THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 5 



the country in which they are divulged, and, by dilating the 

 intellect, re-act on the moral character of mankind." 1 



Where our perceptive faculties are baffled, we dream ; where 

 they compass their object, we inquire after cause. Such is a 

 law of our minds, which cannot have been bestowed upon us 

 without being designed for a good end. And, indeed, it is 

 by experience placed beyond all doubt, that to yield to this 

 impulse is to use a direct means of improving our condition 

 on earth, and to advance in the scale of moral as well as in- 

 tellectual being. Nor are we left to doubt that extensions of 

 knowledge, either in simple fact or in cause and relation, 

 are not to be estimated by their immediate and apparent 

 effects ; for both are there often good results of the most tan- 

 gible kind where no such thing was expected as from Na- 

 pier's discovery of the logarithms, or, to take an opposite 

 instance, from Smith's ascertainment of the order of rocks 

 and it is utterly impossible in any way to reckon the benefits 

 which light confers upon mind wherever it is allowed to enter. 

 Assuming the legitimacy of such inquiries, and yet holding 

 fast by the reverence which Created owes to Creating, we may 

 without fear yield to the instinct which sends us to ask after 

 cause with regard to this vast and beauteous scene. How has 

 it been that these orby myriads have taken the places in which 

 we find them ? To what authorship are we to ascribe the 

 whole 1 



It has often been found, in philosophizing, that the prime 

 difficulty lay in bringing down the mind to sufficiently simple 

 conceptions. The many soar and mystify, and come to nothing ; 

 to few is it given to find truth where it usually lies, amongst 

 the things most familiar. The ideas which the ancients formed 

 of the movements of the heavenly bodies were lofty, but en- 

 tirely erroneous. It was reserved for the geometers of the 

 last two centuries, by pursuing truth on more solid grounds, to 

 establish the simplicity which is now known to extend through 

 the physical constitution of the universe. It has been fully 

 ascertained that the planets have obtained their forms, keep 

 their places with regard to the sun and to each other, and 

 pursue all their various motions, in obedience to certain laws 

 which are to be every day seen acting on the humblest scale 

 in our very presence. Thus, the earth is a globe for the same 

 reason that a dew-drop is so. It is slightly flattened at the 



1 Herschel's Address, ut supra. 



