288 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



CHAPTER XIV. 



ARRANGEMENT OF THEORIES. 



To those who have attended to the history of ideas, it must 

 always seem a remarkable thing that in early times, among 

 certain truths, the very culminating point should have been 

 sometimes attained by one grand bound over all the difficul- 

 ties of the journey, leaving undescribed all the ruggedness of 

 the ground passed over. To those who have been born on 

 this summit, there is the same difficulty in passing down to 

 the plain, as there is for us to pass upwards : the same blast- 

 ing of rocks and filling up of morasses. To say that the 

 history- of the struggle is lost to us does not explain all. In 

 these three words, already quoted, "measure, weight, and 

 number," as applied to creation, we see that men had looked 

 long and carefully on the world, had admired its beauty, and 

 believed that everything was arranged with scrupulous accu- 

 racy. The context shows that the fundamental idea was a 

 moral one, and the reasons we now have were not then in 

 existence ; but in general terms there is the eminence seen on 

 which they stood ; we move back towards the plain, or try to 

 reach the summit, measuring, weighing, and numbering, and 

 proving the great mountain view to be true to the minutest 

 particle of matter. 



The scientific mind seeks to repeat the order of thought 

 by which the divine mind arranged the universe ; the artistic 

 mind sees it completed, and rejoices in its beauty. The 

 scientific mind has the work of the six days of creation, the 

 artistic mind lives in the Sabbath of rest. The poetical mind 

 refuses this class of limitation. 



