GENERAL VIEW OF NATURE. 73 



or as merely probable in a greater or less degree., a different 

 order of succession is to be preferred. Here, therefore, we 

 do not proceed from the subjective point of view of human 

 interest : the terrestrial is treated only as a part of the 

 whole, and in its due subordination. The view of nature 

 should be general, grand, and free; not narrowed by 

 proximity, sympathy, or relative utility. A physical cos- 

 mography, or picture of the universe, should begin, there- 

 fore, not with the earth, but with the regions of space. 

 But as the sphere of contemplation contracts in dimen- 

 sion, our perceptions and knowledge of the richness of 

 details, of the fulness of physical phenomena, and of the 

 qualitative heterogeneity of substances, augment. From 

 the regions in which we recognise only the dominion of 

 the laws of gravitation, we descend to our own planet, and 

 to the intricate play of terrestrial forces. The method 

 thus pursued is the opposite of that which is followed when 

 conclusions are to be established. The one recounts what 

 the other demonstrates. 



Our knowledge of the external world is obtained through 

 the medium of the senses. It is by the phsenomena of light 

 that the presence of matter in the remote regions of space is 

 revealed to us. The eye is the organ by which we are 

 enabled to contemplate the universe ; and, for the last two 

 centuries and a half, telescopic vision has given to later gene- 

 rations a power of which the limit is yet unattained. The first 

 and most general consideration in the Cosmos is that of the 

 contents of space, the distribution of the material universe, 



We see matter " existing in space, partly in the form 

 of rotating and revolving spheroids differing greatly in 



