506 Geological Society : — Anniversary o/" 1 839. 



Such are the prospects of Descriptive Geology ; — of the geology 

 of facts and classifications. To our knowledge of causes we can look, 

 with no such certainty of its progress being steady and rapid ; or 

 rather, we are certain that the advance must be slow, and may bo 

 often and long interrupted. For it is not an advance, to suggest one 

 or another hypothetical cause of change, without assigning the laws 

 and amount of the change : it is hardly an advance even to calculate 

 the results of our hypotheses on assumed conditions. To obtain by 

 induction, from adequate facts, the laws of cliange of the organic 

 and inorganic creation, — this alone can lead us to those discoveries 

 which must form the epochs of Geological Dynamics. And we have 

 yet to learn, whether man's past duration upon the earth, whether 

 even that whicii is still destined to him, is such as to allow him to 

 philosophize with success in such matters ; — whether, not individuals 

 only, not a generation alone, but whether the whole species be not 

 too ephemeral, to penetrate, by the unassisted powers of its reason, 

 into the mystery of its origin : — whether man, placed for a few cen- 

 turies on the earth as in a school-room, have time to strip the wall 

 of its coating, and count its stones, before his Parent removes him 

 to some other destination. 



And now. Gentlemen, I approach the close of my task, and of the 

 office M'hich has imposed it upon me ; an office which has been to 

 me a source of unmingled gratification. The good opinion implied 

 by your selection of me, the good opinion of such a body of men, 

 •was an occasion of sincere and earnest self-congratulation, — a self- 

 congratulation hardly damped by my consciousness of an imperfect 

 acquaintance with your science ; — since I trusted that you, though 

 not unaware of my defects, had judged that good will, and a dispo- 

 sition to look at the subject in its largest aspect, might in some 

 measure compensate for them. And if I needed other grounds of 

 satisfaction in the employment which I am thus bringing to its close, 

 I might find them in the reflections I have just been led to make in 

 the progress and prospects of the science with which you are con- 

 cerned. For it has ever been one of my most cherished occupations, 

 and will, I trust, long be so, to trace the principles and laws by which 

 the progress of human knowledge is regulated from age to age in 

 each of its provinces. To have had brought familiarly under my 

 notice, in a living form, the daily advance of a science so large and 

 varied as yours, has been, as it could not but be, a permanent 

 and most instructive lesson ; — perpetually correcting lurking mis- 

 takes, and suggesting new thoughts. And if, while I have looked 

 at your science in this spirit, you have thought me worthy to be 

 called to preside over your body for two years ; and if, during that 

 time, you have not repented of your choice, as I have not found 

 my views inapplicable to the subjects which liave come before you ; 

 I may, I would believe, find in this some ground for confiding in 

 the trains of thought which have tlius led me to such a position ; 

 and may hope that, however arduous be the task of framing a philo- 

 sophy of science suitable to its present condition, and of using such 

 a philosophy as a means of furthering knowledge in general, still, 



