294 



EXPLANATIONS. 



they can be leconciled with that provisional theory, >r what 

 additions or corrections it requires to make it square with 

 them. In this way .... we arrive, by means of hypo- 

 theses, at conclusions not hypothetical."* It was with the 

 design of thus giving a direction to inquiry, and leading to 

 views of nature previously little thought of, but unspeak- 

 ably grander than those commonly entertained, that, too 

 eager for truth to regard my own imperfections, I ventured 

 upon my late speculation. When an ordinary reader 

 judges of it, let him remember that the question lies, not 

 • between two philosophical theories, but between one phil- 

 osophical theory and a view of nature which does not 

 even profess to look to nature for a basis. As a system 

 moreover, which finds none of the previous labors of sci- 

 ence shaped or directed in favor of its elucidation, but all 

 in the contrary way, it obviously calls for every reasona- 

 ble allowance being made for its defects. It may prove 

 a true system, though one half of the illustrations present- 

 ed by its first explicator should be wrong. 



For any mind competent to judge of the argument, 

 there can be little need to insist upon the superiority of 

 the conclusions to which it leads, over the results which 

 arise from more limited views of ordinary science. Ex- 

 isting philosophy, halting between the notions of the 

 enlightened and the unenlightened man, leaves us only 

 puzzled. We know not how to regard the phenomena of 

 the world, and our own relation to them. Many sink into 

 a kind of fatalism which paralyzes the faculties ; others 

 ascend into fantastic dreams which exercise a not less 

 baleful influence. Some of the disastrous consequences 

 are sufficiently conspicuous ; but many more blaze and 

 expend themselves in privacy, known only in the circles 

 where they have been so fatally felt. The entire conduct 

 of a large portion of society, and more or less that of 

 nearly all the rest, is regulated, or rather cast loose from 

 regulation, by the want of definite ideas regarding that 

 fixed plan of the Divine working, on the study and ob- 

 servance of which it is evident that our secular happiness 

 nearly altogether depends. Even acute men of the world 

 are daily seen acting to their own manifest injury, in 

 consequence of their utter ignorance of any system of law 

 pressing around them. With the great bulk of society, 

 life is mc rely a following of a few inferior instincts, with 

 * Mill's System of Logic. 



