4 



It is not the most laborious and successful searcher who is the 

 most disposed to theorize, or the readiest to quarrel with the fruits 

 won by a fellow labourer. On the contrary, it is your men of small 

 grasp and little range that are ever the quickest to shape a theory, 

 and the most positive to maintain it. The firmer the grasp of the 

 real facts of nature, and the wider the range of inquiry into these, 

 the more cautious becomes the daring of the generalizer ; and the 

 more stroagly does he feel the importance of two things : — first, 

 that as many facts as possible shall be collected, by which every 

 generalization shall be tried ; and second, that every fact got shall be 

 a true fact. The latter is a point often not enough considered, and 

 which I shall more fully touch on presently, — content with now 

 reminding you that it has been said, with great justness, that there 

 are even more false facts than there are false theories in the world. 



Geology is a science that rests exclusively on a knowledge of the 

 outer world, and can only consist, as a science, in the true interpre- 

 tation of the facts which that world shows to us. There is no 

 science to which what I have said as to theories can more thoroughly 

 apply ; and there is no science which has been, and is liable to be, 

 more hindered hy false facts. There is none, therefore, in which the 

 gathering up of true facts, and the bringing these together as a 

 common stock for the use of science, can be more needed. A. well- 

 known geologist, writing to me, a few days ago, says : — "I believe 

 we want workers, not theorizers ; men who will bide their time, and 

 not propounders of pretty theories, for self and immediate glorifica- 

 tion. Much remains to be done in careful work, and well directed 

 energy." The man whose life is passed on some outlying corner of 

 the lias or the coal-formations, and who sees only the special class 

 of facts that surround him, may be very apt to indulge himself in 

 shaping theories. Enlarge his scope, — make his gatherings part of 

 an accumulated store taken from a much wider field; and you check, 

 at once, the disposition to theorize, and teach him that the first 

 truth, and the most necessary of all to be learned, — but perhaps the 

 most difficult, — is, that no fact can be known to be a true fact till 

 its relations have been studied ; for that there is no one fact in all 

 physical nature, any more than in man's moral and social nature, 

 which can stand by itself, — naked and alone, — but that the qualities 

 of every fact, and therefore whether this or that statement of it is a 



