676 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



to narrate ; and if they judge, as I trust they will, 

 that the attempt has been made with full integrity 

 of intention and no want of labour, they will look 

 upon the inevitable imperfections of the execution 

 of my work with indulgence and hope. 



There is another source of satisfaction in arriv- 

 ing at this point of my labours. If, after our long 

 wandering through the region of physical science, 

 we were left with minds unsatisfied and unraised, 

 to ask, " Whether this be all ?" our employment 

 might well be deemed weary and idle. If it ap- 

 peared that all the vast labour and intense thought 

 which has passed under our review had produced 

 nothing but a barren Knowlege of the external 

 world, or a few Arts ministering merely to our grati- 

 fication ; or if it seemed that the methods of arriv- 

 ing at truth, so successfully applied in these cases, 

 aid us not when we come to the higher aims and 

 prospects of our being ; this History might well be 

 estimated as no less melancholy and unprofitable 

 than those which narrate the wars of states and the 

 wiles of statesmen. But such, I trust, is not the 

 impression which our survey has tended to produce. 

 At various points, the researches which we have 

 followed out, have offered to lead us from matter 

 to mind, from the external to the internal world ; 

 and it was not because the thread of investigation 

 snapped in our hands, but rather because we were 

 resolved to confine ourselves, for the present, to the 

 material sciences, that we did not proceed onwards 



