XV. 



ELEMENTARY MAGNETISM. 



A LECTURE TO SCHOOLMASTERS. 



~TT"T"E have no reason to believe that the sheep or 

 VV the dog, or indeed any of the lower animals, 

 feel an interest in the laws by which natural phenom- 

 ena are regulated. A herd may be terrified by a thun- 

 derstorm; birds may go to roost, and cattle return to 

 their stalls, during a solar eclipse; but neither birds 

 nor cattle, as far as we know, ever think of enquiring 

 into the causes of these things. It is otherwise with 

 man. The presence of natural objects, the occurrence 

 of natural events, the varied appearances of the uni- 

 verse in which he dwells penetrate beyond his organs 

 of sense, and appeal to an inner power of which the 

 senses are the mere instruments and excitants. No fact 

 is to him either original or final. He cannot limit him- 

 self to the contemplation of it alone, but endeavours 

 to ascertain its position in a series to which uniform 

 experience assures him it must belong. He regards all 

 that he witnesses in the present as the efflux and se- 

 quence of something that has gone before, and as the 

 source of a system of events which is to follow. The 

 notion of spontaneity, by which in his ruder state he 

 accounted for natural events, is abandoned; the idea 

 that nature is an aggregate of independent parts also 

 disappears, as the connection and mutual dependence 

 of physical powers become more and more manifest: 

 until he is finally led to regard Nature as an organic 

 whole as a body each of whose members sympathises 

 28 843 



