THE DOCTRINE OF FINAL CAUSES. 495 



The real philosopher, who knows that all the kinds of truth are in- 

 timately connected, and that all the best hopes and encouragements 

 which are granted to our nature must be consistent with truth, will be 

 satisfied and confirmed, rather than surprised and disturbed, thus to 

 find the Natural Sciences leading him to the borders of a higher region. 

 To, him it will appear natural and reasonable, that after journeying so 

 long among the beautiful and orderly laws by which the universe is 

 governed, we find ourselves at last approaching to a Source of order 

 and law, and intellectual beauty : that, after venturing into the region 

 of life and feeling and will, we are led to believe the Fountain of life 

 and will not to be itself unintelligent and dead, but to be a living Mind, 

 a Power which aims as well as acts. To us this doctrine appears like 

 the natural cadence of the tones to which we have so long been listen- 

 ing ; and without such a final strain our ears would have been left 

 craving and unsatisfied. We have been lingering long amid the har- 

 monies of law and symmetry, constancy and development ; and these 

 notes, though their music was sweet and deep, must too often have 

 sounded to the ear of our moral nature, as vague and unmeaning 

 melodies, floating in the air around us, but conveying no definite thought, 

 moulded into no intelligible announcement. But one passage which 

 we have again and again caught by snatches, though sometimes inter- 

 rupted and lost, at last swells in our ears full, clear, and decided ; and 

 the religious " Hymn in honor of the Creator," to which Galen so 

 gladly lent his voice, and in which the best physiologists of succeeding 

 times have ever joined, is filled into a richer and deeper harmony by 

 the greatest philosophers of these later days, and will roll on hereafter 

 the " perpetual song" of the temple of science. 



