294 PROCEEDINGS OF PIIOVINCIAL SOCIETIES. 



'^ The most important agent in the natural world is light ; which, 

 with its frequent concomitant, heat, sets in motion all the animal 

 and vegetable world, arrays the whole creation in its variety of 

 gorgeous hues, vivifies the dormant seeds of plants, and causes even 

 inert matter to assume new combinations and new affinities, and to 

 ferment, as it were, with the germ of vitality. What light is to 

 the material, knowledge is to the intellectual world. Nay, we 

 even use the word metaphorically, when speaking of the operations 

 of the mind. But, as in the case of inert matter, some fermentation 

 takes place before it assumes a more beauteous arrangement in a 

 chrystallized or prismatic form, so, in that of mental improvement, 

 the first rays of light which are let in upon the uncultivated mind 

 are apt to cause a peculiar commotion upon it. They act upon it as 

 the Spirit that moved on the face of the chaotic deep ; and do not 

 bring the confused and indigested mass into order without a strange 

 and often a violent perturbation. Hence we shall find that, when- 

 ever a sudden and vehement impulse is given to the operations of 

 the mind, men become restless and self-willed. In their desire to 

 advance in the pursuit of objects heretofore unknown to them, they 

 are hurried forward by a tumult of impatience and delight ; and in 

 their eagerness to outstrip their teachers, they rush impetuously to 

 the goal, they overlook or overleap many previous necessary conclu- 

 sions, and, mistaking the first rays of light which beam on their 

 understandings, for the brightness of meridian day, they become 

 filled with self-sufficiency and self-will — the two greatest obstacles 

 to philosophical investigation and intellectual improvement. These 

 observations appear to me not inapplicable to the present moment. 

 There is a great and general movement in advance throughout the 

 civilized world ; and such an impulse cannot be given to men's 

 minds without important results, nor without considerable agitation. 

 Mankind may be considered, at present, as under a sort of moral 

 and intellectual ferment, from the influence of the first beams of 

 knowledge shining on their minds, and rousing a confused and inert 

 mass into action ; and before any organized or well-regulated 

 arrangement can take place, we must expect the smooth and the 

 rough, the cold and hot, the moist and dry, the dense and rare, to 

 come into collision, and contend with each other for the mastery. 

 This agitation cannot, at once, subside ; and while it lasts we can 

 look for little actual advancement in science : but when it becomes 

 composed and arranged, just as in the defecation of any other fer- 

 mentive process, we may expect the happiest eflTects. 



" Prejudice and presumption are so closely allied to ignorance, that 

 where the former exist we may always expect to find the latter ; 

 and they are the greatest foes to sound philosophy and scientific 

 improvement. We may observe this on all occasions, and not least 

 in the attacks which have been made, by mistaken zeal, upon the 

 new science of geology. For my own part, I do not see how the 

 scriptural account of the creation is more impugned, or invalidated, 

 by the inquiries or discoveries of geologists in the present age, than it 



