When my attention was first attracted to the work of this school, so long as my mind was content to skim over the surface of an unknown world, so immeasurably distant from us, and whilst flitting too rapidly over it to be able to distinguish any of its features, it presented itself to me as a creation of my heated imagination. Since then I have lived in that world of wonders, and I then grasped the fact that it was quite possible for this world to have been a reality. But to journey thither, even to live in this strange country, the only path to which is by induction, in company with Max Müller and Noiré, who, apparently, are its inhabitants, from the ease with which they move in it, is a totally different matter from explaining the methods of getting there, or describing the sojourn. I should have to draw information from various sources, and the scientific and hypothetical data connected therewith would require sorting and rearranging to make them assimilate more easily; these would present difficulties not readily surmounted. How could a reasonable and speaking being come forth from that which had no reason and no language? The earliest traditions are silent on the manner of man’s acquisition of his first ideas and his first words. But because a problem has not been solved, that is no reason for the assertion that it is insoluble, unless a refutation is at once demonstrable, as in the squaring of the circle. “If every one had abstained from striving to penetrate hidden things, no sciences would exist,” Noiré remarked. Newton might have said: “The facts that a stone falls and the planets move are known by actual experience, why search out the laws which produce these phenomena?” And the theory of gravitation would have been lacking. Lyell might have said: “We see that the crust of the earth is composed of several strata, why reckon the time required for their formation?” And there would have been no science of geology. Liebig might have said: “We see that clover grows and cattle prosper, why should the relation of cause and effect concern us?” And there would have been no organic chemistry. Adam Smith might have said: “We know by experience that valuable objects can be exchanged, and that their prices fluctuate, why should we study the cause of rise and fall?” And this chapter would have been missing from political economy. No road presents itself to me by which to arrive in the midst of primitive humanity; of necessity, therefore, I have recourse to analogy, which, under the circumstances, is not the worst expedient.