James Paxton
wrote in 1826 that it enjoyed "universal and permanent esteem"
not only in England but also in France despite "the desolating in-
fluence of the Revolution. "46 Paley's treatment of the hydrologic
cycle was conventional and naive compared, for example, with
that of John Ray written one hundred years earlier. However,
Paley did reject the grosser forms of anthropocentric distortion.
Some have thought, that we have too much water upon
the globe, the sea occupying above three quarters of
its whole surface. But the expanse of ocean, im-
mense as it is, may be no more than sufficient to
fertilize the earth. Or, independently of this reason,
I know not why the sea may not have as good a right
to its place as the land. It may proportionably sup-
port as many inhabitants; minister to as large an
aggregate of enjoyment. The land only affords a
habitable surface; the sea is habitable to a great
depth. 47
John Bird Sumner, a Fellow of Eton College, wrote A
Treatise on the Records of the Creation, and on the moral at-
tributes of the Creator; with particular reference to the Jewish
history, and to the consistency of the principle of population
with the wisdom and goodness of the Deity, 2nd edition, London
1818. The book's second chapter is called "On the Opinion
which ascribes the Formation of the World to Chance." In this
chapter the hydrologic cycle was introduced as an overpowering

46James Paxton, Illustrations of Paley's Natural Theology

(Oxford, 1826), dedicatory page to the Bishop of Durham.
47William Paley, Natural Theology (Stereotype edition;
Boston, 1836), p. 210; first published, 1802.
133
argument against chance. 48 Its services were also called upon
in the chapter "On the Wisdom of the Creator" (IT, pp. 23-24).
William Buckland's inaugural lecture at Oxford, Vindiciae
Geologicae, was published in 1820. In the dedication to the
Chancellor of the University, Buckland explained his purpose
as: "to show that the study of geology has a tendency to confirm
the evidences of natural religion; and that the facts developed by
it are consistent with the accounts of the creation and deluge re-
corded in the Mosaic writings. ,,49 Thousands of examples,
Buckland claimed, can be adduced from geology to demonstrate
the design and "benevolent contrivance" of the Omnipotent Ar-
chitect: Among the few he picked for special consideration was
the hydrologic cycle. It was in the hydrologic cycle-this "won-
derful and unceasing circulation"-that "we find such undeniable
proofs of a nicely balanced adaptation of means to ends, of wise
foresight and benevolent intention and infinite power, that he
must be blind indeed, who refuses to recognize in them proofs
of the most exalted attributes of the Creator" (p. 13).
The theme of the hydrologic cycle was sufficiently impor-
tant to Buckland for him to reintroduce it in his Bridgewater
Treatise which bears the title Geology and Mineralogy, con-
sidered with reference to Natural Theology (1836). In this
work, published at a time when geology was about to be trans-
formed under the impact of Charles Lyell, Buckland saw fit to
pay homage to John Ray whom he called "one of our earliest
and most original writers on Physico-theology. "50
The Bridgewater Treatises themselves proved to be the
last formal occasion when natural theology and science could be
treated as but different routes to the same end-the understand-
ing of nature. If the Right Honourable and Reverend Francis
Henry, the Earl of Bridgewater (1756-1829), had died some
twenty years later, it seems improbable that his will could be
strictly carried out. For his will was that the president of the

48John Bird Sumner, A Treatise on the Records of the Creation

(2nd edition; London, 1818), I, pp. 53-54.
49William Buckland, Vindiciae Geologicae (Oxford, 1820),
dedicatory page to William Wyndham, Chancellor of the Uni-
versity of Oxford.
50Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy, Considered with refer-
ence to Natural Theology (London, 1836), p. 555.

134
most prestigious scientific body in England, the Royal Society,
should appoint scholars to write On the Power, Wisdom, and
Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation. All reasonable
arguments were to be used, "as for instance the variety and
formation of God's creatures in the animal, vegetable, and
mineral kingdoms; the effect of digestion, and thereby of con-
version; the construction of the hand of man, and an infinite
variety of other arguments; as also discoveries ancient and
modern, in arts, sciences, and the whole extent of litera-
ture. ,,51 Of the eight contributors to the Bridgewater Treatises,
six were in fact Fellows of the Royal Society. All, with the ex-
ceptions of Thomas Chalmers who was a professor of Divinity,
had been trained in either the physical or the medical sciences.
Some of the treatises appear to have been popular. The work
of John Kidd, for example, first appeared in 1833 but required
a fifth edition in 1837 and reached a sixth edition in 1852. The
treatise by William Whewell reached a seventh edition in 1839.
The last publication of the entire series (in ten volumes) oc-
curred between 1852 and 1869.
We should note that the treatises were written in the popu-
lar style. Although some of the authors were distinguished
scientists they made little attempt to be either very scientific
or original in the Bridgewater expositions. John Kidd, for ex-
ample, was a professor first of chemistry, then of medicine,
at Oxford. He authored the Outlines of Mineralogy (1809),
which was a worthy contribution to a new field in two volumes,
but he showed his interest in religion by publishing in 1824 a
book on comparative anatomy, the main purpose of which was
to provide further illustrations to Paley's Natural Theology. 52
Earlier, in 1815, he examined the relation between geology and
Mosaic history in a chapter of his otherwise unenthusiastic study
called A Geological Essay on the Imperfect Evidence in support
of a Theory of the Earth. The care with which Kidd habitually
evaluated evidence and wrote was exemplified by the wording
of his conclusion: "the science of geology is at present so

51 Prefatory notice, with list of Bridgewater lecturers, in

each of the separate Bridgewater treatises.
52John Kidd, An Introductory Lecture to a Course in Compara-
tive Anatomy, illustrative of Paley's Natural Theology (Oxford,
1824) .

135
completely in its infancy as to render hopeless any attempt at
successful generalization, and may therefore be induced to
persevere with patience in the accumulation of useful facts. "53
However, Kidd discarded caution in his Bridgewater treatise
and wrote much of it in purple prose. Especially evident is this
in the short section on the uses of water and on the hydrologic
cycle. On the uses of water Kidd declaimed:
How great is the comfort, to say nothing of the
salubrity of the practice, which results to him
from the application of water to the surface of
the body, by means either of the bath or any
simple process! and again, the change of linen
in which he is partially clothed is rendered
equally comfortable and salutary, in consequence
of its having been previously submitted to the pro-
cess of washing. The infusion of coffee or of tea,
which is probably an essential part of his earliest
meal, could not have been prepared without water .
._ . . 54
On the hydrologic cycle Kidd was disarmingly unoriginal.
He simply expressed an unclouded faith in the providential ar-
rangement of the earth for the health and the commercial needs
of man.
Thus while we have seen the air of the atmosphere
serving as the reservoir of that mass of water from
whence clouds of rain, and consequently springs
and rivers are derived, we have also seen that it
at the same time prevents, by the effect of its pres-
sure on their surface, the unlimited evaporation of
the ocean, and other sources, from whence that
mass of water is supplied. And again, while the
agitation of the air contributes to the health of man,
by supplying those currents which remove or pre-
vent the accumulation of local impurities, it at the
same time facilitates the intercourse between dif-
ferent nations in which the welfare of the whole

53Kidd, A Geological Essay on the Imperfect Evidence in Sup-

port of a Theory of the Earth (Oxford, 1815), p. 269.
54Kidd, On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical
Condition of Man (5th edition; London, 1837), p. 110.

136
 world is ultimately concerned. 55
William Prout, F. R. S. did pioneer work in physiological
chemistry. He discovered, among other things, that the excre-
ment of the boa-constrictor contained ninety percent of uric
acid. His Bridgewater treatise bears the hodge-podge title
Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, con-
sidered with reference to Natural Theology. First published in
1834, it required a third edition in 1845. The work has little
value from either a scientific or a theological point of view. It
is divided into two books, one on chemistry and the other on
meteorology, the two having little to do with each other. In the
section on meteorology the strongest evidence for "the agency
of an intelligent Being operating with some ulterior purpose" is
the distribution of water over the globe. "What would be the
result, for instance, if the Pacific or the Atlantic oceans were
to be converted into continents? Would not the climates of the
existing continents . . . be completely changed by such an ad-
dition to the land, and the whole of their fertile regions be re-
duced to arid deserts ?"56 Thus the complicated arguments of
the Burnet-Keill controversy were reduced-by the time of the
Bridgewater writers-to a pair of shop-worn, rhetorical ques-
tions.
Perhaps the most popular of the Bridgewater series was the
one by William Whewell, in which astronomy and general phys-
ics were considered in relation to natural theology. A man of
great physical and mental energies, Whewell had written on
mineralogy, physics, mathematics, architecture, history of
science, moral philosophy, and much else besides. His most
substantial contributions were to the history and philosophy of

55Ibid., pp. 151-152. The chief authority for Kidd's account

of the hydrologic cycle was Lucretius. This is peculiar for al-
though in De rerum natura, Bk. VI, Lucretius interprets the
stability of sea level as the result of balance between intake
from rivers and removal by evaporation, he explains the origin
of springs and rivers as the result of the subterranean infiltra-
tion of sea water. Moreover, the Lucretian world-view is
hardly compatible with that of a natural theologian.
56William Prout, Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function
of Digestion, considered with reference to Natural Theology
(London, 1834), p. 186.

137
IIi
I
"

I,
!

the inductive sciences, and to the theory of tides. His reputa-

tion with general readers was launched, however, with the
Bridgewater treatise. Of all the comments on the hydrologic
cycle in the Bridgewater series, that of Whewell was the most
restrained and precise. Dalton's work on evaporation provided
a sound basis for his discourse on "The Laws of Heat with re-
spect to Water." Whewell recognized the compound nature of
water circulation; i. e., the existence of "a narrower circle be-
tween the evaporation and precipitation of the land itself, . . .
and a wider interchange between the sea and the lands which
feed the springs. ,,57 He lent his weight to the commonly held
opinion that large oceans were necessary to the maintenance of
life on land. "It appears then that the magnitude of the ocean
is one of the conditions to which the structure of all organized
beings which are dependent upon climate must be adapted" (p.
53) .
Taking the Bridgewater treatises as a whole, arguments
for the wisdom and providence of God were based primarily on
anatomieal evidence, to a less extent on astronomical evidence,
and least-except for William Buckland's contribution-on the
facts of geology and physical geography. High regard for an-
atomical evidence was already apparent during the time of
Newton and Boyle. Newton believed that the mechanism of the
eye could only be intelligible through reference to the Creator.
And Boyle thought that "there is more of admirable Contrivance
in a Mans Muscles, than in (what we yet know of) the Celestial
Orbs. ,,58 Where the earth itself is examined for evidence of
design the hydrologic cycle makes an almost unfailing appear-
ance. We have come to expect it as a focus for religious senti-
ment in apologetic literature; more surprising is that the cycle
can excite fervor even in works of a purely scientific and tech-
nical nature. An example is J. F. Daniell's Meteorological
Essays and Observations (1823). The book is unadorned except
for graphs of monthly temperature, dew-point, and the statisti-
cal tables. Daniell was the inventor of a simple but effective

57William Whewell, Astronomy and General Physics Consid-

ered with Reference to Natural Theology (7th edition; London,
1839), p. 94.
58Robert Boyle, A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Na-
tural Things (London, 1688), p. 43.

138
hygrometer; and having found the means of determining humidity
with some accuracy he was led "to commence a series of ob-
servations; more with a view of trying the powers of the instru-
ment, than of entering fully upon the general subject." However,
the contemplation of the hydrologic cycle caused him to depart
from the cool prose of science, as the following passage-quite
at variance with the style of the rest of the text-shows: "In
tracing the harmonious results of such discordant operations,
it is impossible not to pause, to offer up a humble tribute of
admiration of the designs of a beneficent Providence . . . . "59
Relation to geologic cycle. A feature that is notably lacking
in much of the physico-theological literature of the early nine-
teenth century is any comment on the geological processes of
erosion and deposition. Such processes are easily subsumed
under the scheme of the hydrologic cycle. We have noted that
Ray, Buffon, and Hutton have all indicated an awareness of how
geological processes might operate in a segment of the water
circuit. Playfair in 1802 explicitly linked the water and the
geologic cycles. But the fact that rivers, as they move from
their mountain sources to the sea, would erode the deposit is
neglected by the Bridgewater writers. One reason may be that
geological processes were not thought of as cyclic. Erosion
and deposition serve to bring about the "dissolution of the earth. "
Such processes are progressive and must lead in time to the re-
duction of the land to the level of the sea. Hakewill, who argued
against the earth's dissolution, had difficulty in explaining away
the inevitable consequence of prolonged erosion. The only an-
swer to this problem, one that would make geological processes
cyclic, had been suggested by Philo at the beginning of the
Christian era. The answer was (and is) that mountains are
worn down but they also grow. The idea received of course
much fuller treatment more than seventeen centuries later in
Hutton's Theory of the Earth; and it was given further polish by
Playfair. However, neither Hutton nor Playfair left much i m-
pact on the science and theology of the early decades of the
nineteenth century. Although they laid the foundations of mod-
ern geology it was Charles Lyell who succeeded in battering
down the old cataclYSmiC beliefs, and substituted in their place

59 J.F. Daniell, Meteorological Essays and Observations

(London, 1823), p. 131.

139
I
the doctrine of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is sym-
I
pathetic to the notion of "order" and "wise economy" in physico-
theology but antipathetic to the notion of "decree." The Mosaic
deluge appeared by decree. A catastrophist like William
Buckland, whose influence temporarily put the theories of Hutton
and Playfair in the shade, emphasized "order" and "wise econ-
omy" when he wished to consider the present patterns and op-
erations of the earth; that old stand-by, the hydrologic cycle,
served this purpose well. But when the subject was geologic
history-how the present configuration of the earth came about-
belief in "wise economy" gave way to belief in catastrophic
events. Charles Lyell, although he eschewed theology in sci-
ence, nevertheless may be said to have extended the philosphy
of ''Wise economy" to the operations of the past. Like Hutton
and Playfair before him, Lyell combined the water and the
geologic cycles.
It is well known that the lands elevated above the
sea attract, in proportion to their volume and
density, a larger quantity of that aqueous vapour
which the heated atmosphere continually absorbs
from the surface of lakes and the ocean. By these
means, the higher regions become perpetual res-
ervoirs of water, which descend and irrigate the
lower valleys and plains. In consequence of this
provision, almost all the water is first carried
to the highest regions, and is then made to descend
by steep declivities towards the sea; so that it ac-
quires superior velocity, and removes a greater
quantity of soil, than it would do if the rain had
been destributed over the plains and mountains
equally in proportion to their relative areas. Al-
most all the water is also made by these means to
pass over the greatest distances which each region
affords, before it can regain the sea. 60
In this extract Lyell drew attention to the relation between
stream velocity and erosive power, between stream velocity
and steepness of slope, and noted that water would have ac-
quired less velocity if the rains were not concentrated in regions

60Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (3rd edition; London,

1835), I, pp. 246-247.

140
of steep declivity, the mountains. Lyell was of courSe distin-
guished not for his contribution to the hydrologic cycle but for
his many detailed descriptions of the work of streams and for
the inferences he drew from them. The quotation merely serves
to show that Lyell recognized the work of rivers within the
broad context of the hydrologic cycle.
A contemporary figure of far less importance than Charles
Lyell in the history of ideas was John Macculloch, M. D., F. R. S. ,
F. L. S., F. G. S., etc. Yet we may mention him here for his intui-
tive grasp of a dynamic principle in soil formation. This occurs
in a physico-theological work that is otherwise undistinguished.
First, let us look at his naively sketched hydrologic cycle:
The clouds are raised from the sea in a tenfold
proportion compared to the land; but in this pro-
portion they do not fall into the sea again.
Whether the efficient cause is here also to be
sought in electricity, we can at least see the rea-
son, and why, above all, they seek the mountains.
The land was to be their destination; for their of-
fice was to bring food to the vegetable world. The
declivity of the mountains demand also a larger
supply, since the water cannot there rest: while to
them, further, is it committed to distribute the
streams to the lower lands, as the heart of this
vital circulation. 61
There is not much in this, but on soil formation he was
better. According to Macculloch, we owe to mountains not only
the descent of the rains and "the whole machinery of circulating
waters" but also, as a primary and useful effect,
the immediate cause of the renewal of the soil;
renewing also, as it removed.
Mountains are mere provisions for eventual
soil, stored up by the Creator for the production
and the perpetual renewal of the agricultural sur-
face [I, p. 154].
Macculloch appears to have sensed that soil-forming pro-
cesses are in some sort of adjustment with erosional processes.
In modern terms, we should speak of weathering and denudation

61 John Macculloch, Proofs and Illustrations of the Attributes

of God (London, 1837), n, p. 263.

141
acting in dynamic equilibrium.
If the naked rock was first covered with soil
[by chemical action], thus is the existing soil
for ever renewed, as it is forever removed.
And if every shower washes down to a lower
level that of the upper ones, the same effects,
on a larger scale, are seen in the turbid enlarge-
ments of rivers, where the act of deposition is
familiar. . . . And it is plain, that under such a
system, the upper lands would soon become naked
and barren, were it not for the chemical provision
.vhich I have pointed out; since it is under this
power, chiefly, if not solely, that the rocks con-
stitute the fountain of perpetual supply [po 155].
Relatively few writers saw the geologic processes of ero-
sion and deposition as forming a subsystem within the system
of the hydrologic cycle. They were (and are) usually treated
separately. It remains for me to mention one writer who recog-
nized the relationship and then explicitly denied the effectiveness
of the geologic segment of the cycle. He was Granville Penn.
In a book called A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and
Mosaic Geologies (1822), Penn went beyond the Simple laudation
of the hydrolOgiC cycle as evidence of divine wisdom by ascrib-
ing the cutting of valleys directly to God. According to Penn,
when flood-water reached a flat plain its natural tendency was
to spread out. Flood-water could only flow in confined channels
as rivers where the trenches were already in existence. That
people believed otherwise only showed a confusion of cause for
effect and a lack of perspicacity in field observation. However,
to those who subscribed to Mosaic geology and to the philosophy
of Newton and Bacon, it was God who "cut out the rivers among
the rocks (Job, 28:10)" and "sent the springs into the valleys
(Psalms, 104: 10)." The appeal to Moses, Newton, and Bacon as
comparable authorities all speaking for the same side must now
seem to us unusual. Penn continued:
Nor did the consequence, and therefore the end of
this admirable arrangement, escape their discern-
ment; for 'all the rivers run into the sea; yet, the
sea is not full; from the place from whence the
rivers come, thither they return again.' The first
direction of the waters, from their sources into

142
 the valleys; their process from the valleys along
the plains, and below the surface of the plains to
their respective seas; from which general re-
ceptacle they are again raised by evaporation into
clouds, which are returned by the winds to the
mountain chains, and, in the form of rain, or
snow, continually replenish the sources, in
perpetual circulation; constitute a system so pro-
foundly stamped with the characters of intelligence
and power, that they can never be attributed by any
one, whose mind is in the smallest degree imbued
with Bacon'S or Newton's philosophy, to any other
cause, than that which originally caused the uni-
versal system of animal and vegetable life which
that circulation of waters is destined to sus-
tain . . . . 62
Penn criticized D' Aubuisson for suggesting the erosional
origin of the valley system; it would have been much more apt,
he thought, to compare the circulation of waters to the vascular
system of animals and vegetables.
Is it not astonishing [that one should ascribe] the
admirable and stupendous fluvial system to the
same blind cause which furrows a sloping foot-
path after a violent shower; rather than to the
Intelligent Cause, which contrived and executed
the vascular system in created animals and veg-
etables? [P.379,]
The well-watered earth. The linkage of topographic changes
brought about by streams to the general circulation of air and
water was a weak one compared with the association between the
hydrologic cycle and the belief in the widespread occurrence of
well-watered land. We have noted how the belief arose in the
course of the Burnet-Keill controversy. Throughout the eight-
eenth century and in at least the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, whenever the circulation of water was praised it was
praised because it provided the mechanism for the fertilization
of the land. If scholars at the end of the eighteenth century had
wanted to know the extent of deserts in the world, they could

62Granville Penn, A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and

Mosaic Geologies (London, 1822), pp. 377-378.

143
have obtained a fairly accurate picture from the descriptive
geographies of travellers and explorers. But on the whole they
chose to ignore them, not only the apologists but also scholars
without overt theological bias like James Hutton. It has been
pointed out that our acceptance of the extent of dry climates in
the world is remarkably late, and that this was in part due to
the dominance of the Greek temperature zones in climatologic
thinking. The doctrine of the providence of God and the justifi-
cation of that doctrine on the basis of the hydrologic cycle was
another factor that led to the slighting of the dry lands. It
should also be added that scholars of northwestern Europe were
helped in their delusion by the well-watered-and even drenched-
landscapes they saw constantly about them.
There are of course exceptions. Bernhard Varenius lived
in a country wrested from water and constantly threatened by it.
Nevertheless his awareness of alien scenes such as deserts was
remarkable-to the extent of classifying them into different
types: sandy, stony, and heath-covered. In contrast, for ex-
ample, to. Hutton who, almost a century and a half after Varenius'
death, saw truly dry areas only in one or two spots, Varenius
acknowledged their presence over broad expanses of Africa,
Arabia, and Inner Asia. 63 In eighteenth-century England the
idea of a well-watered earth was an unexamined article of faith
to those who have fallen for the persuasiveness of the hydrologic
cycle and to those who have allowed themselves to generalize
from very limited experience. We may take it that the Scottish
poet James Thomson displayed a not uncommon attitude when he
characterized "nature's universal robe" as "green. "64 However,
a philosophical Deist like Shaftesbury could affc'd to acknowledge
the existence of "vast Deserts, " and even to rejoice in them for
to Shaftesbury no part of the entire "map of nature" was unworthy
of reverence.
In the nineteenth century it became increasingly difficult to
ignore the existence of deserts as the size and nature of these
barren areas were better and more Widely known. A book writ-
ten for popular consumption called Curiosities of Physical Geog-
raphy and published in 1845 gave the extent of the Sahara as two

63Bernhardus Varenius, Cosmography and Geography . . .

(London, 1682), p. 56.
64James Thomson, Seasons, I, 83; first published, 1730.

144
and a-half million square miles or more than two-thirds of the
area of Europe. 65 Jefferys Taylor's A New Description of the
Earth, considered chiefly as a residence for man (1832) drew
attention to the fact that, "A very large portion of Mrica is like
nothing so much as a boundless sea of burning sand!" To make
sure that the point was taken he went on to elaborate: "Tracts
of land of prodigious extent are there composed not of earth or
clay, moistened, as in England, with waters from showers and
springs; but of dry, dusty, and dazzling sand, heated so con-
stantly by the rays of the sun, as to scorch and blister, in the
most dreadful degree, the feet of the wretched travellers in
those fierce deserts. "66 Since Taylor's book was written largely
with the intent to demonstrate the wisdom of God, the large des-
erts presented an awkward problem. He resolved it rather lamely
by claiming "it is seldom the case that the natives of any country,
however severe the climate and barren the soil, are discontent-
ed with it" (p. 86). Of interest aisc is the section on the hydro-
logic cycle that appears fewer than twenty pages later in the
same book; here Taylor pushed the deserts into the background
and argued, as had so many before and after him, that "the
prodigious ocean is no larger than is needful to supply that im-
mense treasury of the clouds, whereby the surface of the four
continents is to be in turn visited and supplied" (p. 103).
By the middle of the nineteenth century the distribution and
approximate size of the various deserts were known in some de-
tail. The Berghaus atlas and that of A. K. Johnston revealed
the extent of knowledge in the first part of the nineteenth century.
The Berghaus hyetographic plate of 1841 showed three "rainless
districts" as well as several other areas of low rainfall in the
southern hemisphere. The plate was reproduced with minor
modifications by Johnston in 1848. The two largest "rainless
districts"-the Sahara-Persian desert and the Shamo (Gobi)-
were estimated to have areas of three and two million square
miles respectively. 67 Among books Mary Somerville's Physical
65W. Wittich, Curiosities of Physical Geography (London,
1845), p. 157.
66Jefferys Taylor, A New Description of the Earth, . . .
(London, 1832), p. 84.
67 A. K. Johnston, The Physical Atlas (Edinburgh, 1848). The
IfHyetographic or Rain Map of the World" is based on H.
Berghaus' Hyetographische Karte der Erde (Gotha, 1841).

145
Geography portrayed realistically the prevalence of drought over
enormous tracts of land. She described the air in the interior
of North America, ASia, and New Holland as continually dry,
and said that much of Africa was "doomed to perpetual steril-
ity. ,,68 Against the amount of factual information that was avail-
able, it is indeed surprising that so many writers, some
regarded as distinguished men of science by their contempor-
aries, could so blandly overlook an awkward fact in their attach-
ment to the concept of the hydrologic cycle and to the theological
comforts it sustained. The "wonderful and unceasing circula-
tion" of water continued to exercise a certain fascination for
scholars in the later half of the century. Elisee Reclus,
Archibald Geikie, T. H, Huxley, and N. S. Shaler have all
written of it in varying degrees of eloquence; although their
language was, on the whole, more subdued than those who lived
a generation earlier,
But in the middle of the nineteenth century the contempla-
tion of the ceaseless movement of water in the service of all
living creatures, and in particular of men, could still call forth
an uninhibited paean. And, moreover, the use of an elevated
style to deliver the bare facts of geography (as we now see them)
did not seem out of place to a sophisticated audience. In 1849
Arnold Guyot, the well-known Swiss professor of physical geog-
raphy and history, gave a series of lectures in Boston on "The
Earth and Man." Though the lectures were delivered in French
they commanded a large and attentive American audience, and
they were thought to have sufficient interest to warrant transla-
tion and publication in the newspapers the following day. Guyot
began his lectures by claiming inorganic nature for the service
of organized nature, the whole globe for man, and all for God.
On the theme of the hydrologic cycle he asked his audience to
look upon the continents and oceans as more than simply related
by geographical contiguity:
At present, gentlemen, we know in their characters
and in their contrast, the continental hemisphere
and the oceanic hemisphere; the land and the water.
. . . We are so much in the habit of these two ele-
ments, the dry and the moist, pervading and

68Mary Somerville, Physical Geography (3rd edition; London,

1851), II, p. 58.

146
 penetrating one another, that we have some diffi-
culty in figuring to ourselves a state of things
wherein the two spheres would be total strangers.
We forget that it is to the ocean we owe these bene-
ficent rains, which refresh and vivify all nature;
those springs which quench our thirst; those streams
and rivers which fertilize our valleys and our
plains . . . we scarcely dream that if the ocean
ceased to send to the continents the supply of water
necessary to their daily life, the parched and arid
earth would soon see all the organized beings that
live upon its surface perish in pain and anguish.
69

69 Arnold Guyot, The Earth and Man (Boston, 1851), pp. 129-
130.

147
 POSTSCRIPT

The need to rationalize surface configurations so that they can

be shown to illustrate Wisdom declined noticeably in the second
half of the nineteenth century. Popular expositions on the wise
economy of nature still sought the support of the hydrologic cy-
cle; Thomas Huxley himself nodded in the direction of Eccle-
siastes. But philosophical debate in the later part of the
nineteenth century veered sharply from traditional themes as a
result of the explosive ideas introduced by Charles Darwin. A
new notion of fitness, dynamic and evolutionary, came into be-
ing which bore little resemblance to the older concepts of fitness
and order in nature, and of divine providence.
Before the Darwinian thesis took hold, to educated Euro-
peans nature appeared mainly in two aspects: as God's creation
and therefore infinitely pliable to the exigencies of His mood,
and as God's creation and therefore reflecting, however dimly,
His own perfection. The first aspect shows God as the omnip-
otent law-giver. Both man and nature are subject to His wrath,
a fact reflected in the list of cataclysmic events in both earth
and human history. The second aspect reveals God as eternal
wisdom, symbolized by the circle. These two world-views are
deeply rooted in the ancient civilizations of the eastern Med-
iterranean. We may label the one Hebraic and the other Greek.
They have never been successfully reconciled. In the same
author, and indeed often in the same book, they appear incon-
gruously side by side. The stars in their unchanging circular
courses display the wisdom and eternity of God. The earth,
however, reveals a Creator who has been obliged to interfere,
from time to time, with the course of nature by special decree.
In the second half of the seventeenth century the circle of
perfection still had its supporters although it was widely ru-
mored to be out of shape. The planets no longer have circular
courses but a Cambridge mathematician, even as late as 1696,
could still assert that all the planetary orbits are either truly
circular or ''not very much different from the same." The end
of the seventeenth century was also a time when the geometric

149
harmonies of the earth were being vigorously advocated. One
could not claim the earth as possessing the harmony of a per-
fect sphere; the mountains and the seas plead too obviously
otherwise But one could claim for the earth a sort of higher
0

harmony based on the concept of the hydrologic cycle. We have

seen how this claim was persistently pursued until the middle
of the nineteenth century.
When the scholar harboring two world-views, Hebraic and
Greek, confined his attention to the earth, their incompatibility
could hardly be ignored much longer. Yet for a time it was.
Thus William Buckland was a catastrophist when he looked into
the past configurations of the earth; but in contemplating the
present arrangement of land and sea, mountain and valley, he
could only see-through the conceptual spectacles of the hydro-
logic cycle-perfect harmony. Charles Lyell, James Hutton,
and John Playfair may be said to have given up the Hebraic God
when they projected the harmonies of the present into the past.
Hutton and Playfair, in particular, have reinforced the harmon-
ies of the earth by adding the denudational cycles to the hydro-
logic cycle. Both have praised the hydrologic cycle as
manifesting divine wisdom. To them, the denudational cycle
too displayed ''beautiful economy." When an astronomer con-
templates the planets he may well say that, in their orbits, he
can find "no vestige of a beginning, -no prospect of an end. "
But it was of the earth that Hutton offered this much-quoted ob-
servation; there lay his claim to originality. The earth at last
acquired a degree of the cyclic perfection that formerly could
be discerned only in the heavens.
When the planetary orbits were found to be imperfectly cir-
cular, only the purely geometric face of the circle was marred ..
Circle in the dynamic sense of "cycle" remained a valid inter-
pretation of nature and of natural events. The cycle has neither
beginning nor end. A world consisting solely of cyclic events
is a perfectly ordered world, no more subject to progressive
change than perfection or God.
The circle was broken by the New Astronomy. For a time,
one could still see in the cycle the manifestation of God's wis-
dom. In the later part of the nineteenth century, with the rise
of Darwin's theory of evolution, the cycle too was rendered awry
by the anisotropic pressure of geologic time.

150
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