for the year 1863. lix 



be effected than would repay fourfold the sums expended on 

 exploration. 



I would not for a moment, however, be supposed to base 

 my own advocacy of scientific enterprises on grounds so low 

 as these. I regard science, in its highest acceptation, as sy- 

 nonymous with knowledge of what is true. All truth I 

 hold to be of Divine origin. I desire therefore, to see science 

 honoured and cultivated for its own sake alone. There are 

 those who shrink alarmed, from the conclusions to which 

 modern discovery in astronomy, in geology, in comparative 

 anatomy, may prechance be leading ; but I have no ap- 

 prehension that such discoveries can really reveal aught it 

 would not be a boon to learn. 



We live, it is true, in times of unprecedented mental 

 activity and excitement. Nothing seems too high, nothing 

 too holy, for the grasp of man's understanding. Nay, those 

 who profess but to trace the human, from the self-generated 

 transmutation of the simian brain, — to see in man but the de- 

 velopment of the monkey, — show themselves most eager, as if 

 in vindication of their own intellectual superiority, to probe the 

 profoundest secrets of Providence — to indulge imagination in 

 its wildest flights. Even authors of established reputation 

 (with due deference be it spoken) scruple not to lend the 

 weight of great names to such visionary speculations, and 

 chafing as it were at the slow accumulation of historic data 

 and abstract physical truths, accept the most startling 

 hypotheses, on the slenderest evidence. All this, however, 

 but renders it the more essential that the observation of facts 

 should be kept, as far as possible, in advance of the 

 promulgation of theories ; that the safe though rugged road 

 of inductive reasoning should not be deserted for the flowery 

 but delusive paths of pre-Baconian philosophy. Be it ours 

 at least to take nothing for granted where Revelation appears 



