648 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



quisite for such a purpose. But far less than this 

 is sufficient to put in busy operation the inventive 

 and capricious fancy. A few appearances hastily 

 seen, and arbitrarily interpreted, are enough to give 

 rise to a wondrous tale of the past, full of strange 

 events and supernatural agencies. The mythology 

 and early poetry of nations afford sufficient evidence 

 of man's love of the wonderful, and of his inventive 

 powers, in early stages of intellectual developement. 

 The scientific faculty, on the other hand, and espe- 

 cially that part of it which is requisite for the 

 induction of laws from facts, emerges slowly and 

 with difficulty from the crowd of adverse influences, 

 even under the most favourable circumstances. We 

 have seen that in the ancient world, the Greeks 

 alone showed themselves to possess this talent ; and 

 what they thus attained to, amounted only to a 

 few sound doctrines in astronomy, and one or two 

 extremely imperfect truths in mechanics, optics, 

 and music, which their successors were unable to 

 retain. No other nation, till we come to the dawn 

 of a better day in modern Europe, made any po- 

 sitive step at all in sound physical speculation. 

 Empty dreams or useless exhibitions of ingenuity, 

 formed the whole of their essays at such know- 

 ledge. 



It must, therefore, independently of positive evi- 

 dence, be considered as extremely improbable, that 

 any of these nations should, at an early period, 

 have arrived, by observation and induction, at wide 



