THE MESSAGE AND PROMISES TO 



for material results. We have learned the 

 of the world : that nothing can disturb it outside the 

 circle of natural causes ; that nothing ever will disturb it 

 which is not the result of natural causes ; and that such 

 disturbing causes, which are rather of the nature of 

 growths, are always of prodigiously slow development. 

 By the progress of physical and natural science con- 

 jointly, we have at length been delivered from the 

 terrors of superstition and ignorance, and the tyranny 

 of dogmatic creeds, which took advantage of them. 



4. And even in the general practical sphere, Science 

 has done more than merely minister to man's material 

 comforts and happiness. After discovering the laws and 

 obtaining the dominion over the forces of external nature, 

 Science has come to man himself, to human nature ; and 

 here, too, she has ascertained the laws, physiological and 

 psychological, as manifested in his mind and frame ; 

 and from this knowledge, supplemented by the practical 

 science of medicine itself a slow growth of traditional 

 experience and knowledge we may hope in future to 

 regulate the expenditure of our physical and mental 

 energies with a wiser economy ; we may even hope, by 

 the improved resources of the medical art, to come to 

 terms with, if we may not wholly subdue, the maleficent 

 forces within, which show themselves in diseases or dis- 

 ordered function of body or mind ; and it even appears 

 certain that we might save ourselves half the diseases, 

 and a large fraction of the unhappiness and minor 

 miseries of life by common attention to the known and 

 demonstrated laws of health. 



In the natural order of inquiry, and according to the 

 order of difficulty and complexity, Science has first ad- 

 dressed herself to the study of the physical world ; next 

 to the organic world, or the world of life ; and lastly to 



