14 INTRODUCTION. 



for the detailed and elaborate expansion of Univer- 

 sologj itself. At present they are apt to be content 

 with" their accumulation of mere facts, or with at the 

 most some most convenient classification of the facts. 

 They rarely inquire into what Richard Owen calls 

 the Meaning of the Facts. For example, they under- 

 stand by Electro-Negative, that a Substance watched 

 in the processes of the Laboratory comports itself in 

 a particular manner ; that is to say, that, it passes, 

 in the Electro-Magnetic Bath, to the Positive Pole 

 of the Battery ; and by Electro-Positive they under- 

 stand the opposite occurrence ; but ask them why 

 this is so, and they have not even a theory upon the 

 subject. If told that this is because Electro-Negative 

 bodies are of a similar kind as, or are, so to speak, 

 sympathetic with, the Lightning, and the Air, and the 

 Light, with the Front-Face and Elevation of an Edi- 

 fice, and with the Face and Brow of a Man, and so 

 with Heaven and the elevated region of the Sun, and 

 that, for that reason, they comport themselves like 

 the Lightning ; and that Electro-Positive Bodies are, 

 on the contrary, sympathetic with the Earth and the 

 Darkness, and with the Lower and Posterior portions 

 of a House or a Man, and so with Hell-ward Direc- 

 tion or the Antipodes, and the Earth's shadow, all 

 this would be to talk to them in an unknown tongue ; 

 or, at least, it would be mere poetry and imagination ; 

 and yet Science has now to rise to this new range of 

 considerations, and they will, in the end, transcend 

 infinitely in importance all that Science now means, 

 and Avill bind every variety of knowledge, from that 



