SOME THOUGHTS ON PERPETUAL MOTION. 391 



may be of the nature and authority of an intuitive senti- 

 ment. The unanimous consent of mankind to any propo- 

 sition is to be regarded as the utterance of humanity. That 

 which our common humanity expresses is the expression 

 of the Author of our humanity ; it is a kind of revelation, 

 and will be found in all cases to correspond to a reality. 



But we are not compelled to refer this doctrine to any 

 sj:>ontaneous, and universal, and necessary intimations grow- 

 ing out of the constitution of human nature. Why may 

 not this faith have been a grand generalization reached in 

 common by the philosophic minds of all ages ? The facts 

 of Nature have always been patent to all the world. The 

 phenomena upon which we have reared the stupendous 

 structure of the modern sciences were as open to the scru- 

 tiny of Th ales, and Pythagoras, and Plato as to us. There 

 are scientific grounds for such beliefs; and the ancient 

 sages, though they certainly failed to appreciate the data 

 of science to the same extent as ourselves, may reasonably 

 be supposed to have caught glimpses of majestic inductions 

 which involved the destruction of terrestrial order, or even 

 the order of the material universe. 



We stand now in the presence of those grand and in- 

 structive phenomena. On an eminence in the midst of the 

 visible universe, with the multitudinous events of earth 

 and heaven transpiring before our eyes — a universe flooded 

 by the ethereal light of modern science — our intelligence 

 gifted with the power to penetrate to the core of the earth, 

 or fly beyond the flight of the most erratic comet — or pierce 

 the gloom of a million ages passed — or lift the veil which 

 opens the vista of a million ages to come — and here, in this 

 favored position, we ask ourselves what tides we witness in 

 the flow of terrestrial and cosmical events. It is a sublime 

 query. With boldness, but with humility and reverence, 

 let us seek the answer. 



