244 RECENT PROGRESS IN RELATION TO THE THEORY OF HEAT. 



movement to matter, and to imagine a species of movement constituting heat ? 

 Never did savant, who had painfully learned to observe what surrounds him, enter- 

 tain that thought. For him, the cause of heat is of the same order with that of 

 the fall of bodies to the surface of the earth. It is a force, an abstract principle, 

 which it is not his mission to fathom. And if, having become philosopher, he 

 aims to ascend higher in the scale of causes, he must advance with an extreme 

 sagacity, under the penalty of encountering the most mortifying failures. Few 

 men are endowed with those qualities of mind which are congruous to the phi- 

 losopher, and those who carry into this rugged enterprise the science and the 

 modesty of the sage are apt to anive, in theh" conclusions, at principles of the 

 purest spiritualism. 



