ORGANIC GEOLOGICAL DYNAMICS. 637 



the nature and manner of such a consistency. Such 

 an insight would only be possible if we could obtain 

 a clear view of that central body of truth, the 

 source of the principles which appear in the sepa- 

 rate lines of speculation. To expect that we should 

 see clearly how the providential government of the 

 world is consistent with the unvarying laws by 

 which its motions and developements are regulated, 

 is to expect to understand thoroughly the laws of 

 motion, of developement, and of providence ; it is 

 to expect that we may ascend from geology and 

 astronomy to the creative and legislative center, 

 from which proceeded earth and stars; and then 

 descend again into the moral and spiritual world, 

 because its source and center are the same as those 

 of the material creation. It is to say that reason, 

 whether finite or infinite, must be consistent with 

 itself; and that, therefore, the finite must be able 

 to comprehend the infinite, to travel from any one 

 province of the moral and material universe to any 

 other, to trace their bearing, and to connect their 

 boundaries. 



One of the advantages of the study of the his- 

 tory and nature of science in which we are now 

 engaged is, that it warns us of the hopeless and 

 presumptuous character of such attempts to under- 

 stand the government of the world by the aid of 

 science, without throwing any discredit upon the 

 reality of our knowledge ; that while it shows how 

 solid and certain each science is, so long as it refers 



