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rays. Atmospheric air, again, a triple compound — three gases so 
blended as to sustain life, any one of which, inhaled alone, would 
destroy it. Water, also, is of a triple constitution, at least in 
respect of its accidents, being water, or ice, or steam, according 
to the quantity of heat inherent in it at the moment. So, also, 
is electricity of triple constitution. Again, take the human 
subject — consider man. He has, first, a bodily organization ; 
second, a principle of life in common with all animals ; third, 
a principle of mind peculiar to himself. In his bodily organ- 
ization, again, he has a threefold vital mechanism, — the 
heart, the lungs, and the brain, emphatically, I believe, called 
by anatomists “ the tripod of life/* circulation, respiration, 
and sensation being the means by which he lives, moves, and 
communicates with the outer world. His nervous system also 
is threefold — the motor nerves, moving the limbs ; the sentient 
nerves, conveying the intimations of the senses to the mind ; 
and the ganglionic, neither motive nor sentient, but presiding 
over the organic life, growth, and nutriment of the body. Yet 
these three, united in one brain, constitute in reality but one 
nervous system. Again, man as a reasonable creature. His 
mind is tripartite, consisting of the intellectual, the moral, and 
the voluntary powers ; and further, in the exercise of his intel- 
ligence, his processes of argumentation seem to follow the same 
law; e. g. } the syllogistic form. Take the colloquial formulae 
by which he expresses his relation to either time or space ; 
e. g., the past, the present, the future — man's standpoint, and, 
in connection with it, either above and below, on the right hand 
and on the left, in front and in the rear. Take his expressions 
for space in the exact sciences, — positive, zero, negative ; or 
positive, infinite, negative. Take intercepted motion : the 
impact, the arrest, the recoil ; or the commingling of two 
opposite waves of sound and the mute point of junction, or of 
two opposite rays of light and the inferred point of darkness. 
And, with more or less of exactness, these instances might be 
almost indefinitely multiplied. Now, we venture to ask, is all 
this a purely fanciful generalization ; or is it within the limits 
of, and conformable to, a sound philosophical conclusion, to 
regard all as the mark of the Great First Cause upon His 
mundane work ; the stamp on all things of His own recondite 
essence ; “ the image/' faint it may be, and the superscrip- 
tion," illegible possibly by some, but which truly shadow 
forth the Caesar of all Caesars, the designer of all designs, the 
great Central Being whose they one and all are, and to whom 
they one and all point ? I know that triplex arrangements 
in given objects, more or less fanciful, have long been alleged 
as illustrations of the triune Godhead. Thus the roots, the 
