318 POPULAR EDUCATION. [CnAP. XXXVII. 



earth moves round the sun, as to inculcate the old 

 exploded dogma that it is the motionless centre of 

 the universe. The child is as willing to believe that 



O 



our planet is of indefinite antiquity, as that it is only 

 6000 years old. Tell him that the earth was inha 

 bited by other races of animals and plants before the 

 creation of man, as we now know it to have been, 

 and the idea is not more difficult for him to conceive 

 than the notion which is usually allowed to take root 

 in his mind, that man and the species of animals and 

 plants, now our contemporaries, were the first occu 

 pants of this globe. All that we require, when once 

 a good system of primary and normal schools has 

 been organized, is a moderate share of moral courage 

 and love of truth, on the part of the laity and clergy ; 

 and then the academical chair and scientific lecture- 

 room, and every pulpit, and every village school, may 

 be made to speak the same language, in regard to 

 those natural phenomena, which are of a kind to 

 strike and interest the popular mind. * 



* The substance of the above remarks, on the fossil foot 

 prints of Greensburg, was given by me in a Lecture to the 

 Iloyal Institution, London, Feb. 4. 1848. 



