LECTURES AND ESS A YS 



the heavens, and clear heads have been 

 pondering the phenomena of the solar 

 system. The same eyes and minds have 

 been also observing, experimenting, and 

 reflecting on the action of gravity at 

 the surface of the earth. Nothing has 

 occurred to indicate that the operation 

 of the law has for a moment been sus- 

 pended; nothing has ever intimated 

 that nature has been crossed by spon- 

 taneous action, or that a state of things 

 at any time existed which could not be 

 rigorously deduced from the preceding 

 state. 



Given the distribution of matter, and 

 the forces in operation, in the time of 

 Galileo, the competent mathematician 

 of that day could predict what is now 

 occurring in our own. We calculate 

 eclipses in advance, and find our calcu- 

 lations true to the second. We deter- 

 mine the dates of those that have 

 occurred in the early times of history, 

 and find calculation and history in 

 harmony. Anomalies and perturbations 

 in the planets have been over arid over 

 again observed ; but these, instead of 

 demonstrating any inconstancy on the 

 part of natural law, have invariably 

 been reduced to consequences of that 

 law. Instead of referring the perturba- 

 tions of Uranus to any interference on 

 the part of the author of nature with the 

 law of gravitation, the question which 

 the astronomer proposed to himself was : 

 " How, in accordance with this law, can 

 the perturbation be produced ?" Guided 

 by a principle, he was enabled to fix the 

 point of space in which, if a mass of 

 matter were placed, the observed per- 

 turbations would follow. We know the 

 result. The practical astronomer turned 

 his telescope towards the region which 

 the intellect of the theoretic astronomer 

 had already explored, and the planet 

 now named Neptune was found in its 

 predicted place. A very respectable 

 outcome, it will be admitted, of an 

 impulse which " rests upon no rational 

 grounds, and can be traced to no rational 

 principle," which possesses "no intel- 

 lectual character," which "philosophy" 



has uprooted from "the ground of 

 reason," and fixed in that " large irra- 

 tional department " discovered for it, by 

 Mr. Mozley, in the hitherto unexplored 

 wilderness of the human mind. 



The proper function of the inductive 

 principle, or the belief in the order of 

 nature, says Mr. Mozley, is " to act as a 

 practical basis for the affairs of life and 

 the carrying on of human society." But 

 what, it may be asked, has the planet 

 Neptune, or the belts of Jupiter, or the 

 whiteness about the poles of Mars, to 

 do with the affairs of society ? How is 

 society affected by the fact that the sun's 

 atmosphere contains sodium, or that the 

 nebula of Orion contains hydrogen gas ? 

 Nineteen-twentieths of the force employed 

 in the exercise of the inductive principle, 

 which, reiterates Mr. Mozley, is " purely 

 practical," have been expended upon 

 subjects as unpractical as these. What 

 practical interest has society in the fact 

 that the spots on the sun have a 

 decennial period, and that, when a magnet 

 is closely watched for half a century, it 

 is found to perform small motions which 

 synchronise with the appearance and 

 disappearance of the solar spots? And 

 yet, I doubt not, Sir Edward Sabine 

 would deem a life of intellectual toil 

 amply rewarded by being privileged to 

 solve, at its close, these infinitesimal 

 motions. 



The inductive principle is founded in 

 man's desire to know a desire arising 

 from his position among phenomena 

 which are reducible to order by his 

 intellect. The material universe is the 

 complement of the intellect; and, without 

 the study of its laws, reason could never 

 have awakened to the higher forms of 

 self-consciousness at all. It is the Non- 

 ego through and by which the Ego is 

 endowed with self-discernment. We hold 

 it to be an exercise of reason to explore 

 the meaning of a universe to which we 

 stand in this relation, and the work we 

 have accomplished is the proper com- 

 mentary on the methods we have pursued. 

 Before these methods were adopted the 

 unbridled imagination roamed through 



