70 GENERAL VIEW OF NATURE. 



arrived at a partial insight into the relative dependence ot 

 phsenomena. My duty is to depict that which is known, 

 according to its present measure and limits. In all that is 

 subject to motion and change in space, mean numerical 

 values are the ultimate object ; they are, indeed, the expres- 

 sion of physical laws ; they shew to us the constant amid 

 change, the stable amid the flow of phenomena. The advance 

 of our modern physical science, which proceeds by weight and 

 measure, is specially characterised by the attainment and pro- 

 gressive rectification of the mean values of certain quantities. 

 Thus, the only remaining and widely diffused hieroglyphic 

 characters of our present writing, numbers, reappear, as 

 once in the Italic school, but now in a more extended sense, 

 as powers of the Cosmos. 



The earnest investigator delights in the simplicity of 

 numerical relations, indicating the dimensions of celestial 

 spaces, the magnitudes of heavenly bodies, their periodic 

 disturbances, the threefold elements of terrestrial magnetism, 

 the mean pressure of the atmosphere, and the quantity of 

 heat which the sun dispenses in each year and in each portion 

 of the year to the several points of the solid and the liquid 

 surface of our planet. Less satisfied is the poet of nature, 

 and still less the mind of the curious multitude. To both 

 of these, Science appears a blank, now that she answers 

 doubtfully, or rejects as unanswerable, questions to which 

 replies were, in earlier times, unhesitatingly adventured. In 

 her severer form and less ample robes she appears deprived 

 of that seductive grace, with which a dogmatising and sym- 

 bolising physical philosophy could deceive the reason and 

 occupy the imagination. Long before the discovery of the 

 new world, men dreamed of lands in the West, visible from 



