2 COSMOS. 



has laboured, amid the ever-recurring changes of form, to 

 recognise the invariability of natural laws, and hat thus by 

 the force of mind gradually subdued a great portion of the phy- 

 sical world to his dominion. In interrogating the history of 

 the past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas yielding* the 

 first glimmering perception of the same image of a Cosmos, 

 ''or harmoniously ordered whole, which, dimly shadowed forth 

 to the human mind in the primitive ages of the world, is now 

 fully revealed to the maturer intellect of mankind as the 

 result of long and laborious observation. 



Each of these epochs of the contemplation of the external 

 world the earliest dawn of thought, and the advanced stage 

 of civilisation has its own source of enjoyment. In the 

 former, this enjoyment, in accordance with the simplicity 

 of the primitive ages, flowed from an intuitive feeling of 

 the order that was proclaimed by the invariable and suc- 

 cessive re-appearance of the heavenly bodies, and by the 

 progressive development of organised beings ; whilst in the 

 latter, this sense of enjoyment springs from a definite know- 

 ledge of the phenomena of nature. When man began to 

 interrogate nature, and, not content with observing, learnt 

 to evoke phenomena under definite conditions ; when once he 

 sought to collect and record facts, in order that the fruit of 

 his labours might aid investigation after his own brief exist- 

 ence had passed away, the philosophy of Nature cast aside the 

 vague and poetic garb in which she had been enveloped from 

 her origin, and having assumed a severer aspect, she now 

 weighs the value of observations, and substitutes induction 

 and reasoning for conjecture and assumption. The dogmas 

 of former ages survive now only in the superstitions of the 

 people and the prejudices of the ignorant, or are perpetuated 

 in a few systems, which, conscious of their weakness, shroud 

 themselves in a veil of mystery. We may also trace the same 

 primitive intuitions in languages exuberant in figurative 

 expressions; and a few of the best chosen symbols engendered 

 by the happy inspiration of the earliest ages, having by 

 degrees lost their vagueness through a better mode of inter- 

 pretation, are still preserved amongst our scientific terms. 



Nature considered rationally, that is to say, submitted to 

 the process of thought, is a unity in diversity of phenomena ; 

 a harmony, blending together all created things, however dkfc 



