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array, which the naturalist, above all others, delights to 

 contemplate. If things are no longer to be regarded as 

 dissimilar because they unite on their outer limits, 

 differences may be given up, as having no special 

 meaning, and as therefore unworthy of investigation. 

 It requires but a slight insight into the physical universe 

 to be convinced, that nearly everything which we see 

 (and, moreover, without injuring its individual reality] is 

 blended into that to which it is the most akin. Night 

 is distinct from day ; yet, so long as the twilight inter- 

 venes, no man can pronounce where the one ends, and 

 the other begins. Heat is opposed to cold ; yet, if by 

 degrees they be respectively diminished, they will at last 

 amalgamate, in a central temperature. And thus it is 

 with things material. The sea and the land are essen- 

 tially unlike ; yet the precise boundary between the two 

 is never clearly denned, the ebb and flow are constantly 

 going on, and the line of separation is variable. The 

 mountain-range is moulded on a different type to the 

 level country beneath it ; yet the turning-point of them 

 both is, in all instances, on neutral ground. We need 

 not however adduce further evidence in support of this 

 fact, that, throughout the whole of Nature, the general 

 principle of fusion (either absolute or apparent) is most 

 obvious. From first to last, traces of it are everywhere 

 to be detected; not only between clusters, or material 

 combinations, of objects (in which case it is absolute), 

 but even between the objects themselves, under which 

 circumstances, however, it is merely apparent ; for, since 



