THE RECONCILIATION. 105 



a similar modification of belief takes place with respect 

 to tliem. 



While this process seems to those who effect, and those 

 who undergo it, an anti-religious one, it is really the reverse. 

 Instead of the specific comprehensible agency before as- 

 signed, there is substituted a less specific and less compre- 

 hensible agency ; and though this, standing in opposition to 

 the previous one, cannot at first call forth the same feeling, 

 yet, as being less comprehensible, it must eventually call 

 forth this feeling more fully. Take an instance. Of 



old the Sun was regarded as the chariot of a god, drawn by 

 horses. How far the idea thus grossly expressed, was 

 idealized, we need not inquire. It suffices to remark that 

 this accounting for the apparent motion of the Sun by an 

 agency like certain visible terrestrial agencies, reduced a 

 daily wonder to the level of the commonest intellect. 

 When, many centuries after, Kepler discovered that the 

 planets moved round the Sun in ellipses and described 

 equal areas in equal times, he concluded that in each planet 

 there must exist a spirit to guide its movements. Here we 

 see that with the progress of Science, there had disap- 

 peared the idea of a gross mechanical traction, such as was 

 first assigned in the case of the Sun ; but that while for this 

 there was substituted an indefinite and less-easily conceiva- 

 ble force, it was still thought needful to assume a special per- 

 sonal agent as the cause of the regular irregularity of mo- 

 tion. When, finally, it was proved that these planetary 

 revolutions with all their variations and disturbances, con- 

 formed to one universal law when the presiding spirits 

 which Kepler conceived were set aside, and the force of 

 gravitation put in their place; the change was really the 

 abolition of an imaginable agency, and the substitution of 

 an unimaginable one. For though the law of gravitation 

 is within our mental grasp, it is impossible to realize in 

 thought the force of gravitation. Newton himself confessed 

 the force of gravitation to be incomprehensible without the 



