30 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



occurred to indicate that the operation of the law has 

 for a moment been suspended ; nothing has ever 

 intimated that nature has been crossed by spontaneous 

 action, or that a state of things at any time existed 

 \vhich could not be rigorously deduced from the 

 preceding state. 



Given the distribution of matter, and the forces in 

 operation, in the time of Galileo, the competent mathe- 

 matician of that day could predict what is now occurring 

 in our own. We calculate eclipses in advance, and find 

 our calculations true to the second. We determine the 

 dates of those that have occurred in the early times of 

 history, and find calculation and history in harmony. 

 Anomalies and perturbations in the planets have been 

 over and over again observed ; but these, instead of 

 demonstrating any inconstancy on the part of natural 

 law, have invariably been reduced to consequences of 

 that law. Instead of referring the perturbations of 

 Uranus to any interference on the part of the Author 

 of nature with the law of gravitation, the question 

 which the astronomer proposed to himself was, ' How, 

 in accordance with this law. can the perturbation be 

 produced ? ' Guided by a principle, he was enabled to 

 fix the point of space in which, if a mass of matter 

 were placed, the observed perturbations would follow. 

 We know the result. The practical astronomer turned 

 his telescope towards the region which the intellect of 

 the theoretic astronomer had already explored, and the 

 planet now named Xeptune was found in its predicted 

 place. A very respectable outcome, it will be admitted, 

 of an impulse which ' rests upon no rational grounds, 

 and can be traced to no rational principle ; ' which 

 possesses 'no intellectual character;' which 'philo- 

 sophy ' has uprooted from ' the ground of reason,' and 

 fixed in that ' large irrational department ' discovered 



