METHOD OF DETERMINING GENERA. 175 



and read the sentences : a study more abstruse but far 

 more pregnant than that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, 

 and whose attainment is rewarded with a supremer 

 knowledge than is accorded by these, which exhibit 

 merely the legends of dead despots; but here we have 

 a display of the vitality of the wisdom inscribed in 

 gleaming characters upon the leaves of the wonderful 

 book of life, God's glorious works, made manifest to 

 man. 



Thus we should aim at the knowledge of final causes, 

 the apparent wisdom of whose adaptations points clearly 

 to the source of all the first great Cause. A naturalist 

 with such large views has a wide field before him, which 

 with every step expands, and which alone is worthy of 

 engrossing the earnest attention of his intelligence, and 

 is in itself sufficient to absorb the profouudest contem- 

 plation. His mind becomes thus filled with great objects, 

 which charm it with their beauty and feed it with the 

 complexity of their intricate combinations, whose earnest 

 development is an affluent stream of perpetual instruc- 

 tive occupation. With Newton we may say : " We 

 everywhere behold simplicity in the means, but an inex- 

 haustible variety in the effects," resulting all from the 

 luminous wisdom of prearranged design. 



The humiliation which attends the sentiment of the 

 utter inabilitjr and incompetency of the mind to grasp 

 the intricacy and vastness of nature, is consoled by the 

 redundant proofs the contemplation yields of a supreme 

 and benevolent Providence presiding over all things, and 

 thence we derive the comfortable and supporting assur- 

 ance, in the fickle waywardness and vicissitudes of a ha- 

 rassed and anxious life, that a benevolent eye is ever 

 watchfully awake ; for the naturalist everywhere beholds 



