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The latter remarks with amazement on the perfectly natural appearance of these Algonkian limestones resting in seeming conformability on Cretaceous shales, and says that the line of separation between them, called in the theory the "thrust plane," resembles in all respects an ordinary stratification plane.
Our last fact demands a somewhat more extended consideration; but it may be stated in advance briefly as follows: In very numerous cases and over hundreds and even thousands of square miles, the conformable conditions specified in the previous fact are exactly reproduced upside down; that is, very "old" rocks occur with just as much appearance of natural conformability on top of very "young" rocks, the area in some instances covering many hundreds of square miles, and in one particular instance in Montana and Alberta covering about five or six thousand square miles of area.
We feel this conformity by the means of agreeable sensation, but we arrive at no representation of it, either clear or confused. Pleasure is free when we represent to ourselves the conformability, and when the sensation that accompanies this representation is agreeable.
The truth is, that both equally illustrate the classic spirit, the spirit of their age par excellence and of French painting in general, in a supreme degree, though the conformability of the one is positive and of the other passive, so to say; and that neither illustrates quite the subserviency to the conventional which we, who have undoubtedly just as many conventions of our own, are wont to ascribe to them, and to Lebrun in particular.
To things as things in themselves, conformability to law must necessarily belong independently of an understanding to cognize them. But phenomena are only representations of things which are utterly unknown in respect to what they are in themselves. But as mere representations, they stand under no law of conjunction except that which the conjoining faculty prescribes.
We call such a metaphysical cause, to which we have to ascribe freedom and intelligence in the highest degree, God; and we call its free position in reference to the world, the government of the world, or providence. The other conclusion leads us to the acknowledgment of a connection of providence with conformability to law in the actions of all forces and qualities in the world.
Whether that which truly exists was actually identical with Number or Numbers, or whether it was something different from Number, but had a certain relation to Number; whether if there were such a relation, this was merely a relation of analogy or of conformability, or whether Number were something actually embodied in that which truly exists these were speculative questions which were variously answered by various teachers, and which probably interested the later more than the earlier leaders of the school.
This mighty, irresistible proof accompanied by an ever-increasing knowledge of the conformability to a purpose in everything we see around us, by the conviction of the boundless immensity of creation, by the consciousness of a certain illimitableness in the possible extension of our knowledge, and by a desire commensurate therewith remains to humanity, even after the theoretical cognition of ourselves has failed to establish the necessity of an existence after death.
We feel this conformity by the means of agreeable sensation, but we arrive at no representation of it, either clear or confused. Pleasure is free when we represent to ourselves the conformability, and when the sensation that accompanies this representation is agreeable.
But while unconformability invariably bears testimony to a lapse of unrepresented time, the conformability of two sets of strata in contact by no means implies that the newer formation immediately succeeded the older one. It simply implies that the ancient rocks were subjected to no movements of such a nature as to tilt, bend, or break them before the more modern formation was superimposed.
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