24 COSMOS. 



a Cosmos, oi harmoniously ordered whole, which, dimly shad- 

 owed forth to the human mind in the primitive ages of the 

 world, is now fully revealed to the maturer intellect of man 

 kind as the result of long and laborious observation. 



Each of these epochs of the contemplation of the external 

 world — the earliest dawn of thought and the advanced stage 

 of civilization — has its own source of enjoyment. In the 

 former, this enjoyment, in accordance with the simplicity of 

 the primitive ages, flowed from an intuitive feeling of the or 

 der that was proclaimed by the invariable and successive re- 

 appearance of the heavenly bodies, and by the progressive de- 

 velopment of organized beings ; while in the latter, this sense 

 of enjoyment springs from a definite knowledge of the phe- 

 nomena of nature. When man began to interrogate nature, 

 and, not content with observing, learned to evoke phenomena 

 under definite conditions ; when once he sought to collect and 

 record facts, in order that the fruit of his labors might aid in- 

 vestigation after his own brief existence had passed away, the 

 philosophy of Nature cast aside the vague and poetic garb 

 in which she had been enveloped from her origin, and, having 

 assumed a severer aspect, she now weighs the value of ob- 

 servations, and substitutes induction and reasoning for con- 

 jecture and assumption. The dogmas of former ages survive 

 now only in the superstitions of the people and the prejudices 

 of the ignorant, or are perpetuated in a few systems, which, 

 conscious of their weakness, shroud themselves in a vail of 

 mystery. • We may also trace the same primitive intuitions 

 in languages exuberant in figurative expressions ; and a few 

 of the best chosen symbols engendered by the happy inspira- 

 tion of the earliest ages, having by degrees lost their vague- 

 ness through a better mode of interpretation, are still preserved 

 among our scientific terms. 



Nature considered rationally, that is to say, submitted to 

 the process of thought, is a unity in diversity of phenomena ; 

 a harmony, blending together all created things, however dis- 

 similar in form and attributes ; one great whole (to i^av) an- 

 imated by the breath of life. The most important result of 

 a rational inquiry into nature is, therefore, to establish the 

 unity and harmony of this stupendous mass of force and mat- 

 ter, to determine with impartial justice what is due to the 

 discoveri 3s of the past and to those of the present, and to an- 

 alyze the individual parts of natural phenomena without suo- 

 cumbing beneath the weight of the v/hole. Thus, and thus 

 alone, is it permitted to man, while mindful of the high dea- 



