INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



613 



truth may require. Much of the suspicion with which the scientific have been visited, 

 may be referred to prejudices in favour of early imbibed opinions, to which the demonstra- 

 tions of science have been opposed prejudices which are known in the pages of Lord 

 Bacon as idola specus, the individual mind being the den to which that sagacious 

 observer of human nature alludes ; and repugnant as it is to the owner and guardian of 

 the mental cavern to have its chambers of imagery searched, and the occupant of any 

 niche ejected, men have been compelled repeatedly to submit to the process, however they 

 may have resisted the attempt. A country schoolmaster may still discourse of the four 

 elements fire, air, earth, and water; and his boys may look up to him as a prodigy of 

 erudition ; but chemical analysis teaches us to smile at the enumeration, though old as 

 the days of the Greek philosophers. So the antiquated notion of the earth being an 

 extended plane, like a table, as motionless as that household instrument, the sun 

 coming to take his daily peep at it, like a careful watchman on his rounds, has 

 vanished from the face of civilised society, though supported by the impression of the 

 senses, once deemed essential to religious faith, and defended by ecclesiastical law. It 

 becomes us therefore, when the decisions of science are contrary to our familiar ideas, to 

 inquire into the soundness of both, and willingly to surrender our preconceived opinions 

 to the force of truth, and not to array prejudice against knowledge. Even did the 

 revelations of geological inquiry not admit of common minds entertaining the evidence 

 upon which they rest, the decisions of the actual experimentalists invite regard, on 

 account of their number, science, sagacity, moral character, means of information, and 

 unwearied industry in employing them. But however at variance several of its con- 

 clusions may be with the convictions gathered from the ordinary ocular view of na- 

 ture, it requires but a little attentive inspection of the face of a country its sea-cliffs, 

 beaches, mountain sides, rocky precipices, land-slips, and ravines, connected with a very 



slight reflection, to 

 apprehend the so- 

 lid foundation upon 

 which the geologist 

 grounds his doc- 

 trines, of changes 

 and catastrophes in 

 the constitution of 

 the superficies, as 

 well as the vast 

 epochs of time re- 

 quired for the ag- 

 gregation of strata : 

 and to one who has 

 read the record of 

 mutation so clearly 

 inscribed upon the 

 surface of the globe, 

 and has recognised 

 its hoar antiquity as 

 a legitimate deduc- 

 Land-siip. tion from the exist- 



ing monuments of its fluctuations, the wonder is, that with the same powers of observa- 

 tion, the great mass in enlightened communities, until a recent period, should have re- 

 mained so ignorant of the history of their terrestrial home. 



RR 3 



