276 THE LIMIT OF KNOWLEDGE. 



" use," and " purpose," and " perfection," in 

 nature generally, we speak words which either 

 have no meaning at all, or one which is very pre- 

 sumptuous and impious, as well as very absurd. 

 That we always understand our own purpose is 

 very doubtful ; and it is certain that we can never 

 find out any purpose in nature. If we did, we 

 should penetrate the secrets of the Almighty ; and 

 as we cannot do that, it is a silly as well as an 

 impious vanity to say that we can. The real fact 

 is, that we know what we have observed, and 

 not a jot more ; and if we think that we do, we 

 are in error. 



Now, when we carefully, attentively, and with- 

 out any visionary theory or notion formed pre- 

 vious to knowledge, and therefore groundless and 

 delusive look at nature around us, we find two 

 great classes of natural productions. The one 

 class perfectly passive to the operation of the laws 

 of matter, having in themselves no principle of 

 change, suffering no alteration though ever so 

 long kept apart from other substances, and alter- 

 ing only when they are affected by something ex- 

 ternal of themselves. Those substances we can, 

 in many instances, resolve into their elements, or 

 constituent parts ; and we also can, although not 

 in so many instances, reproduce them back again 

 out of the very elements into which they were 

 previously resolved. If we cannot do that, we 

 always can account for all the parts, and say into 

 what other substances they have been compounded ; 

 and, scatter them as we may, through any number 

 of combinations, not one of them is lost either in 

 its quantity of matter or in any of its qualities ; 

 but in all cases in which we can bring the ingre- 



