VI.] Chauncey Wright. 95 



set aside Mr. Spencer's proceedings as un-Baconian 

 without so drawing the line as to exclude Newton's 

 comparison of the falling moon to the falling apple, — 

 the grand achievement which first extended the 

 known dynamic order of Nature from the earth to 

 the heavens. 



Our knowledge of the universe is no doubt well 

 nigh infinitely small, — how small we cannot know. 

 The butterfly sailing on the summer breeze may be 

 no farther from comprehending the secular changes 

 in the earth's orbit than man is from fathoming 

 the real course and direction of cosmic events. Yet, 

 if throughout the tiny area which alone we have 

 partially explored we everywhere find coherency of 

 causation, then, just because we are incapable of 

 transcending experience, we cannot avoid attribut- 

 ing further coherency to the regions beyond our ken, 

 so far as such regions can afford occasion for thought 

 at all. The very limitations under which thinking 

 is conducted thus urge us to seek the One in the 

 Many ; yet, if our words are rightly weighed, this 

 does not imply a striving after "systematic om- 

 niscience," nor can any theistic conception which 

 confines itself within these limits of inference be 

 properly stigmatized as contrary to the spirit of 

 science. 



