TWO ANTAGONIST DOCTEINE3 OF GEOLOGY. 597 



science ought to be attempted, they will know that it was not only the 

 historian's privilege, but his duty, to estimate the import and amount 

 of the advances which he had to narrate ; and if they judge, as I trust 

 they will, that the attempt has been made with full integrity of inten- 

 tion and no want of labor, they will look upon the inevitable 

 imperfections of the execution of my work with indulgence and 

 hope. 



There is another source of satisfaction in arriving at this point of 

 my labors. If, after our long, wandering through the region of 

 physical science, we were left with minds unsatisfied and unraised, to 

 ask, " Whether this be all ?" our employment might well be deemed 

 weary and idle. If it appeared that all the vast labor and intense 

 thought which has passed under our review had produced nothing but 

 a barren Knowledge of the external world, or a few Arts ministering 

 merely to our gratification ; or if it seemed that the methods of 

 arriving at truth, so successfully applied in these cases, aid us not 

 when we come to the higher aims and prospects of our being ; this 

 History might well be estimated as no less melancholy and unprofit- 

 able than those which narrate the wars of states and the wiles of 

 statesmen. But such, I trust, is not the impression which our survey 

 has tended to produce. At various points, the researches which we 

 have followed out, have offered to lead us from matter to mind, from 

 the external to the internal world ; and it was not because the thread 

 of investigation snapped in our hands, but rather because we were 

 resolved to confine ourselves, for the present, to the material sciences, 

 that we did not proceed onwards to subjects of a closer interest. It 

 will appear, also, I trust, that the most perfect method of obtaining 

 speculative truth, that of which I have had to relate the result, is 

 by no means confined to the least worthy subjects : but that the 

 Methods of learning what is really true, though they must assume 

 different aspects in cases where a mere contemplation of external 

 objects is concerned, and where our own internal world of thought, 

 feeling, and will, supplies the matter of our speculations, have yet 

 a unity and harmony throughout all the possible employments of our 

 minds. To be able to trace such connexions as this, is the proper 

 sequel, and would be the high reward, of the labor which has been 

 bestowed on the present work. And if a persuasion of the reality of 

 such connexions, and a preparation for studying them, have been con- 

 veyed to the reader's mind while he has been accompanying me 

 through our long survey, his time may not have been employed on 



