text:  If however the latter circumstance were wanting after the first sensation of the marvellous had subsided the philosopher would enquire whether instead of being a deviation from a law it were not a subordinate instance of some higher law of which the period of history had been too short to give any co-ordinate instances; and were it found by a long course of experience that in every 4000 years a similar retrocession of the earth took place a new law would be established