The Ordinary Naturalist Is Not Sufficiently Aware

The Earth's Becoming At A Particular Period The Residence Of Human Beings, Was An Era In The Moral, Not In The Physical World, That Our Study And Contemplation Of The Earth, And The Laws Which Govern Its Animate Productions, Ought No More To Be Considered In The Light Of A Disturbance Or Deviation From The System, Than The Discovery Of The Satellites Of Jupiter Should Be Regarded As A Physical Event In The History Of Those Heavenly Bodies, However Influential They May Have Become From That Time In Advancing The Progress Of Sound Philosophy Among Men.

It Was A Profound Saying Of Wilhelm Humboldt, That 'man Is Man Only By Means Of Speech, But In Order To Invent Speech He Must Be Already Man.'

[my Book] Will Endeavour To Establish The Principle[s] Of Reasoning In ... [geology]; And All My Geology Will Come In As Illustration Of My Views Of Those Principles, And As Evidence Strengthening The System Necessarily Arising Out Of The Admission Of Such Principles, Which... Are Neither More Nor Less Than That No Causes Whatever Have From The Earliest Time To Which We Can Look Back, To The Present, Ever Acted, But Those Now Acting; And That They Never Acted With Different Degrees Of Energy From That Which They Now Exert.

Geology Is The Science Which Investigates The Successive Changes That Have Taken Place In The Organic And Inorganic Kingdoms Of Nature; It Enquires Into The Causes Of These Changes, And The Influence Which They Have Exerted In Modifying The Surface And External Structure Of Our Planet.

'time's Noblest Offspring Is The Last.' This Line Of Bishop Berkeley's Expresses The Real Cause Of The Belief In Progress In The Animal Creation.