Note 782 — Chapter V · (continued 2)

Dr. Whewell, comparing him with his great German contemporary, Werner, says, ‘In the German, considering him as a geologist, the ideal element predominated.’ … ‘Of a very different temper and character was William Smith. No literary cultivation of his youth awoke in him the speculative love of symmetry and system; but a singular clearness and precision of the classifying power, which he possessed as a native talent, was exercised and developed by exactly those geological facts among which his philosophical task lay.’ … ‘We see great vividness of thought and activity of mind, unfolding itself exactly in proportion to the facts with which it had to deal.’ … ‘He dates his attempts to discriminate and connect strata from the year 1790.’ Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, London, 1847, vol. iii. pp. 562–564.