SHROPSHIRE AND NORTH WALES NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 191 
when speaking of the operations of the mind. But, as in the case of 
inert matter, some fermentation takes place before it assumes a more 
beauteous arrangement in a crystallised or prismatic form, so, in that 
of mental improvement, the first rays of light which are let in upon 
the uncultivated mind are apt to cause a peculiar commotion upon it. 
They act upon it as the Spirit that moved on the face of the chaotic 
deep, and do not bring the confused and indigested mass into order 
without a strange and often a violent perturbation. Hence we shall 
find that, whenever a sudden and vehement impulse is given to the 
operations of the mind, men become restless and self-willed. In their 
desire to advance in the pursuit of objects heretofore unknown to 
them, they are hurried forward by a tumult of impatience and delight ; 
and in their eagerness to outstrip their teachers, they rush impetuously 
to the goal, they overlook or overleap many previous necessary con¬ 
clusions, and, mistaking the first rays of light which beam on their 
understandings for the brightness of meridian day, they become filled 
with self-sufficiency and self-will, the two greatest obstacles to 
philosophical investigation and intellectual improvement. These 
observations appear to me not inapplicable to the present moment. 
There is a great, a general movement in advance throughout the 
civilised world, and such an impulse cannot be given to men’s minds 
without important results, nor without considerable agitation. Mankind 
may be considered at present as under a sort of moral and intellectual 
ferment, from the influence of the first beams of knowledge shining on 
their minds, and rousing a confused and inert mass into action; and 
before any organised or well-regulated arrangement can take place, we 
must expect the smooth and the rough, the cold and hot, the moist and 
dry, the dense and rare, to come into collision, and contend with each 
other for the mastery. This agitation cannot at once subside, and 
while it lasts we can look for little actual advancement in science ; but 
when it becomes composed and arranged, just as in the defecation of 
any other fermentive process, we may expect the happiest effects. 
“ Prejudice and presumption are so closely allied to ignorance, that, 
where the former exist, we may always expect to find the latter, and 
they are the greatest foes to sound philosophy and scientific improve¬ 
ment. We may observe this on all occasions, and not least in the 
attacks which have been made, by mistaken zeal, upon the new science 
of geology. For my own part, I do not see how the scriptural account 
of the creation is more impugned or invalidated by the inquiries or 
discoveries of geologists in the present age, than it was, onlv two 
centuries ago, by those of Galileo, who, in that enlightened age, 
suffered the penalty of a long imprisonment, and nearly incurred the 
