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taken of laying it before you. I come amongst you bringing you new 

 facts on subjects which your minds are not familiar with, and I labour 

 under the disadvantage of having to place these facts before you in the 

 minimum of time. In fact, I have myself solved, in these lectures, the 

 problem of least effort. I appear as a traveller from a strange country, 

 where I have seen strange things. The pleasantest part of my life has 

 been spent in making these researches. The pleasure of making them 

 — the novelty of the facts which they disclose — encouraged me to come 

 before an audience like this, in the hope of interesting others in taking 

 up similar pursuits. I am but an humble craftsman, collecting a few 

 stones together for the great building of Nature ; but after us there must 

 arise some great master-builder, who will perfect the task. The science 

 of Animal Mechanics is only commencing : a vast future is before it. It 

 would be impossible to describe all the results that must come from the 

 careful conscientious combination of geometry and mechanics with the 

 science of comparative anatomy. All these results must come in time. 

 Amongst other applications, I may mention that we are even now in a 

 position to lend valuable aid to the science of geology. You see the 

 fossil skeletons ; you see the points or processes on their bones where 

 certain muscles were attached. We now can calculate with precision, 

 as, I believe, within a few ounces, what the weights, the forms and 

 sizes, of the muscles that supplied those extinct animals, must have 

 been : therefore, if it were worth the trouble, we could reclothe with 

 flesh the fossil megatherium, and restore the perfect form of outline 

 which its body would have had when covered with its muscles. 



In conclusion, let us suppose that this and all the other branches of 

 science which man can study have been carried to their utmost perfec- 

 tion ; let us suppose that man has fully explored all the secrets of 

 Nature he is capable of obtaining, and has found a key that un- 

 locks all her mysteries : he will still find himself only a worshipper 

 in the temple and before the altar of an unknown God, whose 

 true nature and moral relations to himself must be sought from other 

 sources than those which Nature furnishes. There are truths in 

 the system of things as real and as certain as any laws of Nature, 

 although we cannot perceive them with our senses. My eyes cannot 

 see them ; my ears may not hear them ; nor can I touch them with my 

 hands ; but they are there. I know them to be true, and that they will 

 endure when Nature and her laws have passed away like the memory 

 of a troubled dream. I testify what I have seen. I have many a time 

 seen an humble earnest faith in these unseen truths cause a smile of joy 

 to play upon the pale face distorted with pain like a sunbeam dancing 

 on the bosom of the troubled ocean. I have seen those truths illumine 

 with a light from heaven the dim eyes soon to be closed for ever by the 



