Hi INTRODUCTION. 



fault and the loss is their own, and must not be charged to 

 Science. It is enough for her if she but furnish food which 

 is capable of nourishing the well-directed heart ; it is not 

 her province either to cleanse that heart, or to give it 

 powers of digestion. For this she must refer her votary 

 to a higher and a holier voice ; and if she ever speak of 

 looking 



" Through Nature up to Nature's God," 



she does so with a humble deference to her elder sister, 

 whose province it is to lead the heart to that contemplation. 

 Science and Religion must not be confounded : each has 

 her several path, distinct, but not hostile : each in her way 

 is friendly to man, and, where both unite, they will ever be 

 found to be his best protectors : the one " a light to his 

 eyes," opening to him the mysteries of the material uni- 

 verse ; the other " a lamp to his feet," leading him to the 

 immaterial, and incorruptible, and eternal. The " eye," it 

 is true, will grow dim when the light of this world fails ; 

 and happy is he who then has " a lamp," lighted from hea- 

 ven and trimmed on earth, to guide him through the hours 

 of darkness. But the eye must not be blamed because it 

 is not the lamp ; nor should Science be disdained because 

 she leaves us far short of just conceptions of the invisible 

 world. Her highest flight is but to the threshold of reli- 

 gion ; for what a celebrated writer has said of philosophy 

 generally, is equally applicable to every branch of scien- 

 tific inquiry. " In wonder all philosophy began ; in won- 

 der it all ends : and admiration fills up the interspace. But 

 the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance ; the last is 

 the parent of adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our 

 knowledge ; the last is its euthanasy and apotheosis." 



W. H. H. 



Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, 

 October 5, 1840. 



