OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 93 



compounds, and must therefore be susceptible of 

 analysis, though we do not see how it is to be 

 set about ; so, in physics, we may perceive the 

 complexity of a phenomenon, without being able 

 to perform its analysis. For example : in mag- 

 netism, the agency of electricity is clearly made 

 out, and they are shown to stand to one another in 

 the relation of effect and cause. But the analysis 

 of magnetism, in its relation to particular metals, 

 is not yet quite satisfactorily performed ; and 

 we are compelled to admit the existence of some 

 cause, whether proximate or ultimate, whose pre- 

 sence in different metals, or in different states of 

 the same metal, determines that peculiar electric 

 condition which constitutes permanent magnetism. 

 Cases like these, of all which science presents, offer 

 the highest interest. They excite enquiry, like the 

 near approach to the solution of an enigma ; they 

 show us that there is light, could only a certain veil 

 be drawn aside. 



(85.) In pursuing the analysis of any pheno- 

 menon, the moment we find ourselves stopped by 

 one of which we perceive no analysis, and which, 

 therefore, we are forced to refer (at least provision- 

 ally) to the class of ultimate facts, and to regard as 

 elementary, the study of that phenomenon and of 

 its laws becomes a separate branch of science. If 

 we encounter the same elementary phenomenon in 

 the analysis of several composite ones, it becomes 

 still more interesting, and assumes additional im- 

 portance ; while at the same time we acquire in- 

 formation respecting the phenomenon itself, by ob- 



