OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 359 



ledge, has become the means of developing proper- 

 ties and principles among the most common objects, 

 which could never have otherwise been discovered ? 

 Had not platina (to take an instance) been an object 

 of the most ordinary occurrence in a laboratory, would 

 a suspicion have ever occurred that a lamp could be 

 constructed to burn without flame; and should we 

 have ever arrived at a knowledge of those curious 

 phenomena and products of semi-combustion which 

 this beautiful experiment discloses ? 



(391.) Finally, when we look back on what has been 

 accomplished in science, and compare it with what 

 remains to be done, it is hardly possible to avoid 

 being strongly impressed with the idea that we have 

 been and are still executing the labour by which 

 succeeding generations are to profit.* In a few in- 

 stances only have we arrived at those general 

 axiomatic laws which admit of direct deductive 

 inference, and place the solutions of physical pheno- 

 mena before us as so many problems, whose prin- 

 ciples of solution we fully possess, and which require 

 nothing but acuteness of reasoning to pursue even 

 into their farthest recesses. In fewer still have we 

 reached that command of abstract reasoning itself 

 which is necessary for the accomplishment of so 

 arduous a task. Science, therefore, in relation to 

 our faculties, still remains boundless and unexplored, 

 and. after the lapse of a century and a half from the 

 aera of Newton's discoveries, during which every 

 department of it has been cultivated with a zeal and 

 energy which have assuredly met their full return, 



* Jackson, The Four Ages, p. 52. London : Cadell and 

 Davies, 1798. 8vo. 



A A 4? 



