Proceedings of the British Association, 133 



and the knowledge of those laws by which individual phenomena 

 are governed. Every man has generalized to a certain extent, by 

 separating peculiar and individual facts, embodying them in some 

 general conception, and giving it a name. Wherever truth can be 

 expressed in language, it is done as a generalization. As we advance 

 in the discoveries of science, facts multiply so fast upon us that 

 they would become unmanageable, if we could not group them by 

 certain resemblances, or include them under some simple law, 

 which is merely an expression of a general conclusion derived 

 from facts which we know to be true and from which all those 

 phenomena proceed, as necessary and inevitable consequences. The 

 moment we arrive at the knowledge of such a law we can as- 

 sume, in a certain sense, a prophetic character, and predict events 

 with certainty, because we know that the Author of nature is 

 unchanging in his operations, and that the same effects will follow 

 the same causes in times to come as in times past. Astronomical 

 predictions afford a familiar example of the certainty of these con- 

 clusions, and, in fact, whenever we act upon experience in the most 

 homely affairs, we act on the same principle. We meet together 

 here to extend our generalizations by new facts, or to modify those 

 laws at which we had previously arrived by embodying all the new 

 truths we have attained, so as to bring our generalizations up to the 

 condition of present knowledge. In some cases we have tested our 

 general conclusions so often that we are as certain of their truth as 

 we are of our own existence. There are others in which we have 

 not arrived at any such certainty, and it is exactly such conclusions, 

 and the facts connected with them, that we meet here to discuss. 

 Even in astronomy there are still certain residual phenomena, at pre- 

 sent not fully explained ; but in a new science like geology, which 

 brings to light such a vast variety of unexpected phenomena, such 

 indications of intense and powerful action, the mechanism of 

 which is but imperfectly comprehended, it is most advantage- 

 ous that collections of facts, brought here by observers with dif- 

 ferent views, should be closely examined, in order that one may 

 check another, and that laws of phenomena be made out, before 

 any one presumes to put forth any theory of the earth and its forma- 

 tions. I speak not now of the moral effects of such meetings and 



