SKETCH OF THE GEOLOGY OF DERBYSHIRE. 31 
their origin, or the numberless circumstances which have been made 
to conspire to such beneficial ends. His curiosity, however, at 
length cannot fail to be aroused; and after long stumbling, and 
many attempts to jump to conclusions without examining premises, 
he finds that by the plain, simple, and unfettered exercise of those 
faculties of observation and reason which have been given him for 
the purpose, he can arrive as certainly at a knowledge of the won- 
derful, the unthought-of mechanism, by which the structure of the 
earth has been produced and is sustained, as by the exercise of the 
same faculties he had previvusly arrived at the knowledge of the 
mechanism by which the structure of the universe is continually 
upheld. 
