THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE. 135 



began to exist. But if you admit any special creation 

 for the first particle of organic matter you may just as 

 well admit it for all the rest; five hundred or five thou- 

 sand distinct creations are just as intelligible^ and just 

 as little difficult to understand, as one." The answer to 

 these cavils is two-fold. In the first place, all human 

 inquiry must stop somewhere; all our knowledge and 

 all our investigation cannot take us beyond the limits 

 set by the finite and restricted character of our facul- 

 ties, or destroy the endless unknown, which accom- 

 panies, like its shadow, the endless procession of 

 phenomena. So far as I can venture to ofi'er an 

 opinion on such a matter, the purpose of our being in 

 existence, the highest object that human beings can 

 set before themselves, is not the pursuit of any such 

 chimera as the annihilation of the unknown ; but it is 

 simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boun- 

 daries a little further from our little sphere of action. 



I wonder if any historian would for a moment admit 

 the objection, that it is preposterous to trouble ourselves 

 about the history of the Roman Empire, because we 

 do not know anything positive about the origin and 

 first building of the city of Rome ! "Would it be a 

 fair objection to urge, respecting the sublime dis- 

 coveries of a Newton, or a Kepler, those great philoso- 

 phers, whose discoveries have been of the profoundest 

 benefit and service to all men, — to say to them — " After 

 all that you have told us as to how the planets revolve, 

 and how they are maintained in their orbits, you 

 cannot tell us what is the cause of the origin of the 

 sun, moon, and stars. So what is the use of what you 

 have done ?" Yet these objections would not be one 



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