There is some comfort in the reflection that, as in Political Economy, so in Geology, it is the inspiration that lives and not the mere amount of positive contribution to knowledge. Bacon has effected nothing for science; in everything that he attempted it may be shown that he was wrong and that his methods have led to nothing. His name is associated with no new discovery, no new law, not even with a new or inductive method. But his niche is secure through the spirit in which he approached the question; if he did not see the Promised Land, at least he was a firm believer in its existence, and that spirit has outlived his unhappy detraction of greater men than himself in mental philosophy. His mind was swift to perceive analogies, and such a type of mind, if it adds little to actual knowledge, is at least valuable as a stimulus. Carlyle in his political pamphlets has certainly not advanced the lines of the 'dismal science'; he even contemptuously doubted its existence, and he has done harm to it through the ready-reckoner school of _à priori_ economists who refer everything with confidence to their own internal consciousness. Yet Carlyle at his worst has his value. He has the merit of showing that the problem is in its very nature an everlasting one, and that the plummet line of the mere profit-and-loss moralist will never sound the depths of man and his destiny. Such thinkers are, however, rare; but in natural science they are the salt. Such are Oken, Cuvier, Darwin; their position is independent of the truth of their theories, and they have the gift of a fused and informing imagination, by which their theories are landmarks. Much of their work has already been recast, and some of their once supposed safest generalisations have been abandoned. But the progress of science revolves round them as central suns. Hardly one of Niebuhr's interpretations of Roman history has stood the test of subsequent investigations, any more than those of Ewald in the field of Biblical criticism. Yet in historical science no two men have a more assured rank.