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1809.] i.'./ [Lo\vi'i<'. 



• 

 bends its course into a curve which carries it out far beyond the phxnet's 

 orbit, and, still further obeying tlie same force, it hastens forward with 

 it until, passing in advance of it, its speed is checked by the same force, 

 and it swings round through the same orbit and is, by the force of its 

 own motion, carried far inside of it, where it reduces its speed, because, 

 by reason of the forward moti(Hi of the planet, this motion can there 

 make but little draft upon it, and waits until the planet again passes 

 in advance of it and renews its force, when it rises again throvigh the 

 orbit, and repeats the same series of movements. Here then is the force 

 that corrects all the iri-egulaiities of motion in the system, checks all 

 accelerations and revives from all retardations. By analogy to the term 

 central force, I venture to call it the orbital force of cosmical motion, 

 because it proceeds from a body moving in its orbit. I think I have said 

 enough to present the subject sufficiently to those who desire to think 

 about it. 



But it is impossible to stay the mind at this point; it must seek to find 

 the next link backwards in the chain of causes. If thus planets move 

 and maintain the motions of their satellites, then the sun must move in 

 a similar way to maintain the motions of the planets; and we have evi- 

 dence that it is so. And the sun also must have its moving centre, and 

 so on indefinitely. This too we may suppose, though we have no direct 

 evidence of it. 



This ought not to surprise us; for no where, in the acquisition of 

 knowledge, does observation carry us back to the Great Centre of all 

 causes, nor often to very remote ones; and yet it is a natural process of 

 our philosophic faith to reach out and assume a cause for every thing, 

 and we do assume it in harmony with the character of the efiect; physi- 

 cal or spiritual, moral or intellectual, personal or impersonal, according 

 to its demands. Thus only can we fill up the inevitable gaps which expe- 

 rience and observation leave to be supplied in every investigation; and 

 thus Ave are continually led back to the assumption of causes, principles 

 and ideas that can be, as it were, felt by the mind, and which yet trans- 

 -cend all the definitions and manipulations of deductive logic. All our 

 abstractions are natural reachings of the mind towards the absolute in 

 some special aspect of it, and often we make thereby very valuable ac- 

 quisitions. 



And certainly it is not desirable that we should have capacity to start 

 from first causes and deduce from them all the systems and events of the 

 universe; for our happiness depends, not upon the reach of our minds, 

 but upon their continued and proper growth; and this can be only a 

 gradual process, rising from the observation of things and events and 

 from a study of their dynamics to proximate causes, and from a co-ordi- 

 nation of these to more remote and higher ones, without any supposable 

 end to the means or to the functions of our progress. A mind whose 

 chief function is growth cannot commence with the condition to which 

 it aspires, for then it could have neither growth nor aspiration. 



And it is not chargeable as a vice, that we are compelled to postulate 

 A. p. S. — VOL. XI — Z 



