394 Comparative Encouragement to the Study, ^c. 



could have no agency in placing them, then it was said, that 

 they were not the remains of animals, but that they were sports 

 of nature, formed in the earth by a " plastic force." Thus was 

 it attempted to stifle, in its infancy, the study of the structure, 

 and the early history of our planet, as it had before been at- 

 tempted to suppress the knowledge of the true theory of the 

 solar system. 



Over these efforts of ignorance, time has prevailed, happily 

 vindicating the freedom of human thought, both in religion and 

 physics. The benign influence of this freedom of opinion has 

 immeasurably extended the power of man. Science and the 

 arts have enabled him to visit the most distant countries with 

 certainty and punctuality; to collect facts from every quar- 

 ter, accumulating them, and the information derived from them, 

 so as to give an almost physical ubiquity and omniscience to the 

 general mind. If, as we have before said, the general and indi- 

 vidual happiness depends upon the extent to which this kind of 

 knowledge is possessed, it becomes an interesting inquiry, to ex- 

 amine through unprejudiced witnesses, how far the civiUzed na- 

 tions of the world are comparatively in possession of these great 

 advantages. As we take it for granted, no argument is re- 

 quired to prove that an individual is honoured of his fellow 

 men, in proportion to his well applied attainments, and that this 

 kind of consciousness forms the most unequivocal source of hap- 

 piness to himself, we shall content ourselves with saying, that we 

 believe what may be said of such an individual, may be truly 

 attributed to a nation so distinguished. 



Of the attainments of an individual, the world has no means 

 of forming an accurate judgment, but from his acknowledged 

 WTitings ; and it is in this manner we must attempt to form a 

 comparative opinion of the attainments of nations, the works 

 respectively published in each of them, constituting their proper 

 statistics in science and literature. Of these, wc shall only con- 

 cern ourselves with the first, being of opinion, that a correct 

 taste in national literature, depends essentially upon the culti- 

 vation of that kind of judgment, which is generated from, and 

 reflected by the study of nature ; to say nothing of the utter 

 poverty of that literature, from which the rich illustrations fur- 

 nished by the inexhaustible realms of the animal, mineral, and 

 vegetable kingdoms, are excluded. 



