Transition rocks-Argillite-Greywacke---Lime- stone----Gypsum---Porphyry--Syenite-Green- stone---Secondary rocks---Observations on their formation---Old Redsandstone---Coal---indica- tions of it-Shale-Limestone---Rock Salt---Va- riegated Sandstone---Shell Limestone---Lias--- oolites----Iron sand---Greensand----Chalk---Ter- tiary Formations---of France---of England--- LECTURE I. Introductory Remarks-Divisions of Natural History--Geological Theories--Stewart's Opinion of Theories, Fontanelle's, Bailly's-Theory of Burnett,-Protogæa of Leibnitz-Woodward-Hook-HalleyWhiston--Lazoro Moro-De la Pryme-KingDeluc--Guettard-Lister-Lehman-Whitehurst Kirwan-Buffon-Hutton-Saussure-Pallas-Werner. Observations on the Theories of Hutton and Werner.--Deluge, traditions of it.--American Geologists.---Striking Coincidences between Sacred History and Geology. While we are prospering in Commerce and the Arts, it is gratifying to every liberal mind that Science is cherished in our country, and that the great cause of intellectual improvement has become one of the most popular. When the Sun of Science, towards the close of the 15th century, dawned on Europe, from the dark cloud, which, for nearly 400 years, had en rapt intellectual progress, there were but four classics in the Royal Library of Paris: France and England were in barbarism; America undiscovered. A taste for polite literature was first spread over the west of Europe by the fall of the Eastern Empire, and the consequent dispersion of the Greeks. It was enhanced by the noble discovery of the Art of Printing, which secured to itself the patronage afforded by the enlightened and liberal minds of a succession of Popes. They encouraged learning and the sciences, and in disseminating them, gave full assurance of the perpetuation of this valuable Art, and of the progressive improvement of human knowledge. But Philosophy was not courted with the zeal paid to Literature: Aristotelean maxims continued to be universally received until the 17th century, when Bacon, Lord Verulam, the profound philosopher, and most universal genius of any age, dissipated the mist of error, and threw a blaze of light on useful science, by which experiment and observation were discovered to be more convincing than system and hypothesis. In slightly adverting, as I have done, to Peripatetic philosophy, it is unnecessary to recall your attention to the school of Plato, the father of ancient philosophy; or to follow the division of his school by Zenocrates and Aristotle. However delightful the task, we shall refrain from entering and enjoying the Academy of the one, nor shall we walk in the delightful suburban grove of Athens, with the other. We need not trace that philosophy which was patronised by Julius Cæsar and Augustus; which was taught by Alexander of Anaphrodeseus; introduced among the Jews by Aristobolus, and among the Arabians by Al Mamon. To this omission I am the more reconciled, since a learned exposition of that school has already been laid before you, in the eloquent discourses of my colleague, on the history of the philosophy of the mind. I must be allowed to say, however, that it was that philosophy, which in the earliest ages of Christianity rendered itself obnoxious to the church, by its doctrine of the eternity of the world. Still it forced its way within the Christian pale, and re-established its reputation: and from the 5th century the Aristotelian philosophy rose or fell with science in general, until its inconsistency with religion and true philosophy was exposed, at the period I have mentioned, by Bacon, the father of experimental philosophy.-Bacon! |