314 Geological Society. 



poraneity of all the superficial gravel on the earth. We saw the 

 clearest traces of diluvial action, and we had, in our sacred histories, 

 the record of a general deluge. On this double testimony it was, that 

 we gave a unity to a vast succession of phenomena, not one of 

 which we perfectly comprehended, and under the name diluvium, 

 classed them all together. 



To seek the light of physical truth by reasoning of this kind, is, in 

 the language of Bacon, to seek the living among- the dead, and will 

 ever end in erroneous induction. Our errors were, however, natural, 

 and of the same kind which led many excellent observers of a former 

 century to refer all the secondary formations of geology to the Noachian 

 deluge. Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, 

 a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having 

 more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I 

 think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus 

 publicly to read my recantation. 



We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the dilu- 

 vian theory, and referred ail our old superficial gravel to the action 

 of the Mosaic flood. For of man, and the works of his hands, we 

 have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of a former 

 world entombed in these ancient deposits. In classing together di- 

 stant unknown formations under one name j in giving them a simul- 

 taneous origin, and in determining their date, not by the organic re- 

 mains we had discovered, but by those we expected hypothetically 

 hereafter to discover, in them ; we have given one more example 

 of the passion with which the mind fastens upon general conclusions; 

 and of the readiness with which it leaves the consideration of 

 unconnected truths. 



Are then the facts of our science opposed to the sacred records ? 

 And do we deny the reality of a historic deluge ? I utterly reject such 

 an inference. Moral and physical truth may partake of a common 

 essence, but as far as we are concerned, their foundations are inde- 

 pendent, and have not one common element. And in the narrations 

 of a great fatal catastrophe, handed down to us, not in our sacred 

 books only, but in the traditions of all nations, there is not a word to 

 justify us in looking to any mere physical monuments as the intelligi- 

 ble records of that event : such monuments, at least, have not yet 

 been found, and it is not perhaps intended that they ever should be 

 found. If, however, we should hereafter discover the skeletons of an- 

 cient tribes, and the works of ancient art buried in the superficial de- 

 tritus of any large region of the earth ; then, and not till then, we may 

 speculate about their stature and their manners and their numbers, 

 as we now speculate among the disinterred ruins of an ancient city. 



We might, I think, rest content with such a general answer as 

 this. But we may advance one step further History is a con- 

 tinued record of passions and events unconnected with the enduring 

 laws of mere material agents The progress of physical induction, 

 on the contrary, leads us on to discoveries, of which the mere light 

 of history would not indicate a single trace. But the facts re- 

 corded in history may sometimes, without confounding the nature 



of 



