CONCLUDING KEMAKKS. 199 



of mentally regarding known facts, some few of which I have 

 myself made known on other occasions, but the great mass 

 of which have been accumulated by the labours of others, 

 and are admitted as established truths. Every one has a right 

 to view these facts through any medium he thinks fit to em- 

 ploy, but some theory must exist in the minds of those who 

 reflect upon the many new phenomena which have recently, 

 and more particularly during the present century, been dis- 

 covered. It is by a generalised or connected view of past 

 acquisitions in natural knowledge that deductions can best be 

 drawn as to the probable character of the results to be antici- 

 pated. It is a great assistance in such investigations to be 

 intimately convinced that no physical phenomena can stand 

 alone : each is jnevitably connected with anterior changes, 

 and as inevitably productive of consequential changes, each 

 with the other, and all with time and space ; and, either in 

 tracing back these antecedents or following up their conse- 

 quents, many new phenomena will be discovered, and 

 many existing phenomena, hitherto believed distinct, will 

 be connected and explained : explanation is, indeed, only re- 

 lation to something more familiar, not more known i.e. 

 known as to causative or creative agencies. In all pheno- 

 mena the more closely they are investigated the more are we 

 convinced that, humanly speaking, neither matter nor force 

 can be created or annihilated, and that an essential cause is 

 unattainable. Causation is the will, Creation the act, of 

 God. 



