Xll INTRODUCTION. 



Lifting our searching gaze into the measureless space 

 beyond our earth, we find planet bound to planet, and 

 system chained to system, all impelled by a universal 

 force to roll in regularity and order around a common 

 centre. The pendulations of the remotest star are com- 

 municated through the unseen bond ; and our rocking 

 world obeys the mysterious impulse throughout all those 

 forces which regulate the inorganic combinations of this 

 earth, and unto which its organic creation is irresistibly 

 compelled to bow. 



The glorious sun by day, and the moon and stars in 

 the silence and the mystery of night, are felt to influence 

 all material nature, holding the great Earth bound in a 

 many- stranded cord which cannot be broken. The 

 tidal flow of the vast ocean, with its variety of animal 

 and vegetable life, the atmosphere, bright with light, 

 obscured by the storm-cloud, spanned by the rainbow, 

 or rent with the explosions of electric fire, attest to the 

 might of these elementary bonds. 



These are but a few of the great phenomena which 

 play their part around this globe of ours, exciting men 

 to wonder, or shaksing them with terror. 



The mind of man, in its progress towards its higher 

 destiny, is tasked with the physical earth as a problem, 

 which, within the limits of a life, it must struggle to 

 solve. The intellectual spirit is capable of embracing 

 all finite things. Man is gifted with powers for studying 

 the 'entire circle of visible creation;, and he is equal, 

 under proper training, to the task of examining much 

 of the secret machinery which stirs the whole. 



In dim outshadowing, earth's first poets,, from the 

 loveliness of external nature, evoked beautiful spirtualiza- 

 tions. To them the shady forests teemed with aerial 

 beings, the gushing springs rejoiced in fantastic sprites, 

 the leaping cataracts gleamed with translucent shades, 

 the cavernous hills were the abodes of genii, and the 

 earth-girdling ocean was guarded by mysterious forms. 



