General Rejiections on eas. oF 
voisier as the philosopher who argued for the ascent of the 
figure, from a knowledge of the machinery that was worked 
behind the scenes, but which was entirely concealed from 
those who had attempted the same explanation before bim. 
If then we admit that it is a true mode of reasoning, and a 
sure progress in science, to collect a number of individual 
phenomena into a class and arrange them under 2 common 
antecedent, we must allow great*merit to Lavoisier for having 
discovered, that the absorption of oxygen was the antecedent 
of nearly all the known cases of combustion. If, however, 
we demand something more in explanation of this class of 
phenomena than the discovery of their invariable antecedent, 
we may pronounce all chemical facts as still unexplained, 
and may rest assured that they will for ever remain so. 
Sometimes the immediate antecedent may be traced one, two, 
three, or four links back; but the chain will uniformly ter- 
minate in a cause to which we cap assign no antecedent. 
But with humbie views of the power of man to ascend 
the scale cf Omnipotence, we may rest contented with the 
last fact in the series, that we have ascertained, and instead 
of vainly attempting to penetrate into secrets which were 
never designed for us to know, we may now examine to see 
to what manifold purposes the knowledge of causes that we 
have already acquired, may be applied. ‘ Newton stopped 
short at the last fact which he could discern in the solar sys- 
tems that ali bodies were deflected to all other bodies, 
according to certain regulations of distance and quantity of 
matter. When told that he had done nothing in philosophy ; 
that he had discovered no cause, and that to merit any praise, 
he must show how this deflection was produced; he said, he 
knew no more than he had told them; that he saw nothing 
causing this deflection; and was contented with having de- 
scribed it so exactly, that a good matheinatician could now 
make tables of the planetary motions, as accurate as he 
pleased, and with hoping, in a few years, to have every pur- 
pose of navigation and philosophical curiosity completely 
answered.” (Life of Newton, Encyclopzdia.) Thus the 
most ignorant man knows as well as the greatest philosopher, 
that light is essential to vision, and the laiter knows but one 
fact more in the series; all beyond is as incomprehensible to 
him as to the other. ‘This additional fact is, that light ena- 
bles us to see external objects. by its power of undergoing re- 
fraction in passing through lenses, so as to form an image of 
