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exhibit strange periodic movements, which have an evidently 
beneficial effect as tending to prevent stagnation. A study 
of the period of these movements shows that they have some 
mysterious connexion with the moon. Presently, Newton 
arises and shows that these movements are necessary mathe- 
matical consequences of the same law by which a stone, held 
in the hand and let go, falls to the earth. 
As regards this particular phenomenon, it may be that the 
immediate effect of the discovery is rather to turn aside the 
mind from the contemplation of the useful results of the move- 
ment, and involve it in the intricacies of a very complicated 
hydrodynamical problem. The particular phenomenon is 
shown to be part and parcel of a vast system, and it may 
well be that the beneficial results of this system are not at 
first apparent ; from its very vastness the mind^s eye fails to 
take it in. 
Yet surely the study of truth of one kind, rightly pursued, 
cannot conflict with our reception of truth of another kind, 
though from the imperfection of our knowledge and of our 
faculties temporary difficulties may arise. Doubtless, in the 
end our views will be enlarged, and in some respects, it may 
be, corrected. 
To illustrate my meaning, permit me for a few moments to 
indulge in fiction. I will suppose then, that in some un- 
frequented part of the Pacific Ocean there existed an undis- 
covered island, which, for the sake of a name, I will call Irene. 
The Irenians were men of cultivated minds, intelligent, and 
deeply religious, but for centuries they had been cut off from 
all connexion with the rest of the world, and they were 
ignorant of the very rudiments of natural science. They 
delighted in poetry, and in the cultivation of the feelings ; and 
being devout they contemplated the phenomena of nature in 
immediate relation to a supreme Being. That most wonderful 
of our senses, the sense of sight, buried to them in mystery in 
all that belonged to it, was a special object of admiration, and 
they loved to dwell on it as evidence of the beneficence of the 
Creator. 
At last the island was discovered by the captain of a 
scientific circumnavigating expedition. The Irenians and their 
visitors were greatly pleased with each other ; and the scientific 
men of the expedition, finding them apt pupils, took great 
interest in teaching them so much of the elements of physics 
as the length of their stay permitted. They taught them 
among other things something of optics, the existence of rays, 
the laws of reflection and refraction, the formation of images 
by lenses, the use of telescopes. They then dissected an eye. 
