METHOD OE DETERMINING GENERA. 
175 
ancl read the sentences : a study more abstruse but far 
more pregnant than that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, 
and whose attainment is rewarded with a supremer 
knowledge than is accorded by these, which exhibit 
merely the legends of dead despots; but here we have 
a display of the vitality of the wisdom inscribed in 
gleaming characters upon the leaves of the wonderful 
book of life, God’s glorious works, made manifest to 
man. 
Thus we should aim at the knowledge of final causes, 
the apparent wisdom of whose adaptations points clearly 
to the source of all—the first great Cause. A naturalist 
with such large views has a wide field before him, which 
with every step expands, and which alone is worthy of 
engrossing the earnest attention of his intelligence, and 
is in itself sufficient to absorb the profoundest contem¬ 
plation. His mind becomes thus filled with great objects, 
which charm it with their beauty and feed it with the 
complexity of their intricate combinations, whose earnest 
development is an affluent stream of perpetual instruc¬ 
tive occupation. With Newton we may say: a We 
everywhere behold simplicity in the means, but an inex¬ 
haustible variety in the effects,” resulting all from the 
luminous wisdom of prearranged design. 
The humiliation which attends the sentiment of the 
utter inability and incompetency of the mind to grasp 
the intricacy and vastness of nature, is consoled by the 
redundant proofs the contemplation yields of a supreme 
and benevolent Providence presiding over all things, and 
thence we derive the comfortable and supporting assur¬ 
ance, in the fickle waywardness and vicissitudes of a ha¬ 
rassed and anxious life, that a benevolent eye is ever 
watchfully awake; for the naturalist everywhere beholds 
