THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. O 



defined, are seen by his successor to have branches starting 

 out in different directions filaments, as he calls them, the 

 language applicable, to the smallest of objects examined in 

 our hands, being thus found applicable to the promontories 

 of those great continents, each atom of which may be said to 

 be millions of miles removed from another. 



Such is the universe, as developed to the perceptions of the 

 modern philosopher different indeed from that of our fore- 

 fathers, who did not know the bounds even of this little world, 

 and beheld in the sun, moon, and stars only a set of menial 

 lights ordained, usefully or not, to attend it. And to such con- 

 templations are we raised by modern science, if we choose to 

 leave for them the strifes and self-seekings of our social scene. 

 Thinking of such acquisitions of knowledge, one cannot but 

 go warmly along with the living Herschel when he speaks of 

 the discoveries of Struve, Bessel, and Henderson, as among 

 the fairest flowers of civilization. They surely justify, as 

 he says, " the vast expenditure of time and talent which have 

 led up to them," and show that " there are yet behind not only 

 secrets of nature which shall increase the wealth and power 

 of man, but TRUTHS which shall ennoble the age and the country 

 in which they are divulged, and by dilating the intellect, 

 re-act on the moral character of mankind." ( 3 ) 



Where our perceptive faculties are baffled, we dream ; where 

 they compass their object, w r e inquire after cause. Such is 

 a law of our minds, which cannot have been bestowed upon 

 us without being designed for a good end. And, indeed, it is 

 by experience placed beyond all doubt, that to yield to this 

 impulse is to use a direct means of improving our condition 

 on earth, and to advance in the scale of moral as well as in- 

 tellectual being. Nor are we left to doubt that extensions of 

 knowledge, either in simple fact or in cause and relation, are 

 not to be estimated by their immediate and apparent effects ; 

 for both are there often good results of the most tangible kind 

 where no such thing was expected as from Napier's disco- 

 very of the logarithms, or, to take an opposite instance, from 

 Smith's ascertainment of the supra-position of rocks and it is 

 utterly impossible in any way to reckon the benefits which 



