There Are Very Few Persons

Nothing Tends So Much To The Advancement Of Knowledge As The Application Of A New Instrument. The Native Intellectual Powers Of Men In Different Times Are Not So Much The Causes Of The Different Success Of Their Labours, As The Peculiar Nature Of The Means And Artificial Resources In Their Possession.

Nothing Is So Dangerous To The Progress Of The Human Mind Than To Assume That Our Views Of Science Are Ultimate, That There Are No Mysteries In Nature, That Our Triumphs Are Complete And That There Are No New Worlds To Conquer.

The Three States Of The Caterpillar, Larva, And Butterfly Have, Since The Time Of The Greek Poets, Been Applied To Typify The Human Being,--its Terrestrial Form, Apparent Death, And Ultimate Celestial Destination.

We Can Trace Back Our Existence Almost To A Point. Former Time Presents Us With Trains Of Thoughts Gradually Diminishing To Nothing. But Our Ideas Of Futurity Are Perpetually Expanding. Our Desires And Our Hopes, Even When Modified By Our Fears, Seem To Grasp At Immensity. This Alone Would Be Sufficient To Prove The Progressiveness Of Our Nature, And That This Little Earth Is But A Point From Which We Start Toward A Perfection Of Being.

Geology, Perhaps More Than Any Other Department Of Natural Philosophy, Is A Science Of Contemplation. It Requires No Experience Or Complicated Apparatus, No Minute Processes Upon The Unknown Processes Of Matter. It Demands Only An Enquiring Mind And Senses Alive To The Facts Almost Everywhere Presented In Nature. And As It May Be Acquired Without Much Difficulty, So It May Be Improved Without Much Painful Exertion.