THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER. 



FEBRUARY, 1863. 



THE WORK OF THE YEAR. 



The progress of science during a single year must depend, in 

 some degree, on the recurrence of special phenomena in 

 Nature to give occasion for inquiry, experiment, and speculation . 

 The pure sciences are in so large a measure independent of 

 phenomena, that their progress is at any time a fair criterion 

 of the activity of thought ; but in the various departments of 

 physics, man has to wait upon Nature, to follow where she leads 

 him; to encounter the difficulties of untrodden paths as she 

 may point the way, and whisper of what is to be sought 

 there. The history of science might be used as profitably, to 

 illustrate the relations of human character and human know- 

 ledge to external circumstances, as the history of the nation or 

 the individual in the development of successive phases of moral 

 phenomena. In the analysis of cosmical laws, we must shape 

 our courses as eclipses, and occultations, and transits may occur; 

 the changes of the seasons give the proper subjects for the in- 

 quiries of the meteorologist ; and in geology an earthquake, a 

 volcanic eruption, or a landslip, may disclose facts that appear 

 to nullify previous conclusions, so as to demand a reconsidera- 

 tion of points supposed to have been settled long ago. In 

 these matters, for all the purposes of scientific inquiry, man is 

 the creature of circumstances. But it is no less true that in 

 the same pursuit he creates circumstances; and in geography, 

 zoology, botany, chemistry, and other allied sciences, he is as 

 often the inventor of methods of exploration, comparison, and 

 experiment, as he is, on the other hand, incited to research by 

 the varying aspects of the phenomenal. It has become a neces- 

 sity of our civilization that events should be grouped and clas- 

 sified from week to week, from month to month, from year to 

 year. But it must ever be borne in mind that no single week, 

 month, year, or even cycle of years, will exhibit accurately the 

 whole of the attainments of that one period, nor can it furnish 

 every datum necessary to an estimate of the magnitude, and 

 importance, and bearing, and scope of all the labours of the 

 vol. i. — NO. i. B 



