XIII. 



A LECTURE ON MAGNETISM. 



WE have no reason to believe that the sheep or the dog-, 

 or, indeed, any of the lower animals, feel an interest in the 

 laws by which natural phenomena are regulated. A herd 

 may be terrified by a thunder-storm ; birds may go to roost, 

 and cattle return to their stalls during a solar eclipse ; but 

 neither birds nor cattle, as far as we know, ever think of 

 inquiring into the causes of these things. It is otherwise 

 with man. The presence of natural objects, the occurrence 

 of natural events, the varied appearances of the universe in 

 which he dwells, penetrate beyond his organs of sense, and 

 appeal to an inner power of which the senses are the mere 

 instruments and excitants. No fact is to him either final 

 or original. He cannot limit himself to the contemplation 

 of it alone, but endeavors to ascertain its position in a 

 series to which the constitution of his mind assures him it 

 must belong. He regards all that he witnesses in the 

 present as the efflux and sequence of something that has 

 gone before, and as the source of a system of events which 

 is to follow. The notion of spontaneity, by which in his 

 ruder .state he accounted for natural events, is abandoned; 

 the idea that Nature is an aggregate of independent parts 

 also disappears, as the connection and mutual dependence 

 of physical powers become more and more manifest : until 

 he is finally led, and that chiefly by the science of which 

 I happen this evening to be the exponent, to regard 



