VICIOUS EMPIRICISM. 23 



only accessible in certain positions of social life; nor do 

 they present the same charm in all seasons and in all climates. 

 If our interest is fixed exclusively upon one class of objects, 

 the most animated accounts of travellers from distant regions 

 will have no attraction for us, unless they happen to touch 

 on the chosen subjects of our studies. 



As the history of nations, if it were possible that it could 

 always successfully trace back events to their true causes, 

 would no doubt solve to us the ever-recurring enigma of the 

 alternately impeded and accelerated progress of human 

 society ; so, likewise, the physical description of the uni- 

 verse, the science of the Cosmos, if grasped by a powerful 

 intellect, and based on the knowledge of all that has been 

 discovered up to a given epoch, would remove many of those 

 apparent contradictions, which the complication of pheno- 

 mena, caused by a multitude of simultaneous perturbations, 

 presents at the first glance. 



The knowledge of laws, whether revealing themselves in 

 the ebb and flow of the ocean, in the paths of comets, or in 

 the mutual attractions of multiple stars, renders us more 

 conscious of the " calm of nature :" and we might say that 

 " the discord of the elements," that long-cherished phan- 

 tasm of the human mind in its earlier and more intuitive 

 contemplations is gradually dispelled as science extends its 

 empire. General views lead us habitually to regard each 

 organic form as a definite part of the entire creation, and to 

 recocj nise, in the particular plant or animal, not an isolated 

 species, but a form linked in the chain of being to other 

 forms living or extinct. They assist us in comprehending 

 the relations which exist between the most recent discoveries, 

 and those which have prepared the way for them. They en- 



