2 THE PROGRESS AND SPIRIT OF 



mankind, are occurring more rapidly, as well as extensively, 

 than at any prior time in human history. The fact is one 

 which lies on the very surface of all that we see in the world 

 around us. No man of common understanding, even in the 

 narrowest circle of observation, but must mark the continual 

 shifting of things before him ; reversing, in many cases, the 

 maxims and usages which are the inheritance of centuries, 

 and altering in a thousand ways the present conditions of 

 material and social life. The philosopher who looks from a 

 higher level, and upon a more distant horizon, discerns in 

 these changes a wider and more lasting influence. He sees 

 that they involve the relations of races and communities of 

 men over the whole face of the globe; and that they are 

 destined, sooner or later, to obliterate many of those diver- 

 sities and lines of demarcation, which, however originally 

 produced, seemed almost to dissever the species, in the con- 

 trast of human existence they afford. He takes further note 

 of what is the great agent in this and other changes, that 

 wonderful progress in physical philosophy, which has placed 

 new powers in the hands of man powers transcending in 

 their strangeness and grandeur the wildest fables and dreams 

 of antiquity, and the effects of which are already felt in 

 every part of the habitable earth. He sees the march of 

 discovery continually going on; new paths opened; new 

 instruments and methods of research brought into action ; 

 and new laws evolved, giving connection and combination 

 to the facts and phenomena which unceasingly accumulate 

 around us. 



Closely, or even necessarily, connected with the changes 

 last denoted, is the topic to which, as suggested by the works 

 before us, we would especially invite the attention of our 

 readers. We allude to the concurrent changes taking place 

 in the spirit and scope of physical philosophy at large; 

 scarcely less remarkable in their nature and influence than 



