The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 1903. Andrew A.
Lipscomb, Ed-in-chief, 20 Vol. Vol. 6, page 11.
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Edited by Paul Leicester
Ford, 1895 - ten Vols. Vol. 4, page 337.
THOMAS JEFFERSON to Charles Thomson
Paris, December 17, 1786.
Dear Sir, -- A dislocation of my right wrist has for three or four months
past disabled me from writing except with my left hand, which was too slow
and awkward to be employed but in cases of necessity. I begin to have so
much use of my wrist as to be able to write, but it is slowly and in pain.
I take the first moment I can, however, to acknowledge the receipt of your
letters of April the 6th, July 8th, and 30th. In one of these you say you
have not been able to learn whether in the new mills in London, steam is
the immediate mover of the machinery or raises water to move it. It is the
immediate mover. The power of this agent, though long known, is but now
beginning to be applied to the various purposes of which it is susceptible.
You observe that Whitehurst supposes it to have been the agent which,
bursting the earth, threw it up into mountains and valleys. You ask me what
I think of his book? I find in it many interesting facts brought together,
and many ingenious commentaries on them. But there are great chasms in his
facts, and consequently in his reasoning. These he fills up with
suppositions which may be as reasonably denied as granted. A skeptical
reader, therefore, like myself, is left in the lurch. I acknowledge,
however, he makes more use of fact than any other writer of a theory
of the earth. But I give one answer to all these theorists. That is as
follows: they all suppose the earth a created existence; they
suppose a Creator, then, and that he possessed power and wisdom
to a great degree. As he intended the earth for the habitation of
animals and vegetables, is it reasonable to suppose he made two
jobs of his Creation? That he first made a chaotic lump and set it
into motion, and then, waiting ages necessary to form itself? That
when it had done this he stepped in a second time to create the
animals and plants which were to inhabit it? As a hand of a
Creator is to be called in it may as well be called in at one stage of
the process as another. We may as well suppose he created the
earth at once nearly in the state in which we see it, fit for the
preservation of the beings he placed on it. But it is said we have a
proof that he did not create it in its solid form, but in a state of
fluidity, because its present shape of an oblate spheroid is
precisely that which a fluid mass revolving on its axis would
assume; but suppose the same equilibrium between gravity and
centrifugal force which would determine a fluid mass into the
form of an oblate spheroid would determine the wise Creator of
that mass if he made it in a solid state, to give it the same
spherical form.
A revolving fluid will continue to change its shape till it
attains that in which its principles of contrary motion are
balanced; for if you suppose them not balanced it will change its
form. Now the balanced form is necessary for the preservation of
a revolving solid. The Creator, therefore, of a revolving solid
would make it an oblate spheroid, that figure alone admitting a
perfect equilibrium. He would make it in that form for another
reason; that is, to prevent a shifting of the axis of rotation. Had he
created the earth perfectly spherical its axis might have been
perpetually shifting by the influence of the other bodies of the
system, and by placing inhabitants of the earth successively under
its poles it might have been depopulated; whereas being
spheroidical it has but one axis on which it can revolve in
equilibria. Suppose the axis of the earth to shift forty-five degrees;
then cut it into one hundred and eighty slices, making every
section in the plane circle of latitude perpendicular to the axis:
every one of these slices except the equatorial one would be
unbalanced, as there would be more matter on one side of its axis
than on the other. There would be but one diameter drawn
through such a slice which would divide it into two equal parts;
on every other possible diameter the parts would hang unequal;
this would produce an irregularity in the diurnal rotation. We
may therefore conclude it impossible for the poles of the earth to
shift if it was made spheroidically, and that it would be made
spheroidal, though solid to obtain this end. I use this reasoning
only on the supposition that the earth has had a beginning. I am
sure I shall read your conjectures on this subject with great
pleasure, though I bespeak before hand a right to indulge my
natural incredulity and skepticism. The pain in which I write awakens me
here from my reverie and obliges me to conclude with compliments to Mrs.
Thomson and assurances to yourself of the esteem and affection with which I
am,
Dear Sir, your friend and servant.
Th: Jefferson
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