DELINEATION OF NATURE. 5& 



to which our solar system belongs, to our own terrestrial 

 ppheroid, circled by air and ocean, there to direct our atten- 

 tion to its form, temperature, and magnetic tension, and to 

 consider the fulness of organic life unfolding itself upon its 

 surface beneath the vivifying influence of light. In this 

 manner a picture of the world may, with a few strokes, be 

 made to include the realms of infinity no less than the minute 

 microscopic animal and vegetable organisms, which exist in 

 standing waters, and on the weather-beaten surface of our 

 rocks. All that can be perceived by the senses, and all that 

 has been accumulated up to the present day by an attentive 

 and variously directed study of nature, constitute the materials 

 from which this representation is to be drawn, whose character 

 is an evidence of its fidelity and truth. But the descriptive 

 picture of nature which we purpose drawing, must not enter 

 too fully into detail, since a minute enumeration of all vital 

 forms, natural objects and processes is not requisite to the 

 completeness of the undertaking. The delineator of nature 

 must resist the tendency towards endless division, in order to 

 avoid the dangers presented by the very abundance of our 

 empirical knowledge. A considerable portion of the quali- 

 tative properties of mattoi or, to speak more in accordance 

 with the language of natural philosophy, of the qualitative 

 expression of forces is doubtlessly still unknow r n to us ; and 

 the attempt perfectly to represent unity in diversity must 

 therefore necessarily prove unsuccessful. Thus besides the 

 pleasure derived from acquired knowledge, there lurks in the 

 mind of man, and tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatis- 

 fied longing for something beyond the present a striving 

 towards regions yet unknown and unopened. Such a sense 

 of longing binds still faster the links which in accordance 

 with the supreme laws of our being connect the material with 

 the ideal world, and animates the mysterious relation existing 

 between that which the mind receives from without, and that 

 which it reflects from its own depths to the external world. 

 If then nature (understanding by the term all natural objects 

 and phenomena) be illimitable in extent and contents, it like- 

 wise presents itself to the human intellect as a problem which 

 cannot be grasped, and whose solution is impossible, since it 

 r^juires a knowledge of the combined action of all natural 

 forces. S ich an acknowledgment i& due where the actual 



