1885.] 
Seen and the Unseen . 
573 
h K S u ^ ur f ed th u e dominion over the human 
™hL h Ma " has lost much of light and knowledge 
rf Ihe art^ciak” n0W P ° SSeSS the had existed in P la « 
Institutions have been founded on artificial demands, to 
support which man, against his nature and duty, and at the 
entire sacrifice of justice, feelings, and conscience, has used 
the sword against his fellows. War, Persecution, Vice, and 
Misery have thus reigned : thus the Moral, Social, and 
Intellectual have been crushed and prostrated, and all the 
mental slavery forced upon man has been caused by a per- 
version of his natural inclinations and of the principles of 
Nature. The hope of ameliorisation must be based on 
mental piogress, when examination of the experience of the 
errors of the past will serve as a monitor for the future, but 
in the present there is no liberty for the unrestricted exercise 
of thought and its expression. 
Would it not be well to understand and recognise the law 
which controls Nature and man with an undeviating and 
unchangeable government, rather than rely upon the rule of 
artificial laws ? Then the great tree, so long concealed from 
mental view, whose roots have existed eternally, founded 
only in that great system of Nature of which man is the 
subject and effect would grow and progress : its fruits would 
then be the united interests of mankind : then ignorance, 
which has been and still appears to be inexorable in its 
influence, would be destroyed by the annihilating hand of 
truth and wisdom. 
Theories founded on visible faCts men have laboured to 
reduce to Science, believing the faCt was attributable to 
some cause invisible, search was made and the cause demon- 
strated. Science founded on this ground cannot be over- 
thrown, — i.e. t the causes are true and the effects are true. 
But those who expeCt effects to manifest themselves to the 
senses as unchangeable would be mistaken as respeCts their 
particidavs and minutice. There are such things as general 
causes to produce general effects ; but there is not such a 
thing as a general cause manifesting invariably both general 
and minute effects, particularly when these effects are looked 
for or expeCted in forms. 
“ Reasoning from effects in a retrograde manner men have 
arrived at non-entity, and become confirmed in a disbelief of 
anything beyond what the senses will recognise as existing 
Are you not convinced, by the fluctuating nature of things 
external, fluctuating, and transient, and which are fleeting 
