442 Edward Livingston Yomnans. 



by their employment upon the ends for which they are de- 

 signed ? 



In this discussion I use the term Science in its true and 

 largest meaning, which is nothing less than a right inter- 

 pretation of Nature — a comprehension of the workings of 

 law wherever law prevails. Knowledge grows. Its germs 

 are found in the lowest grades of ignorance, and develop 

 first into the improved form of common information, which 

 then unfolds into the definite and perfected condition of 

 science. It matters nothing whether the subjects are .stones 

 or stars, human souls, or the complications of social rela- 

 tion ; that most perfect knowledge of each which reveals 

 its uniformities constitutes its special science, and that 

 comprehensive view of the relations which each sustains to 

 all in the cosmical order, realizes the broadest import of the 

 conception. Science, therefore, is the revelation to reason 

 of the policy by which God administers the affairs of the 

 world. But how inadequate is the conception of it general- 

 ly entertained, even among men of eminent literary cultiva- 

 tion, who seem to think the highest object of understanding 

 the things of Nature is merely to slake a petty curiosity!* 



* Mr. Carlyle writes : " For many years it has been one of my constant 



regrets, that no schoolmaster of mine had a knowledge of natural history, 



so far at least as to have taught me the grasses that grow by the wayside, 



and the little winged and wingless neighbours that are continually meeting 



me, with a salutation which I cannot answer, as things are ! Why didn't 



somebody teach me the constellations, too, and make me at home in the 



starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know 



to this day? I love to prophesy that there will come a time, when not in 



Edinburgh only, but in all Scottish and European towns and villages, the 



schoolmaster will be strictly required to possess these two capabilities 



(neither Greek nor Latin more strict !), and that no ingenuous little denizen 



of this universe be thenceforward debarred from his right of liberty in 



these two departments, and doomed to look on them as if across grated 



fences all his life ! " No hint is here given of that transcendent order of 



truth to which surrounding objects are but the portals. 



