304 GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES 
reserve a class of favors of a purely exterior character, rarely 
vouchsafed to the suitors who make court to it for that dowry 
of the extrinsic and the adventitious which it occasionally 
brings. 
It certainly 7s one of the characteristics of geological science, 
though in a far higher sense than that to which I have adverted, 
that it promises little and performs much. It contrasts strongly 
in this respect with those purely mental sciences still properly 
taught in our higher schools,—for they constitute the true 
gymnastics of mind, but, like other gymnastics, are to be 
regarded, not as actual work, but simply as a preparation for it. 
The use of the dumb-bells opens the chest and strengthens the 
muscles; but it is left to labor of quite another kind to supply 
the wants of the present, or to provide for the necessities of the 
future. And such appears to be the sort of relation borne by 
the purely mental to the natural sciences. How very different, 
however, the prospects which they seemed to open to the curious 
inquirer in the earlier ages of their history, or even in the 
earlier history of individual minds among ourselves! Mental 
science must have appeared to many of us, when we first 
approached it, as a magnificent gateway, giving access to a vast 
province, in which not only all knowledge regarding the nature 
of mind was to be acquired, but in which also, through the 
study of the intellectual faculties, we were to be introduced to 
the best possible modes of acquiring all other knowledge. But 
have we not been disappointed in our hopes? nay, from the 
doubts and uncertainties conjured up by the nice dialectics of the 
science, have we not had eventually to cast ourselves for escape 
on the simple instincts of our nature ? and, ultimately, have we 
not gained well nigh as little through the process, so impera- 
tively demanded by the metaphysician, of turning the mind 
upon itself, instead of exercising it on things external to it, as 
if we had been engaged in turning the eye upon itself, instead 
