Adam Sedgwick

“You have deserted—after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth—the true method of induction.”

“Geology, without the assistance of chemistry and mineralogy, is no better than a chasing of rainbows.”

“I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow, because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous.”

“There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly.”

“If the book be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine.”

“We must not, however, fall into the mistake of supposing that the first principles of any science are in a special manner the gift of God. For all the first principles of all the sciences are the gift of God.”