GENERAL VIEW OF NATURE. 69 



carefully resisting the tendency to endless division ; thus 

 avoiding the danger to which we are subjected by the very 

 abundance of our empirical riches. Doubtless, a considerable 

 portion of the properties of matter are still unknown to us ; 

 entire series of phaenomena dependant on forces and qualities 

 of which we are ignorant, remain to be discovered ; and were 

 it for this reason only, we must fail in attaining a perfect 

 unity in the view of the whole of the facts of nature. 

 By the side of the pleasure derived from knowledge 

 already attained, there subsists, not unmixed with melan- 

 choly, the longing of the aspiring spirit, still unsatis- 

 fied with the present, after regions yet undiscovered and 

 unopened. Such longing draws still closer the link which, 

 by ancient and deep-seated laws of the world of thought, 

 connects the material with the immaterial, and quickens the 

 interchange between that which the mind receives from 

 without, and that which it gives back from its own depths. 



If, then, Nature (comprising in the word all natural 

 objects and phenomena) may be regarded as embracing a 

 range infinite in extent and contents, it also presents to the 

 human intellect a problem which it cannot wholly grasp, 

 and of which it can never hope to reach the solution, because 

 it requires a knowledge of all the forces which act in the 

 universe. Such an acknowledgment is due, when present and 

 prospective phsenomena are the objects of that direct investi- 

 gation, which does not venture to quit the empirical path 

 and strictly inductive method. But though the constant 

 effort to embrace the whole remain unsatisfied, the " His- 

 tory of the contemplation of the Universe" (which is 

 reserved for a subsequent portion of this work) shows 

 us how, in the course of centuries, mankind have gradually 



