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scientific inquiry. The past history of the world 

 has clearly demonstrated the impotence of the human 

 mind to discover by its own unaided power of specu- 

 lation, the ways and operations of Nature that are 

 recondite and hidden away from ordinary observation. 



Her secrets she only yields up to the patient and 

 slow processes of scientific research. The Epicurean 

 philosophers, according to Lucretius, maintained that 

 all things tended to fall toward the centre of the 

 earth. Doubtless this belief was derived from their 

 observation of meteors apparently falling to the earth 

 from, as they imagined, the highest regions of space : 

 for they held the earth to be the centre of the 

 universe. But their belief was little better than a 

 child's guess, and though in regard to terrestrial 

 objects it was true, yet notwithstanding its truth, theirs 

 was an ineffectual article of belief, and one which did 

 not tend to promote scientific research or enlighten 

 the scientific mind. 



It was in no sense prognosticate of the great law 

 of gravitation, discovered and expounded by Sir Isaac 

 Newton. The long and arduous processes of abstruse 

 calculation by which his profound intelligence verified 

 the hypothesis from which they started, had not, we 

 may be sure, their origin in his accidentally observing 

 an apple fall to the ground, but had for their pre- 

 cursor a long and careful putting together of a mass 

 of phenomenal observations, perceived by a mind as 

 powerfully practical as it was powerfully speculative. 

 Such, and only such, will ever be the nature of the 



