INTRODUCTION. 



REFLECTIONS ON THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF ENJOYMENT PRE 

 SENTED TO US BY THE ASPECT OF NATURE AND THE STUDY OF HER 



LAWS. 



In attempting, after a long absence from my native coun- 

 try, to develop the physical phenomena of the globe, and the 

 simultaneous action of the forces that pervade the regions of 

 space, I experience a two-fold cause of anxiety. The subject 

 before me is so inexhaustible and so varied, that I fear either 

 to fall into the superficiality of the encyclopedist, or to vi^eary 

 the mind of my reader by aphorisms consisting of mere gener- 

 alities clothed in dry and dogmatical forms. Undue concise- 

 ness often checks the flow of expression, while diffuseness is 

 alike detrimental to a clear and precise exposition of our ideas. 

 Nature is a free domain, and the profound conceptions and 

 enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly dehne 

 ated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of 

 bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of the creation. 



In considering the study of physical phenomena, not mere- 

 ly in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its gen- 

 eral influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, 

 we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowl- 

 edge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces 

 are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each 

 other ; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts 

 our views and ennobles our enjoyments. Such a result can, 

 however, only be reaped as the fruit of observation and intel- 

 lect, combined with the spirit of the age, in which are reflect- 

 ed all the varied phases of thought. He who can trace, 

 through by-gone times, the stream of our knowledge to its 

 primitive source, will learn from history how, for thousands 

 of years, man has labored, amid the ever-recurring changes 

 of form, to recognize the invariability of natural laws, and 

 has thus, by the force of mind, gradually subdued a great por- 

 tion of the physical world to his dominion. In interrogating 

 the history of the past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas 

 yielding the first glimmering perception of the same imag<^i of 



