LECTURE IX. 



WE may, more especially through the progress of recent 

 times, defino the purpose of all investigation in Natural 

 Science, the lowest equally with the highest, as an attempt 

 to show that the whole world around us is hound by 

 exceptionless, mathematical laws, and to deduce from such 

 laws, every mutation that occurs. Very dissimilar are the 

 degrees of completion in the different branches of Natural 

 Science, nay, the degrees even in which they have attained 

 the conception of their highest aim, or have more or less 

 advanced toward it. Between astronomy, the most perfect 

 portion of human science, and the knowledge of organic 

 existence, yawns a vast gap, to the filling up of which 

 mankind has yet tens of centuries to labour to carry over 

 it a firm and solid road. Since it really does not lie in the 

 industry of the inquirer, we must seek in the matter itself 

 the reason why our scientific knowledge of organic existence 

 is yet so far distant from its ideal, that there are even still 

 Natural Historians who will not for a moment acknowledge 

 the final conclusion. In Nature, we find manifold sub- 

 stances which act and react one upon another ; and hence 



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