1852.] SEDGWICK ON THE LOWER PALAEOZOIC ROCKS. 161 



above all they ought to be historically just ; and that, if geographical, 

 they ought not to involve and perpetuate most palpable geographical 

 contradictions. So far as regards the present controversy, between 

 my friend and fellow-labourer and myself, it resolves itself into this : 

 whether I should retain a true geographical name for a country I 

 have explored and reduced to good order, after the hard and long- 

 continued work of years ; or he should throw down its fences, claim 

 it for his own, and, in defiance of geographical propriety, call it Si- 

 lurian, without the shadow of pretence from any right of conquest 

 over it, or any correct original knowledge of its relations to that Si- 

 lurian region he had won for himself by a like labour, and to which 

 he had a lawful title, acknowledged, I might say, with acclamation, 

 by every geological school of Europe. 



The personal question is indeed a paltry matter ; but it does in- 

 volve a very important principle. Philosophical names are not to be 

 given rashly ; and premature names ought to be abolished ; other- 

 wise we barbarize our language, and retard the true progress of sci- 

 ence. Scientific names are, or ought to be, the abstract representa- 

 tions of the highest conceptions of the human mind; which first 

 dealing analytically with facts, then groups them together syntheti- 

 cally under their most general conception. The analysis of the phee- 

 nomena com^s first, — the philosophic names come, or ought to come, 

 last. Nor are philosophical names ever unimportant, even in mixed 

 and progressive subjects like our own ; for they are the very circula- 

 ting medium of science ; and if our coin be base, our scientific deal- 

 ings can never prosper. And is it not true that in science, as in 

 other things, names are often all that the greater part of mankind 

 ever care about in their commerce with the world, especially on- 

 questions like the present ? 



On grounds such as these, I contend that the very conception of a 

 downward development of the Silurian System into the Cambrian is 

 a contradiction of the ordinance of nature ; as, ever since the world 

 began, her systems have been developed upwards and not downwards ; 

 that the description of such a downward development under the word 

 system is a most anomalous use of scientific language ; and that such 

 a word as system, in geology, cannot logically be made use of while 

 the analytical process is going on, and before it has led us to a 

 resting-place on which we may commence the true synthetical process 

 of constructing a system. 



I do not assert that the word system was at first used illogically 

 by my friend ; because he, no doubt, at first thought that he had found 

 a good base-line for it. But in this we now know that he was mis- 

 taken ; and from the moment that mistake was proved, his system (as 

 a system) was at an end. It was then a mere group of strata, which 

 admitted of no collective name, except so far as it was capable of defi- 

 nition ; and the parts of it which were before mistaken and ill-defined 

 must afterwards be referred to some new base-line, and find their 

 resting-place in some new arrangement. But changes of this kind 

 imply also a change of our verbal definitions, or we utterly destroy the 

 symmetry of our scientific language. 



VOL. VIII. — PART I. M 



