OBJECTION ANSWERED. 23 



naturally arise, which it will be appropriate, at this 

 point, to consider and remove. 



30. It is first objected that the achievement of the 

 discovery of such a Science must be impossible on 

 account of the infinite extent of the Subject or Do- 

 main. It is obviously impossible, it is said, that any 

 one individual, or even all the individuals of any one 

 age of the world, should know the whole Universe, in 

 detail. How then can any one claim to possess a 

 Science of the Universe ? The claim is preposterous, 

 it is sometimes added, and no one but God can be 

 presumed to have, or can be conceived of, even, as 

 having such knowledge. 



31. This objection is at first view plausible, but it 

 is unsound, and leads to a too broad denial of the 

 human capacity. We do not know in detail the par- 

 ticulars of even the smallest of our Sciences. Icthy- 

 ology is a branch of Animalogy, confined to the 

 study of the fishes; but no Icthyologist is for a 

 moment supposed to have become acquainted with, 

 so to speak, the individual history of every particular 

 fish, and not only of those now in life but of every 

 fish that ever did live or ever will live ; and yet such 

 a supposition would only parallel what is assumed, in 

 this objection, as necessary with reference to the pos- 

 sibility of a Universal Science. 



32. What the Icthyologist does is to discover and 

 systematize the General Principles, carried into a 

 convenient degree of detail, of Fish nature. What 

 the Universologist has to do is no more than this in 

 respect to the larger subject. He has to discover 



