No wider or more extended field of inquiry could be found; but philosophical geology is not content with this.

At all the confines of his science, the transcendental geologist finds himself confronted with some of the most stupendous problems which have ever engaged the restless intellect of humanity.

The origin and primaeval constitution of the terrestrial globe, the laws of geologic action through long ages of vicissitude and development, the origin of life, the nature and source of the myriad complexities of living beings, the advent of man, possibly even the future history of the earth, are amongst the questions with which the geologist has to grapple in his higher capacity.
These are problems which have occupied the attention of philosophers in every age of the world, and in periods long antecedent to the existence of a science of geology.

The mere existence of cosmogonies in the religion of almost every nation, both ancient and modern, is a sufficient proof of the eager desire of the human mind to know something of the origin of the earth on which we tread.

Every human being who has gazed on the vast panorama of the universe, though it may have been but with the eyes of a child, has felt the longing to solve, however imperfectly, "the riddle of the painful earth," and has, consciously or unconsciously, elaborated some sort of a theory as to the why and wherefore of what he sees.