MIEACLES AND SPECIAL PKOVIDENCES. 31 



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 carrying 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 sun's atmosphere contains sodium, 

 or that the nebula of Orion contains hydrogen gas ? 

 Nineteen-twentieths of the force employed in the 

 exercise of the inductive principle, which, reiterates 

 Mr. Mozley, is ' purely practical,' have been expended 

 upon subjects as unpractical as these. What practical 

 interest has society in the fact that the spots on the 

 sun have a decennial period, and that when a magnet 

 is closely watched for half a century, it is found to 

 perform small motions which synchronise with the 

 appearance and disappearance of the solar spots ? And 

 yet, I doubt not, Sir Edward Sabine would deem a life 

 of intellectual toil amply rewarded by being privileged 

 to solve, at its close, these infinitesimal motions. 



The inductive principle is founded in man's desire 

 to know a desire arising from his position among 

 phenomena which are reducible to order by his intellect. 

 The material universe is the complement of the intel- 

 lect ; and, without the study of its laws, reason could 

 never have awakened to the higher forms of self- 

 consciousness at all. It is the Non-ego through and 

 by which the Ego is endowed with self-discernment. 

 We hold it to be an exercise of reason to explore the 

 meaning of a universe to which we stand in this 

 relation, and the work we have accomplished is the 

 proper commentary on the methods we have pursued. 





