REVELATION AND REASON. 5 



by the brilliancy of the intellectual powers, the inconceivable swift- 

 ness of thought, the boundless range which our fancy can take, and 

 the vast objects which our reason can embrace. That we should have 

 been able to resolve the elements into their more simple constituents, 

 to analyze the subtle light which rills all space to penetrate from 

 that remote particle in the universe of which we occupy a speck, into 

 regions infinitely remote ascertain the weight of bodies at the 

 surface of the most distant worlds investigate the laws that govern 

 their motions, or mould their forms, and calculate to a second of 

 time the periods of their re-appearance, during the revolution of 

 centuries all this is in the last degree amazing, and affords much 

 more food for admiration than any of the phenomena of the material 

 creation. Then what shall we say of that incredible power of 

 generalization, which has enabled some even to anticipate by ages 

 the discovery of truths the farthest removed above ordinary appre- 

 hension, and the most savouring of improbability and fiction, not 

 merely of a Clairault conjecturing the existence of a seventh planet, 

 and the position of its orbit, but a Newton learnedly and sagaciously 

 inferring from the refraction of light, the inflammable quality of the 

 diamond, the composition of apparently the simplest of the elements, 

 and the opposite nature of the two ingredients, unknown for a century 

 after, of which it is composed ? Yet there is something more mar- 

 vellous still in the possession of thought by which such prodigies 

 have been performed, and in the force of the mind itself, when it acts 

 wholly without external aid, borrowing nothing whatever from 

 matter, and relying on its own power alone. The most abstruse in- 

 vestigations of the mathematician are conducted without any regard 

 to sensible objects; and the helps he derives in his reasonings from 

 material things at all, are absolutely insignificant, compared with the 

 portion of his work which is altogether of an abstract kind, the aid 

 of figures and letters being only to facilitate and abridge his labour, 

 and not at all essential to his progress ; nay, strictly speaking, there 

 are no truths in the whole range of the pure mathematics which might 

 not, by possibility, have been discovered arid systematized by one 

 deprived of sight and touch, or immured in a dark chamber without 

 the use of a single material object. The instrument of Newton's 

 most sublime speculations the calculus, which he invented, and the 

 astonishing systems reared by its means, which have given immor- 

 tality to the names of Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, are all the creatures 

 of pure abstract thought ; and all might by possibility have existed in 

 their present magnificence, without any material help whatever, 



