310 Geological Socielj/. 



and observation ; and in advancing, by such means, to those general 

 laws by which all things are bound together. They seem not to 

 know that inventive power in physics, unlike inventive power in works 

 of art or of imagination, finds no employment in ideal creations, 

 and only means the faculty by which the mind clearly apprehends the 

 relations and analogies of things already known ; and is thereby direct- 

 ed and urged on to the discovery of new facts, by the help of new 

 comparisons — that the history of all ages (and I might add, the writ- 

 ten law of our being, where it is declared that by the sweat of our brow 

 shall we gather up our harvest) has proved this way of slow and 

 toilsome induction to be the only path which leads to physical truth. 



Laws for the government of intellectual beings, and laws by which 

 material things are held together, have not one common element to 

 connect them. And to seek for an exposition of the phaenomena of the 

 natural world among the records of the moral destinies of mankind, 

 would be as unwise, as to look for rules of moral government among 

 the laws of chemical combination. From the unnatural union of 

 things so utterly incongruous, there has from time to time sprung up 

 in this country a deformed progeny of heretical and fantastical con- 

 clusions, by which sober philosophy has been put to open shame, and 

 sometimes even the charities of life have been exposed to violation. 



No opinion can be heretical but that which is not true. Conflict- 

 ing falsehoods we can comprehend ; but truths can never war against 

 each other. I affirm, therefore, that we have nothing to fear from 

 the results of our inquiries, provided they be followed in the labo- 

 rious, but secure road of honest induction. In this way we may rest 

 assured that we shall never arrive at conclusions opposed to any 

 truth, either physical or moral, from whatsoever source that truth 

 may be derived : nay rather (as in all truth there is a common es- 

 sence), that new discoveries will ever lend support and illustration 

 to things which are already known, by giving us a larger insight into 

 the universal harmonies of nature. 



Had the authors to whom I have alluded, contented themselves 

 with pointing out the errors of our logic, and the fallacies of our in- 

 duction, they might, perhaps, have done us some service. For It 

 cannot be denied that we have sometimes lost ourselves amidst the 

 strange forms of nature which have started up before us, during our 

 wanderings among the monuments of an older world : and in the re- 

 cords of our labours, a critical eye may perhaps sometimes discover 

 that the modesty of our facts is but ill assorted with the boldness of 

 our conclusions. 



I should have been well content to have ended with these general 

 censures. But during the past year there has been sent forth, by 

 one of our own body, " a New System of Geology, in which the great 

 revolutions of the earth and of animated nature are reconciled at once 

 to modern science and to sacred history :'* and to this title I will 

 venture to add, — in which the worst violations of philosophic rule, by 

 the daring union of things incongruous, have been adopted by the 

 author from others, and at the same time decorated by new fan- 

 tasies of his own. I shall not stop to combat the bold and unautho- 

 rized 



