MIRACLES AND SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 35 



the dates of those that have occurred in the early times 

 of history, and find calculation and history in harmony. 

 Anomalies and perturbations in the planets have been 

 over and over again observed; but these, instead of 

 demonstrating any inconstancy on the part of natural 

 law, have invariably been reduced to consequences of 

 that law. Instead of referring the perturbations of Ura- 

 nus to any interference on the part of the Author of 

 nature with the law of gravitation, the question which 

 the astronomer proposed to himself was, "How, in ac- 

 cordance with this law, can the perturbation be pro- 

 duced?" Guided by a principle, he was enabled to fix 

 the point of space in which, if a mass of matter were 

 placed, the observed perturbations would follow. We 

 know the result. The practical astronomer turned his 

 telescope toward the region which the intellect of the 

 theoretic astronomer had already explored, and the planet 

 now named Neptune was found in its predicted place. A 

 very respectable outcome, it will be admitted, of an im- 

 pulse which "rests upon no rational grounds, and can 

 be traced to no rational principle"; which possesses "no 

 intellectual character"; which "philosophy" has uprooted 

 from "the ground of reason," and fixed in that "large 

 irrational department" discovered, for it, by Mr. Mozley, 

 in the hitherto unexplored wilderness of the human mind! 

 The proper function of the inductive principle, or the 

 belief in the order of nature, says Mr. Mozley, is "to act 

 as a practical basis for the affairs of life, and the carry- 

 ing on of human society." But what, it may be asked, 

 has the planet Neptune, or the belts of Jupiter, or the 

 whiteness about the poles of Mars, to do with the affairs 

 of society? How is society affected by the fact that the 



