PROGRESS OF RTJIN. 259 



part of the name of the description of nature, the 

 observation and knowledge of nature have been 

 vitiated. The saying is common, even to a proverb, 

 that the history of any period, whatever may be the 

 events of which that history is to give ah account 

 even if they are the occurrences in the life of one 

 individual, cannot be properly written, till many 

 years after the period has elapsed. We shall not 

 inquire why that should be the case, because the 

 result of the inquiry might not be very satisfactory ; 

 but if it be true, as it is very generally said to be, 

 that the events of history are the better understood 

 the further the study of them is removed from ac- 

 tual observation, most assuredly the reverse is the 

 case with nature ; for in it, nothing but immediate 

 observation can be relied on; and that which, it 

 seems, is philosophic truth in the successions of 

 human conduct, is error, and nothing but error, 

 when applied to the knowledge of things. 



If there were nothing in nature but the properties 

 of matter, the agencies of light and heat, and those 

 actions of substances upon each other, which can, 

 wholly, or even in part, be imitated in the labora- 

 tory of the chymist, then nature would altogether 

 be in progress towards destruction. The tendency 

 of all those powers is to produce inorganic masses 

 masses of which the one part is not necessary for 

 the operation of the others ; but of which any por- 

 tion may be considered as a whole, whatever may 

 be its form and magnitude. The heat of a burning 

 taper, though not the same in degree, is just as en- 

 tirely heat as that of Etna during an eruption, and 

 the light of the same taper is just as completely light 

 as that of the mid-day sun. So also, if the water 

 of a pond were to be divided into countless millions 

 of drops, each of them would be just as much a 

 whole as the entire contents of the pond, and as 

 perfectly water as the ocean. It is the same with 

 all the metals, stones, earths, and other substances 



