limited our attainments, when the creation of a single blade of grass,
the humblest worm, a poor beetle, or gadfly, would baffle the utmost
structural skill of the greatest philosopher! Into the fathomless depths
of our own globe we have also essayed to penetrate. Poor beings! of
three score and ten, whose utmost historical span extends only to some
thousands of years, have sought to trammel up the terrene vicissitudes
of millions of ages anterior to their own existence! Does not this
savour of a vain research, or of a laudable thirst for knowledge?

Over all these dark and solemn inscrutabilities, however, the _Vestiges_
undertook to throw a glare of light, to reveal their beginning,
progression, order, relations, and law of development. Although daring
in aim, the attempt was not to be wholly deprecated. While religious
freedom had been secured, philosophy had become timid, official, and
timeserving; retentive as FONTENELLE of the truths within its grasp, and
fearful to give utterance to aught that might disturb the stillness of
the temple, the lecture-room, or fashionable auditory. Modern teachers
had been used so long to the Baconian go-cart, that they had become as
apprehensive of losing the inductive clue as the PALINURUSES of old of
the sight of the directing shore. But the time had arrived when it
seemed expedient to relax the strictness of the investigative rule, and
afford scope for a more systematic, if not speculative research. Science
had made great acquisitions, and it seemed desirable, if only for
experiment sake, to see what kind of FRANKENSTEIN would result from the
architectural union of her scattered limbs. This formed the scope of the
_Vestiges of Creation_; novelties were not propounded, only a portentous
skeleton raised from the truths physical astronomy, geology, chemistry,
physiology, and natural history had established. Does the author recoil
from his work? No; these _Explanations_ attest that he is steadfast in
the worship of the idol of his brain. He retracts nothing, he