occupied without enlarging the intellect, and the very effort has long
been discountenanced. Great advances, however, have been made in science
since system-making began to be discredited; nature has been
perseveringly ransacked in all her domains, and many extraordinary
secrets drawn from her laboratory. Astronomy and geology, chemistry and
electricity, have greatly extended the bounds of knowledge; still, we
apprehend, we are not yet sufficiently armed with facts to resolve into
one consistent whole her infinite variety.

Efforts at generalization, however, and the systematic arrangement of
natural phenomena, are seldom wholly fruitless. If false, they tend to
provoke discussion--to lead to active thought and useful research. A
solitary truth, though new and useful, rarely obtains higher distinction
than to be quietly placed on the rolls of science, while a bold
speculation, traversing the whole field of creation, and smoothing all
its difficulties, satisfies for the moment, and fixes general attention.
Of this the _Vestiges of Creation_ are an example. Without adding to our
positive knowledge by a single new discovery, demonstration, or
experiment, they have excited more interest than the _Principia_ of
NEWTON. From this popular success, if good do not accrue, no great evil
need be anticipated. Hypotheses are most hurtful when accredited by an
irreversible authority--when erected into a tribunal without appeal,
they become the arbitrary dictator in lieu of the handmaid of science.
Discussion and invention, in place of being stimulated, are then
fettered by them; the human mind is enslaved, as Europe was for
centuries by the _Physics_ of ARISTOTLE, and still continues to be in
some of the ancient retreats and conservatories of exploded errors. But
these form the exceptions, not the rule of the age, which is free and
equal inquiry. Errors have ceased to have prescriptive immunities; and
mere conjectures, however sanctioned or plausible, if inconsistent with