It is not within our province to inquire by what process, and in what condition the Almighty brought matter into existence-what the space was which i… - David Brewster

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It is not within our province to inquire by what process, and in what condition the Almighty brought matter into existence-what the space was which it occupied, or what the forms were which it assumed. Of such things we know nothing. In the depths of primeval time, the globe we inhabit may have a planetary existence, wheeling along its ethereal railway without a breathing passenger to count its periods, and without a living plant to measure the day by its opening and closing blossoms, or to mark the rolling seasons by the yearly increments of its stem. Or it may have been the theatre on which vast cycles of animal and vegetable life have been run- now its birthplace, and now its grave: But we have no data to guide us in our conjectures, and even imagination fails us if we call it to our aid. Whatever may have been, had ceased to be at the commencement of our history, when the primary rocks, forming the moten nucleus of the globe, were first exposed to the action of the elements.

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About David Brewster

Sir David Brewster FRS (December 11, 1781 – February 10, 1868) was a Scottish physicist, inventor and writer, and one of the founders of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was particularly remarkable for his contributions to the field of optics.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Sir David Brewster Brewster Brewster D
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It is not easy to devise a cure for such a state of things (the declining taste for science). The most obvious remedy is to provide the educated classes with a series of works on popular and practical science, freed from mathematical symbols and technical terms, written in simple and perspicuous language, and illustrated by facts and experiments which are level to the capacity of ordinary minds.

The cultivation of science is a luxury of no common kind amid the bustle and vexation of life, and is quite compatible with the most active professional duties. Your education and the example you have had to copy will, I am sure, guard you against those presumptuous and skeptical opinions which scientific knowledge too often engenders. In the ardour of pursuit and under the intoxication of success scientific men are apt to forget that they are the instrument by which Providence is gradually revealing the wonders of creation, and that they ought to exercise their functions with the same humility as those who are engaged in unfolding the mysteries of His revealed will.

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The human voice may be denominated the music of the mind; language, a figurative mode of expressing our ideas and sentiments. The effects of flowing from this beneficent endowment are overwhelming in contemplation and almost infinite in extent. It is principally instrumental to all the moral and physical improvements of man, and enables him to pour forth his otherwise invisible, inaudible, unfathomable thoughts, to his fellow-man and to his God.

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