THE TEMPLE AND ITS PAETS. 63 



others : still, if the building, when erected, exhibits unmis- 

 takable indications' of order, and symmetry, and harmony 

 of its numerous parts, it stands as evidence of general truth- 

 fulness of the architectural rules by which it was erected ; 

 and, if it is then known that the hewer of those timbers was 

 absolutely perfect in his art r the inference would be legitimate, 

 that the paring and distortion used in putting them together, 

 were owing to the ignorance or unskillfulness on the part 

 of the builder, by which a joist or a post was occasionally 

 inverted, or made to take the intended place of another of 

 somewhat similar form. 



Now, all natural facts (which, it must be confessed, 

 the science and philosophy of the day view in an aspect 

 somewhat heterogeneous) are timbers of the great temple of 

 Nature. A system of classification and reasoning, therefore, 

 by which these various facts, as timbers, may be, without 

 any warping or forcing, brought into the form of one 

 grand system, among the myriads of the complicated parts 

 of which there may be observed a mutual dependence and 

 harmony so perfect, that the loss of a single part would 

 sensibly mar the symmetry of the whole ; then we may be 

 assured that this system is the true one, and that the 

 structure erected by it is a structure of truth. Now, a 

 system of classification of this kind must exist somewhere in 

 nature, if it be admitted that nature is not, after all, a more or 

 less heterogeneous and disconnected mass. If the reader can 

 not believe, with me, that the doctrine of the seven-fold series 

 and its natural adjuncts, as herein briefly unfolded, constitutes 

 that system, it is confidently believed that he will at least find it 

 immensely suggestive, compelling nature, in many instances, 

 to tell her own story, and to give up secrets which science 

 and philosophy have hitherto been inadequate to wrest from 



