33 



faint degree the cosmos, but to apprehend its lesson of hu- 

 mility: we read the brightest of all the illumined pages of 

 the book of nature, and find no flaw. The very fact that 

 " this brave overhanging firmament ; this majestical roof fret- 

 ted with golden fire," expanded before our nightly vision, 

 seems to us infinite in its compass, is in itself the index of 

 an apprehension that enthrones reason apart from the high- 

 est attributes of irrational life. The physicist and the meta- 

 physician have diverse conceptions of space ; but practically, 

 for us, the impossible is to conceive of limits to the uni- 

 verse. Imagination speeds from star to star through all the 

 fields of space, guided by the strictest mathematical induction, 

 and finds everywhere the same majestic harmony. No chaos 

 lies behind the heavens, nightly revealed anew in all their 

 mystery as evening draws her azure curtain athwart the sun. 

 It is indeed the garish day, with its mundane round of petty 

 cares, that curbs the wings of fancy, blinds the eye of faith, 

 and shuts out heaven from our view. But who can set bounds 

 to that mighty vision ? If we sphere space, what lies beyond 

 it? Still law, order, harmony; one overruling all-pervading 

 influence, one Divine purpose. What can be behind it but 



Cjod: 



" One God, one law r one element, 

 And one far-off divine event, 

 To which the whole creation moves." 



MR. VAUX : Dr. Wilson has given you a most able 

 effort to discover errata, and I think all of you will 

 agree that, after such a brilliant speech, full of so much 

 science, philosophy, learning and culture, we will have 

 to give up the idea that there is an erratum anywhere 

 in the science of philosophy. But in order that you 

 may have a counterpart in some degree to this 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXVII. 131. E. PRINTED JAN. 28, 1890. 



