PRINCIPLES OF THINGS. 



or are falling in their turn, without having lived long enough to reach the 

 common age of man ; all of them have been proved, or reasonably sus- 

 pected, to be compounds of other substances, that may yet, perhaps, be de- 

 tected to be compounds of something beyond. Even oxygene, the most 

 brilliant of the whole, the boasted discovery of Lavoisier, and out of which 

 he was supposed to have built to his own memory a monument more 

 durable than brass," has had its throne shaken to its foundation by Sir Hum- 

 phry Davy, and is at this moment, like the Roman ei> pire in its decline, 

 obhged to divide its sway with a new and popular power, which this last 

 celebrated chemist has denominated chlorine ; while of the more subtle and 

 active agents, hght, caloric, the magnetic and electric fluids, we know no- 

 thing but from their effects, and can only say of each — stat nominis umbra. 



Is physical science then a vain show ? — a mere house of cards, built up 

 for the sole purpose of being pulled down again ? — Assuredly not. The 

 firm footing we have actually obtained upon many essential points — a 

 feoting not to be disturbed by any future change of system, or novelty of 

 discovery — and the ascertainment of a multitude of recondite facts, and 

 their application to some of our most extensive and valuable arts, suffi- 

 ciently prove that philosophy has neither lived nor laboured in vain. Al- 

 though we have not been able to break through the spell completely — to 

 follow up the Proteus-form of matter into its deepest recesses, and fix it in 

 its last shape and character — we have succeeded in developing many 

 of its most important laws, as it will be the object of the ensuing lecture to 

 point out, and to apply them to a solution of many of its most important 

 phaenomena. Whatever is sure and trusty has remained to us, and what- 

 ever has given way has been mere chimera and shadow : we have chiefly, 

 perhaps only, failed where we have either been too curious, or have suf- 

 fered imagination to become our charioteer in the slow and sober journey 

 of analysis. 



Before v»re quit this subject, let us, in the candid spirit of genuine phi- 

 losophy, do the same justice to Epicurus as we attempted in our last lecture 

 to Pythagoras and Plato. It has been very generally said, and very gene- 

 rally believed, principally, because it has been very generally said, that the 

 great and mighty cause of this beautiful and harmonious formation of 

 worlds, and systems of worlds, in the opinion of Epicurus, was mere 

 CHANCE, or FORTUNE. Thcrc is nothing, however, in those fragments of 

 his works which have descended to us, that can in any way countenance so 

 opprobrious an opinion, but various passages th it distinctly controvert it, — 

 passages in which he peremptorily denies the existence of chance or for- 

 tune, either as a deity or a cause of action ; and unequivocally refers the 

 whole of those complex series of percussions and repercussions, inter- 

 changes and combinations, exhibited by the elementary seeds or atoms of 

 matter during the creative process, to a chain of immutable laws which 

 they received from the Almighty Architect at the beginning, and which 

 they still punctually obey, and will for ever obey till the universe shall at 

 length cease to exist.* ^'^ Whom," says Epicurus, in a letter to his disci- 

 ple Menaeceus, that has yet survived the preying tooth of time, and will be 

 found in Diogenes Laertius, do you beheve to be more excellent than he 

 who piously reveres the Gods, who feels no dread of death, and rightly 

 estimates the design of nature ? Such a man does not, with the multitude, 



* For a more extensive inquiry into this subject, the reader is referred to the author's 

 Prolegomena to his translation of the "Nature of Xiiipgs," from which this gununary is 



