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James Hutton
The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,—no prospect of an end.
James Hutton (1726–1797)
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, I · p. 304
Original wording
Water still moving inside stone
Claudius Claudianus, known as Claudian (c. 370–after 404), was a late antique poet from Alexandria. A sequence of his epigrams turns on a transparent stone with a moving inclusion.
A stream under cover
The poem begins like a landscape: a spring wanders beneath a vaulted roof. A change of scale reveals that this entire watery world fits in the palm of a hand.
Marvellous stone and marvellous water! With good reason it surpasses rivers and stones, for it flows and is a stone.
– Claudian, Claudii Claudiani Carmina, p. 250.[1]
Why the last word is stone
The closing couplet does not invoke a river only to discard it. Claudian insists on both terms: the object outdoes water and stone precisely by displaying both at once.
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