rxBAPOXICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



Nor need ftn>r to draw down on Nature the admonition which fell on 

 the inner ear of the poet 





-Tboo prabvt hew whore thou art leatt ; 

 Tfci* fcilli hath many purer priest, 

 many an abler voice than thou. 



For era* thof* words and phrases which seemed at first sight to remove the 

 book from the field of our criticism, are found on a nearer view to have 

 acquired a new, and indeed a paradoxical sense, for which no right of sanctuary 



be claimed. 



The words on the title-page : " In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in 

 may recall to an ordinary reader the aspiration of the Hebrew 

 the closing prayer of the "Te Deum," or the dying words of Francis 

 Xarier; and men of science, as such, are not to be supposed incapable either 

 of the nobler hopes or of the nobler fears to which their fellow-men have 

 attained. Here, however, we find these venerable words employed to express 

 a conviction of the perpetual validity of the "Principle of Continuity," enforced 

 by the tremendous sanction, that if at any place or at any time a single 

 exception to that principle were to occur, a general collapse of every intellect 

 in the universe would be the inevitable result. 



There are other well-known words in which St Paul contrasts things seen 

 with things unseen. These also are put in a prominent place by the authors 

 of the Unxcn Universe. What, then, is the Unseen to which they raise their 

 thoughts! . 



In the first place the luminiferous aether, the tremors of which are the 

 dynamical equivalent of all the energy which has been lost by radiation from 

 the various systems of grosser matter which it surrounds. In the second place 

 a still more subtle medium, imagined by Sir William Thomson as possibly 

 capable of furnishing an explanation of the properties of sensible bodies; on 

 the hypothesis that they are built up of ring vortices set in motion by some 

 supernatural power in a frictionless liquid: beyond which we are to suppose an 

 indefinite succession of media, not hitherto imagined by any one, each mani- 

 foldly more subtle than any of those preceding it. To exercise the mind in 

 peculations on such media may be a most delightful employment for those who 

 are intellectually fitted to indulge in it, though we cannot see why they should 

 on that account appropriate the words of St Paul 



