104 WRITINGS OF JAMES SMITHSON. 



In a book held by a large portion of mankind to have 

 been written from divine inspiration, an universal deluge is 

 recorded. ; It was natural for the believers in this deluge to 

 refer to its action, all, or many, of the phenomena in ques- 

 tion ; and the more so as they seemed to find in them a 

 corroboration of the event. 



Accordingly, this is what was done, as soon as any desire 

 to account for these appearances on the earth became felt. 

 The success, however, was not such as to obtain the general 

 assent of the learned ; and the attempt fell into neglect and 

 oblivion. 



Able hands have lately undertaken the revival of this 

 system; Mr. Penn has endeavoured to reconcile it with the 

 facts of the Kirkdale Cave, which appeared to be strongly 

 inimical to it. 



Acquainted with Mr. Penn's opinions only from the 

 "Analysis of the Supplement to the Comparative Estimate" 

 in the Journal of the Royal Institution for January, not 

 having seen this Supplement itself, the Comparative Esti- 

 mate, nor even a review of this in a former number of the 

 Journal, and knowing of Mr. Buckland's Beliquice Dlluvi- 

 ancB, only the account of the Kirkdale Cave published in 

 the Philosophical Transactions for 1822, I have hesitated 

 long about cornmunicating the present observations, which 

 presented themselves during the perusal of the above-men- 

 tioned slender abstract. 



I have yielded to a sense of the importance of the subject 

 in more than one I'espect, and of the uncertainty when I 

 shall acquire ampler information at more voluminous 

 sources — to a conviction that it is in his knowledge that 

 man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high 

 superiority which he holds over the other animals who 

 inhabit the earth with him, and consequently that no igno- 

 rance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil, 

 and that it is therefore preferable to urge unwarranted 

 doubts, which can only occasion additional light to become 

 elicited, than to risk by silence letting a question settle to 



