Perhaps the greatest of all the difficulties which we feel in forming such conjectures, regards the endless duration of an immortal existence. All our ideas in this world are so adapted to a limited conscheme of a being incapable of lasting beyond a few years, but so inseparably connected with a constant change even here-a perpetual termination of one stage of existence and beginning of anotherthat we cannot easily, if at all, fancy an eternal, or even a long-continued, endurance of the same faculties, the same pursuits, and the same enjoyments, All here is in perpetual movement—ceaseless change, There is nothing in us or about us that abides an existence of the body itself in a new state, after passing through death, is nothing contrary to the analogies which nature presents, has been oftentimes observed, and is a topic much dwelt upon, especially by the ancient philosophers. The extra-tinuance of life-not only so moulded upon the ordinary transformations which insects undergo have struck men's imaginations so powerfully in contemplating this subject, that the soul itself was deemed of old to be aptly designated under the emblematical form of a butterfly, which having emerged from the chrysalis state, flutters in the air, instead of continuing to crawl on the earth, as it did before the worm it once was ceased to exist. The instance of the foetus of animals, and especially of the human embryo, has occupied the at-hour-nay, an instant. Resting-place there is none tention of modern inquirers into this interesting for the foot-no haven is provided where the mind subject. Marking the entire difference in one state may be still. How then shall a creature, thus of existence before and after birth, and the diver- wholly ignorant of repose-unacquainted with any sity of every one animal function at these two pe- continuation at all in any portion of his existence riods, philosophers have inferred, that, as, on pass--so far abstract his thoughts from his whole expeing from the one to the other state of existence so rience as to conceive a long, much more a perpemighty a change is wrought, without any destruc- tual, duration of the same powers, pursuits, feelings, tion either of the soul or body, a like transition may pleasures? Here it is that we are the most lost in take place at death, and the event which appears to our endeavors to reach the seats of the blessed with close our being may only open the portals of a new, our imperfect organs of perception, and our inveand higher, and more lasting condition. As far as terate and only habits of thinking.* such considerations suggest analogies, they furnish It remains to observe, that all the speculations a matter of pleasing contemplation, perhaps lend upon which we have touched under this second even some illustration to the argument. Neverthe-subdivision of the subject, the moral argument, are less, they must be regarded as exceedingly feeble similar to the doctrines of inductive science-at helps in this latter respect, if indeed their aid be least to such of those doctrines as are less perfectly not of a doubtful, and even dangerous kind. They ascertained; but the investigation is conducted upon are all drawn from material objects-all rest upon the same principles. The most satisfactory proofs the properties and the fortunes of corporeal exist- of the soul's immortality are those of the first, or ences. Now the stronghold of those who maintain psychological class, derived from studying the na the Immortality of the Soul, and, indeed, all the ture of mind; those of the second class which we doctrines of Natural Theology, is the entire differ- have last been surveying, derived from the condience between mind and matter, and the proofs we tion of man in connection with the attributes of the have constantly around us, and within us, of ex- Deity, are less distinct and cogent; nor would they istences as real as the bodies which affect our out- be sufficient of themselves; but they add important ward senses, but resembling those perishable things confirmation to the others; and both are as truly in no one quality, no one habit of action, no one parts of legitimate inductive science as any branch mode of being. -we may rather say, any other branch-of moral philosophy. Upon the particulars of a future state-the kind of existence reserved for the soul-the species of its occupations and enjoyments-Natural Theology is, of course, profoundly silent, but not more silent *The part of Dean Swift's satire which relates than Revelation. We are left wholly to conjecture, to the Stulbrugs may possibly occur to some readers and in a field on which our hopelessness of attain- as bearing upon this topic. That the stanch ading any certain result is quite equal to our interest mirers of that singularly gifted person should have in the success of the search. Indeed, all our ideas been flung into ecstasies on the perusal of this exof happiness in this world are such as rather to traordinary part of his writings, needs not surprise disqualify us for the investigation or what may us. Their raptures were full easily excited; but I more fitly be termed the imagination. Those ideas am quite clear they have given a wrong gloss to it, are, for the most part, either directly connected and heaped upon its merits a very undeserved praise. with the senses, or derived from our condition of They think that the picture of the Stulbrugs was weakness here which occasions the formation of intended to wean us from a love of life, and that it connections for mutual comfort and support, and has well accomplished its purpose. I am very cergives to the feebler party the feeling of allegiance, tain that the Dean never had any such thing in view, to the stronger the pleasure of protection. Yet may because his sagacity was far too great not to perwe conceive that, hereafter, such of our affections ceive that he only could make out this position by a as have been the most cherished in life shall survive most undisguised begging of the question. How and form again the delight of meeting those from could any man of the most ordinary reflection exwhom death has severed us-that the soul may en-pect to wean his fellow-creatures from love of life joy the purest delights in the exercise of its powers, above all for the investigation of truth-that it may expatiate in the full discovery of whatever has hitherto been most sparingly revealed, or most carefully hidden from its view-that it may be gratified with the sight of the useful harvest reaped by the world from the good seed which it helped to sow. We can only conjecture or fancy. But these, and such as these, are pleasures in which the gross indulgences of sense have no part, and which are even removed above the less refined of our moral gratifications: they may, therefore, be supposed consistent with a pure and faultless state of spiritual being. by describing a sort of persons who at a given age lost their faculties, and became doting, drivelling idiots? Did any man breathing ever pretend that he wished to live, not only for centuries, but even for three-score years and ten, bereaved of his understanding, and treated by the law and by his fellow men as in hopeless, incurable dotage? The passage in question is much more likely to have proceeded from Swift's exaggerated misanthropy, and to have been designed as an antidote to human pride, by showing that our duration is necessarily limited-if, indeed, it is not rather to be regarded as the work of mere whim and caprice. SECTION VI. LORD BACON'S DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES.* mentum esse. Itaque merito religioni tanquam fdatissimam et acceptissimam ancillam attribui, cum altera volentatem Dei, altera potestatem manifestet." If the earlier part of the passage left any doubt of the kind of service which religion was to derive from inductive science, the last words clearly show that it could only be by the doctrine of final causes. 2. But further, he distinctly classes natural religion among the branches of legitimate science; and it is of great and decisive importance to our present inquiry that we should mark the particular place which he assigns to it. He first divides science into two great branches, Theology and Philosophycomprehending under the former description only the doctrines of revelation, and under the latter all human science. Now after expressly excluding Natural Religiont from the first class, he treats it as a part of the second. The second, or philosophy, is divided into three parts, according as its object is the Deity, Nature, or Man. The first of these subdivisions constitutes Natural Religion, which he says may be termed Divine knowledge, if you regard its object, but Natural knowledge, if you consider its nature and evidence, (" ratione informationis scientia naturalis censeri potest.") That he Ir now appears, that when we said that Natural Theology can no more be distinguished from the physical, psychological, and ethical sciences, in respect of the evidence it rests upon and the manner in which its investigations are to be conducted, than the different departments of those sciences can be distinguished from each other in the like respect, we were only making an assertion borne out by a close and rigorous examination of the subject. How, then, comes it to pass, it may be asked, that the father of Inductive Philosophy has banished the speculation of Final Causes from his system, as if it were no branch of inductive science? A more attentive consideration of the question will show, first, that the sentence which he pronounced has been not a little misunderstood by persons who looked only at particular aphorisms, without duly regarding the context and the occasion; and, secondly, that Lord Bacon may very probably have conceived a prejudice against the subject altogether, from the abuses, or indeed perversions, to which a misplaced affection for it had given rise in some of the ancient schools of philosophy. That Lord Bacon speaks disparagingly of the in-places it in a different subdivision from Natural quiry concerning final causes, both when he han-Philosophy proves nothing; for he classes anatomy, dles it didactically, and when he mentions it inci- medicine, and intellectual philosophy also in a difdentally, is admitted. He enumerates it among the ferent subdivision; they come under the head of errors that spring from the restlessness of mind Human Philosophy, or the science of man, as con(impotentia mentis,) which forms the fourth class of tradistinguished from Natural Theology and Nathe idols of the species (idola tribus,) or causes of tural Philosophy, or the science of God and of exfalse philosophy connected with the peculiarities of ternal objects. Many objections may undoubtedly the human constitution.t In other parts of the be made to this classification, of which it is perhaps same work he descants upon the mischiefs which enough to say, that it leads to separating optics as have arisen in the schools from mixing the doc-well as anatomy and medicines from natural philotrines of natural religion with those of natural phi-sophy. But, at all events, it shows both that Lord losophy; and he more than once treats of the in- Bacon deemed Natural Theology a fit object of phiquiry concerning final causes as a barren specula-losophical inquiry, and that he regarded the induction, comparing it to a nun or a vestal consecrated tive method as furnishing the means by which the to heaven. But a nearer examination of this great inquiry was to be conducted. authority will show that it is not adverse to our doc3. The general censure upon the doctrine of final trine. causes to which we have in the outset adverted, as 1. First of all it is to be remarked, that Lord Ba-conveyed by certain incidental remarks, is manifestcon does not disapprove of the speculation concern-ly directed against the abuse of such speculations, ing final causes absolutely, and does not undervalue and more especially in the ancient schools of philothe doctrines of Natural Religion, so long as that sophy. Lord Bacon justly objects to the confounding speculation and those doctrines are kept in their of final with efficient or physical causes; he marks proper place. His whole writings bear testimony the loose and figurative language to which this conto the truth of this proposition. In the Parasceve to fusion has given rise; he asks if it is philosophical natural and experimental history, which closes the to describe the eye as Aristotle, Galen, and others Novum Organum, he calls the history of the pheno- do, with the eyelids and eyelashes as a wall and a mena of nature a volume of the work of God, and hedge to protect it; or the bones as so many beams as it were another Bible-"volumen operum Dei, and pillars to support the body; and he is naturally et tanquam altera scriptura." In the first book of apprehensive of the danger which may result from the De Dignitate, he says there are two books of men introducing fancies of their own into science, religion to be consulted-the Scriptures, to tell the and above all, from their setting out with such fanwill of God, and the book of creation, to show his cies, and then making the facts bend to humor them. power. Accordingly he maintains elsewhere,** This is indeed the great abuse of the doctrine of that a miracle was never yet performed to convert final causes; and the more to be dreaded in its conatheists, because these might always arrive at the sequences, because of the religious feelings which knowledge of a Deity by the light of nature. Nor are apt to mix themselves with such speculations, ought we to pass over the remarkable passage of and to consecrate error.¶ the Cogitata et Visa, in which he propounds the use of Natural Philosophy as the cure for superstition and the support of true religion. "Naturalem Philosophiam, post verbum Dei, certissimam superstitionis medicinam, eandem probaptissimam, fidei ali- in optics, under the head of the human mind—the § Ib. lib. iv. c. 3. He treats of the desiderata * Francisci Baconi, Cogitata et Visa. De Dig. lib. iii. c. 2. senses. 4. The objections of Lord Bacon are the more clearly shown to be levelled against the abuse only, that we find him speaking in nearly similar terms of logic and the mathematics as having impeded the progress of natural science. In the passage already referred to, and which occurs twice in his books, where the Platonists are accused of mixing Natural Religion with Philosophy, the latter Platonists (or Eclectics) are in the same works charged with corrupting it by the mathematics, and the Peripatetics by logic. Not certainly that the greatest logician of modern times could undervalue either his own art or the skill of the analyst, but because Aristotle through dialectic, and Proclus through geometrical pedantry, neglected that humbler but more useful province of watching and interpreting nature, and used the instruments furnished by logic, and the mathematics, not to assist them in classifying facts, in or reasoning from them, but to construct phantastic theories, to which they made the facts bend. have treated others with greater respect than he has shown them.* Above all, it is certain that he would never have suffered that the veneration due to his own name should enshrine an idolt to obstruct the progress of truth, and alienate her votaries from the true worship which he himself had founded. That Lord Bacon has not himself indulged in any speculations akin to those of Natural Theology is, beyond all dispute, true. There is hardly any writer upon moral or natural science, in whose works fewer references can be found to the power or wisdom of a superintending Providence. It would be difficult to find in any other author, ancient or modern, as much of very miscellaneous matter upon almost all physical subjects as he has brought together in the Sylva Sylvarum, without one allusion to Final Causes. But it must also be admitted, that it would not be easy to find in any other writer of the least name upon physical subjects so little of value, and so much that is wholly unworthy of respect. That When rightly examined, then, the authority of work is, indeed, a striking instance of the inequaliLord Bacon appears not to oppose the doctrine ties of the human faculties. Among the one thouwhich we are seeking to illustrate. Yet it is possi- sand observations of which it consists, hardly oneble that a strong impression of the evils occasioned of the two hundred and eighteen pages certainly not by the abuse of these speculations may have given one-can be found in which there is not some inhim a less favorable opinion of them than they de- stance of credulity, superstition, groundless hyposerved. It appears that he had even conceived some thesis, manifest error of some kind or other; and prejudice against logic and the mathematics from a nothing at any time given to the world ever exhibitsimilar cause; and he manifests it, not only in the ed a more entire disregard of all his own rules of passages already referred to, but in that portion of philosophizing: for a superficial examination of his treatise De Dig. et Aug., in which he treats of facts, a hasty induction, and a proneness to fanciful mathematical as an appendix to physical science, theory, form the distinguishing characters of the expressing much hesitation whether to rank it as a whole book. Assuredly it is a proof that the docscience, and delivering himself with some asperity trine of Final Causes is not the only parent of a against both logicians and mathematicians.t High "phantastic philosophy," though the other base unas is the authority of this great man-and upon the dergrowth of "heretical religion" may not be subject of the present inquiry the highest of all-found in the recesses of the Sylva. yet, if it clearly appears that the argument from Descartes, whose original genius for the abstract Final Causes comes within the scope of inductive sciences fixed an era in the history of pure mathe science, we are bound to admit it within the circle matics, as remarkable as Bacon's genius did in that of legitimate human knowledge, even if we found of logic, like him failed egregiously as a cultivator the father of that science had otherwise judged. It of natural philosophy; and he excluded Final is clear that, had he now lived, he would himself Causes altogether from his system as a preposterous have rejected some speculations as wholly beyond speculation-an irreverent attempt to penetrate mysthe reach of the human faculties, which he unhe-teries hidden from human eyes by the imperfection sitatingly ranges among the objects of sound philosophy. It is equally undeniable that he would the perverted use made of some portions the Bible history-" Hinc vanitat nonnulli ex modernis summa levitate ita indulserunt, ut in primo capitulo Geneseos et in libro Job et aliis scripturis sacris, Philosophiam Naturalem fundare conati sint; inter viva quærentes mortua." * Nov. Org. lib. i. Aph. 96; De Dig. lib. i. + De Dig. lib. iii. c. 6.-Delicias et fastum mathematicorum, qui hanc scientiam physicæ fieri imperare cupiunt. Nescic enim quo fato fiat ut mathematica et logica quæ ancillarum loca erga physicam se gerere debebant, nihilominus, certitudinem, præ se jactantes, dominationem exercere petunt." of our nature. But it is to be observed, that all the successful cultivators of physical science have, as if under the influence of an irresistible impulsion, indulged in the sublime contemplations of Natural Religion. Nor have they fallen into this track from feeling and sentiment; they have pursued it as one of the paths which inductive philosophy opens to the student of nature. To say nothing of Mr. Boyle, one of the earliest cultivators of experimental philosophy, whose works are throughout imbued with the subject of Final Causes, let us listen to the this spirit, and who has left a treatise expressly on He complains of treatises of Natural History being "swelled with figures of animals and plants, and other superfluous matter, instead of being enriched with solid observations."-De Dig. lib. ii. c. 3. Idolum theatri. He distinctly considers the "doctrine of angels and spirits" as an "appendix to Natural Theology," This striking and epigrammatic antithesis ocand holds that their nature may be investigated by curs more than once in his writings. Thus, in the science, including that of unclean spirits or demons, Nov. Org. lib. i. aph. 65—“Ex divinorum et huwhich he says hold in this inquiry the same place manorum malesana admixtione, non solum educitur as poisons do in physics, or vices in ethics.--(De Dig. philosophia phantastica, sed etiam Religio hæretilib. iii. c. 2.) Natural magic, the doctrine of fas- ca;" and again, in De Dig. and Aug. lib. iii. c. 2, cination, the discovery of futurity from dreams and speaking of the abuse of speculations touching naecstasies, especially in bad health from death-bed tural religion, he remarks on the "incommoda et glimpses-in a word, divination-he holds to be pericula quæ ex eo (abusu) tum religioni, tum phiBranches of science deserving of cultivation; though losophiæ impendent, utpote qui religionem hæretihe warns against sorcery, or the practice of witch-cam procudit et philosophiam phantasticam et sucraft. (Ib. lib. iv. c. 3, and lib. ii. c. 2.) perstitiosam." words of Sir Isaac Newton himself. The greatest And if he could not rest from his immortal labors in setting forth the system of the Universe, without raising his mind to the contemplation of Him who "weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance," so neither could he pursue the more minute operations of the most subtile material agent, without again rising towards Him who said "Let there be light." The most exquisite investigation ever conducted by man of the laws of nature by the means of experiment abounds in its latter portion, with explicit references to the doctrines of Natural Theology, and with admissions that the business of physical science is "to deduce causes from effects till we come to the very First Cause," and "that every true step made in inductive philosophy is to be highly valued, because it brings us nearer to the First Cause."t SECTION VII. OF SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT, AND THE METHODS OF physical science to which they naturally belong.All that is needful is, constantly to keep in mind the identity of the evidence on which these truths rest, with that which is the groundwork of those other parts of philosophy. Although, however, convenience and the paramount importance of the subject seem to require such a separation, it is manifest that much of theology must still be found intermingled with physics and psychology, and there only; for the truths of Natural Theology being sufficiently demonstrated by a certain induction of facts-a certain number of experiments and observations-no farther proof is required; and to assemble all the evidence, if it were possible, would be only encumbering the subject with superfluous proofs, while the collection would still remain incomplete, as every day is adding to the instances discovered of design appearing in the phenomena of the natural and moral world. It has been said, indeed, that a single well-estab lished proof of design is enough, and that no additional strength is gained to the argument by multiplying the instances. We shall afterwards show with what limitations this proposition is to be received; but for our present purpose it is sufficient, that, at all events, a certain definite number of instances are of force enough to work out the demonstration; and yet in every branch of physics and psychology new instances are presented at each step we make. These instances are of great importance; they are to be carefully noted and treasured up; they form most valuable parts of those scientific inquiries, conveying, in its purest form and in its highest degree, the gratification of contemplating abstract truths, in which consists the whole of the pleasure derived from science, properly so called-that is, from science as such, and as independent of its application to uses or enjoyments of a corporeal kind." An apprehension has frequently been entertained by learned and pious men-men of a truly philosophical spirit-lest the natural desire of tracing design in the works of nature should carry inquirers too far, and lead them to give scope to their imaHAVING shown that Natural Theology is a branch within the bounds of strict reasoning. gination rather than contain their speculations They have of inductive science-partly physical, partly intel- dreaded the introduction of what Lord Bacon calls lectual and moral-it is of comparatively little importance to inquire whether or not it can be kept at the injuries which religion may receive from bea "phantastic philosophy," and have also felt alarm apart from the other branches of those sciences. In ing exposed to ridicule, in the event of the speculaone view of this question we may say, that there is tions proving groundless upon a closer examination. no more ground for the separation than there would But it does not appear reasonable that philosophers be for making a distinct science of all the proposi- should be deterred by such considerations from tions in Natural Philosophy which immediately relate to the human body-whereby we should have and giving it the place which belongs to it in all anxiously investigating the subject of Final Causes, portions of dynamics, pneumatics, opties, chemistry, their inquiries; provided they do not suffer fancy to electricity, and all human anatomy and pathology intermix with and disturb their speculations. If as contradistinguished from comparative, reduced under one and the same head-a classification, in- they do, they commit the greatest error of which reasoners can be guilty-an error against which it deed, resembling Lord Bacon's. But in another, is the very object of inductive philosophy to guard; and, as it seems, the more just view, there is a suffi- but it is no more an error in this, than in the other cient number of resemblances and differences, and investigations of science. He who imagines design the importance of the subject is sufficient, to justify where there is none; he who either assumes facts the making a separate head of Natural Theology.in order to build upon them an inference favorable The question is entirely one of convenience; nothing of essential moment turns upon the classification; and there is obviously an advantage in having the truths collected in one body, though they are culled from the various parts of Physical and Meta Principia, lib. iii. Prop. xli. and xlii. Optics, Book iii. Query 28.-" How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were the several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in optics, and the ear without knowledge of sound?" (See, too, Query 31.) 66 such an inference fancifully, and not logically, to Natural Religion, or from admitted facts draws comes within the description of a false philosopher he prefers the hypothetical to the inductive method; he cannot say with his master, hypotheses non fingo" he renounces the modern, and recurs to the exploded modes of philosophizing. But he is not the more a false philosopher, and does not the more sin against the light of improved science, for committing the offence in the pursuit of theological truth. He would have been liable to the same that is, the things to be explained by means of the proposition or discovery, if we had been led to it by another route; in other words, if we had reached it by means of other phenomena of the like kind, referrible to the same class, and falling within the same principle or rule. Thus, the experiments upon the prismatic spectrum prove the sun's light to be composed of rays of different refrangibility.This being demonstrated, we may explain by means of it the phenomena which form the proofs of the first proposition of the " Optics," that lights which differ in color differ in refrangibility-as that a parallelogram of two colors refracted through a prism has its sides no longer parallel; or, having shown the different refrangibility by the prismatic phenomena, we may explain why a lens has the focus of violet rays nearer than the focus of red, while this experiment is of itself one of the most cogent proofs of the different refrangibility. It is plain that in these cases, the same phenomenon may be made indiscriminately the subject of matter either of analysis or synthesis. So, one of the proofs given of latent heat is that after you heat a bar of iron once or twice by hammering it, the power of being thus heated is exhausted, until by exposing it to the fire that power is restored. Yet, suppose we had proved the doctrine of the absorption of heat by other experiments-as by the effects on the thermometer of liquids of different temperatures mixed together the phenomenon of the iron bar would be explicable by that doctrine thus learnt. Again, another proof of the same truth is the production of heat by the sudden condensation of gaseous fluids, and of cold by evaporation, the evolution of heat being inferred from the former, and its absorption from the latter operation. But if the experiments upon the mixture of fluids of different temperatures, and other facts, had sufficiently proved the disappearance of heat in its sensible form, and its being held in a state in which it did not affect the thermometer, we should by means of that doctrine have been able to account for the refrigerating effect of evaporation, and the heating power of condensation. charge if he had resorted to his fancy instead of observation and experiment while in search of any other scientific truth, or had hypothetically assumed a principle of classifying admitted phenomena, instead of rigorously deducing it from examining their circumstances of resemblance and of diversity. That any serious discredit can be brought upon the science of Natural Theology itself, from the failures to which such hypothetical reasonings may lead, seems not very easy to conceive. Vain and superficial minds may take any subject for their ridicule, and may laugh at the mechanician and the chemist as well as the theologian, when they chance to go astray in their searches after truth. Yet no one ever thought of being discouraged from experimental inquiries, because even the strictest prosecution of the inductive method cannot always guard against error. It is of the essence of all investigations of merely contingent truth, that they are exposed to casualties which do not beset the paths of the geometrician and the analyst. A conclusion from one induction of facts may be well warranted until a larger induction obliges us to abandon it, and adopt another. Yet no one deems chemistry discredited because a body considered in one state of our knowledge to be a compound acid has since appeared rather to be a simple substance, bearing to the acids no resemblance in its composition; nor would the optical discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton be discredited, much less the science he cultivated be degraded, if the undulatory hypothesis should, on a fuller inquiry, become established by strict proof. Yet such errors, or rather such imperfect and partial views, were the result of a strict obedience to the inductive rules of philosophizing. How much less ground for cavil against either of those rules, or the sciences to which they are applicable, would be afforded by the observations of those who had mistaken their way through a neglect of inductive principle, and by following blindly false guides! While, then, on the one hand, we allow Natural Theology to form a distinct head or branch, the other sciences must of necessity continue to class its truths among their own; and thus every science may be It cannot, then, be a real and an accurate disstated to consist of three divisions-1. The truths tinction, or one founded on the nature of the thing, which it teaches relative to the constitution and ac- which depends on the accident of the one set of tion of matter or of mind;-2. The truths which it facts having been chosen for the instruments of the teaches relative to theology; and 3. The applica- analytical, and the other set for the subjects of the tion of both classes of truths to practical uses, physi- synthetical operation, each set being alike applicacal or moral. Thus, the science of pneumatics ble to either use. For, in order that the synthesis teaches, under the first head, the doctrine of the may be correct, nay, in order that it may be strict pressure of the atmosphere, and its connection with and not hypothetical, it is obviously necessary that respiration, and with the suspension of weights by the phenomena should be of such a description as the formation of a vacuum. Under the second head, might have made them subservient to the analysis. it shows the adaptation of the lungs of certain ani- In truth, both the operations are essentially the mals to breathe the air, and the feet of others to same-the generalization of particulars-the arsupport their bodies, in consequence of both being ranging or classifying facts so as to obtain a more framed in accordance with the former doctrine-general or comprehensive fact; and the explanation that is, with the law of pressure-and thus demonstrates a wise and beneficent design. Under the third head, it teaches the construction of barometers, steam-engines, &c., while the contemplation of the Divine wisdom and goodness inculcates piety, patience, and hope. But it may be said, that in this classification of the objects of science, we omit one ordinarily reckoned essential-the explanation of phenomena. The answer is, that such a classification is not strictly accurate, as no definite line can be drawn between the explanation of phenomena and the analytical process by which the truths themselves are established: in a word, between analysis and synthesis in the sciences of contingent truth. For the same phenomena which form the materials of the analytical investigation-the steps that lead us to the proposition or discovery-would, in a reversed order, become the subjects of the synthetical operation: of phenomena, is just as much a process of generalization or classification, as the investigation of the proposition itself, by means of which you are to give the explanation. We do not perform two operations, but one, in these investigations. We do not in reality first find by the prism that light is differently refrangible, and then explain the rainbow-or show by the air-pump that the atmosphere presses with the weight of so many pounds upon a square foot, and then explain the steam-engine and the fly's foot-or prove, by burning the two weighed gases together and burning iron in one of them, that water is composed of them both, and that rust is the metal combined with one, and then explain why iron rusts in water. But we observe all these several facts, and find that they are related to each other, and resolvable into three classes-that the phenomena of the prism and of the shower are the same, the spectrum and the rainbow being varieties |