2 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 



sentiment of truth which never deserted him under any circumstances ; 

 the immense knowledge, which enabled him to behold, at once, the 

 whole of the facts of science ; in a word, the powerful intellect whereby 

 he could penetrate into the remotest future consequences that were 

 deducible from these facts, ware to him a source of great disquietude, 

 because he saw that the imagination would be let loose upon a field 

 of science, which, from its very nature and its vastness, calls, more 

 than any other theatre of intellectual exertion, for exactness and pre- 

 cision. If, then, he opposed every tendency which, in his view of its 

 effect, would prove to be a delusion and therefore dangerous, I myself 

 can well be a witness that he did so, not so much for the purpose of 

 obtaining a victory, or even with any hope of converting those who 

 were engaged in widening the high road which terminated in so fata] 

 a precipice, but rather with the expectation of protecting those from its 

 influencewho were most likely to become its victims. The disastrous 

 picture was presented to his eye, of a youthful community exposed to 

 the seductive power of doctrines highly calculated to fascinate the 

 imagination — that faculty which is most predominant and victorious at 

 an early age, but, on that account, the most liable to commit some mis- 

 chievous error in the cultivation of the sciences. My brother, therefore, 

 felt it an obligation upon him to undertake the repugnant functions of 

 a preceptor, who, in obedience to the voice of conscience, sets himself 

 down to the task of controlling the passions of his pupils, in just 

 apprehension that they should be overpowered by those who would 

 labour to excite and would cover them with adulation. 



From the observations collected by my brother, and from several of 

 his notes which appear to refer to topics not previously broached by 

 him, but which he was to treat at, large in a new edition of the 

 " Researches," it is obvious, in my judgment at least, that this work 

 was intended by him to be enriched with numerous facts, communi- 

 cated to him by the learned men of all countries, who seemed to have 

 no other object in view in their generous labours, than to send the 

 results to him, and also by some general conclusions received by him 

 relative to the ancient animals which were deducible from them.* 



One of the questions to which his attention was particularly 

 directed, arose from the series of novel facts discovered by M. Cham- 

 pollion in Egypt. From the information thus obtained, this latter illus- 



* When the subject will admit of it, the new facts collected by my brother will be 

 added to tbe text in the form of notes, in order that the text may be preserved in all 

 its original integrity. The greater number of the facts, however, will be found in 

 the Supplement, of which, the materials have been wholly supplied by my brother, 

 aud which M. Laurillard is to add to the Researches on Fossil Bones. 



