FEBRUARY 



|T is perhaps impossible for an intel- 

 ligent person to prosecute any line 

 of research, without finding himself 

 instinctively grouping his newly ac- 

 quired facts according to some system, it may 

 be merely fanciful and erroneous, or it may 

 be more or less scientific and accurate. The 

 human mind has an innate propensity to sys- 

 tematic arrangement, which doubtless has its 

 ground in this, that any fact, pure and simple, 

 is of very little interest, except as considered 

 in its relation to other facts. It is as true of 

 every fact as of a human being, that none liveth 

 unto itself. And even without any distinct sense 

 of this truth which prevails throughout the uni- 

 verse, the mind, by its very constitution fitted 

 to the state of the case, governs itself according 

 to this principle. Without such relationship, 

 science, as we understand it, would be impossi- 

 ble, or at best only a heterogeneous accumula- 

 tion of isolated facts, as devoid of all utility 



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