How unreasonable then would
appear the pundit's incredulity, if persisted in: how suddenly
enlightened the rational faith of the rustic: how seasonable would be
felt the useful learning of him, whose knowledge well applied can thus
unfetter truth from the bandages of ignorance.
Illustrations, if apt, are so well adapted to persuade towards a
particular line of argument, that, at the risk of diffuseness, and
because minds being various are variously touched, one by one thought
and one by another, I think fit to add yet more of a similar tendency:
in the hope that, by a natural induction, such instances may smoothe our
way.
When an eminent living geologist was prosecuting his researches at
Kirkdale cave, Yorkshire, he had calculated so nicely on the antecedent
probabilities, that his commands to the labourers were substantially
these: "Take your mattocks, and pick up that stone flooring; then take
your basket, and fill it--with the bones of hyaenas and other creatures
which you will find there." We may fancy the ridicule wherewith
ignorance might have greeted science: but lo, the triumph of philosophy,
when its mandate soon assumed a bodily shape in--bushels of bones gnawed
as by wild beasts, and here and there a grinning skull that looked like
a hyaena's! Do we not see how this bears on our coming argument? Such a
deposit was very unlikely to be found there in the eyes of the
unenlightened: but very likely to the wise man's ken.
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