4 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 



prove the propriety of these views of the above Naturalists, showed 

 actually what they were persuaded to believe were human bones mixed 

 with the osseous remains of those former animals, which were said to 

 have inhabited the surface previously to the era of the human race on 

 this globe. But the desperate hope of extinguishing, by one solitary 

 case, one unexampled instance, so vastly important, a general prin- 

 ciple, and also the hope of burying in the same ruin those truths re- 

 garding cosmogony which received in this same general principle a 

 support as well as a rational foundation on which it was partially 

 itself constructed — such a hope, I repeat, could not, for any length of 

 time, be maintained. The whole, therefore, of these pretended facts 

 instantly vanished at the application of the test of a rigorous enquiry, 

 and were thus consigned to merited oblivion. 



Nothing, we readily admit, can be more agreeable to nature and to 

 justice, than for a man to oppose any opinion which he cannot adopt, 

 provided only, be it remembered, that, upon all such occasions, he has 

 adequate reasons for rejecting such an opinion ; nay, nothing is more 

 justifiable than for a man to collect information, which shall support 

 the views he has established for himself, let but his mind be unin- 

 fluenced by any other motive than this opinion itself, quite isolated 

 from any source of modifying interference. But then, how is it, I 

 ask, do we see so much of this ardent spirit opposed to every acci- 

 dentally discovered truth, which never had the least pretension to a 

 different sort of character ; to which, no hostility has, at any time, 

 been shown, which no defect of the reasoning process employed in it 

 can have tarnished, and which should, as a necessary consequence, 

 command the assent of every well-constituted mind ? Now, the whole 

 of the reply, which I propose to give to this interrogation, must be 

 limited to the simple remark, that were even this accidental truth 

 weakened or completely subverted by the discovery of human remains 

 in the older rocks of the earth, still, that such a discovery would not, 

 in the least, detract from the merit belonging to the profound inves- 

 tigations and the most ingenious arguments by which that truth was 

 established, and therefore that it would not diminish the glory of him 

 who devoted an assiduous life to the one, and exerted the indefatigable 

 labours and perseverance which were indispensable to the others ; nor 

 will that Discourse, in which it is demonstrated with such consummate 

 clearness, and expressed in so noble a style, be received with the less 

 ardour and interest on the same account, as an elegant model, by all 

 the right-minded men who may come after him, and who may be dis- 

 posed to labour for the promotion of the Sciences to their perfect con- 

 dition, animated by true-hearted worship of Truth. 



